A red chalk study of a male nude, annotated in Michelangelo’s hand marking the proportional divisions of the body. On the verso, another male nude, the figure partially outlined with the stylus.

The main drawing seems to have had a didactic function, for it is statically posed and the proportions of parts of the body are indicated. It is possible that it was drawn for Sebastiano del Piombo (c.1485-1547), the most accomplished of Michelangelo's immediate followers. The style of this drawing suggests a date around 1515-20, the period of Michelangelo's closest association with Sebastiano.

The drawing is annotated by Michelangelo: on the right elbow: ‘terzo duna testa’; upper leg: ‘dua e u[n] terzo a l a[n]guinaia' (groin); left ankle: ‘dua e terzi’. Measurements are also given of the anatomical sections sketched in the margins: the width of the upper arm sketched at upper right: ‘2 terzi’; the knee sketched at the lower left edge: ‘[u]na’; the foot sketched in the lower left corner: ‘un[a] e 3 quarti’. The unit used in the drawing is a testa or head, defined in the sketch at top right as the distance from chin to hairline, and equal to the length of a hand. Overall the model stands eleven and a half units tall, and while this would normally give a gracefully elongated figure, this ratio is here due to an unusually small head which further emphasises the breadth of the shoulders.

The musculature is anatomically accurate, if greatly exaggerated, and reflects the artist's lifelong investigation of the male nude. Michelangelo's biographer Ascanio Condivi (Vita di Michelangelo, Rome, 1553) stated that the artist was preoccupied with proportion, though this is one of few surviving drawings to be so explicit.

A copy of the recto is in the Teylers Museum, Haarlem (A.26). Another was in the collection of Giulio Clovio, recorded in his inventory of 1577 as 'Una notomia con tutti le misure di Michelangiolo fatta da Dⁿ Giulio'; that copy was in the Poynter sale (24 April 1918, lot 82; a photograph is held in the British Museum).

On the verso is another drawing of a standing nude, stylistically related to a drawing made in preparation for the Young Slave in the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris (inv. 197 recto), datable about 1516. When drawing from the life model, Michelangelo often included peripheral details; here, he shows the model’s long hair caught up behind in a knot. A copy of the drawing is in the Uffizi (6550-E), attributed to Pontormo.