A drawing after the nude youth (ignudo) to the left above the Cumean Sibyl, in Michelangelo’s fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

The drawing is one of a set of fourteen at Windsor (RCIN 990632-990645), twelve of which copy ignudi on the Sistine Ceiling, the other two (990632-3) copying details of the scene of The Flood in the ceiling. The drawings of the ignudi were reproduced in engravings by Adamo Scultori (Adamo Ghisi), part of a set of 72 engravings after the ignudi, Ancestors of Christ, Prophets and Sibyls in the Sistine Ceiling. The first edition with 63 plates, signed with the monogram of Adamo Scultori, can be dated c. 1547-55. The series was republished in 1585, and expanded in 1612 with a frontispiece ‘MICHAEL ANGELUS BONAROTUS PINXIT, ADAM SCULPTOR MANTUANUS INCIDIT’. This drawing corresponds with the print inscribed ‘6’ in the series (The Illustrated Bartsch, XV (Adamo Scultori), 1986, p. 182, no. 32).

The prints are smaller than the drawings, suggesting that the engraver employed an intermediate sheet to transfer the design to the plate, which would explain the presence of light squaring on the present drawing. Letters of 1547 between Adamo’s father, Giovanni Battista Scultori (1503-1575), and the Cardinal Perrenot de Granville, establish that Giovanni Battista made 59 drawings with figures from the Sistine Chapel for the Cardinal (see A. Moltedo, La Sistina Riprodotta, 1991, pp. 70-71). It is plausible that the present series of drawings are by Giovanni Battista, perhaps a second set in parallel with those for the Cardinal, and subsequently used by his son as the basis for his engravings.