Two pencil drawings on cream wove paper (formerly one sheet), circa 1830. Each 250x190 mm; 9 7/8x7 3/8 inches. One sheet with the artist's red ink stamp (Lugt 838a, lower left recto).
Ex-collection Harwood Fine Arts, New Jersey, with a copy of the purchase receipt; private collection, New York.
Both drawings appear to be based loosely on figures in Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel frescoes, Rome. The seated figure with left knee bent and left arm raised resembles that of the Prophet Isaiah, while the seated nude with crossed legs and raised arms is similar to that of the seated ignudo above and to the right of the Prophet Daniel (Michelangelo's red chalk preparatory drawing of this figure is now in the Cleveland Museum of Art).
Delacroix (1798-1863) was clearly indebted to Michelangelo's work and referenced it in many of his own paintings. He also wrote an essay in the Revue des deux mondes, 1837, on Michelangelo's Last Judgment fresco, 1536-41, also in the Sistine Chapel, Rome, in which he referred to Michelangelo as "the father of modern art."
