Michelangelo, Drawing, and the Subject of Art

The emergence of the modern institution of art is often understood as the gradual secularization of the religious image. Yet if secularization is understood as the erosion of conventional subject matter, then the contribution of secular painting need not be disqualified. In Michelangelo's cartoon for The Battle of Cascina (1504), for example, the compositional structure of the cartoon militates against an iconographic analysis, formerly thought to disclose political meaning. The breaking down of iconography, however, did not claim art's pure autonomy here. Instead, the work demonstrated the social and political centrality of the new institution of art.