page_title: Brutus (Michelangelo)
section_title: Fibula as a study for the head
hierarchical_section_title: Brutus (Michelangelo) / The work / Fibula as a study for the head
caption_attribution_description: English: De Tolnay writes: "No drawings for the Brutus have been preserved to us, but there is a sculptured preliminary study on the bust itself: on the fibula holding the drapery, hitherto quite unnoticed, is a fine relief [Plate I, B], obviously wrought by Michelangelo himself, which could only have been made for the artist's own use as it is not visible to the spectator. It must have been made before the head of the bust was begun as a preliminary study, and represents a head in profile with naked neck and base, reproducing exactly the pose of the heads of Brutus on antique coins [Plate I, C]. Vasari's statement, therefore, that Michaelangelo drew his inspiration from antique gems is, at all events in part—proved to be correct—not for the bust itself but for the preliminary study."
context_page_description: Brutus is a marble bust of Brutus sculpted by Michelangelo around 1539–1540. It is now in the Bargello museum in Florence.
  The sculpture gives Brutus an heroic aspect in keeping with political sentiment against tyranny at the time of its creation. It belongs to—and may have initiated—a revival of the classical bust in sculpture.
context_section_description: Giorgio Vasari wrote that Michelangelo had modeled Brutus from the image cut into a gem. Later scholars did not find the sculpture to resemble any such extant gem, supposing instead that the sculpture may have been modeled after a bust of Caracalla. De Tolnay in 1935 published his observation that the fibula in the sculpture is a study for the sculpture itself, providing a missing link to show the resemblance to classical coinage.
  The shape of the head itself is simpler than that of the silhouette on the shoulder. According to de Tolnay:
  In the former (the fibula), the silhouette of the head is roundish ; the forehead in relief shows movement ; the outline of the nose is undulating ; the line of the lips is soft ; the chin is sharply rounded. In the latter (the bust), everything is simplified for cutting ; the comparatively small head rises above an unusually broad bull-neck, and has an almost straight rectangular silhouette ; the forehead is quite smoothed off ; the nose is severely straight ; the lips are hard ; the chin is angular and protruding. The minor details have disappeared and only the form as a whole remains effective. This evolution from an empirical, individual prototype to a universal, ideal type is characteristic of Michelangelo's procedure, and may be seen even in his early work.
caption: Comparison of fibula on Brutus's shoulder with classical depiction of Brutus on a coin
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