The handedness of Michelangelo Buonarroti

The handedness of Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564), one of the greatest artists of all time, is still controversial. Although there is no doubt that almost all of his well‐attributed drawings were drawn with the right hand, the hatch marks of the shading going downward from right to left; it has been often neglected in the literature that he was an innate left‐hander. An unfairly unknown autobiography of Raffaello da Montelupo stated that Michelangelo, a natural left‐hander, trained himself from a young age to become right‐handed. The same biography also underlined that Michelangelo restricted the use of his left hand only to works requiring force such as hammering, carving, and chiseling marble. The sign of the wooden crucifix donated to Santo Spirito in 1492 and two autographic sketches by Michelangelo—one left alongside a poem in 1509, and the other in the dress of the Vittoria Colonna sketch in 1525—are useful tools for analyzing the artist's evolution from left to right handedness when drawing, writing, and painting. Clin. Anat. 31:645–647, 2018. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.