Road to Calvary

Battista Franco left Venice for Rome as a young man and did something single-minded even by the standards of his generation. For years he studied almost nothing but Michelangelo, drawing after him again and again until the older master's muscular figures became his own vocabulary. You can read that schooling in this crowded Road to Calvary of 1552, where Christ sinks under the cross among bodies that twist and press with a sculptor's weight. It was made near the end of Franco's life, after he had returned north to work in Venice and the Veneto. Trained first as a draughtsman, he was also one of the accomplished etchers of his day, and the same firm, restless line that fills his prints runs through the figures crowding this hill.