Sketching studies

Spain’s Prado art gallery has discovered two sketches by Michelangelo in its art stockroom. The modest drawings of a shoulder and a man’s arm are studies for the Last Judgement painted on the altar wall of the Sistine chapel in the Vatican, Gabriele Finaldi, associate director, Prado collection, said. They were part of a set of eight drawings donated to the museum in 1930, which, although thought to be associated with the Renaissance master and his school, had never been studied or published. The two pieces were identified by experts as the Prado prepared for an exhibition of 16th century Italian drawings.