Writing the body: Andrea del Verrocchio’s Measured Drawing of a Horse

Abstract

This article sheds new light on Andrea del Verrocchio’s Measured Drawing of a Horse Facing Left (recto), c.1480–88 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 19.76.5), by scrutinizing the artist’s unique approach to the representation of measurement. It takes as its focus the complex apparatus of annotations traversing the horse, which painstakingly translates the proportions of the equine body into words. A close reading of these “written vectors” fundamentally transforms our understanding of the function of text in a measured drawing. For Verrocchio, writing is not merely a descriptive tool but rather a powerful vehicle for the construction of a spatialized body within the boundaries of the pictorial field. His experimentation with the graphic potential of the written word challenges the traditional tension between pictura and scriptura and speaks to a broader shift in how drawn images were constructed and conceptualized during the Renaissance.