A young soldier attaching his breastplate, seen from behind, after Michelangelo (recto); A group of figures, for a Brazen Serpent (?), (verso)

A study after a figure in the left background of Michelangelo's famous cartoon of the Battle of Cascina, now destroyed. Commissioned in 1504 by the Gonfalonier Pietro Soderini, it was eagerly copied by young artists as soon as it was completed, which contributed to its early destruction. Both Vasari and Cellini wrote enthusiastically about it. The earliest known copy after the composition, by Aristotile da Sangallo, is now at Holkham Hall.
This figure was also engraved by Marcantonio Raimondi or Agostino Veneziano (Bartsch XIV, 463 and 463A). Another copy of it is in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rennes, P. Ramade, Disegno, les dessins italiens du musée de Rennes, exhib. cat., Rennes and elsewhere, 1990, no. 124.