A sibyl in Antiquity was a female figure endowed with prophetic gifts. The Delphic Sibyl was the most famous of them.
Michelangelo’s (1475-1564) Delphic Sibyl sets with her legs bent and facing towards the left; her head is turned to the right and her arms are bent and raised in different ways. The contemporary Italian architect and author Giorgio Vasari (1511-74) emphasised these positions as a special resource, characteristic of Michelangelo’s sibyls when he wrote Michelangelo’s biography. This biography, like Vasari’s biographies of various other major Renaissance artists, can be read in Le Vite – as Vasari’s book from 1550 is called for convenience. Michelangelo’s frescoes are there referred to as an ultimate model from which artists could learn. Not that they should be copied! On the contrary, the position in which a figure was portrayed in a work should be replaced with one’s own motif. For artists working in graphics, like Giorgio Ghisi, this view was an advantage. Not only was there a demand for their graphics from collectors and scholars. Artists, too, could derive benefit by looking through graphic presentations.
