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We don't. The lines in his drawings usually go right to left, the way right-handed people draw.
There is only one historical reference, and it seems confusing:
"(Michelangelo's left-handedness) ...is alluded to only in the autobiography of the Florentine sculptor and architect Raffaello da Montelupo (ca. 1504/1505-1566), and then only by way of an anecdote when describing his own left-handedness in drawing and writing.3 Raffaello's eyewitness account is a footnote in Michelangelo studies, for the famous biographies of Michelangelo written by Ascanio Condivi (Rome, 1553) and Giorgio Vasari (Florence, 1550 and 1568), authors who were close to the great artist, omit any such mention. However, many Renaissance authors writing about Leonardo noted that he was left-handed."
http://www.metmuseum.org/special/Leonardo_Master_Draftsman/draftsman_left_essay.asp

And here's what de Montelupo had said:
"Here I may mention that I am in the habit of drawing with my left hand, and that once, while at Rome, while I was sketching the arch of Trajan at the Colosseum, Michelangelo and Sebastian del Piombo (Venetian painter active in Rome), both of whom were naturally left-handed (although they did not work with the left hand except when they wished to use great strength) stopped to see me, and expressed great wonder, no sculptor or painter ever having done so before me, as far as I know."

This seems really questionable. Hadn't he heard of Leonardo's (seemingly) very famous left-handed drawings? Hadn't Michelangelo and del Piombio? And there is no explanation of how de Montelupo knew the two artists were "naturally left-handed."
Why didn't a single biographer, including those who knew him well, mention at all that Michelangelo was left-handed? There will never be any definitive proof.

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15y ago

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