A man who liked drawing men’s butts and crosses filled a room in the British Museum with pictures of butts and crosses. Michelangelo’s will was largely suppressed in later years by scandalous Puritans within the Catholic Church.
The museum features a combined exhibition that looks back at Michelangelo’s work over the past decades, from his close friendship with aristocrats whom he described as his “friends,” his spiritual friendship with women, his architecture, and his subsequent fear of death. Is going. and religious salvation.
The exhibition opens with a somber voice reading out Michelangelo’s letters and the portrait of Michelangelo that appears in the guide that most of us have seen: an old man with a big beard.
The wall in the video displays his painting of the Last Judgment in which Michelangelo’s waist garment covers the undesirables he left exposed, but look at the gray sketch on the side wall. This is the only surviving record of what the painting looked like before the Willies were hidden away. You can spend a lot of time comparing paintings and sketches, shaking your head from side to side, as if you were watching a tennis match.
Divided into several chapters, the first considers Michelangelo’s friendship with the aristocrat Tommaso de Cavalieri and the many paintings and poems exchanged between them.
The collection of drawings is impressive, but it is a shame that the question of how close the friendship was was ignored. Most scholars lean toward a very close but platonic friendship, and it is very likely that it was an unrequited love for Michelangelo. But describing them as “friends” without qualification seems like a strange choice, and one that would be more appropriate for an exhibition 30 years ago than one today.
The exhibition devotes as much time to his very platonic friendship with the proto-Protestant poet Vittoria Colonna, and one of the treasures here is the only surviving copy of a book banned by the Inquisition. This is the first edition of this book.
Filling one wall is Michelangelo’s only surviving life-size caricature, a sketch for a painting, and Ascanio Condivi’s painting based on that caricature has been reunited for the first time in nearly 500 years. Both have been specially restored for this exhibition.
Unsurprisingly for the time he worked, this exhibition has a lot of Jesus and crosses on display. Indeed, they dominate the second half of the exhibition, as Michelangelo seemed increasingly concerned about his own unworthy worldly ideas and his posthumous salvation.
Perhaps one of the most fascinating sights here are the two different designs of Christian crosses, the one we are familiar with being a very later invention. Elsewhere, a painting of the Crucifixion of St. Peter, used as background decoration on the wall, is strategically placed above the saint’s groin.
There are also many letters he wrote to relatives, some of which contain some pretty intimate details about his condition and how it ultimately affects all of us.
Then he dies and the exhibition ends.
As a show, it’s a little complicated. Arguably, each chapter stands alone as an exhibition in its own right, so bundling them together in a package that looks back at the artist’s past decades makes the exhibition feel somewhat disjointed.
But Michelangelo is always worth seeing, and this is a large collection of works brought together in one place in a way that is a rare treat to admire.
The exhibition “Michelangelo: The Last Decades” is on view at the British Museum until the end of July 2024.
Monday to Friday
Adults: £18 | Discount: £16 | National Art Pass: £8 | Under 16s (accompanied by an adult): Free
(Students receive 2-for-1 tickets on Friday)
Saturday and Sunday
Adults: £20 | Discount: £18 | National Art Pass: £10 | Under 16s (accompanied by an adult): Free
British Museum members enjoy free entry to all exhibitions.
And if The Last Judgment whetted your appetite for his other masterpiece, the Sistine Chapel, there’s no need to travel to Rome to see it, as there’s an impressive replica right here in the UK.
