Author Topic: Michelangelo's Coming Out Drawings on display in London  (Read 7356 times)

Offline sel

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Michelangelo's Coming Out Drawings on display in London
« on: February 21, 2010, 04:55:28 am »
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/arts_and_culture/8520879.stm


Michelangelo drawings of his muse go on display    [/size]

A series of drawings which Michelangelo made for a younger man he is thought to have fallen in love with, have gone on display at London's Courtauld Gallery.

The exhibition is built around his masterpiece The Dream (Il Sogno), bequeathed to the gallery in 1978. The Dream is considered one of the finest of all Renaissance drawings
It depicts a naked young man, thought to represent Tommasso de Cavalieri, being roused from sleep by a spirit.

The Michelangelo Dream exhibition, which also features handwritten sonnets to Cavalieri, will run until 16 May.

'Serious friendship'

The series of works created for Cavalieri were described in 1568, by artist and Michelangelo biographer Giorgio Vasari, as "drawings the like of which have never been seen".


Drawings portray Michelangelo's love
In a letter to Michelangelo, also featured in the exhibition, Cavalieri said the drawings had been admired by "the Pope, the Cardinal de Medici and everyone".

Curator Stephanie Buck said Cavalieri was thought to have been "an adolescent of 17 or under" when Michelangelo fell in love with him.

"It was a deep and serious friendship which was to last until Michelangelo's death in 1564," she told the BBC News website.

"The two men met in the winter of 1532 and Michelangelo fell passionately in love with Tommaso de Cavalieri, who was praised for his outstanding beauty, gracious manners and intellect."


 "These extremely complex and beautiful works show Michelangelo's power of invention, the immense creativity and mastery in the medium".
Curator Stephanie Buck

When Michelangelo created the drawings for Cavalieri he was "the most famous living artist of his day, at the height of his career, and praised as 'the divine'", Ms Buck said.

"These extremely complex and beautiful works show Michelangelo's power of invention, the immense creativity and mastery in the medium.

"They also show him engaged with concepts of love and beauty."

A group of drawings by Michelangelo of Christ's resurrection, based on a "heroic nude figure of the reborn Christ leaping free of the tomb and the bondage of life on earth", is also featured.

The gallery said the drawings offered "close thematic and formal comparisons with The Dream".




BbM, I swear

Offline Kerry

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Re: Michelangelo's Coming Out Drawings on display in London
« Reply #1 on: February 21, 2010, 08:45:51 am »

The Dream
by Michelangelo
γνῶθι σεαυτόν

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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Re: Michelangelo's Coming Out Drawings on display in London
« Reply #2 on: February 21, 2010, 08:56:55 am »



http://www.spamula.net/blog/2005/05/


May 02, 2005

Michelangelo’s Dream

Maria Ruvoldt’s book The Italian Renaissance Imagery of Inspiration: Metaphors of Sex, Sleep and Dreams   is an absorbing study of ‘the Renaissance perception, production and reception of sleep and dreams and their relation to divine inspiration.’ In Chapter 6 of the book, Ruvoldt looks in detail at a fascinating drawing by Michelangelo Buonarroti, Il Sogno  (the Dream):




The drawing, done in graphite on paper, was made around 1533. It is currently in the collection of the Courtauld Institute of Art. Ruvoldt speculates that it was among a number of pieces that Michelangelo presented as gifts to Tommaso de’ Cavalieri , a young man with whom the artist had recently become infatuated. The drawing has been interpreted (by Panovsky, among others) as an allegory for virtue triumphing over vice in an ‘awakening of the soul.’




The semicircular arrangement of figures sketched around the reclining nude and the descending angel depict several of the vices, but are by no means a typical catalogue of the ‘seven deadly sins:’ there is no depiction of Superbia  (Pride), for example, while Luxuria  (Lust) is sketched more than once. Ruvoldt plausibly suggests that Michelangelo drew those aspects of the vices which he felt applied to himself…




Beneath the recumbent nude are a number of masks. The mask given most prominence, the one with the flat nose and the forked beard, is a slightly caricatured likeness of the artist himself. This could be seen as a physical  representation being shown as subordinate to the artist’s spiritual  likeness as embodied by the reclining figure.




Perhaps the most puzzling element in the composition is the sphere upon which the central figure leans back. The meridian encircling this globe has led to conjecture that it represents the world. Ruvoldt thinks it is intended instead as a symbol and an attribute of melancholy:  more specifically that saturnine melancholy, which, according to Marsilio Ficino, was a characteristic temperament of men of genius, rendering them susceptible to intense depression and inspiration alike: it is known that Michelangelo considered himself a melancholic of this stamp. Spheres also feature in other contemporary depictions of melancholy.




According to Ruvoldt, the fact that the angel’s trumpet is pointing at the other figure’s forehead,  and not to his ear,  is also significant. Apparently, Renaissance medical tradition held that the forehead corresponded to the location of the mind’s imaginative faculty, to that part of the brain which receives and preocesses visual impressions: in which case, what we see here is a depiction of the artist directly inspired by images received ‘from above.’
"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
(and you know who I am...)


Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne)
and Pee-wee in the 1990 episode
"Camping Out"

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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Re: Michelangelo's Coming Out Drawings on display in London
« Reply #3 on: February 22, 2010, 12:35:43 am »


I'll also add:

The Courtauld Gallery is in a wing (the 'Strand Block') of the beautiful and historic building
and courtyards of Somerset House:







--and, of course, one beautiful evening, another masterpiece was presented more than a year ago (Sel will certainly remember!)



http://www.somersethouse.org.uk/film/663.asp

2 August 2008
Brokeback Mountain

Strong emotions under the stars with director Ang Lee's profound and powerful
romantic-drama. The late Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal dominate the screen,
their love for one another set against the striking landscape of the American West.

Running time: 134mins


We’ve created a themed menu around each film, so there’s something new to eat each night.

Brokeback Mountain Menu
Vegetable Chilli with corn bread £3.50
Beef Chilli with corn bread £4.50





(photographs by BlissC, reports and postings by Sel and seadragon16)

Brokeback Mountain on at Somerset House, London on 2nd August
http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,20807.0.html
"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
(and you know who I am...)


Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne)
and Pee-wee in the 1990 episode
"Camping Out"

Offline sel

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Re: Michelangelo's Coming Out Drawings on display in London
« Reply #4 on: February 22, 2010, 04:28:48 am »

I'll also add:

--and, of course, one beautiful evening, another masterpiece was presented more than a year ago (Sel will certainly remember!)

[
(photographs by BlissC, reports and postings by Sel and seadragon16)

Brokeback Mountain on at Somerset House, London on 2nd August
http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,20807.0.html


You remembered John! Thank you! It was a  great evening.
BbM, I swear

Offline Ellemeno

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Re: Michelangelo's Coming Out Drawings on display in London
« Reply #5 on: February 22, 2010, 05:10:34 am »
Even Michelangelo is better, when we can connect him to BBM and Brokies!

Offline Penthesilea

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Re: Michelangelo's Coming Out Drawings on display in London
« Reply #6 on: February 22, 2010, 10:09:33 am »
Even Michelangelo is better, when we can connect him to BBM and Brokies!


You bet! :D