Art Museum Journal

 

Michelangelo Public and Private... Exhibition at Seattle Art Museum
By STAN PARCHIN
August 25, 2009 

The Seattle Art Museum is the exclusive venue for Michelangelo Public and Private: Drawings for the Sistine Chapel and Other Treasures from the Casa Buonarroti from October 15, 2009 to January 31, 2010. Twelve works on paper by the Italian Renaissance master (1475-1564) are joined by portraits of the artist, personal documents and decorative arts from the Florentine museum. The Casa Buonarroti, founded in 1619 by Michelangelo's great-nephew on the site of the artist's former home, remains the world's greatest repository of the master's drawings.
 
The exhibition centers on a intimate group of Michelangelo's images for the Sistine Chapel Ceiling and Last Judgment frescoes in the Vatican. From preliminary sketches to finished studies, the viewer gains remarkable insight into the artist's working process, an idea Michelangelo would have abhorred. According to biographer and painter Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574), he went to great lengths to cultivate his reputation as a divinely-inspired genius by burning most of his projects' preparatory drawings, models and casts, thus making the conception of his masterpieces seem effortless.
 
Michelangelo's personality and its "cult" are further explored through painted and sculpted portraits of the artist by his contemporaries and followers. In addition, engraved copies of sections of the Sistine Chapel Ceiling attest to the popularity of his images during the 16th Century and thereafter.
 
Some of the show's works (e.g., the three pictured here) were previously on view in the exhibition Michelangelo: Drawings and Other Treasures from the Casa Buonarroti at the High Museum of Art (June 23-September 2, 2001) and the Toledo Museum of Art (September 21-November 25, 2001).
 
Source
Ragionieri, Pina and Gary M. Radke. Michelangelo: Drawings and Other Treasures from the Casa Buonarroti (exh. cat.). Atlanta: High Museum of Art, 2001, 130-131, 134-135, 138-139.