For the first time the monumental Epiphany will be exhibited at the British Museum (circa 1550-53), over two meters high, after its scrupulous renovation and restoration which began in 2018. The only complete cartoon that has come down to us (life-size preparatory drawing, from the word for a large sheet of paper) of Michelangelo, is among the greatest works on paper of the Renaissance, and one of the greatest treasures of the collection British Museum.
The work, loaned by Casa Buonarroti, Florence, is a fascinating example of this: the elderly Michelangelo used his drawing skills to create models for others to paint. Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) left Florence for Rome in 1534, never to see his hometown again. This move marked the beginning of a dramatic new chapter that would radically shape his experiences as both an artist and a man. Popular perception of Michelangelo focuses on the famous works of his youth: David (1501–04), for example, or the Sistine Chapel Ceiling. Michelangelo: The Final Decades will introduce visitors to the remarkable variety and inventiveness of his late career, which saw him still active four days before his death in 1564, aged 88. The exhibition will examine how Michelangelo redefined the iconography of religious art to create extremely influential compositions of key moments in Christianity, such as the Crucifixion, the Lamentation and the Last Judgment, in an era when the Catholic church was questioned like never before.
The Last Judgment and other drawings
Numerous other works from the British Museum's unrivaled collection of Michelangelo drawings spanning nearly two decades will also be on display for the first time, including the preparatory drawings of the Last Judgment, which describe how Michelangelo invented a new vision of how the human form would be reshaped at the end of the world. Such was the audacity of his innovation that his painting was fiercely criticized and then censored.
The exhibition will provide rare insights into the artist's engaging interaction with his closest and most trusted circle
The generous loans of British Library they include lively letters to his young nephew that show Michelangelo had an irritable, easily irritated side. Meanwhile, poems and drawings addressed to his aristocratic friends, Tommaso de 'Cavalieri and the poet Vittoria Colonna, testify to his passionate and heartfelt attachment to them. An exquisite work created is part of this correspondence, loaned by His Majesty the King from the Royal Collection, the Punishment of Titius (circa 1532) depicting an eagle ripping open the liver of a bound naked man, given to Thomas as a moral guide for the young man. The intensity of Michelangelo's faith strengthened as he aged. On display will be one of his most moving examples of meditation on the death of Christ and his own mortality: a group of drawings of the Crucifixion, made in the last ten years of his life. Through them we witness an elderly artist turn to the act of drawing as a means of spiritual meditation – variations on a single theme to explore his feelings about mortality, sacrifice, faith and the prospect of redemption.
