"Michelangelo e la Cappella Sistina nei disegni autografi di Casa Buonarroti” [Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel in the autograph drawings of Casa Buonarroti]
MAG Riva del Garda, Museum
Until October 23, 2022
From an idea of Vittorio Sgarbi, edited by Cristina Acidini and Alessandro Cecchi
The Alto Garda MAG Museum welcomes from August 6 to October 23, 2022, the exhibition "Michelangelo e la Cappella Sistina nei disegni autografi di Casa Buonarroti" produced and organized by MAG and MetaMorfosi in collaboration with Casa Buonarroti in Florence and the patronage of the Autonomous Province of Trento.
Through a selected anthology of drawings from the Florentine institution, the exhibition born from an idea of Vittorio Sgarbi, MAG’s Chairman, and edited by Cristina Acidini and Alessandro Cecchi, respectively Chairman and Director of the Casa Buonarroti Foundation, allows visitors to retrace the long and complex creative process of Michelangelo, who was called to carry out the decoration of the Sistine Chapel in two different periods. Between 1508 and 1512, Michelangelo completed the titanic task of decorating the Vault of the Sistine Chapel, which forced him to work for months upside down, lying down on scaffolding close to the vault. He completed the decoration of the Chapel only twenty years later, creating the renowned Last Judgement on the altar wall between 1535 and 1541.
In the section dedicated to the Sistine Chapel vault, the exhibition displays a selection of drawings made by Michelangelo that later were placed into panel-boards to be transferred into the wall before being fresco painted. These papers include studies of individual limbs, isolated figures of naked festoon-holders and figures in the most varied positions, with masterpieces such as the studies, in two sheets, created for the Expulsion from the Earthly Paradise in the vault.
The second part of the exhibition includes preparatory drawings for the Last Judgement, from the overall study to the individual figures, accompanied, in closing, by ancient copies of the figures of the Damned, bearing witness to how the great fresco had become a study for generations of artists.
Also on display there is a cycle of ten plates engraved using a burin, by Mantuan Giorgio Ghisi, dating back to the late 1540s that bears witness to the great admiration aroused in the decades to follow by the artwork and the in-depth studies that followed. Also of particular interest there is an engraving by Francesco Barbazza based on a drawing by Francesco Panini, son of the famous Roman landscape artist Gian Paolo, which was issued by the Roman Copperplate Engraving Camerale evidence of how the Sistine Chapel looked in 1766.
The exhibition was organized with the valuable contribution of Garda Cartiere, Sparkasse Cassa di Risparmio, Gaspari Foundation and Arcese.
