Reviews #9
Michelangelo: the Last Decades (2 May - 28 Jul)
The British Museum, London
Reviewed by Nigel Ip (Print Quarterly)
Michelangelo Buonarrotti (1475–1564), the fall of Phaeton. Black chalk, over stylus underdrawing, on paper, about 1533. © The Trustees of the British Museum.
Michelangelo Buonarrotti (1475–1564), the punishment of Tityus. Black chalk on paper, 1532. Royal Collection Trust © His Majesty King Charles III 2024.
Michelangelo Buonarrotti (1475–1564), Epifania. Black chalk on paper, about 1550-53. © The Trustees of the British Museum.
The first object to greet visitors in the British Museum’s Michelangelo: The Last Decades exhibition is Daniele da Volterra’s pricked portrait of the ‘divine Michelangelo’, a piece of ephemera that would not normally have survived past its sole function as a preparatory transfer drawing for the Assumption of the Virgin (about 1555) in Santissima Trinità dei Monti, Rome. As a tangible record of a meticulously laborious process, this face-to-face encounter symbolically touches on the realities of the elderly artist’s lifetime fame as he reckoned with the inevitable possibility of his own mortality. He would go on to live another nine years, eventually passing at the age of 88 in 1564.
Focusing on the artist’s last 30 years in Rome, the exhibition weaves a web of invisible strings that encourage you to go look back at certain objects with a closer eye. The cross-pollination of ideas and re-using of favourite poses is a central theme which unveils itself over the course of one’s visit. As Michelangelo's health deteriorated, it not only affected the character of his draughtsmanship but also his beautiful calligraphy and ability to write his own letters. By showing us valuable correspondence with his nephew Leonardo Buonarotti, in which he describes his physical and mental state over many years, the exhibition offers an empathetic reading of his late drawings. In doing so, one can better rationalise Michelangelo’s use of creative shortcuts to manage his diverse workload, delegating further assignments to his assistants and collaborators as his health waned.
It is also worth pointing out that the exhibition features almost exclusively black-chalk drawings and none in red chalk; this is no accident. Michelangelo’s interest in red chalk dropped significantly after 1530, only briefly returning in the 1550s with some drawings related to the Bandini Pietà (about 1547-55) and Rondanini Pietà (about 1550-64).
Immediately throwing us off with a false start is a room dominated by studies for the Last Judgement (1536-41). Instead, one should draw their attention to the double-sided ‘presentation drawing’ of Tityus (1532), one of four highly finished drawings (disegni finiti) made for Tommaso de’ Cavalieri in the 1530s.
Created exclusively as gifts for close friends – despite unprecedented demand for works ‘by his hand’ (di sua mano) – the presentation drawings were extremely personal, innovative creations at a time when Michelangelo was becoming increasingly introspective and poetic. A wonderful corridor devoted to Vittoria Colonna examines this with rarely seen archival material, bookended by Colonna’s handwritten compilation of her Rime spirituali – specially made for Michelangelo – and the artist’s own copy of Colonna’s complete printed collection of poetry.
What is unique about the Tityus sheet is that it reveals the kind of working processes that Michelangelo was paranoid about safeguarding; he famously burnt many of his drawings on bonfires days before his death and sent others with letters demanding their disposal. On the sheet’s verso, Michelangelo traced Tityus’ contours and repurposed it for multiple projects. This unfolds into an extended narrative which charts the motif’s various incarnations over three separate projects in the next few years, with further appearances in the coming decades.
For its first transformation, Michelangelo saw the figure’s potential as a resurrected Christ standing above his open tomb carrying a flag. While difficult to compare in the exhibition due to their different orientations, the resurrected Christ is almost a direct mirror-image of the Tityus outline but with a modified lower arm. The figure was then cast as Zeus in the Fall of Phaeton (1533). By comparing the finished drawing with its early compositional draft, we can see how Michelangelo made drastic changes and rearrangements to the bottom figural group. The scene’s hierarchical arrangement also prefigures many aspects of the Last Judgement, where Tityus returns in the central role of Christ.
From here, we can follow Michelangelo’s journey from chaotic drawings of tumbling bodies to detailed life studies of male nudes, a mere sample of everything he would have needed to populate the ambitious fresco. Vital to this discussion is Christ’s striding pose, which would become a highly replicated design in his later output, crushing Ascanio Condivi’s claim that Michelangelo never repeated a pose in his 1553 biography of the master.
Ironically, Condivi would go on to paint the striding figure in the Casa Buonarroti’s unfinished Epifania (about 1550-53) shortly after publishing his biography. Both newly conserved for the occasion, this is the first time the British Museum cartoon and its painting have been reunited since being in Michelangelo’s studio nearly 500 years ago.
A quick comparison reveals that the composition was initially larger on the top and left sides, and that Condivi was ill-equipped to translate Michelangelo’s design into a finished product. One case in point is his misinterpretation of the master’s pentimento, where a rejected ghostly apparition of the Virgin’s head appears to the left of her final position. In the painting, Condivi interpreted the discarded head as a new hooded figure entirely. The infant St John the Baptist has also been given a proper right arm wielding a crucifix, a detail that is absent in the cartoon, perhaps for narrative clarity in a composition that remains elusive to this day.
Speaking of cartoons, it is a shame the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte’s cartoon fragment of two soldiers in the Pauline Chapel’s Crucifixion of St Peter (about 1546-50) could not be lent, missing an unprecedented opportunity to unite the only two surviving cartoons by Michelangelo’s hand. Nonetheless, the curators Sarah Vowles and Grant Lewis clearly tried, as indicated by the excellent catalogue. Brilliant testaments of the master’s skill in monumental drawing, it is hard to fathom that he made them when already too frail to complete his own paintings. The Pauline Chapel frescoes would be his last, and no drawings survive for the Conversion of Saul (about 1542-45). The exhibition has devised an elegant display for this section, partially reproducing the Crucifixion of St Peter on one wall, on top of which two sheets of figure studies are hung in proximity to their painted counterparts. Eagle-eyed observers will probably recognise the kneeling figure digging a hole as deriving from a figure in the Last Judgement, which was also recycled from the never-completed Battle of Cascina (about 1503-04).
To manage his professional workload, Michelangelo enlisted collaborators to work from his drawings. Marcello Venusti was the most notable and comes across as an unexpected star in the exhibition. His earliest engagement seems to be painted derivations of Michelangelo’s presentation drawings for Vittoria Colonna, whose letter describing her first reaction to Christ on the Cross (about 1543) is presented beside it. Looking at the Louvre’s figure studies of the mourning Virgin and St John the Evangelist (about 1545-50), preparatory for Venusti’s Crucifixion paintings, it becomes clear that we are witnessing a transition point in Michelangelo’s physical capacity to draw, exchanging bold, sensitive strokes for shaky lines from his trembling hand (la mano tremante). The same room also features an unusual sketch of marble blocks with measurements for a Crucifixion (about 1547-55), one of many to be digitised for the Casa Buonarroti’s new online catalogue; a similar marble drawing recently sold at Christie’s New York in April.
From around 1545, Michelangelo designed an Annunciation altarpiece for Venusti to paint, intended for Cardinal Federico Cesi’s family chapel in Santa Maria della Pace; no longer in situ since its removal in the 17th century, the composition survives in several small-scale versions. Two double-sided studies in the British Museum – once part of the same large sheet of paper – reveal that Michelangelo repeated the striding pose of the Last Judgement Christ, giving it to an Annunciate Virgin rising from her seat in response to the approaching angel Gabriel. The studies eventually spawned two alternative compositions – both realised in paint by Venusti – including the Morgan Library’s disputed cartonetto (small cartoon) ‘attributed to Michelangelo’.
Closing the Venusti saga is the Cleansing of the Temple (about 1550-55), which offers exceptional insights into the artist’s creative re-use of paper, not just visual motifs. One of the British Museum mounts contains two long, rectangular sheets of studies establishing the central composition on their rectos, featuring a front-facing, striding Christ with his proper right arm raised while traders cower on either side of him. Meanwhile, the versos reveal his earlier intentions to have Christ depicted sideways, facing left. However, the real interest is the way Michelangelo trimmed the right side of the top-mounted sheet and used it to extend the left part of the bottom one, which itself is a thrifty composite of six strips of paper.
Simultaneously, like his youthful collaboration with Sebastiano del Piombo, Michelangelo provided Daniele da Volterra with designs for projects that were not his own, such as the double-sided painting of David and Goliath (about 1550). Likely inspired by his own depiction of the scene on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, a set of small sketches show Michelangelo’s development of the two wrestling figures, accommodating for their front and back views. Another sheet containing extra studies for the Cleansing of the Temple suggests David’s stance was at least partially inspired by the rampaging Christ.
Despite his relative inexperience as an architect, Michelangelo spent a considerable part of his later years working on Rome’s numerous building projects, notably the Campidoglio and the rebuilding of St Peter’s Basilica. The most interesting drawings, however, are those for the upper storey windows of the Palazzo Farnese courtyard, and of the Porta Pia. In these sheets, Michelangelo first laid down the general design in black chalk, before heavily reworking it with additions, rejections, and entirely new proposals; the final idea would eventually be brushed with ink wash for clarity. Such drawings offer interesting examples for how different kinds of draughtsmanship could be read informatively by varying audiences in relation to their specific functions.
Although the exhibition officially ends with a section discussing Michelangelo’s legacy, the affectionately named ‘chapel’ is the more fitting memorial to this great artist. Consisting of a dark circular room with a small wooden crucifix purporting to have been carved by Michelangelo in his final years plus six gripping Crucifixion drawings of varying levels of finish and reworking, we can feel the artist’s desperate attempts to prepare his soul for the inevitable. While the Rondanini Pietà studies demonstrate the remarkable malleability of his mind, the Resurrected Christ appearing to his Mother (about 1560-63) betrays the lack of strength in his hands, echoing a passage in Michelangelo’s letter to Leonardo on 28 December 1563: ‘my hand no longer serves me; so, from now on, I’ll get others to write for me, and I’ll sign.’ Indeed, the next letter we read is penned by Daniele da Volterra with Michelangelo’s final signature at its base.
Overall, this thought-provoking exhibition is a thrilling descent into the mind of the master, laced with anecdotes and trade secrets to better understand his extraordinary achievements. If one has enough patience to read through the archival sources, there is potential to come out feeling like you've known Michelangelo personally. Multiple visits are highly recommended.
