The different works of the artist will be gathered from the British Museum, the Teyler Museum in Haarlem, the Netherlands and the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Together they will form a part of a Michelangelo exhibition at the British Museum, something that has not been seen for thirty years.
The exhibition will contain almost a sixth of Michelangelo’s known works, making it the largest such display ever assembled. Some Experts claim that it will be the first time that many of the works have been assembled together in one place since 1564, the year Michelangelo died and of the break-up of his studio.
The exhibition will be called, ‘Michelangelo Drawings: Closer to the Master.’ The world renowned scholar on the Italian Renaissance, Hugo Chapman, spoke of the exhibition saying: “Drawings are the thread that links all of his activities. If we had only known him as a draughtsman, we would still hail him as a genius.”
“The only way we can really understand Michelangelo and the course of his career is though his drawings. We can't ask for [the statue of] David or ask the Pope to dismantle the Sistine Chapel.”As well as exhibiting the preparatory works for the Sistine Chapel, there will also be on feature the figure of Day from the Medici Tombs and Michelangelo's final drawings of the Crucifixion.
The drawings from figure of Day reveal a number sketches of a shoulder- a feature which cannot be seen on the final sculpture in the Medici Tombs, where the ruling family of the Renaissance Florence are buried.
Mr Chapman claimed: “What we're looking at is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the drawings he must have done.”
Ninety of Michelangelo’s drawings are held by the British Museum, making it the largest collection apart from that of the Italian, which was previously held by the Michelangelo family. Works include a drawing of a young Florentine man named Andrea Quaratesi- a man from banking family, and tutored by Michelangelo. Some of the drawings possibly show Quaratesi’s attempts to imitate the work of Michelangelo.The British Museum acquired its Michelangelo pieces from a British portrait painter, Sir Thomas Lawrence. The works were offered to the nation and the monarch when Lawrence died in 1830, but at that time the government lacked the funds to purchase the collection.
The director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor said that the exhibition would help to highlight much of the Museums collection, which is generally unknown to the public. The museum is hoping for around 150,000 visitors to the exhibition, a number to equal that which their Persian exhibition, Forgotten Empire achieved.
The exhibition will run from 23rd March to 25th June and the admission price will be £10.
