26 Dec 2017

Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman & Designer

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Reviewed by Jan Castro

"Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer" is a once-in-a-lifetime exhibit. Carmen C. Bambach and other curators have selected the finest drawings, a few sculptures, and a wood model of the vault of the King's Chapel from exclusive collections worldwide. The exquisite drawings are set into historic contexts: Michelangelo's apprenticeship under Ghirlandaio, his copies of earlier masters including Masaccio and Donatello, his dawdling for forty years over the tomb of Pope Julius II.

The Met has recreated a quarter-scale Sistine Ceiling and provided new scholarship about the artist's models for The Last Judgment. This awe-inspiring exhibition does not address the unisex qualities of the bodies. Men and women alike have huge necks, shoulders, and limbs. Genitals and breasts are muted. Michelangelo elevated touching fingers, musculature, and dimensional, sensuous movements into universal human qualities and strengths.