Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) The Dream, c. 1533
Photo: The Courtauld Gallery, London
This is the setting for Michelangelo’s Dream, an exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery in London. It centers on one drawing in black chalk by Michelangelo, made around 1533 (the year is not certain). Trying to describe it is like trying to arrest a cloud in the sky to explain its composition and destiny. Michelangelo won’t oblige: Everything in the frame seems evanescent as though one puff of breath might disperse it.
There is a central figure—a naked male, thighs akimbo, seated on an
open-ended box. A winged spirit hovers above with a trumpet but—and
here’s the first oddity—the trumpet rests on the nude’s forehead, not
in one of his ears. Inference? Yours to deduce. Then there are the
contents of that box—leering theatrical masks. Encircling the reclining
male are assorted figures, also naked, male and female, some
interlocked, some not and all of them—according to scholarly
interpreters—representing vices, such as gluttony, greed, anger and
sloth. Within a composition as compact as this these lofted, peripheral
figures are tiny but the chalk is used with lapidary precision, limbs
muscles, and the molding of the bodies all exquisite.
The whole thing is weightless. Although the anchoring central figure is anatomically exact and seemingly at the peak of fitness he is, at the same time, as insubstantial as a feather. You feel that Michelangelo caught all these figures between appearing and disappearing, at the one moment of gravity before levitation. Hence the title, given to the drawing later, of Michelangelo’s Dream.
The drawing has an erotic history. It was made by Michaelangelo when he was in his late 50s. He had just encountered a young nobleman of great beauty, Tommaso de Cavalieri, then in his teens. It was love at first sight. Michaelangelo gave the dream drawing, and others called the “presentation” drawings to Tommaso and they were so stunning that other noble families of Rome, as well as a cardinal and the pope, came to view them. It was a key moment in renaissance art. Until then, drawings had been most commonly used as preparation for frescoes or paintings, monumental works. Now they were becoming accepted as masterpieces in their own right—and in their own intimate dimension.
At the Courtauld there are just thirteen drawings in all, eleven on the walls and two on a central pedestal, as well as letters and poems forming the correspondence between Michelangelo and de Cavalieri. There is no suggestion that the master’s passion was reciprocated and, eventually, the nobleman married, had children and appeared at Michelangelo’s deathbed among all those who had experienced the genius of his work at first hand.
The gallery has put together this narrative, pairing the central image with the presentation drawings, with the help of other sources. The fact that it is so small and displayed so simply and that you can spend as long as you choose with your nose almost pressed to the glass creates a transcendent viewing experience. I was transfixed by another of the drawings, of Phaeton’s fall from his coach in which the horses, all mighty steeds, tumble upside down through the air like hastily discarded clothes.
The book published with the show is, inevitably, bulky with learned discourses on the provenance of the drawings and the meaning of the images but you don’t need that kind of trumpet pinned to your own forehead. Just let the drawings lead you into their own elusive dimension, like a dream, and wonder at the fragile sublimity of it all.
The Courtauld is itself one of London’s little jewels, (part of a complex called Somerset House grouped around a blissful piazza) and its permanent collection of impressionists and post-impressionists is exhibited in the same, homey-feeling rooms—one of the key pieces is Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergere in which the soulful stare of the barmaid is reflected in a mirror that also glimpses the reverie of fin de siècle Paris—absinthe made the heart grow fonder.
Michelangelo’s Dream runs until May 16. Visit courtauld.ac.uk for details where you can also watch two videos explaining the history and background of the exhibits. Admission:
The whole thing is weightless. Although the anchoring central figure is anatomically exact and seemingly at the peak of fitness he is, at the same time, as insubstantial as a feather. You feel that Michelangelo caught all these figures between appearing and disappearing, at the one moment of gravity before levitation. Hence the title, given to the drawing later, of Michelangelo’s Dream.
The drawing has an erotic history. It was made by Michaelangelo when he was in his late 50s. He had just encountered a young nobleman of great beauty, Tommaso de Cavalieri, then in his teens. It was love at first sight. Michaelangelo gave the dream drawing, and others called the “presentation” drawings to Tommaso and they were so stunning that other noble families of Rome, as well as a cardinal and the pope, came to view them. It was a key moment in renaissance art. Until then, drawings had been most commonly used as preparation for frescoes or paintings, monumental works. Now they were becoming accepted as masterpieces in their own right—and in their own intimate dimension.
At the Courtauld there are just thirteen drawings in all, eleven on the walls and two on a central pedestal, as well as letters and poems forming the correspondence between Michelangelo and de Cavalieri. There is no suggestion that the master’s passion was reciprocated and, eventually, the nobleman married, had children and appeared at Michelangelo’s deathbed among all those who had experienced the genius of his work at first hand.
The gallery has put together this narrative, pairing the central image with the presentation drawings, with the help of other sources. The fact that it is so small and displayed so simply and that you can spend as long as you choose with your nose almost pressed to the glass creates a transcendent viewing experience. I was transfixed by another of the drawings, of Phaeton’s fall from his coach in which the horses, all mighty steeds, tumble upside down through the air like hastily discarded clothes.
The book published with the show is, inevitably, bulky with learned discourses on the provenance of the drawings and the meaning of the images but you don’t need that kind of trumpet pinned to your own forehead. Just let the drawings lead you into their own elusive dimension, like a dream, and wonder at the fragile sublimity of it all.
The Courtauld is itself one of London’s little jewels, (part of a complex called Somerset House grouped around a blissful piazza) and its permanent collection of impressionists and post-impressionists is exhibited in the same, homey-feeling rooms—one of the key pieces is Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergere in which the soulful stare of the barmaid is reflected in a mirror that also glimpses the reverie of fin de siècle Paris—absinthe made the heart grow fonder.
Michelangelo’s Dream runs until May 16. Visit courtauld.ac.uk for details where you can also watch two videos explaining the history and background of the exhibits. Admission:
- Adult: £5.00, concessions: £4.00
- Free admission: Mondays 10 am to 2 pm, except public holidays
- Free at all times for under 18s, full-time UK students and unwaged
Leave a comment