Michelangelo on vacation by the lake. The drawings from Casa Buonarroti on display in Riva del Garda.

The MAG Museo Alto Garda in Riva del Garda welcomes, from August 6 to October 23, 2022, the exhibition Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel in the Autograph Drawings of 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.

The exhibition aims to offer a particularly evocative look at the preparation and final outcome of Michelangelo ’s work at the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, among the world’s greatest masterpieces of Art, through autograph drawings and other works from the Casa Buonarroti in Florence.

The encounter with the Sistine takes place through a precious print depicting it before Michelangelo’s intervention. This is followed by preparatory studies for the Vault-some of them true masterpieces in their own right-that the visitor will not find difficult to associate with the fresco’s best-known figures and scenes, such as the Expulsion from Paradise and the Ignudi, while others still provoke debate among scholars as to their ultimate transposition onto the Vault. The section also includes an ironic self-portrait in the act of painting the Vault, flanked by an autograph sonnet.

A 19th-century lithograph inserted in a precious coeval table of Tuscan manufacture closes the first part of the exhibition. We then move on to the more painful and dramatic story of the Final Judgment, a work by the artist already heading toward old age and often in the grip of gloomy thoughts. Visitors will then be able to admire the studies for the fresco as a whole, as well as those for the figures of the damned.

The centuries-long fortunes of this huge undertaking are also borne witness in the exhibition by Giorgio Ghisi ’s 16th-century engravings and other ancillary works. The exhibition then concludes with an 18th-century etching from the collections of Casa Buonarroti, showing a view of the Sistine Chapel after Michelangelo’s interventions.

For all information, you can visit the official website of the MAG Museo Alto Garda.

Michelangelo on vacation by the lake. The drawings from Casa Buonarroti on display in Riva del Garda.

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