There was a lot of love in the last years of Michelangelo Buonarotti’s life. Already hugely successful, the Renaissance master dedicated his final decades to loving his god, his family, his friends, and serving his pope. The proof of that love is all over the walls of this intimate little visual biography of the final years of his life, filled with his drawings and letters and paintings by his followers.
The first love explored is that for his friend Tommaso de’ Cavalieri, a young nobleman he met when summoned to Rome to paint the ‘Last Judgement’ in the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo sent Tommaso drawings of gorgeous idealised male nudes, muscular bodies writhing and twisting. He wrote him letters filled with romance: ‘I am insensible to sorrow or fear of death, while my memory of you endures.’ Sure, they might have been just friends, but I’ve never said anything like that to my mate Gaz.
The implication is that there was more than just friendship at play here. Art historians have long speculated on Michelangelo’s sexuality – he died having never married or had children – but the British Museum is just awkwardly nudge-nudge wink-winking at it with these adoring letters and chalk nudes, rather than giving it a big celebratory exploration, which makes it all feel a bit too dark and secret to feel like a positive thing.
Jaw-dropping, atmospheric, beautiful, powerful stuff
The next love explored here is less physical and infinitely more spiritual. Vittoria Colonna was a religious reformer who laid a path towards Christian enlightenment for Michelangelo to follow. He draws the crucifixion and pietà, writes poetry about the divine inspired by Colonna. All the while, he’s getting bigger and bigger papal commissions, designing the Palazzo Farnese, St Peter’s, the Porta Pia; the architectural drawings here show him shaping the face of Rome.
But his hands were failing. Instead of painting, he drew competitions for other artists to copy. Sometimes it worked, as in Marcello Venusti’s ultra-colourful, hyper-vivid interpretations of the older artist’s ideas. Other times it really didn’t. Ascanio Condivi’s take on Michelangelo’s stunning, enormous, brooding ‘Epifania’ cartoon is amateurish and grimly ugly.
But even as he ailed, he never stopped drawing. The final works here are meditations on mortality, acts of devotion. He depicts the crucifixion over and over with increasingly weak, wobbly marks. Jesus is faint, faded, the grievers either side of him are agonised and tormented. Jaw-dropping, atmospheric, beautiful, powerful stuff.
We’ve had a lot of Michelangelo drawing shows in recent years, and his architectural plans aren’t his most interesting work, and really this feels like an exhibition of sketches and letters. But that last room of drawings is incredible. They were never meant to be seen, they're frail, weak things, but they’re also an amazing vision of one of history’s greatest painters using his art to find solace, to find peace, in the darkest of times.