PRESS
RELEASE
17.11.2014
http://expo.khi.fi.it VISUALIZING THE INVISIBLE IN MICHELANGELO’S DRAWINGS AT CASA BUONARROTI An Online Exhibition by the Photo Library of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut Starting 17 November 2014, 74 born-digital and historical photographs of Michelangelo drawings are the focus of the latest online exhibition by the Photo Library of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut.
A number of Michelangelo’s drawings at Casa Buonarroti pose a challenge to art historians even today. These are drawings whose legibility is compromised – and in some respects rendered quite impossible – by the fact that Michelangelo has returned to the sheet at a later point in time and either rubbed out his initial sketches or drawn fresh ones over the top or indeed re-used the whole page as writing paper. In her catalogue raisonné of 1964, Paola Barocchi sums up one part of this problematic group of sketches as “indecipherable”. In this online exhibition, architectural historian Mauro Mussolin takes ten of these sheets and subjects them to nothing short of archaeological scrutiny in order to uncover their contents. With the aid of digital photography and imaging software, it is today possible to probe the surface of Michelangelo’s drawings in new depth and detail, and to reconstruct what lies beneath. Photographs employing grazing light or backlighting, for example, or taken under UV light, are able to render visible lines and shapes that are barely perceptible with the naked eye, and which provide insights into Michelangelo’s practice as a draughtsman. By further manipulating levels of contrast and digitally removing later overwritings, conceptual sketches that were in part previously unknown are brought fully to light and open up scope for new interpretations. This process offers an exemplary demonstration of the use of image-generating technologies as a tool of art-historical research. Thus the two figures executed with a stylus at the top of a letter that Michelangelo wrote to his brother in June 1511 (AB, IV, 22) only become visible under grazing lighting. Their proximity to the two ignudi in one of the outer compartments of the Sistine Ceiling, on which Michelangelo was working during this period, is immediately apparent. In the case of Folio 22 F, the goal has been to reconstruct, in virtual form, a red chalk sketch that lies hidden beneath the anatomical study of a horse in black chalk. This “newly discovered” sketch, presented here for the first time, is interpreted as a planimetric view of the area around the Via della Lungara in Rome and is possibly related to Michelangelo’s interest in identifying locations for strategic defences for the Vatican. The
discovery of the study of head rapidly sketched in black chalk, concealed beneath the text of another letter by Michelangelo to his brother (AB, IV, 33), comes as a complete surprise. According to one hypothesis, and given that Michelangelo is known to have admired the works of earlier masters such as Giotto and Masaccio, we might be looking here at a sketch after the figure of a friar in Giotto’s fresco of the vision of Brother Augustine in the Bardi Chapel in Santa Croce. The final section of the exhibition is devoted to historical photographs of Michelangelo drawings and draws attention to the significance of such early photography, which exerted a shaping influence upon the methodology of Michelangelo scholarship. The online exhibition has been created in collaboration with the Casa Buonarroti in Florence and the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Laboratorio Arti Visive.
VISUALIZING THE INVISIBLE IN MICHELANGELO’S DRAWINGS AT CASA BUONARROTI An Online Exhibition by the Photo Library of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut Concept: Mauro Mussolin Texts: Mauro Mussolin, Almut Goldhahn (Historical Photographs) Coordination: Almut Goldhahn Online from 17 November 2014 at http://expo.khi.fi.it
The next online exhibition will open in spring 2015 and will focus on one of the Institute’s current topics of research.
Further information Dr. Tim Urban PR-Manager Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut Via Giuseppe Giusti 44, 50121 Firenze, Italy Tel.: +39 055 249 11 90, Fax: +39 055 244394
[email protected] www.khi.fi.it/
PRESS
RELEASE,
17.11.2014
VISUALIZING THE INVISIBLE IN MICHELANGELO'S DRAWINGS AT CASA BUONARROTI – An online exhibition by the photo library of the Kunsthistorisches Institut of Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut
PRESS RELEASE 17.11.2014
Images Michelangelo, Studies for figures in movement, circa 1533, stylus, black chalk, pen and ink, 178 x 209 mm, Florence, Casa Buonarroti, inv. 38 F recto; Digital rendering by Mauro Mussolin and Leonardo Pili: overlaying of the stylus, black chalk, and pen and ink marks © Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut / Fondazione Casa Buonarroti di Firenze / Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa Letter by Michelangelo to his brother Buonarroto with studies in stylus for the Ignudi of the Sistine Chapel, 1511, pen and ink, stylus, 215 x 222 mm, Florence, Casa Buonarroti, AB, IV, 22 recto; Digital rendering by Mauro Mussolin and Leonardo Pilli: redrawing of the stylus marks © Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut / Fondazione Casa Buonarroti di Firenze / Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa Michelangelo, Anatomical studies of horses and plan drawing of Rome, circa 1540, black chalk and red chalk, 403 x 257 mm, Florence, Casa Buonarroti, inv. 22 F recto © Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut / Fondazione Casa Buonarroti di Firenze / Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa
Michelangelo, Sketch after Giotto (detail of the Cappella Bardi in Santa Croce, Florence) hidden by the text of a letter to his brother Buonarroto, before August 1527, black chalk, 204 x 218 mm, Florence, Casa Buonarroti, AB, IV, 33, recto; Digital rendering by Mauro Mussolin and Leonardo Pilli: highlighted rendering of just the black chalk drawing © Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut / Fondazione Casa Buonarroti di Firenze / Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa
Michelangelo, Sketch of a hill with river and marks left by the bottom of a glass, 1529 (?), pen and ink 318 x 205 mm, Florence, Casa Buonarroti, AB, I, 69 verso © Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut / Fondazione Casa Buonarroti di Firenze / Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa
Adolphe Braun & Cie.: „Michelangelo Buonarroti: Study for the tomb of Julius II, drawing from the Uffizi in Florence“, carbon print, before 1902, 340 x 486 mm (board), KHI, inv. nr. 4064 © Kunsthistorisches Instituts in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut
PRESS
RELEASE,
17.11.2014
VISUALIZING THE INVISIBLE IN MICHELANGELO’S DRAWINGS AT CASA BUONARROTI – An online exhibition by the Photo Library of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut
