Michelangelo's drawings for the Sistine Chapel on display in Georgia

From Feb. 2 to April 3, the Dimitri Shevardnadze National Gallery of the Georgian National Museum in Tblisi will put on display Michelangelo Buonarroti ’s preparatory drawings for the frescoes he would paint for the Sistine Chapel. After the success of the exhibitions dedicated to Botticelli and Caravaggio, it is now Michelangelo’s turn to be the star of the Georgian museum: a collection of 200 sketches, manuscripts, paintings, sculptures and archaeological artifacts kept in the Casa Buonarroti in Florence, whose president, Pina Ragionieri, personally selected which artifacts to grant to the Gallery.

Among them is the “Study of an arm for a figure in the Sistine Vault,” which scholars date to about 1509-1510 and which Michelangelo made in black pencil, of which Ragionieri commented: "the very energetic stroke enhanced by the plastic use of chiaroscuro, prompted Luciano Berti to define ’disegnar scolpendo’ the technique used here, as in other youthful sheets, by Michelangelo, and to find in this drawing a probable memory of the ancient Discobolo, but above all a powerful hand that takes up a motif experimented in the David, and repeatedly present in the figures of the Vault. It is no accident that this horizontally outstretched right forearm has determined critics to approximate it to different figures: the Frey, for example, refers it to the arm of the God the Father of Adam’s Creation, while the Wilde and the Tolnay recognize in it a mirror image of the left arm of drunken Noah. Although Thode thought for this sheet at the chronologically much later stage of the Last Judgment, the salient features of the artist’s sign and spirituality while still a young man, when he was precisely sculpting the David and tackling the undertaking of the Vault, are by now unanimously recognized in it."

The event is organized by the Embassy of Italy and the Georgian National Museum in cooperation with theMetaMorfosi Cultural Association, at the behest of numerous institutions: on the Italian side, the Italian Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Culture and the “VivereALL’italiana” program, while on the Georgian side the Ministry of Culture and Monument Protection, the Ministry of Economy and Economic Development, theNational Tourism Administration, Check-in-Georgia, and VTB Bank.

“The well-established collaboration between MetaMorfosi and Casa Buonarroti has enabled our association to make available to the Italian Embassy in Tbilisi, for the organization of this exhibition, a selection at the same time powerful and refined drawings by Michelangelo.” explained MetaMorfosi’s general director Vittorio Faustini speaking at the presentation of the exhibition which was also attended by the Italian ambassador to Georgia Antonio Enrico Bartoli "In particular The arm study for the vault of the Sistine Chapel made by Michelangelo in black pencil, and the head study for the Flood, made instead by the master in red pencil, represent two extraordinary moments of artistic synthesis of Michelangelo’s genius that alone are worth an entire exhibition. MetaMorfosi, which has already flanked the Italian Embassy in the realization in the previous exhibition dedicated to Botticelli, thus wants to confirm its role as a bridge between the cultures of the world, in the never prescindable sign of the Italian Renaissance."

Michelangelo's drawings for the Sistine Chapel on display in Georgia

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