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
khi-presse@khi.fi.it
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