[MR] New exhibition devoted to Michelangelo and late Renaissance Flore

[Jeanne]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20021111/ap_wo_en_po/arts_
us_renaissance_art_2

CHICAGO - More than four centuries ago, a melancholy young nobleman from the
Medici family, Francesco I, second Grand Duke of Tuscany, had a secret
chamber built at one of his palaces in Florence. He filled it with exquisite
art works, jewels, natural curios and scientific specimens.



Francesco spent days at a time hiding from the world in what he called his
"studiolo" or study. Other rulers of the day who had similar vaults called
them "wonder cabinets."


The curators of an exhibition that opened Saturday at the Art Institute of
Chicago, "The Medici, Michelangelo and the Art of Late Renaissance
Florence," devote a whole room to Francesco's wonder cabinet, but the truest
wonders are in surrounding galleries: Art works created as the Renaissance
was winding down in the city of its birth.


These are not the more famous works of the Early or the High Renaissance,
when Florence was a rowdy republic and the Medici were up-and-coming
bankers — quick with the moneybags, the daggers and the stuffed ballot
boxes.


The exhibition, which runs through Feb. 2, covers the years from the
accession of Francesco's father, Cosimo I, in 1537, to the death in 1631 of
Archduchess Maria Maddalena, widow of Francesco's nephew, Cosimo II. By the
latter year, the Medici — and Florence — were in decline, and the city's art
was reverting to an almost medieval religiosity.


There are no da Vincis, Raphaels, Botticellis or Donatellos. Instead, most
of the featured artists are from the later Mannerist school, which took its
lead from the late works of Michelangelo.


Most aren't household names. There are such painters as Jacopo da Pontormo,
Agnolo Bronzino and Francesco Salviati, while the sculptors include Baccio
Bandinelli, Vincenzo Danti and Bartolomeo Ammanati.


But gallery-goers who demand star names needn't be disappointed. There are
preliminary models for the most famous bronze by Benvenuto Cellini,
sculptor, goldsmith and all-around scamp, plus three sculptures and five
drawings by Michelangelo.


One of the works on paper is the unsigned "Drawing of a Candelabrum,"
discovered only this past spring in the collection of the Smithsonian's
Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York. The drawing made
international headlines in July when it was identified as Michelangelo's
work. This is its first time on display outside New York.


The largest and best-known of the Michelangelo works in the exhibition is
the uncompleted "Apollo/David," whose twisting body seems to be breaking
free from the original block of marble. Like many of the 200 other works on
display, this is the first time the sculpture has traveled outside Italy.
Its dramatic pose and subtle physical distortions provide a good blueprint
for the aims of Mannerism.


Equally moving is the tiny wooden crucifix displayed nearby. The 88-year-old
Michelangelo was whittling it just before his death in Rome in 1564.

One of the most striking sculptures by Michelangelo's Mannerist followers is
Bartolomeo Ammanti's monumental bronze of Hercules wrestling the giant
Antaeus.

Among paintings on display, the many Bronzino portraits are justly famous,
and sometimes subtly unsettling. But the best-known painting is probably
"Judith with the Head of Holofernes," by Bronzino's grandson, Cristofano
Allori.

The exhibition, which was assembled by the Art Institute, the Detroit
Institute of Arts and a consortium of Italian museums, had its first showing
at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence earlier this year. Its only U.S. showings
are at the Art Institute (Nov. 9, 2002-Feb. 2, 2003) and in Detroit (March
16-June 8, 2003).