Metropolitan Museum Announces Major Michelangelo Exhibition for 2017

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York will stage its largest-ever exhibition dedicated to Michelangelo, titled "Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer," opening in November 2017. Curated by Carmen C. Bambach, the Met's curator of drawings and prints, the show will feature 150 drawings, three large sculptures, and works from 54 collections across Europe and the United States. Central to the exhibition is the role of drawing as the foundation of Michelangelo's art across painting, sculpture, and architecture. Among the highlights is the early panel painting "The Torment of Saint Anthony" (c. 1487–1489), attributed to a 12-year-old Michelangelo while apprenticed to Domenico Ghirlandaio. Also on view will be a wooden maquette for a chapel vault, the complete series of drawings for Tommaso de' Cavalieri, a monumental cartoon for his last Vatican fresco, two rarely shown drawings from the Met's collection (a study for the Libyan Sibyl and a design for the tomb of Pope Julius II), and the marble "Young Archer," lent by the French government. The exhibition runs through February 2018 and includes complementary works by other 16th-century artists.