Rarely Seen Sketches by Michelangelo Debut in the US 

An ongoing exhibition at the College of William and Mary’s Muscarelle Museum of Art in Williamsburg, Virginia, brings seven of Michelangelo’s few surviving sketches to light in the United States for the first time. Through May 28, Michelangelo: The Genesis of the Sistine, organized by Special Exhibition Curator Adriano Marinazzo, incorporates 38 objects in total, including 25 of the Renaissance master’s drawings and ideations for the Sistine Chapel along with etchings, lithographs, and other artifacts related to the monumental undertaking at the Vatican.

The exhibition spans five galleries — three of which have been painted a soft shade of blue to evoke the feeling of being at the Sistine Chapel while visitors consider Michelangelo’s process sketches that developed the final frescoes. Intent on connecting viewers to the scene, Marinazzo presents a culmination of his own research — a projection slowly panning a digital model of chapel’s ceiling architecture including the frescoes, enabling the opportunity to observe previously unseen details and embrace the complexity.

In a statement to Hyperallergic, Marinazzo, a devoted scholar of Michelangelo, expressed that The Genesis of the Sistine is not just a presentation of the artist’s drawings, but also a research-based exhibition.

“I selected these drawings based on the studies and publications I have worked on over the past 15 years,” he said in an email. “It is a highly focused, original, and deeply personal project.”

“I feel it is almost a miracle that what I had in mind for so long has finally come to life just as I envisioned,” Marinazzo added.

The seven drawings debuting on US soil are Michelangelo’s sketches of his initial but abandoned plan for the ceiling that were originally on a singular sheet, reunited in one frame for the first time since their creation.

The exhibition also boasts a previously unseen letter from the artist’s friend and assistant Francesco Granacci, writing to him about the difficulty in recruiting additional assistants to complete the frescoes.

In addition to several of Michelangelo’s anatomical, portrait, and compositional studies for the project, the exhibition includes two quick self-portraits depicting himself painting the chapel’s ceiling at odd and uncomfortable angles, and a portrait of the Renaissance master completed by another of his contemporaries, Giuliano Bugiardini.

“The key is to present the drawings — the very first step of Michelangelo’s creative process, one could say the genesis of the masterpiece — alongside large-scale reproductions of the finished paintings,” Marinazzo explained.

“This allows visitors to understand the full scope of the project and Michelangelo’s remarkable ability to translate ideas from something very small to something monumental,” he said.

The curator explained that completing the mural was exceptionally difficult, describing Michelngelo as “painting on scaffolding with very little distance from the ceiling’s surface.”

“It is truly extraordinary — almost impossible,” he remarked. “Only Michelangelo, whom I consider the greatest, could have achieved it in the way he did.”

The Gallerie degli Uffizi, Casa Buonarroti, and the Musei Reali loaned several drawings and related artifacts to the Muscarelle Museum for this exhibition, and the Vatican Museums provided original images from the Sistine Chapel for the exhibition catalogue authored by Marinazzo with contributions from experts and senior leadership from the lending museums.