What words come to your mind when you see the famous ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? “Divine”? “Inspirational”? “Majestic”? How about “belly out of whack” or “a thousand hazards”? How about “skull scrapes where a hunchback’s lump would be”? Or, “ill from the overwhelming labor”? It took Michelangelo over 4 years of arduous toil to single-handedly complete the famous painting ... Read More »
A fascinating little piece in the New York Times today looks at the once-contentious relationship between the Renaissance arts scenes of Florence and Rome through two current exhibitions just a few neighborhoods away from each other in Manhattan. While Rome is represented in one corner by the Morgan Museum & Library’s Rome After Raphael exhibition, which features a slew ... Read More »
God bless the juvenile minds over at Cracked for going on a rather tawdry “Easter Egg hunt” in the European classics. They find a gigantic brain in Michaelangelo’s “Sistine Chapel” fresco (1475-83), porn in the same artist’s “Last Judgement” (1534-1541), and, yes, bared backsides in Bruegel the Elder’s “Netherlandish Proverbs” (1559, left). It’s a touch “The Da Vinci Code”, but ... Read More »
As one of the Michaelangelo works at the Vatican that have just undergone a $4 million restoration, a critical debate is brewing over “The Crucifixion of Saint Peter” and the naughty bits of the martyred saint. You step into the Pauline Chapel at Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome, and there he is, twisting his neck and shoulders to lock ... Read More »
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