Rare Michelangelo exhibit in Savannah sheds light on how he viewed women

SAVANNAH — When it comes to the works of Michelangelo (1475-1564), women as a subject do not spring to mind, as the artist’s gaze so often celebrated the nude male form in sculpture and painting.

Yet, a new exhibit here at Telfair Museums illuminates how the Italian Renaissance master saw women as “equal partners in the grand scheme of human life,” according to guest curator Gary Radke, who led Syracuse University’s internationally renowned Florence Graduate Program in Renaissance Art for 35 years.

“Michelangelo’s Women: Images of Female Power and Divinity from the Casa Buonarroti,” which opens to the public Friday, is the first exhibit ever to focus solely on Michelangelo’s depiction of and relationship to women through drawings, letters and poems pulled from his family’s archived collection and preserved at the Casa Buonarroti in Florence, Italy.

The exhibit will feature seven of Michelangelo’s original drawings, including his masterpiece of “Madonna and Child,” which was sketched around the year 1525. Reproductions of the Sistine Chapel ceiling and his fresco “The Last Judgment” will be viewed from a different perspective, one that shows how Michelangelo saw women in strong, powerful, even heroic roles.

Several of the drawings and letters have never been seen in the United States.

New Themes, Fresh Scholarship

Considered one of the world’s foremost experts on Italian Medieval and Renaissance art and architecture, Radke collaborated with the Casa Buonarroti Foundation’s late president, Pina Ragionieri, over the past two decades on shows at Atlanta’s High Museum, the Seattle Art Museum and Syracuse University Art Museum. During those years, he grew so familiar with the collection — which holds 200 of Michelangelo’s 800 surviving drawings — that he recognized “no one had really done very much with this topic.”

Even though interest in Michelangelo’s women blossomed after the cleaning of the Sistine Chapel ceiling was completed in the mid-1990s, Radke said enthusiasm receded because no one had connected the dots with Michelangelo’s full body of work. He also attributed lack of study of the artist’s female drawings and paintings to “more than a little bit of prejudice.”

“He wasn’t interested in just soft, compliant, lovely, sweet and those kinds of figures,” said Radke, referring to Michelangelo’s use of long limbs and voluptuous muscles in his art. Radke, though, sees that centuries-old oversight as “some new doors to open, some new windows to look at the variety of (Michelangelo’s) work.”

A resident of Savannah since retiring from teaching 11 years ago, Radke approached Elyse D. Gerstenecker, Telfair’s director of curatorial affairs, to mount the exhibit during a narrow window when the Casa Buonarroti Foundation was willing to let these works travel. Because the drawings and letters are works on paper, they can only be shown for a limited time before they need to be rested, explained Gerstenecker. Once the exhibit ends in January, the pieces will return to Italy.

“That’s one of the blessings of being able to work on an exhibition like this one,” said Gerstenecker. “It’s mentally nourishing as an art historian … when there is a new approach to a subject.”

Let’s Hear It for the Girls

Through letters and poetry, the exhibit will highlight Michelangelo’s long friendship with Vittoria Colonna, a muse, patron and poet in her own right, as well as the significant role Rosina Vendramin played in preserving Michelangelo’s legacy. Vendramin, the wife of Count Cosimo Buonarroti, Michelangelo’s last living relative, worked during the final decade of her life organizing and archiving the family’s collection of his works and ensuring the financial resources were available to turn the Casa Buonarroti into a house museum in the mid-1880s.