Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475-1564) remains one of the greatest artists of all time. If you are in the Williamsburg, Virginia, area, you have a treat in store for you at the Muscarelle Museum at the College of William and Mary. The Muscarelle has a number of the Italian Renaissance artist’s sacred and profane works on display. You only have a limited time to see them, as the exhibit ends on April 14, 2013. You will not want to miss the Matti Preti (1613-1699) exhibit at the Muscarelle at the same time, a collection of paintings ranging from Christian martyrdoms to John the Baptist to the story of the apocryphal Book of Tobit.
To wet your appetite for Michelangelo, I discovered that the Vatican has put an interactive virtual tour of the Sistine Chapel on the web, with some meditative audio as a plus. You can click and move your mouse over the image to take in different perspectives, and from the lower left corner zoom in on all of the Biblical themes in the master’s incredible work.
Also, I know that my fellow Veracity blogger, John Paine, is a known Michelangelo fan (here and here).
Pietà by Michelangelo, 1499
Michelangelo inspires many with his grand vision of Christian faith, an artist to marvel, and yet he remains a man of mystery. Michelangelo struggled with same-sex attraction , as suggested by a number of homoerotic poems he wrote. However, there is no known evidence that he ever acted on his carnal desires, remaining celibate his entire life. Was he redirecting and rechanneling his sexual energies towards glorifying God through his extraordinary talents?
HT: My mom, for the Sistine Chapel virtual tour.
Veracity 
April 6th, 2013 at 12:04 am
“Homoerotic poetry?” Yep, that should bring in the search engines. 😉
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