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Michelangelo’s love poems to a Roman nobleman go on display
Louise Jury, Chief Arts Correspondent17 Feb 2010
Love poems written by Michelangelo to a beautiful Roman nobleman 40 years his junior are going on public display in London for the first time.
The handwritten sonnets record with extraordinary intensity the artist's adoration of Tommaso de'Cavalieri.
They will be at the Courtauld Gallery alongside letters and a sequence of drawings which are also regarded as expressions of his love for the man.
The friendship began when the nobleman was 17 and the artist in his late fifties, and lasted for 30 years until Michelangelo's death in 1564.
Curator Stephanie Buck said: “The drawings and poems are clear expressions of their friendship and that love which was, he always stresses, a chaste love but with an extremely physical desire. They are a group of the most beautiful things that have ever been made.”
The drawings include the Courtauld's own masterpiece, The Dream (Il Sogno), which is the centrepiece of the exhibition.
It is one of the artist's “presentation drawings” — a group of highly-refined compositions he gave to his closest friends.
European galleries, the Royal Collection and the British Museum are lending other works.
Michelangelo's Dream opens tomorrow and runs until 16 May, with admission included in the price of a ticket to the Courtauld's permanent collection.
