It's been a good year so far for exhibitions of renaissance drawing. We've had the brilliant Michelangelo show at the Courtauld Institute, and the not so well-known exhibition (After Michelangelo) currently on at Christchurch in Oxford. Now we have an exhibition of 100 renaissance drawings to look forward to- it's due to open at the British Museum tomorrow, a joint venture between the B.M and the Uffizi who have lent 50 drawings including the Raphael above.
BM exhibitions of the graphic arts are always worth a visit: they are expertly curated and their catalogues are exemplary. I've always wondered about the sort of people who go to these exhibitions though. Are they die-hard connoisseurs losing themselves in rapt contemplation of a pen or chalk drawing? Or are they just members of the general public drawn to the beauty of drawings. Maybe curious individuals seduced by the big names of renaissance art? At the Michelangelo exhibition, between looking at the drawings, I looked at the people looking at the drawings…
There should be even more people crowding around the drawings in the B.M. this summer In fact, the newspapers who have been given previews this week, are predicting a blockbuster. On his blog, the curator of the exhibition, Hugo Chapman, writes of another kind of crowd, the "hundreds of guests" invited to the launch party last night, though sadly not the Uffizi curators who were stranded in Italy due to the ash cloud.
Am I glad I went to Italy before Mr Volcano reared his troublesome head!
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