Thursday, July 22, 2010

Museum Caprese Michelangelo

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

In my last post, I spoke about my visit to the birthplace of Michelangelo Buonarroti.

In this post, I wanted to share with you some of the scenery of the museum in the small town of Caprese Michelangelo, north and east of Arezzo, Italy. Inside the buildings are copies of many of the great works of Michelangelo, but there are a lot of other artworks on exhibit as well.

I love the omaggio to classical storytelling in art in this bronze sculpture and bas relief combination that you see in the first image. The young Michelangelo rests in a twisted pose (cleverly predicting his dynamic figure poses that changed the art world) as he gazes up into his future. Although my image does not show it well, each of the boy’s future sculptures is envisioned in varying levels of dimensionality, moving from high relief close to the young artist, to extremely low relief (upper left).



Unfortunately, I could not find the artist’s names on several of these outdoor pieces, although they are assuredly more contemporary works. I think what I am trying to show here also is that just because you have seen the original works of Michelangelo, do not think that this museum is only full of copies of the great artist. It is worth a trip and quite a beautiful area.



And I can highly recommend the food at the nearby Pensione e Ristorante Buca di Michelangelo. And if you find yourself there during the week, please stop into La Pecora Nera [The Black Sheep] shop and say hello to Simona and perhaps even her husband Andrea.





3 comments:

Casey Klahn said...

Good to see these wonderful sculptures, and to hear your review. I just watched The Agony and The Ecstasy, and it crossed my mind whether they revered Michelangelo's birthplace the same way they do Leonardo's.

Kelly Borsheim Artist said...

Hi Casey,
Yeah, Vinci is a place I have yet to visit, although I have heard lovely things of this small community.

I will definitely write about it if I ever do go.
Glad that you enjoyed "The Agony and The Ecstasy" -- I did too.

Anonymous said...

Thank You kelly!
Outstanding and always great to read your Blog.
Gene P.