Michelangelo's Dream

Michelangelo's Dream
The Courtauld Gallery, London - from February 18 to May 16, 2010

"Michelangelo’s masterpiece The Dream is one of the greatest of all Renaissance drawings. This complex work shows a nude youth being roused by a winged spirit from the vices that surround him.

The Dream was probably part of the celebrated group of drawings which Michelangelo made as gifts for Tommaso de' Cavalieri, a young Roman nobleman with whom he had fallen passionately in love. With loans from international collections, the exhibition unites The Dream for the first time with these extraordinary drawings.

Michelangelo’s Dream also includes a selection of previously unexhibited handwritten poems which the artist composed for Cavalieri. Further closely related drawings by Michelangelo as well as works by Albrecht Dürer and others will shed light on the meaning of Michelangelo’s enigmatic masterpiece.

This unique opportunity to see some of Michelangelo’s finest and most beautiful drawings promises to be one of the exhibition highlights of the year."

* video podcasts

"The exhibition Michelangelo's Dream contains not only drawings but also the manuscripts of some of his most important letters and poems. The poems (...) were composed for the Roman nobleman Tommaso de'Cavalieri and deal with spiritual longing and passionate desire. Michelangelo's sonnets and madrigals are perhaps less well known than his sculpture and painting but were considered of great worth by humanist intellectuals in his time."

* audio podcasts

"Each podcast is of a single poem and includes an introduction by Jim Harris, visiting lecturer at The Courtauld Institute of Art, an English translation and then the original Italian."