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The title of the Morgan’s exhibition of Italian Renaissance drawings is a little misleading, as only two of the 79 works on view are by Michelangelo—and one of those features fairly unexceptional studies of a man’s muscular leg. The other, a compellingly odd rendering in black chalk of the head and bust of a woman, shows the artist as a master draftsman. Her piercing gaze recalls Michelangelo’s famous sculpture of David from 1504, probably 20 years before this drawing was made, while her bared breasts, intricate hairdo and fanciful hat—which seems part armor, part architecture—mark her as a figure from allegory or myth.
While these drawings constitute a modest sampling of the headliner, the influence of Michelangelo looms large over this three-part exhibition, which traces the course of art in 16th-century Florence through the prism of the Palazzo Vecchio, the medieval city hall commandeered as a ducal palace by Cosimo I de’ Medici after he assumed power in 1537. Part I features artists who worked in and around the Palazzo in the first half of the century, including Michelangelo and the first generation of Mannerist painters. Part II focuses on the artist and historian Giorgio Vasari, whom the Medicis put in charge of redecorating the Palazzo in 1555, and five years later, building the Uffizi next door. With 13 works here, Vasari receives a miniretrospective, signaling his pivotal role. Part III gives us more obscure artists who decorated the Studiolo, the private study of Francesco de’ Medici, Cosimo’s son and heir, beginning in 1570. While the exhibition has a number of great drawings by big names, a preponderance of unfamiliar artists and multiple sketches for architectural decorations can make it feel slightly musty and pedantic, particularly in Part III.
Part I, however, features some fascinating lesser knowns, such as the Mannerist painter Rosso Fiorentino, who took the eccentricities of Michelangelo’s style to extremes. The figures in his sketch for a Virgin and Child with Saints in the first section of the exhibition form an off-kilter composition, a quadrangle with an empty center. A frenetic imagination appears to have invented these twisting, almost faceted bodies, but Fiorentino’s impeccable draftsmanship does nothing to assuage a sense of jittery anxiety.
In contrast, Bronzino, arguably the greatest of the Florentine Mannerists, clearly drew Male Nude Seen from Behind, a study for a fresco in the Palazzo, from life. The model stands in classical contrapposto, the gentle S-curve of his body offsetting one upraised arm that balances a bundle on his head. The incisive outline of the figure contrasts with the subtle modulations of tone that rather breathtakingly describe the play of light over flesh (has anyone limned the backs of knees this exquisitely before or since?).
A stunning Half-Length Portrait of a Gentlewoman depicts a comely, self-assured sitter, her wavy hair tucked into a turbanlike snood, her ruched blouse sporting an embroidered collar. This atmospheric sheet has earned only an attribution to Bronzino, but it is hard for any nonspecialist to imagine that it’s not by the master.
The second section amply demonstrates Vasari’s range and versatility. From a straightforward copy of a head after Michelangelo, his idol, to elaborate decorative schemes for walls, Vasari tackled all manner of subjects and styles. A study for a figure in a Palazzo Vecchio fresco shows a seated cardinal wearing voluminous vestments with creases so angular they evoke the facade of a Gothic cathedral. In a Pietà in brown ink, the claustrophobically massed figures display strange discrepancies of scale. The Virgin’s draperies sag in doughy folds that echo her slumped body and emphasize the pathos of the scene.
The selections in the last section show the Renaissance running out of steam late in the century. While still highly skilled, the drawings here appear derivative and precious. An angel by Maso da San Friano sits coquettishly cross-legged as he announces the Resurrection in The Three Marys at the Tomb. The same artist’s Risen Christ floats nude save for ribbons of drapery as muscular as his body, one of which knots like clasped hands just at his crotch. Yet something new was also in the air. Santi di Tito’s red-chalk studies on a single piece of paper record the head of a child with both careful observation and affection. His Battle Scene depicts a flying wedge of frenzied soldiers and horses. Combining interests in naturalism and dynamic movement, these works seem almost to illustrate an art-history lesson, pointing a way out of the artistic impasse of the late Renaissance to the age of the Baroque that would soon follow.
