I used to like Michelangelo (artist, not Mutant Turtle). Then I read “Agony and Ecstasy” in the mid 90s and now I love him. I hit the Met exhibit for MB today and I would say I am largely “unsatisfied”.
I had carried my copy of “Agony” across the country and had some immersive image of myself sitting amongst his drawings and re-reading some of the more magnificent passages. The exhibit wasn’t really set up to support this, and in the moment it was feeling a little to “staged” and likely not to enhance either my enjoyment of the book or understanding of the exhibit. His works are great, and their range is breathtaking, but against the backdrop of the sometimes grueling text of “Agony” all of the descriptions of the work seemed insignificant or not-enough. In the end, the exhibit did share a magnificence surprise kiss at the end with a huge, back-lit translucency of the Sistine Chapel hung overhead. It’s easy to summarize your memory of the Sistine ceiling to just one or two scenes, but the full work was like the once-in-a-decade family reunion where you are constantly remembering that one-cousin-you-haven’t-thought-of-in-five-years and recall that they were kind of interesting. It’s worth the hike to the back left corner of the Met.
Side note – best Michelangelo laugh: during some art history course in college a professor was explaining what an insufficient answer for identifying a piece was by using the example “For Michelangelo’s David I need more than ‘a statue of a naked guy holding his rocks’”.