Michelangelo, The Fall of Phaeton. c. 1533, Royal Library, Windsor
When Michelangelo was in his late fifties he fell in love with a noble teenager Tommaso de’ Cavalieri. They continued to be close friends for 30 years. Michelangelo wrote series of poems and most importantly remarkable allegorical drawings as a gift to Tommaso. There is an exhibition of these drawings in the Courtland gallery in London. The one above is one the drawings Michelangelo gave as gift to his muse (video). Michelangelo was rather a prankster, draw an imaginary diagonal lines and see what was the absolute center of the composition. The falling horses are even more impressive than Leonardo’s horses in the Battle of Anghiari.
Michelangelo, The Rape of Ganymede, c. 1533. Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, MA
The one above is another gift to Tommaso de’ Cavalieri. The myth goes that Ganymede was the most beautiful human and the mighty Zeus turned into an eagle to steal Ganymede, might have even raped him… The choice of the theme is rather obvious for Michelangelo, so is the provocatively erotic interpretation of the myth. I find this fact rather amazing when “Cavalieri wrote [to Michelangelo] that they [the drawings] had been admired by ‘the Pope, Cardinal de Medici and everyone’, adding apologetically that the Cardinal had already taken away Ganymede to have a replica made in crystal.” But compare Michelangelo’s Ganymede to the Rembrandt below. Where Michelangelo saws a ravenous love, Rembrandt observed a scared pisher.
Rembrandt, Rape of Ganymede 1635. Gemäldegalerie, Dresden
The last drawing is a fragment from the central part of the exhibition in London and again a gift to Tommaso de’ Cavalieri by Michelangelo. It’s the masks from The Dream:
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If Tommaso was born around 1509, how could he be a teenager in 1532?