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"Donna bella e crudele" : Michelangelo's Divine Heads in Light of the Rime
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Pericolo, Lorenzo (2017) "Donna bella e crudele" : Michelangelo's Divine Heads in Light of the Rime. Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes Florenz, 59 (2). pp. 202-233.
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Official URL: http://www.khi.fi.it/5668493/mitteilungen_2017_1
Abstract
Between the mid 1520s and 1533, Michelangelo executed a group of drawings conceived as gifts for Gherardo Perini and, in particular, Tommaso Cavalieri. Praising their exceptional craftsmanship, Giorgio Vasari refers to these drawings as "divine heads" ("teste divine"). In this essay, the author focuses only on three of these drawings (the so-called Cleopatra and Zenobia in Florence and the Ideal head in the British Museum, London), more specifically on those representing full-size heads or busts of beautiful women characterized by strange hair dresses and hairdos and by unusual pieces of armor. By stressing the links between lyrical motifs developed by Michelangelo in his love poems (Rime) and visual motifs present in these drawings, the author seeks to offer a new interpretation of Michelangelo's "divine heads". The essay intends to demonstrate that Michelangelo's imagery of the "donna bella e crudele" relies on a late fifteenth-century Florentine tradition to which numerous artists had contributed: from Piero di Cosimo to Botticelli and Verrocchio. Interpreting Michelangelo's lyrical output as an unaccomplished para-biographical trajectory modeled on Petrarch's Canzoniere, the author also clarifies in which ways Michelangelo's lyric poetry differs from previous and contemporary examples, and how the figure of the "donna bella e crudele" is replaced (in Michelangelo's final years) by a contemplation of Christ's divine body.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
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| Subjects: | N Fine Arts > N Visual arts (General) For photography, see TR N Fine Arts > NC Drawing Design Illustration N Fine Arts > ND Painting N Fine Arts > NX Arts in general |
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| Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > History of Art | ||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes Florenz | ||||||
| Publisher: | Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz ; Max-Panck-Institut | ||||||
| ISSN: | 0342-1201 | ||||||
| Official Date: | October 2017 | ||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | 59 | ||||||
| Number: | 2 | ||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 202-233 | ||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||
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