me and michelangelo...

You might recall(?) that I spent a little time in the Ashmolean Museum last November looking though some of Turner’s Venetian watercolours…

Well, after that wonderful encounter, I returned to Oxford yesterday to check out some 500 year-old drawings by Michelangelo (1475-1564)! Thanks to the brilliantly helpful Katherine in the Western Print Room, I spent just over an hour pouring over nine of Michelangelo’s drawings – a simply amazing experience. Isn’t it just fantastic that we can do this in the UK?… and it’s all free!
The above images show just four of the drawings I was given privileged access to!
And to crown it all, this was followed by a lovely lunch with my great mate Ken (at The Red Lion, Gloucester Green).
A REALLY magical day.
Photo: four of the drawings: Nude Male Torso+another study; Ideal Head (1508-12?); Descent from the Cross (1521?); and Study of Man’s Head (1509?).
PS: a lovely bonus to the day (for me) was being able to get into the courtyard(s) of a graduate housing scheme I designed for Lincoln College in 1976 on an incredibly tight city centre site… just as I was passing the main entrance in Bear Lane (which is kept locked and only accessible to residents), I noticed a workman unlocking the gates. I quickly explained that I’d be the architect for the scheme and he kindly allowed me to have a very quick look round. It was completed 36 years ago and I reckon it had weathered well and still looked pretty good to my eyes! Here are some images from my whistle-stop tour.