Michelangelo The Last Decades Review Feels Close To a Religious Experience

Trustees of the British Museum

The final section of the British Museum’s exhibition Michelangelo: The Last Decades is circular and enclosed. The walls are black and the light low. The feeling is of being in a small chapel: if a person was to speak in this space, they would surely whisper – though my instinct was for absolute silence. The work on display here, made in the last 30 years of the artist’s long life, is so far beyond the meaning bestowed by words, and even if it wasn’t, who could improve on those of Michelangelo himself?

By the door is one of his poems, dated 1554 (on loan from the Vatican library, it is gorgeously translated by James Saslow). “The voyage of my life has at last reached/ across a stormy sea, in fragile boat,” it begins. It acknowledges that the moment of “accounting” is imminent. It speaks of a soul that may no longer be calmed by the material. Death is engraved on its author’s every waking thought….Story continues….

By: Rachel Cooke

Source: Michelangelo: The Last Decades review 

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