Drawings at the National Gallery of Canada

A student's paradise

Michelangelo's study for the Libyan Sibyl, 1511;
The Libyan Sibyl at the Sistine Chapel.

Blogging was light these past few days since I was in beautiful Ottawa.

Ottawa is just the right combination of the urban, rural and suburban (which is more rural than most suburbs). Being the nation's capital city, it has an impressive downtown area, with the official, governmental buildings standing tall and stately.

Almost every summer, the National Gallery of Canada brings a one-of-a-kind exhibition, sometimes a rotating one (with other big-name museums and galleries). This time, the exhibition was exclusively for Ottawa and was titled: "From Raphael to Carracci: The art of Papal Rome."

Spanning a full century, from 1500 to 1600, it exhibited works commissioned by these powerful popes from the prevalent artists of the age, including Michelangelo and Raphael.

Most of the works were preparatory drawings, later to be made into large-scale paintings, or frescoes as in some of Michelangelo's works.

This exhibition was a student's paradise, showing us the trials and experiments the painters went through to convince their patrons, the powerful popes, and to finally get their works completed.