New Inventions of Modern Times [Nova Reperta], The Invention of Oil Painting, plate 14 (detail), about 1600, Jan Collaert I. Engraving. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1949
Michelangelo: The Failed Instructor
GETTY CENTER
Museum Lecture Hall
This is a past event
This event has been canceled as part of Getty’s response to the coronavirus (COVID-19).
Between 1510 and the early 1530s, Michelangelo engaged in the artistic education of workshop assistants and young noblemen. According to the artist-biographer Giorgio Vasari, his pupils showed little talent, going as far as describing one of them as “not a brain capable of much.” But could it have been Michelangelo’s lack of didactic skills that set his pupils up for failure? Getty assistant curator of drawings Edina Adam examines the types of exercises devised by the master and how they served—or rather disserved—the progress of his students.