It’s hard not to feel sneaky when you view the magnificent new exhibition of drawings by Michelangelo that opens today at the Cleveland Museum of Art. After all, Il Divino, the “divine one,’’ didn’t want you to see what the museum is serving up. He destroyed as many of his drawings as possible so as to avoid having contemporaries, not to mention posterity, peering over his shoulder, which is exactly what the exhibition enables you to do.

Michelangelo’s finished works, whether sculptures or the Sistine Chapel murals, or buildings he designed, have the magisterial inevitability of musical compositions by Beethoven. But Michelangelo’s drawings allow you to see how he got there. Seeing them is like eavesdropping on a great composer at the keyboard, without his knowledge and certainly without his permission.