EVENT NAME: Michelangelo and Power

EVENT PLACE: Palazzo Vecchio Museum

EVENT DATE: from 18 October 2024 to 26 January 2025

EVENT PRICE: €17.50 Museum - full €15.00 Museum - reduced (18-25 years and university students). Included with the Firenzecard. 

EVENT DESCRIPTION:

From 18 October 2024 to 26 January 2025 Palazzo Vecchio hosts the exhibition Michelangelo and Power, curated by Cristina Acidini and Sergio Risaliti, promoted by the Municipality of Florence in collaboration with the Casa Buonarroti Foundation and organized by the MUS.E Foundation. The project and direction of the exhibition are handled by the architect Guido Ciompi, in collaboration with the architect Gianluca Conte of the Guido Ciompi & partners studio. Michelangelo and Power develops on the second floor of Palazzo Vecchio, between the Sala delle Udienze and the Sala dei Gigli, with an itinerary of more than fifty works: sculptures, paintings, drawings, autograph letters and plaster casts - the result of exceptional loans from prestigious institutions such as the Uffizi Galleries, the Bargello Museums, the Casa Buonarroti Foundation, the Fundación Colección Thyssen-Bornemisza and the National Galleries of Ancient Art in Rome, to name just a few – chosen to illustrate Michelangelo's relationship with the power, his political vision and his determination to place himself on an equal footing with the powerful of the earth.

The real star of the exhibition is the famous bust of Brutus, exceptionally loaned by the Bargello National Museum and exhibited for the first time in history at Palazzo Vecchio. The placement of the Brutus sculpture inside the Florentine government palace is cloaked in a very strong political meaning, making explicit the comparison between Michelangelo's political thought and the Medici power. Ideal portrait of the tyrannical killer, it can be considered a political manifesto in all respects. The artist was inspired by Donato Giannotti, who was among the major exponents of that party of Florentine exiles who remained faithful to the republic and enemies of the Medici, who became absolute masters of Florence after the siege in 1530: the Brutus would have been sculpted after the killing of Duke Alessandro il Moro, stabbed on 6 January 1537 by his cousin Lorenzino de' Medici, known as Lorenzaccio, who was hailed as a hero of the municipal Libertas by the Florentine exiles; or, according to an alternative hypothesis, it should be dated after the assassination of Lorenzaccio which took place in Venice on 26 February 1548 at the hands of assassins sent by Cosimo I.

Other important works are on display to represent Michelangelo's different relationships with the powerful people he met in his long life. There are many those granted by the Casa Buonarroti Foundation, including a drawing depicting a nude torso from behind, study for the Battle of Cascina (which refers to the commission of Pier Soderini, the standard-bearer who wanted the David at the foot of the government building), four drawings of fortifications, carried out by the artist in the period of the siege of Florence in the service of the Republic, and two design drawings for the complex of San Lorenzo, one for the façade of the Basilica and the other for the Laurentian Library, which narrate instead his relationship with the Medici popes Leo X and Clemente VII. Added to this very important nucleus of drawings is the Plan of St. Peter's Basilica, preserved in the Uffizi Galleries, an undertaking that kept Michelangelo busy for many years from 1546 until his death in 1564, in a comparison that was not always easy with four popes from Paul III up to Pius IV.