The Great Artists CASA BUONARROTI MUSEUM 3 CRUCIFIX 4 BACCHUS This building is actually the result of a Michelangelo, not yet twenty, carved this This statue, commissioned by Cardinal Riario FLORENTINE seventeenth century “merger” of three wooden crucifix for the Prior of Santo Spirito in 1496, dates from Michelangelo’s first so- ITINERARIES houses that Michelangelo had purchased to thank him for allowing him to study the journ in Rome. It reveals an extraordinary em- some time around 1510 (and he had anatomy of dead bodies in the hospital prior to ulation, and reinterpretation, of classical sculp- lived in one of them for a several years). burial. It is the almost unanimous opinion of ture. The god of wine, unsteady on his feet, is It was his great-grandson, Michelangelo scholars that this is the same carving described raising a goblet, while a little satyr is stealing Buonarroti the Younger (1568-1647), in early sources. a bunch of grapes. The naturalistic treatment Michelangelo in Florence who made decorate the rooms with of the shapes and details is astonishing. Franc- scenes celebrating the glories of the BARGELLO MUSEUM esco I de’ Medici purchased the statue and had Michelangelo spent many long years in Florence and left an “divine artist” and his family, making it This museum is located in the former it placed in the Uffizi Gallery. something of a “shrine to his memory”. Palazzo del Capitano del Popolo (XIII immense legacy of artworks, as well as many others that he 2 In addition to being the permanent century), and it is one of the major 5 PITTI TONDO produced elsewhere and were brought here later. This pamphlet home of a large collection of letters, sculpture museums in Italy. It conserves Michelangelo carved this round, marble bas-re- 5 6 is a little invitation to go “beyond the David” and discover these models (including the wooden model was attending the garden of San Marco. Even works by the greatest artists starting from lief for Bartolomeo Pitti around 1505. It is con- had been exiled to Rome and with whom the controversial Palestrina Pietà) it masterpieces and the famous, or less known but splendid settings for the façade of San Lorenzo and of though it reveals explicit references to Don- the fifteenth century: from Donatello temporary to his other “tondi” (the Doni Tondo Michelangelo shared his republican ideals. Ac- has been identified as a “Michelangelo where they are found. the River God) and original drawings, atello, especially the stiacciato or “flattened” (two statues of David, Saint George and in the Uffizi and the Taddei Tondo in London). cording to some hypothesis this statue would museum”. In addition to the sculpture which are displayed on a rotating basis, style, the sculpture clearly heralds the artist’s the Marzocco) to the Della Robbia family, The Virgin Mary, with her intent expression be a portrait of Lorenzino de’ Medici (the collection that includes works by other the museum periodically hosts exhibits new, revolutionary language. from Ghiberti and Brunelleschi (two seems to herald one of the Sibyls in the Sistine ‘Lorenzaccio’ who killed the Duke Alessandro artists, there is the painting gallery (with Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1475-1564 (Poliziano, Ficino, Pico della Mirandola), and It was during this period, that was also the era (after long resistance the city capitulated to focusing on Michelangelo’s world, his life panels for the famous competition held Chapel, and in the unfinished background we de’ Medici in 1537), and a tribute to the man works dating from the thirteenth to the this had a great impact on his development. It of the first Florentine Republic (1494-1512), that the imperial siege in 1530, and the emperor and the family’s collections. 2 in 1401) to Verrocchio, from Cellini to sixteenth century) and the Museum of The Buonarroti family had its roots in was in this context that he carved his earliest Michelangelo came into contact with Leonardo sanctioned the return of the Medicis). The THE BATTLE OF THE CENTAURS can see the figure of the Young Saint John. who did away with the tyrant. Florence and lived on the Santa Croce district. masterpieces, the Battle of the Centaurs and da Vinci. The two artists were commissioned to David-Apollo now in the Bargello dates from This sculpture also dates from Michelangelo’s Giambologna to Bernini. A rich and very Antique Musical Instruments. Michelangelo himself was born at Caprese, the Madonna of the Stairs, both of which are paint two grandiose frescoes in the Sala del Gran this period. 1 MADONNA OF THE STAIRS youth and it was Agnolo Poliziano, the famous fine grouping of weapons, small bronzes, 6 BRUTUS 7 DAVID/APOLLO near Arezzo, where his father was the “podestà” conserved in the Casa Buonarroti Museum. Consiglio in Palazzo Vecchio. Neither of these In 1534 Michelangelo departed – this time Michelangelo carved this bas-relief of the Vir- poet of the Medici entourage, who suggested majolica items, ivory and other objects of This bust, clearly inspired by classical statu- The dual name of this statue is due to the un- 8 DAVID or chief magistrate. The family moved back to Shortly thereafter he carved the wooden frescoes have survived; Michelangelo had only definitively – for Rome where other great projects gin and Child against a background of steep the subject. Based on an episode from Ovid’s the so-called “minor” arts completes the ary was carved in Rome around 1540 on the certainties in the interpretation of the subject. This statue was originally commissioned by the Florence shortly after the boy’s birth. Crucifix for the Prior of Santo Spirito, done the preparatory cartoons for the Battle of were waiting: the Last Judgment in the Sistine stairs (hence the name) when he was 15 and Metamorphoses, it portrays a lively melee of museum’s collection. advice of Donato Giannotti, a Florentine who At the end of the siege of 1530 (that sanc- Opera del Duomo in 1501 and was completed When he was thirteen he was apprenticed to following the death of his first patron, Lorenzo Cascina, but these drawings were lost over time. Chapel (where more than in any other of his Ghirlandaio’s flourishing workshop (scholars the Magnificent, and perhaps partly because Over the following years Michelangelo was busy works he revealed a profound, and tormented “heroic nudes” in a great variety of poses and tioned the return of the Medicis to Florence) three years later. Out of a block of marble that have said that he worked on the choir frescoes in of it, Michelangelo embarked on a series of with two very important commissions for Pope religious spirit), the final version of the tomb of expressions. Michelangelo drew the inspira- Michelangelo was practically forced to carve another artist had begun carving and aban- the church of Santa Maria Novella), and studied travels that would take him to Rome (1496). Julius II in Rome – the tortured project that Julius II in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli tion for this test of skill from antique sarcopha- this statue for Baccio Valori, papal governor of doned Michelangelo created a revolutionary the great masters of Tuscan painting, Giotto and was modified several times for the pope’s tomb (this project had been considerably downsized There, contact with the classical world had an gi depicting similar themes. Florence as a condition to regain the favor of interpretation of the biblical hero as well as the Masaccio. Shortly thereafter he entered what important influence on his future works. He (for this he carved the Slaves that are in the with respect to the original plans and includes the Medicis. archetype of the Renaissance ideal of beauty. was known as the Garden of San Marco: an obtained important commissions from cardinals Academy Gallery and the Louvre in Paris, as the famous statue of Moses) and his final, great academy founded by Lorenzo the Magnificent such as the classical Bacchus that is now in well as the Victory in Palazzo Vecchio) - and the architectural achievement, the dome of Saint CHURCH OF SANTO SPIRITO The statue, immediately rechristened as “the and directed by one of Donatello’s pupils the Bargello Museum, and the famous Pietà in titanic task of frescoing the ceiling of the Sistine Peter’s Basilica. The distinctive façade of the church ACADEMY GALLERY giant” was placed in front of the Palazzo Vec- (the famous sculptor Bertoldo di Giovanni), Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. During Chapel (1508-12). His last two sculptures were the Pietà is the backdrop for the lively, typically This museum’s name is practically chio in Piazza della Signoria and became the where ancient sculptures were kept partly for Back in Florence, between 1515-34, under the (“Bandini”) in the Opera del Duomo Museum this period he also made the first of many trips Florentine piazza of the same name. synonymous with Michelangelo’s David, symbol of the proud Florentine Republic. The teaching purposes. Lorenzo the Magnificent to the marble quarries at Carrara to choose Medici pontiffs Leo X and Clement VII (Lorenzo and the “Rondanini” Pietà (in Milan) that he was The church that also houses works by but there is much more to see. It was original was moved to this museum in 1873 quickly recognized the young Michelangelo’s the material for his statues. In 1501, back in the Magnificent’s son and nephew respectively) working on shortly before his death in 1564 at talents and took him to live in his palace on Via Florence, within a few years he created two he worked on the San Lorenzo, the complex that the age of 89.