Michelangelo and Power at Palazzo Vecchio

Michelangelo and Power at Palazzo Vecchio

The Sala delle Udienze and Sala dei Gigli house more than 50 works exploring Michelangelo's relationship with power.

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Wed 16 Oct 2024 4:05 PM

The Palazzo Vecchio museum inaugurates an exhibition dedicated to Michelangelo and his relationship with power on the second floor of the Palazzo, on show from October 18 to January 26, 2025. Curated by Cristina Acidini and Sergio Risaliti, the exhibition is a project by Museo Novecento promoted by the Municipality of Florence in collaboration with the Casa Buonarroti Foundation and organized by MUS.E. The works chosen illustrate Michelangelo’s political vision and his determination to place himself on an equal footing with the powerful on earth.

Michelangelo e il potere, Palazzo Vecchio Ph. Leonardo Morfini
Ph. Leonardo Morfini

Unfolding across the Sala delle Udienze and the Sala dei Gigli, more than 50 works, made up of sculptures, paintings, drawings, autographed letters and plaster casts, are on show. The pieces are on loan from prestigious institutions such as the Uffizi Galleries, the Bargello Museums, the Casa Buonarroti Foundation, the Fundación Colección Thyssen-Bornemisza and the Gallerie Nazionali d’Arte Antica in Rome.

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A highlight of the exhibition is the famous bust of Brutus, loaned by the Bargello National Museum and exhibited for the first time at Palazzo Vecchio. The fact that the work is placed inside the Florentine government building is cloaked in political meaning, making an explicit comparison between Michelangelo’s political thought and Medici power.

A dedicated area displays plaster casts of some of Michelangelo’s most well-known works, all based around the artist’s relationships with influential figures of the time, such as the cast of the angel holding a candle that was made in Bologna where he was protected by the noble Francesco Aldrovandi, and the plaster reproduction of the Vatican Pietà made in Rome for Cardinal Jean Bilhères De Lagraulas. Notably, visitors will be greeted by a monumental reproduction of the head of Michelangelo’s David, which can be admired by walking fully around the work, as well as the Night of the Medici Chapels, a sculpture made to celebrate the Medici dukes, Lorenzo and Giuliano.

Michelangelo e il potere Palazzo Vecchio
City Councillor for Culture Giovanni Bettarini, President of the Casa Buonarroti Foundation Cristina Acidini, Mayor Sara Funaro and Director of Museo Novecento Sergio Risaliti

Mayor Sara Funaro comments: “It’s a source of great pride to host an exhibition at Palazzo Vecchio focused on the master, Michelangelo Buonarroti. The works on display create a new and immersive path dedicated to exploring a particular aspect of his works, namely his relationship with power, which was sometimes complicated, sometimes conflictual, and sometimes synergistic. It’s significant that this artistic itinerary unfolds here in a palace that, over the centuries, has seen the alternation of history with a capital H and the power of the Medici dynasty that has also left an indelible mark on contemporaneity.”

Co-curator Cristina Acidini elaborates: “Even the most famous works of art and the most well-known documents can express new meanings when they are inserted into a context that enhances certain aspects of them that are usually difficult to perceive. This is the case with this exhibition, which Sergio Risaliti carefully planned and which, with all the experts at Casa Buonarroti, we gladly supported with loans of Michelangelo’s drawings and documents. The very location of Palazzo Vecchio, from its medieval origins to today’s seat of city power, invites us to reread Michelangelo’s life and works in this light, starting with Brutus, which, as well as being a masterpiece, is a declaration of political alignment. Michelangelo frequented people and families of power since he was a boy in Florence, continuing with popes and sovereigns until his old age: an exceptional condition for an artist of his time and of all times”.

Co-curator Sergio Risaliti added: “There was no artist like Michelangelo who had such close and continuous relationships with the powerful of the earth over his lifetime. From Lorenzo the Magnificent to Pope Paul III, from Julius II, the warrior pope, to Cosimo I, Duke of Florence, who tried in vain to have Michelangelo return to the city while still alive, Buonarroti’s familiarity with the influential figures of his time – popes, kings, illustrious men of letters and philosophers, princes and cardinals – was unusual to say the least and appears surprising to us”.

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