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Some of the greatest works by Michelangelo
Buonarroti (1475-1564) are to be found in Florence:
drawings, sculpture, paintings, architecture. This great renaissance
artist studied the works of Masaccio and Brunelleschi, and received
his training in the workshops of Ghirlandaio and Bertoldo. He
worked in Florence, Siena, Bologna, Lunigiana and especially
in Rome, where he spent the last thirty years of his life. His
tomb in Santa Croce, Florence, is by Giorgio Vasari.
This itinerary takes in the major Florentine works of
Michelangelo, and begins in Piazza San Marco, opposite the former
Medici gardens, where he served his apprenticeship as a sculptor.
We then proceed to the Museum of the Academia, where we find
the original marble David (1501-04),
transferred here from Piazza della Signoria, and a number of
unfinished works: the St Matthew, the four Prisoners,
and the late Palestrina Pietà. Passing the Palazzo
Medici, where Michelangelo altered the loggia by closing it
and adding "kneeling windows", we come to the basilica of San
Lorenzo, whose unfinished façade might well have been one of
his masterpieces (see the wooden model in the Casa Buonarroti).
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David
[zoom]
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Day
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Climbing the stairs in the cloister we reach the
Biblioteca Laurenziana, built for Pope Clement VII. Next
we come to the Museum of the Medici Chapels, and visit
the New
Sacristy with its world
famous Medici Tombs. Here are the marble sculptures of
the Madonna and Child, Giuliano Duke of Nemours,
Lorenzo Duke of Urbino, and the four allegorical
statues of Dawn and Dusk, Night
and Day.
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Leaving the Museum we proceed first to the Opera
del Duomo, to admire the Pietà with its famous
self-portrait, sculpted in Rome in about 1550,
and then to the Bargello, which has youthful pieces
such as the Bacchus
and the Pitti Tondo, as well as the Brutus
(Rome, after 1537). |
La Pietà |
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Tondo Doni
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Important drawings by Michelangelo, and his only
Florentine painting, the Doni Tondo, are to be found in the Uffizi Gallery, while
in the Room of the Five Hundred, in the next-door Palazzo
Vecchio (where he worked on one of the world's great lost
frescoes, the Battle of Cascina), we find the unfinished
marble Victory. |
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The concluding stage of the itinerary is
the Museum of the Casa Buonarroti, where we find drawings,
youthful works and portraits of the artist, whom his
nephew Michelangelo the Younger exalted in the 17th
century as the presiding genius of the family.
The apotheosis of the "divine" Michelangelo
came in the 19th century, with the erection of his
monument (1875) in the famous Piazzale named after
him, a favourite spot of all visitors to Florence. |
Tondo Pitti |
Madonna della Scala
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| Suggested museums in Florence: |
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- Academy
of Fine Arts Museum,
via Ricasoli, n.60, Firenze
- Medici
Chapels,
piazza Madonna Aldobrandini, Firenze
- Opera
del Duomo Museum,
piazza del Duomo, 1, Firenze
- Bargello
Museum, via
del Proconsolo, n.4, Firenze
- Uffizi
Gallery and "Cabinet" of Drawings and Prints,
piazzale degli Uffizi, Firenze
- Palazzo
Vecchio Museum,
piazza della Signoria, Firenze
- Casa Buonarroti Museum,
via Ghibellina, n.70, Firenze
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