Michelangelo and the relationship with power told through 50 works in Florence

Michelangelo Buonarroti’s relationship with power, his political vision and his determination to place himself on an equal footing with the powerful of the earth: these are the themes that are at the center of the exhibition “Michelangelo and Power” from 18 October to 26 January 2025 , curated by Cristina Acidini and Sergio Risaliti, promoted by the Municipality of Florence in collaboration with the Casa Buonarroti Foundation and organized by the Muse Foundation.

The exhibition 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 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. The Brutus sculpture was born as a tribute by Giannotti to the highly cultured Cardinal Niccolò Ridolfi , a leading figure among the Florentine exiles and supporter of a popular republican government model, who had exalted Lorenzino de’ Medici as the ‘new Brutus’. The proud gaze of Brutus, Caesar’s slayer, recalls that of David in Piazza Signoria by its internal fire and may have shared with him, in the intentions of the artist and the clients, the symbolic function of defender of the Florentine republic.

The exhibition in the Sala dei Gigli intends to recreate Michelangelo’s dense network of meetings, confrontations and clashes with power, designing a sort of constellation of portraits of illustrious men and women, all revolving around the Portrait of the artist painted by his friend Giuliano Bugiardini, positioned at the center of the large wall as a ‘blazing star’. Here there are the portraits of Girolamo Savonarola of Fra’ Bartolomeo and of Pier Soderini attributed to Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio, as well as those of Cosimo I in armor by Agnolo Bronzino, of Vittoria Colonna, of Cardinal Reginald Pole in conversation with Paul III and that of Leo

The ‘picture gallery’ clearly shows the magnetism exercised at 360 degrees by Michelangelo and his works, in a network of connections between the artist and power that lasted for almost a century, crossing the luminous season of Lorenzo the Magnificent, that ‘crybaby’ of Friar Savonarola, excelling in the cultural ‘new world’ established by the standard-bearer Soderini together with Machiavelli and Lorenzo di Pier Francesco, known as the Popolano, until the years of the double Medici pontificate with Leo the power of the Church of Rome invested by Luther’s Reformation, which was reacted to with the Council of Trent and the consequent Counter-Reformation, subjecting the arts of painting and sculpture to the orthodoxy of Catholic doctrine.

In the midst of the turbulence of religious conflicts and wars that crossed Europe, while Italy and Tuscany became the battlefield between Spain and France, Michelangelo defended his freedom of conscience in every way, claiming the power of art and the artist. 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 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.

To give an account of the legendary stories relating to two lost youthful works, the Faun and the Sleeping Cupid, two unpublished marble sculptures attributable to sixteenth-century sculptors from private collections are on display. Of great suggestion is the presentation of a sort of plaster cast gallery dedicated to Michelangelo, with casts of some of his major works, all linked for various reasons to the artist’s relationships with the greats of the time: such as the cast of the candlestick angel, made in Bologna where it was protected by the noble Francesco Aldrovandi, that of Bacchus commissioned to the artist by Cardinal Riario, nephew of Sixtus IV, the plaster reproduction of the Vatican Pietà, created in Rome for Cardinal Jean Bilhères De Lagraulas, the monumental copy of the head of David of Piazza Signoria, the two Slaves (the Bearded and the Dying), the Night of the Medici Chapels, one of the sculptures sculpted to celebrate the Medici dukes, Lorenzo and Giuliano.

Among these indirect testimonies is also a plaster reproduction of the Bust of Michelangelo, created starting from the original by Daniela da Volterra. Michelangelo and Power is a project by the Museo Novecento for the Municipality of Florence and the Museum of Palazzo Vecchio.