Casa Buonarroti Museum

Description

In Via Ghibellina 70 there is a grandiose building which houses one of the most unique museums in the city linked to a great Italian art master: Casa Buonarroti, a place to cherish and celebrate the genius of Michelangelo.


Although the name may suggest that this building had once been the house where Michelangelo Buonarroti lived, the construction date tells us differently. The palace was built in 1612 on the site where Michelangelo once owned three houses and had lived there for a while. However, in 1612 the artist had already been dead for over forty years.


The construction of the palace, as can be seen today, was commissioned by his grandnephew Michelangelo the Young, an illustrious scholar, who enriched the family art collection and started a decorative program inside the palace aimed at celebrating the figure of his important ancestor and family. He called the major artists active in that period in Florence to work there, such as Empoli, Domenico Passignano, Artemisia Gentileschi, Pietro da Cortona, Francesco Furini and many others.


Subsequently other members of the Buonarroti family did their utmost to enrich and give new prestige to the Casa Buonarroti such as Leonardo, who had an absolute veneration for  the "old" Michelangelo; Filippo, a very famous antique dealer; and Cosimo who bequeathed the palace to the city which opened to the public as a museum in 1859. On the facade of the building there is a plaque celebrating this moment:


QUESTA CASA
COMPRATA A' SUOI DA DIVINO MICHELANGELO
FATTA ORNARE DI PITTURE
ED ARRICCHITA DE' MODELLI DE' DISEGNI E DEGLI SCRITTI
DEL GRANDE ZIO
DA MICHELANGELO PRONIPOTE
IL CAVALIER COSIMO BUONARROTI
LASCIÒ PER TESTAMENTO ALLA CITTÀ
CON TUTTO NIL SUO MOBILE PREZIOSO
L'ANNO MDCCCLVIII


[this house/bought for his family by the divine Michelangelo/was decorated/and enriched with models of the sketches and the writings/ of the great uncle/ by his grandnephew Michelangelo./Sir Cosimo Buonarroti/bequeathed to the city/the whole building and its precious objects/in the year 1858]


The Museum is organized on three floors. Not to be missed by Michelangelo, among the various pieces of the collection, are two youthful works fundamental in understanding the artist’s stylistic evolution: the refined bas-relief of the Madonna della Scala and the Battle of the Centaurs. In addition, the museum preserves the richest collection in the world of Michelangelo's sketches such as the River Torso, the Two Wrestlers and the Female Nude.


Where is it?

Via Ghibellina, 70, 50122 Firenze FI


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