Michelangelo Architect: in San Marino the autograph sheets from Casa Buonarroti
Attributed to Marcello Venusti (Como 1512/15 – Rome 1579) Portrait of Michelangelo after 1535 oil on canvas, cm.36×27 Florence, Casa Buonarroti, inv.188
SAN MARINO – In the long existence of Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) the activity of architect is only partially known. Yet architecture too, in addition to sculpture and painting, was one of the fields that distinguished his industrious artistic journey. This aspect is accounted for by the exhibition hosted at SUMS Palace in the Republic of San Marinofrom December 22, 2022 to May 14, 2023by title Michelangelo Architect. The drawings of Casa Buonarroti.
The exhibition, produced and organized by theMetamorphos AssociationI in collaboration with the Casa Buonarroti Foundationedited by Alessandro Cecchi, director of the Foundation it is no coincidence that it is hosted in San Marino, the architect’s homeland Giovan Battista Bellucci (1506-1554) known as the «Sanmarino», one of the protagonists of the Italian military renaissancethus allowing an interesting comparison with Michelangelo’s projects.
The exhibition, which features a corpus of 130 autograph sheets kept by Buonarroti house in Florence, will allow you to retrace the different moments in which Michelangelo dealt with architecture, “proving to be well up to the demanding tasks entrusted to him both for technical skills and for creative inventiveness” – underlines Cecchi.
From the competition for the arrangement of the drum of the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore to the facade of San Lorenzo in Florencedesigned on behalf of Leone X but never built, by New Sacristy of the same church in the Laurentian Librarycommissioned by the Medici popes, from the fortifications for the defense of republican Florence to the church, which remained in the planning stage, of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini in Rome, to reach the Peter’s factory, the Sforza Chapel in Santa Maria Maggiore and the Porta Piaboth in the city, the sheets on display are further evidence of the “brilliant mind of a great and revolutionary protagonist of his time, in every sector of artistic activity” – underlines the director of Casa Buonarroti again.
The exhibition was presented on the morning of December 19th in a press conference, during which the Secretary of State for Education and Culture Andrea Bellucci he recalled how the exhibition, which he will inaugurate Wednesday 21 Decemberrepresented “the second stage of a journey that began in March of this year with the exhibition dedicated to Banksy”. Belluzzi said again, the exhibition “is an excellence that we have never told in San Marino, with a unique and extraordinary blend. The curator Cecchi has selected a path that will allow us to grasp Michelangelo’s great talent and great skills in architecture, a theme that sees us as particularly sensitive as a country”.
For Vito Testaj, Head of Performing Arts, it is about “a very important project that brings to San Marino, for the first time, testimonies of Michelangelo in the field of architecture and which has a territorial declination: inside a small space will be dedicated to the discrepancy between Michelangelo’s work and the history of San Marino’.
“The comparison between the Michelangelo projects displayed in the exhibition and the work of Belluzzi – commented the President of MetaMorfosi Peter Folena – it could only take us to San Marino (itself a fortress) to create this exhibition enriched by four digital reconstructions, created by MetaMorfosi, which will allow the visitor to see what cannot be seen live because it has never been realized. The exhibition is also a new stage in the three-year journey that we have undertaken with Andrea Belluzzi, Secretary of State for Education and Culture of the Republic: after Banksy, Michelangelo and in the coming years other great names in art that we will find at Palazzo SUMS home”.
The preparation of the exhibition
Handbook
MICHELANGELO ARCHITECTBUONARROTI DESIGNS
22 December 2022 – 14 May 2023
SUMS Palace
Via Piana 1, San Marino City
Timetables
from Monday to Sunday
from 10:00 to 18:00
Closure
25 December 2022 – 1 January 2023
Tickets
Full price: €14.00 per person
Reduced: €12.00 per person
Reserved for children aged 6 to 18, university students upon presentation of a card, over 65s, school groups, groups of more than 25 people
Free: Children under the age of 6, students of the University of San Marino with a card, visitors with non self-sufficient disabilities and one of their companions, ICOM members with a card, journalists with a card, school teachers with a card.