It was 1975 when Paolo Dal Poggetto, then director of the Museum of the Medici Chapels, commissioned the restorer Sabino Giovannoni to carry out some cleaning tests in a narrow corridor under the apse of the New Sacristy, on the occasion of a preliminary inspection in search of a suitable space for the creation of a new museum outlet. While carrying out his work, Giovannoni came across, under two layers of plaster, a series of mural drawings of figures, drawn with charred and bloody wooden sticks, of various sizes, in many cases overlapping. The drawings were attributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti, and, from November 15, 2023, they can finally be seen by the public.

Visits to Michelangelo’s secret room, accessed from the New Sacristy, within the Museum of the Medici Chapels, will be made for groups of a maximum of 4 people, always by reservation. The limited number of presences per time interval is due to the need to alternate the period of exposure to LED light with prolonged periods of darkness.

Art in the refuge

The small room, 10 meters long by 3 meters wide, 2.50 meters high at the top of the vault, served as a coal storage until 1955 and then became unused, remaining closed and forgotten for decades, under a trapdoor. completely covered by stacked wardrobes, furniture, and accessories.

After the discovery promoted by Paolo Dal Poggetto, the hypothesis raised by him for the existence of the drawings would be that Michelangelo had taken refuge in the small space in 1530, when the Prior of San Lorenzo, Giovan Battista Figiovanni, hid him from the Pope Clement VII’s revenge, furious that the artist – during the period when the Medici were expelled from the city – served as supervisor of the fortifications during the short period of republican government (1527-1530). Having obtained the family’s forgiveness, after about two months – which according to the reconstruction should be between the end of June and the end of October 1530 – Michelangelo finally returned in freedom and resumed his Florentine duties once again, until he definitively left the city in 1534 to Rome.

The drawings would have been made during this period of “self-imprisonment”, who used the walls of the small room to “sketch” some of his projects, including works from the New Sacristy, such as the legs of Giuliano de’ Medici, Duke of Nemours, quotes from antiquity, such as the head of Laocoön, and projects relating to other sculptures and paintings.

A visit to Michelangelo’s secret room offers an opportunity for visitors to come into direct contact with the master’s creative process and also with the perception of the formation of his myth as a divine artist, taken as a model by his contemporary colleagues and young people enrolled at the Academy of Drawing Arts, of which Michelangelo was named “Father and Master”, which in 1563 established its headquarters in the Sacristy.

For reservations contact our concierge info@tornabuoni1.com.