COVER PHOTO: Casa Buonarotti, Via Ghibellina 70, 50122 Firenze (43°46′11.32″N 11°15′48.93″E)
Part 1 of our Casa Buonarotti posts gives a brief history of the Casa and has a look around the ground floor. In Part 2 here we ascend the stairs to visit rooms on the first floor.
At the top of the first flight of stairs is a landing where hang images of Michelangelo – a person who painted portraits only in exceptional cases and who disliked having portraits painted of him. Fortunately for us, he allowed just the two portraits to be painted by friends, one here by Jacopino del Conte (originally believed to be a self-portrait) …
… while other paintings of Michelangelo on the landing are derivative works.
The second original portrait of Michelangelo (wearing a turban) by Giuliano Bugiardini (who assisted Michelangelo on the vault of the Sistine Chapel), hangs in an adjacent room accompanying a bronze bust of Michelangelo created by Daniele da Volterra, a trusted friend of Michelangelo (who was there to assist him on his deathbed and to remove his death mask in 1564) …
A copy of di Volterra’s bust of Michelangelo can be found over the front door of Casa Buonarotti – and in many tourist shops in Florence!
Two of Michelangelo’s earliest sculptures can be found here on the first floor; works that were completed while under the patronage of Lorenzo de’ Medici. This, while a teenager, was a time during which Michelangelo lived with the Medici family, absorbing the scientific, philosophical, poetical and artistic influences from the many philosophers and artists who frequented the courts of the Medici.
The earlier of the two sculptures had been donated along with drawings by Leonardo Buonarotti to Cosimo I de’Medici around 1566, but were donated back by Grand Duke Cosimo II de’Medici in 1616 to Michelangelo’s grand-nephew, Michelangelo the Younger, specifically to place in the Casa Buonarotti in recognition of the Younger’s work in instituting the house-museum to his illustrious ancestor.
The 57cm x 40cm (22″ x 16″) Madonna of the Stairs, influenced by his study of the works of Donatello, was sculpted in marble by the 15-year-old around 1490 using the low-relief stiacciato technique …
Here the Madonna sits on a stone slab with the child held firmly on her lap. Along and up the stairs, youngsters are seen handling a long cloth. Even on such a low-relief sculpture the Madonna’s drapery hangs realistically around her and over the stone block, exhibiting an illusory 3-dimensionality that belies the shallow depth of the sculptor’s chisel cuts.
Do YOU know any 15-year-olds that could produce such an amazing, mature, piece of work!?
The later of the two sculptures, the unfinished 84.5cm x 90.5cm (33″ x 36″) marble Battle of the Centaurs ), his final work while under Lorenzo’s patronage, was created at the age of 17 around 1472 …
This scene of utter mayhem, a chaotic tangle of writhing bodies, represents the battle between the Aeolian tribe of the Lapiths and the Centaurs (half-horse, half-human) at the wedding feast of Pirithous – a favourite composition from ancient Greek mythology.
The use of the subbia chisel (a pointed chisel or punch) has produced the unfinished (non finito) appearance of the surfaces, as opposed to the smoothness of the earlier work (above) …
While the Madonna of the Stairs was completed as a shallow-relief, this sculpture is truly high-relief in which the characters come bursting out of the scene …
The room off to one side of the space containing these two sculptures is devoted to the wooden model (2.83m wide by 2.10m high) designed by Michelangelo of the proposed marble façade …
… for the incomplete, rough-stone, gable-end of the Basilica di San Lorenzo, the Brunelleschi-designed church dating from 1421, considered by the Medici as their own family church …
… although, as can be seen, Michelangelo’s marble façade was never implemented!
On the opposite side to the room containing the two marble sculptures is the Galleria …
… with walls and ceilings adorned with paintings by contemporary Italian artists, including Artemesia Gentileschi‘s ‘Allegory of Inclination’ as one of the ceiling panels (discussed in Part 1) …
The Gallery, the ornamental plan of which was designed by Michelangelo the Younger, is overseen from one end by Michelangelo himself in the form of a statue created specifically for the Casa by Antonio Novelli (1599 – 1662) around 1633 …
Commissioned by Michelangelo the Younger, the statue portrays Michelangelo as the classical philosopher, dressed in a toga and holding a scroll, in a similar pensive mode that Michelangelo himself had created for the tomb of Lorenzo de’ Medici in the Medici Chapel in the 1520s …
The walls of the Gallery are adorned with panels showing scenes from Michelangelo’s life, such as the painting by Anastasio Fontebuoni (1571–1626) showing Michelangelo introducing himself to Pope Julius II in Bologna …
… or the painting by Cosimo Gamberucci (1562 – 1621) in which a young Michelangelo meets with Francesco I de’ Medici …
The Gallery continues through to the Camera della Notte e del Dì (Room of Night and Day) completed in 1637-1638, depicting members of the Buonarroti family and events connected with them. This is the room that contains Giuliano Bugiardini’s turban wearing portrait and di Volterra’s bronze bust of Michelangelo (both mentioned above) …
So through to the next room, the Camera degli Angioli (Room of the Angels), which from 1677 was used as a chapel, containing frescoes by Jacopo Vignali of the good and great of Florence in a procession lead by John the Baptist …
The cupola and the ceiling of the former chapel are decorated with frescoes by Michelangelo Cinganelli, with the ceiling panels depicting angels, from which the room takes its name …
… and the cupola containing an image of St. Michael the Archangel …
The following, final room along from the Galleria, is the Studio, a room originally belonging to an adjoining apartment but incorporated into the Casa in 1633 by Michelangelo the Younger. The ceiling portrays Fame, a trompe l’oeil painting by Cecco Bravo …
… while the perimeter of the upper part of walls is festooned with a gallery of the great and good of Tuscany, including mathematicians, physicists, historians, philosophers, judges …
The small room just beyond is the Stanzino dell’Apollo (Small Room of Apollo), completing the run of monumental rooms created by Michelangelo the Younger. This room is named after the marble statue therein, a restored 1st-century BCE Roman sculpture of Apollo, behind which there is a faded fresco of a terrace that opens onto a garden …
… and on the side wall is an arm carved from marble, probably from a Roman copy of Greek sculptor Myron’s portrayal of Discobolus, the “Discus Thrower” …
There is so much more to see in the Casa Buonarotti including around 200 drawings, sketches and cartoons (although some of which found their way into the British Museum in London in the mid-19th century) …
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=92861721
With the death of Michelangelo’s last direct collateral descendant and heir, Cosimo Buonarotti, all remaining works and the Casa itself were left for the public good. The drawings up to the 1960s were on permanent display in frames and display cases, but suffered some damage. For their conservation they were restored at the Uffizi and returned to the Casa Buonarroti in 1975. Since then only a rotating selection have been released for public view.
Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46543597
The collection also includes texts and letters, including this sonnet to Giovanni da Pistoia …
Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=107969905
… a translation of which can be found here.
We have not covered the whole of Casa Buonarotti here. As somewhere that is so full of riches and is off the well-worn beaten track of Tourist-Florence, it just has to be included on your must-see stops in the city.
Casa Buonarotti is a fabulous find, giving an overview of Michelangelo, his work and his descendants.
For a tour of the Casa via Google Street View, have a look here …
… start on the ground floor at the front door here …
… and then have a look around upstairs, starting with Artemesia, here.
Just step inside and wander round!
Ciao Tutti!
Italian Reflections 