Michelangelo e Bologna

The year 2025 marks the 550th anniversary of the birth of Michelangelo Buonarroti (Caprese 1475 - Rome 1564), which is celebrated with exhibitions, conferences and other initiatives.

The exhibition, held in the rooms of Palazzo Fava in Bologna, aims to explore a chapter of Michelangelo's biography that has been mistakenly overlooked, despite its decisive importance: his two stays in Bologna, in 1494-1495 and 1506-1508, distant in time and in different historical contexts, but both decisive. 

The first represents the apprenticeship of a 19-year-old who had fled Medici Florence, while the second involves a 31-year-old artist, by then famous and sought after by the most important Italian patrons, dealing with technical problems and concerns about providing for his family.

The catalogue is divided into sections that relate Michelangelo's works to the models of his training and to the artistic, literary and political context of Bologna at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries, and it offers a thorough reinterpretation of the relationship between the artist and the city of Bologna.