Michelangelo’s Drawings in the New Sacristy - San Lorenzo, Florence - In-Person Lecture

In November 1975, a suitable new exit for the New Sacristy museum in San Lorenzo, Florence was being sought. The museum’s director instructed a restorer to carry out cleaning tests in a narrow corridor beneath the apse of the New Sacristy. The small windowless room, 30’x 9’ with a 7.5’ vaulted ceiling at the highest point, remained unused, sealed and forgotten for decades below a trapdoor covered by wardrobes, furniture and stacked furnishings. 

Beneath two layers of plaster, restorers discovered several figure drawings in charcoal and sanguine on the walls now attributed to Michelangelo and likely carried out while the artist sought refuge in this space in 1530, when the Prior of San Lorenzo, hid him from the wrath of Pope Clement VII.

The drawings produced during the artist’s “self-confinement” using the walls to “sketch out” some of his projects, include designs for the New Sacristy figure of the legs of Giuliano de’ Medici, and details such as the head of Laocoön. The drawings continue to be a focus of intense scholarly debate. 

Professor Thomas Germano will present a visual lecture about these exciting, newly discovered works.