Curators' introduction to Michelangelo the last decades

Join curators Sarah Vowles and Grant Lewis as they introduce and explore the context, themes and highlight objects of the new exhibition Michelangelo: the last decades.
In 1534, already the most celebrated artist in Europe, Michelangelo left Florence for Rome, never to see his native city again. He was 59 and this move began a dramatic new chapter which would fundamentally shape his experiences as an artist and as a man.
The exhibition and this talk follow the last 30 years of Michelangelo's remarkable life, after he had been summoned back to Rome by Pope Clement VII, to paint a fresco of the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel. The move brought him new commissions and reunited him with some of his closest friends - and fuelled the dynamism which Michelangelo brought to his work in the final decades of his life, as he explored salvation and confronted his mortality.
This event is part of the public programme supporting the exhibition Michelangelo: the last decades (2 May - 28 July 2024).
More information about the exhibition can be found here:
www.britishmuseum.org/exhibit...
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Image: (Left) Daniele da Volterra (1509-66), portrait of Michelangelo Buonarroti. Black chalk on paper, about 1550-55. Teylers Museum, Haarlem, the Netherlands.
Image: (Top right) Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), the Resurrection of Christ. Black chalk on paper, about 1532.
Image: (Bottom right) Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), design for a window. Black chalk over compass incisions, with wash and lead white on paper, late 1540s, reworked 1563. © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.

[@katherinelitchfield6781]

Superb introduction to the exhibition. Thank you.

[@mjw12345]

Wonderful - thank you! Both fine informed communicators! Graphics also excellent.

[@mercelloveras7453]

Thanks a lot for sharing this interested lecture which will be very valuable when I'll come to visit the Michelangelo exhibition.