Florence, 1 July 2024 – The opening to the public of what has been called the has been extended Michelangelo’s Secret Roomlocated under the New Sacristy of the Medici Chapels Museum in Florencecontaining the drawings attributed to Buonarroti. It will also be open to visitors from 1 August onwards: the Minister of Culture Gennaro Sangiuliano expressed a positive opinion on the decision of Massimo Osanna, general director of the Mic museums and acting director of the Bargello Museums of which the Medici Chapels are part “given the positive feedback from the environmental monitoring conducted in the first seven and a half months of continuous opening” of the small environment, open to visitors continuously for the first time starting from 15 November 2023 after almost 50 years since its discovery. Reservations, starting from Tuesday 2 July, give visitors the opportunity to access – in limited groups of up to 4 people at a time – the small space containing a series of drawings discovered in 1975 by the then director Paolo Dal Poggetto. The latter hypothesized that Michelangelo had found refuge in the room in 1530, when the prior of San Lorenzo, Giovan Battista Figiovanni, protected him from the revenge of Pope Clement VII, enraged because the artist – during the period in which the Medici were expelled from the city – had 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 Michelangelo was freed and resumed his Florentine duties, until in 1534 he definitively abandoned the city for Rome. The drawings, still being studied by critics, according to Dal Poggetto’s thesis, were made during the period in which the artist found refuge in the room and would have used the walls as a sort of sketchbook, to “sketch” some of his projects. “The heritage of state museums must be accessible – commented Osanna -. It is with this conviction that we have decided to continue to give visitors the opportunity to enjoy this small, extraordinary environment up close. Thanks to the continuous and constant monitoring carried out forward by the team of the Bargello Museums together with the restorers ofHard stone factoryand from the reassurances that come from their work, we continue to offer this visiting experience: a unique opportunity in the world, which has aroused extraordinary interest in recent months”.
