Casa Buonarroti

History

On 3 March 1508, Michelangelo, who had moved temporarily to Rome three years earlier to work on the Tomb of Pope Julius II, bought four adjoining buildings in Florence at the corner of via Ghibellina and via Santa Maria (now via Buonarroti), just north of the Basilica di Santa Croce. He acquired another adjacent structure in April 1514. These five buildings were the nucleus of what later would become the Casa Buonarroti.

Michelangelo occupied the two most spacious buildings of the complex from 1516 to 1525, renting out the other three. During that period he was working on the façade of the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence. In 1525, he moved to another residence in Florence and all five buildings were rented out.

After moving permanently to Rome in 1534, Michelangelo became increasingly obsessed with the idea of having an "honorable home" in his native city of Florence, as a palace that would represent his family with dignity. He repeatedly asked his nephew Leonardo (1519–1599) to transform the five buildings at the corner of via Ghibellina and via Santa Maria into a family palace, but no work was initiated. Upon the death of Michelangelo, Leonardo inherited the estate of his uncle. Showing little interest in the project, however, Leonardo committing only to a partial restoration of the complex that was carried out in 1590, 26 years after Michelangelo's death.

The palace Michelangelo desired finally was created and was given its present configuration by one of Leonardo's sons, Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger (1568–1647), who further expanded the complex by purchasing an adjacent lot. He had the buildings reconfigured into a unified structure. Following the concept of the piano nobile, he arranged four monumental rooms dedicated to the celebration of his great-uncle and his family. He also dedicated a gallery for displaying the works of art in his art collection, including Michelangelo's Madonna of the Stairs, his earliest known work in marble, and the Battle of the Centaurs.

Michelangelo the Younger commissioned a number of contemporary Italian artists to decorate the interior rooms, including the work of Artemisia Gentileschi, Cecco Bravo, Pietro da Cortona, Jacopo da Empoli, Francesco Furini, Giovanni da San Giovanni, Domenico Passignano, Ottavio Vannini, and Jacopo Vignali. …