From 9 May to 10 July 2000 L’Adolescente (The Adolescent) of Ermitage and the Michelangelo’s Sagrestia Nuova Florence: Casa Buonarroti

The exhibition comes from the compared study of the two unfinished works: the project for the «Sagrestia Nuova di San Lorenzo» and the misterious sculpture attributed to Michelangelo. The sculpture shows an adolescent bent, sullen and introvert. This sculpture should have been part of the decoration of the sacristy, as a famous drawing of the British Museum made by Michelangelo testifies.
The chapel was commissioned by the Pope Leone X to hold the graves of the son Lorenzo Il Magnifico and the brother Giuliano, together with the ones of the nephew Lorenzo de’ Medici duke of di Urbino and the brother Giuliano de’ Medici duke of Nemours.
The unfinished work of Michelangelo and the doubt about its attribution are the very center of the exhibition.
The story of the Adolescent is complicated and bizzarre. In 1785 the tsarina Catherin II wanted the director of the Bank of England – John Lyde Brown – to buy a collection of modern and ancient sculpures. Among these, there was a sculpture of a young bent attributed to Michelangelo.
Sometimes the work is called «The bent boy», but in 1922 a study of Anny E. Popp joins the Ermitage sculpture with the project made by Michelangelo for the Sagrestia Nuova. She supposed that the sculputure was left on the floor of the sacristy when Michelangelo left Forence in 1534 to go to Rome.
The casa Buonarroti exhibition reconstructs the human and artistic story of Michelangelo. The curators Sergej Androssov e Umberto Baldini explained how the problem of the attibution is not so important compared to the discovery of one of the most beautiful sculpture of the school of Michelangelo.
The statue is unfinished – as several works of the artist -: the back, the pelvis, the legs are modelled with precision, but without details. The inferior part is just sketched, the face is almost imperceptible.

But the creativity of Michelangelo is so strong and expressive to communicate the most deep meaning of the work, which is one of the masterpieces of the artist.
Every characteristic of Michelangelo’s work can be found in the «Adolescent»: the face is similar to the one of the young slave in the Galleria dell’Accademia of Florence, the back to the one of the rebel slave of the Louvre.
The exhibition also follows the story of the project for the Sagrestia Nuova.
Drawings and writtens testify the complicated evolution of the project, the realization of the dukes graves, the decoration. Some works were made by Michelangelo’s collaborators: Raffaello da Montelupo, il Tribolo, Simone Mosca, Francesco da Sangallo.
The exhibition ends with the testifies of the fortune of the sacristy, which, even if is unfinished, is a masterpiece typical of the great creation of Michelangelo.

Cristiana Margiacchi