British Museum – Michelangelo: the last decades

Advance booking only 

In 1534, Michelangelo left Florence for Rome, never to see his native city again. He was 59, which many contemporaries regarded as old, but for Michelangelo this move marked the beginning of a dramatic new chapter which would fundamentally shape his experiences as an artist and as a man.

This exhibition looks at the last 30 years of Michelangelo’s remarkable life, when his return to Rome – having been summoned by Pope Clement VII to paint a fresco of the ‘Last Judgment’ in the Sistine Chapel – brought him new commissions and reunited him with some of his closest friends.

Forceful preparatory drawings, including the recently conserved ‘Epifania’ – one of only two surviving cartoons by Michelangelo – show his renewed energy and desire to challenge himself. These works are displayed alongside studies for Michelangelo’s grand architectural projects as well as drawings, poems and intimate letters that reveal his personal passions and anxieties. Rather than showing an artist in decline, this exhibition shows the astonishing dynamism that Michelangelo brought to his work in the final decades of his life as he explored salvation and confronted his mortality.