Photo Credits: Miguel Hermoso Cuesta, Capilla Medici 09, CC BY-SA 4.0
Today we discovery the Medici Chapels complex, which is accessed from the apse of the Basilica of San Lorenzo, includes the sumptuous Mausoleum of the Princes and Michelangelo’s New Sacristy conceived as a funerary chapel of the Medici family.
Inside are buried Giovanni dalle Bande Nere, his wife Maria Salvati, Cosimo the Elder, Francesco I, Anna Maria Luisa de ‘Medici and other members of the family.
There are four Medici chapels: the New Sacristy, the Chapel of the Princes, the Crypt and the Lorraine Crypt.
The New Sacristy was designed and built by Michelangelo Buonarroti commissioned by Pope Leo X and Cardinal Giulio de ‘Medici, but it was Bartolomeo Ammannati and Giorgio Vasari who completed it.
Michelangelo’s hidden works
Let us pause together on the majesty of Michelangelo’s hidden works. In 1975, during the restoration works of the San Lorenzo complex, on the walls of this cellar, which is accessed from the New Sacristy, charcoal signs emerged that the then director of the Medici Chapels, Paolo Dal Poggetto, had discovered and attributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti.
In 1530 the artist would have taken refuge in the secret room of the Chapels for a couple of months, for having sided with the rebels and having betrayed the family that ruled the city, the Medici, forced into exile during the popular revolt of 1527 and returned in power a few years later.
His weeks of ”imprisonment” occupied them in dwelling on his art.
Many of those drawings may be Michelangelo’s originals, as many scholars claim, but others are likely sketches of his assistants, looking for a pastime during their breaks from work. You can discover Michelangelo’s hidden works during one of our Florence Tours.
