Secret room allegedly displaying Michelangelo's drawings opens to public in Florence

euronews (in English)

The room was used to store coal until 1955 and then sealed and forgotten about for decades below a trapdoor that was in turn, hidden beneath furniture.

Transcript

00:00 A small 30 meter square space and some 500 year old charcoal sketches. But these aren't

00:06 any old drawings. This was the Italian master painter Michelangelo's secret room. For centuries

00:11 this formerly dark and dingy cold cellar was used as a storage room within the San Lorenzo

00:16 Basilica in Florence. Then in 1975 these drawings were accidentally discovered during a cleaning

00:22 operation beneath two layers of plaster. Michelangelo also hid in this room for about two months

00:28 in 1530 when he was hunted by Pope Clement VII, a member of the powerful Medici family,

00:33 for supporting the Republican government.

00:35 [It's a strong impact because it's an environment that captures you, it captures you from all

00:42 sides, it drags you, it's a kind of time capsule where you see how they made an art work,

00:47 it's beautiful.]

00:49 Locked in this small room, Michelangelo found a way not to get bored and to carry on with

00:55 his work, using for his drawings the only available surface, the walls of his hiding place.

01:02 Experts say some of these sketches might belong to Michelangelo's apprentices due to differences

01:08 in style, but the hand of the Renaissance genius is unmistakable in some others.

01:13 [These are drawings that are the mind exercises, the artist's mental project that translates

01:20 it into a drawing. There are some that have a manuality and energy in the sign that make

01:29 them qualitatively superior to the others.]

01:33 The studies of the human body and faces, the black marks of the torches that were used to

01:38 light up the room and the complicated composition of bodies on the walls all tell a story of

01:43 an artist on a mission, even when a warrant was issued for his death.

01:47 [These were drawn in relation to the Sistinian paintings. They remind me of the creation

01:58 with God the Father that flies in the air, even though they are not identical, but they

02:04 remind me a lot.]

02:06 Michelangelo's secret room is open to the public from the 15th of November to just 100

02:11 visitors per week.

02:13 (whooshing)

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