Michelangelo and the factory of San Lorenzo

In this room we find two of Michelangelo's grandest projects, both intended for the fabric of San Lorenzo in Florence and both unrealized. The large wooden model of the facade of the church of San Lorenzo stood for a long time in the vestibule of the Biblioteca Laurenziana. It probably came from Michelangelo's house in Rome, where its presence was recorded in a letter written by the artist to his nephew Leonardo in 1555, stating that it was going to be sent to Duke Cosimo I in Florence. The work was moved to Casa Buonarroti at the end of the nineteenth century. The figure of a river god, a preparatory model for a sculpture that was to have been set up in the New Sacristy, came to Casa Buonarroti in 1965 from the Accademia di Disegno, to which it had been donated by Bartolomeo Ammannati in 1583.

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