Some of the greatest works by Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) are to be found in Florence: drawings, sculpture, paintings, architecture. This great renaissance artist studied the works of Masaccio and Brunelleschi, and received his training in the workshops of Ghirlandaio and Bertoldo. He worked in Florence, Siena, Bologna, Lunigiana and especially in Rome, where he spent the last thirty years of his life. His tomb in Santa Croce, Florence, is by Giorgio Vasari.

This itinerary takes in the major Florentine works of Michelangelo, and begins in Piazza San Marco, opposite the former Medici gardens, where he served his apprenticeship as a sculptor. We then proceed to the Museum of the Academia, where we find the original marble David (1501-04), transferred here from Piazza della Signoria, and a number of unfinished works: the St Matthew, the four Prisoners, and the late Palestrina Pietà. Passing the Palazzo Medici, where Michelangelo altered the loggia by closing it and adding "kneeling windows", we come to the basilica of San Lorenzo, whose unfinished façade might well have been one of his masterpieces (see the wooden model in the Casa Buonarroti).

David