The Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenzee celebrates the 550th anniversary of the birth of Michelangelo Buonarroti with ‘The Eternal Contemporary. Michelangelo 1475 – 2025‘, a project that will begin on March 6th, 2025 and will develop throughout the year through a rich program of events and initiatives, designed to highlight the extraordinary relevance of one of the most significant protagonists of the Renaissance. His artistic vision, his innovative spirit and the expressive power of his works continue to exert a profound influence on artists, scholars and the public of every era. Michelangelo, even today, inspires new reflections and interpretations.

On Monday, June 9th at 6 pm, Tomaso Montanari with the actor Francesco Gori will accompany the public in understanding the historical, artistic, cultural and political context of Rome in the first half of the sixteenth century. Through the reading and recitation of some passages from Michelangelo Buonarroti’s letters and selected passages from the artist’s lives written by Giorgio Vasari (1550 and 1568) and Ascanio Condivi (1553), it will be possible to relive the complex story of the construction of the tomb of Pope Julius II, which lasted forty years. A long and ambitious commission, rethought and modified several times by Michelangelo, who had initially conceived a project much more great than the cenotaph of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome, which included the Prisoners preserved in the Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze (Young Slave; Bearded Slave; Atlas; Awakening Slave) and in the Louvre Museum (Dying Slave and Rebellious Slave), as well as the Genius of Victory, today in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.