Michelangelo’s rainbow by Beatrice Brandini
Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Vatican, photographs by Takaschi Okamura. Vatican City, Vatican Museums
Michelangelo’s masterpiece takes center stage in the latest exhibition at Casa Buonarroti (Florence). Engravings, photographs, and contemporary art in an unmissable exhibition from today until January 7, 2026.
Giovanni Volpato etching and engraving on copper. Zacherias Propheta, ca. 1790
The Sistine Chapel is perhaps the masterpiece par excellence, that miracle accomplished by the man, Michelangelo, that never ceases to amaze and stir emotions.
“Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. A Multimedia Icon,” scheduled to run in Florence from September 24, 2025, to January 7, 2026. The exhibition, promoted by the Casa Buonarroti Foundation, in collaboration with the Vatican Museums and the Tuscany Region, was strongly supported by the Foundation’s president, Cristina Acidini, and director, Alessandro Cecchi. It inaugurates the restored and redesigned exhibition rooms on the ground floor of the Casa Buonarroti, thanks to the collaboration of Opera Laboratori, which produced the exhibition curated by Silvestra Bietoletti and Monica Maffioli.
A glimpse of the exhibition “Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. A Multimedia Icon.” On the right, The Prophet Jeremiah
“The exhibition, in the carefully restored rooms, will certainly inform, excite, and surprise visitors,” emphasizes Fondazione Buonarroti President Cristina Acidini. “Masterpieces of this caliber continue to act as a catalyst for creativity even in difficult times, restoring faith in humanity and its future.”
Portrait of Antonio Paolucci inside the Sistine Chapel in 2012
Frank Lerner, Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, color photo essay published in LIFE, 1949
Over 60 works are presented, guiding visitors through a reinterpretation of one of the most monumental and celebrated pictorial cycles in the history of Renaissance art, with a fascinating interpretation: the multimedia iconicity of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel.
Indeed, the media—engraving, photography, illustrated publishing, cinematography, television documentaries, and commercial advertising—have played a significant role in translating and interpreting the complex pictorial narrative created by Michelangelo in the Vatican.
Tano Festa, from The Creation of Man, 1966, private collection
Tano Festa, from The Creation of Man, 1977, private collection
Among the works on display are numerous loans from the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts in Turin, the Academy of Drawing Arts in Florence, the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca, the Vittorio Emanuele II National Central Library, the Bibliotheca Hertziana, the Central Institute for Graphics, the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, and the Vatican Museums.
Khalid Albaih, Not in My Name, 2014.
Fratelli Alinari, a detail from the Last Judgement, ca. 1910.
“…at this moment I am so enthusiastic about Michelangelo that not even Nature satisfies me after him, since I cannot see her with eyes as large as his. If only there were a way to fix such images firmly in my soul! Certainly, I will take with me all the copperplates and drawings of his works I can get.” Johann Wolfgang Goethe, after visiting the Sistine Chapel in December 1786, during a trip to Rome,
The immense Cristina Acidini at the press conference
Two anecdotes connect me to the memory of the Sistine Chapel. The first refers to a business trip my father took, when he suggested I visit Michelangelo’s famous masterpiece. I was very young, but I remember perfectly the emotion of entering that place. The second, as an adult, when I accompanied Alden, a prominent Puma manager, to Rome, despite being a world-traveler and not inclined to sentimentality, I saw him cry like a baby, so great was the emotion he felt.
Alinari Brothers, ceiling detail. Creation of Man, ca. 1887.
The Sistine Chapel is precisely this: an extraordinary place that we wouldn’t exaggerate in calling magical.
Good life to everyone!
Beatrice