Michelangelo: the last decades

Tracing the final 30 years of Michelangelo’s career, this book examines how the great master used art and faith to explore the common human experience of ageing in a rapidly changing world. Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) was one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance. He was not the isolated, tortured genius of artistic myth, but a man who maintained a close circle of friends and associates into old age. He developed collaborative working relationships with younger artists, thereby maintaining his fame and reputation even as he aged, relinquishing the hardest physical work to others. His late drawings offer a powerful insight into his psychology, reflecting his Catholic faith, his commanding intellectual engagement, and his hope for eternal life. Michelangelo reimagined the iconography of religious art to create hugely influential compositions of key moments in Christian faith, such as the Crucifixion, the Last Judgement and the Pietà (or Lamentation). He was involved in designing several significant sites in Rome at this time – including his key architectural project, the immense challenge of rebuilding St Peter’s, at the very heart of Christianity. His role as an architect is explored through beautiful drawings, highlighting his range as a designer. Alongside his major commissions he created deeply personal drawings – revisiting earlier compositions to explore intensely moving Crucifixions that served as spiritual meditations on Christ’s death and offered the hope of salvation for an elderly man facing the end of his own long life. Built on the firm foundations of the British Museum’s extraordinary collection of drawings, his work is explored alongside his personal relationships to consider the transformation of Michelangelo into the towering figure of artistic genius known today.

Sarah Vowles is Smirnov Family Curator of Italian and French Prints and Drawings and curator of the exhibition Michelangelo: the last decades, opening in May 2024 at the British Museum. Previous publications include Piranesi drawings: visions of antiquity (2020) and co-authorship of Mantegna and Bellini (2017). Grant Lewis is the Milein Cosman Project Curator for the exhibition Michelangelo: the last decades, opening in May 2024 at the British Museum.