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A secret room in Florence has been discovered containing magnificent drawings by Michelangelo that had remained hidden for almost 500 years.

In 1975, Paolo Dal Poggetto, the then director of the Museo delle Cappelle Medicee in Florence, accidentally came across a treasure that had been hidden since the Renaissance. During an inspection, Dal Poggetto and his colleagues found a trapdoor hidden under a cupboard near the New Sacristy, a room in the Basilica of San Lorenzo designed to house the tombs of the leading members of the Medici family. The stone steps under the trapdoor led them to a coal-filled room that, at first glance, might have looked like a simple storeroom. But on the walls, the director and his colleagues discovered drawings in chalk and charcoal, attributable to the great Michelangelo himself.

Dal Poggetto concluded that the artist had taken refuge in the secret room after the Medici returned to Florence in August 1530. During the popular uprising three years earlier, Michelangelo had sided with the rebels and betrayed the powerful family that ruled the city. The legendary Florentine sculptor spent a period of about two months within the four walls, from 12 August 1530 until the end of September that year, when he finally managed to escape to Venice.

The artist, aged 55 at the time, was in mortal danger.

"Of course Michelangelo was afraid," explains Monica Bietti - art historian in charge of the Medici Chapel Museum - "and decided to hide in that room".

Bietti speculates that Michelangelo spent his weeks of exile taking stock of his life and art.

In fact, the drawings on the walls represent both works that he had yet to finish, such as the marble statue decorating the tomb of Giuliano de' Medici, placed in the New Sacristy designed by Buonarroti himself, and masterpieces already completed years earlier, such as a detail of the David.

The 76 sketches in Michelangelo's secret hiding place also include studies of the human body, the face of the Laocoon, a self-portrait and the initial sketch of what would become the two hands of the Creation of Adam, which he would realise years later on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome.

Photo/sources:

PaoloWoods/NationalGeographic

#art

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