Michelangelo, from Rome to London

From 2 May to 28 July 2024, the British Museum presents the exhibition “Michelangelo: the last decades”, focusing on the last stage of the artist’s career: his years in Rome.

Source: The British Museum · Image: Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564), Study for The Last Judgement (detail). Chalk on paper, 1540.

In 1534, Michelangelo left Florence for Rome, never to see his native city again. He was 59, which many contemporaries regarded as old, but for Michelangelo this move marked the beginning of a dramatic new chapter which would fundamentally shape his experiences as an artist and as a man.

This exhibition looks at the last 30 years of Michelangelo’s remarkable life, when his return to Rome brought him new commissions and reunited him with some of his closest friends. Forceful preparatory drawings for the monumental Last Judgement fresco as well as the newly conserved cartoon of the Epifania will be displayed alongside studies for Michelangelo’s grand architectural projects, including the rebuilding of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

Intimate letters, poems and drawings will offer powerful insights into his faith, relationships and experiences of old age.

More exhibitions at the British Museum

Since 1 February until 23 June 2024, the British Museum is hosting “Legion: life in the Roman army”, an exhibition exploring the everyday life as part of the force which allowed Rome to keep and control its vast empire. Made up of over 200 objects including loans from 28 lenders, the large scale of the exhibition enables contributions from a wide collection of national and international institutions, as well as supporting material from the collection. It features iconic Roman military objects alongside evidence of the real lives of men, women, and children – citizens and non-citizens, free or enslaved – in forts and frontiers across the empire.