Michelangelo decided to return to Florence for the second time at the end of 1529, where he took over the construction of the defensive fortifications of the San Miniato hill, a key position for mastering the city. He took part in defending the city besieged by the Imperial army. After the Republicans surrendered, he hid in the church of San Lorenzo, where, surrounded in a cellar, he painted about a dozen drawings on the walls. Through the primacy of the church, he received the forgiveness of Pope Clement VII and the artist again worked on the San Lorenzo project until the Pope's death. Deprived of his support, he feels threatened in Florence, ruled by the cruel Alessandro dei Medici, and has been stabbed definitively in Rome despite the urgent invitations made by the Grand Duke of Tuscany Cosimo I Medici ).

image source

Michelangelo maintains friendly ties with the prominent Florentines who have left their town for the authoritarian autho- risation of Cosimo: Cardinal Ridolfi, for whom Brutus's marble bust, the tyrant Caesar murderer (Barzello Museum, Florence); Donato Gianotti, the author of a "Dialogue," in which the main interlocutor is Michelangelo; Luigi del Rijchio and his nephew Francesco Braci, a very handsome young man who died young and whom the artist wrote about fifty rhyming "Epiphies" and whose tomb in Santa Maria in Arcoeli is painting. In the 1930s, Michelangelo came close with Roman friends who inspired some of his original works: he became close to an erudite young man, Tomazo Cavalieri, to whom he devoted petrarticle sonnets and perfectly crafted allegorical drawings in which he affirmed the neoplatonic concept of love; is also approaching the Vitoria Colona, ​​the Pescara Marquis, a pious muse of a circle of clergy and erudite, who are zealous advocates of a reform in the sphere of morality, which is maintained by the poet and artist Michelangelo, who at that time elaborated strictly religious stories. From 1535 the new Pope Paul III of the Farnese family (1534-1549) became a zealous admirer of the artist and confirmed the order of the fresco "The Supreme Court" for the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel, built between 1537 and 1541. The audience's feedback on this entirely innovative work reflects the evolution of the concepts and tastes after making the fresco on Capello's ceiling.

On one side, Vazari reads in the spirit of manneism that in the thought of this extraordinary man, the most important thing was to show the perfection and harmony of the human body in the diversity of his posture and, moreover, the passionate gusts and those who fill the soul. He is pleased to stick to this register-which surpasses other artists-by setting the path of the great style, the naked body and the science of the drawing. On the other side is the reaction of the minds constrained by the trend towards rigorism imposed on The counter-reformation, which falsely reproaches the artist for the "inaccuracies" of the composition and the attacks on theological dogmatics. The difficult variety of Michelangelo's creativity is due to the fact that he works both in Florence and Rome, and in both cities he is forced to follow the fashion trends in painting, sculpture and architecture. An astonishing time is also the length of his creative career. Michelangelo is such a multifaceted creator that it is difficult to establish a similarity between the one who, with so much love and tenderness, carries a Pietas in the Roman cathedral of St. Peter, and who, in Milan, with suspicion and fatigue, breaks and rebuilds another Pieta . Surprisingly great is the difference in the conditions in which this artist works: initially, he works for mezzanine enthusiastic enthusiastic passionate collectors of statues of exquisite ancient goddesses, and at the end of his life he is forced to work as Patrons of the Reformed Church, who accept beauty with suspicion and suspicion because it violates the norms of decency and godliness.

part 1

part 2