Category: Medici

Michelangelo’s Hidden Room Reveals His Pious Heart

It must have been an exhilarating moment in 1975 when museum director Paolo Dal Poggetto discovered a trapdoor hidden under a cabinet in the New Sacristy of the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence, Italy. Under the trapdoor, stone steps led down to a tiny chamber that had gone unnoticed for 500 years. At first,…


The Medici: Patrons of the Florentine Renaissance

Their artworks are icons of Italy and their names are among the most well-known in the art world: Donatello, Brunelleschi, Botticelli, Michelangelo. Eager viewers stop and snap photos of the instantly-recognizable paintings, sculptures, and buildings. Displayed in museums around the world, the immortal paintings invite a popular following. What remains obscured in the history books,…