Michelangelo and Bologna: Chronicle of a Necessary Encounter

Michelangelo passed through Bologna. This isn't a well-known detail, partly because his traces aren't immediately visible in the city. The major exhibition "Michelangelo and Bologna," hosted at Palazzo Fava from November 14, 2025, to February 15, 2026, refocuses precisely on that chapter—his two visits to the city.

The exhibition was conceived with an important celebratory purpose: to mark the 550th anniversary of Michelangelo Buonarroti's birth. Sponsored by the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio in Bologna (as part of the Genus Bononiae cultural project) and produced by Opera Laboratori, the exhibition boasts exceptional scholarly expertise. The curators are Cristina Acidini (President of the Casa Buonarroti Foundation and the Academy of the Arts of Drawing) and Alessandro Cecchi (Director of the Casa Buonarroti Foundation).

Here is a (limited but passionate) overview of the structure of the exhibition I just visited and its evolution.

The Roots of Young Michelangelo: Donatello and the "Stiacciato"

The exhibition begins in Florence, even before arriving in Bologna. As the introductory panels remind us, no account of Michelangelo's early work can ignore Donatello , a presence both cumbersome and fertile for any 15th-century sculptor.

And in fact, one of the first works that greets us is a Donatellian relief in stiacciato (yes, the “schiacciato” one, as the Florentines called it): a carpet of figures suspended between very low relief and illusory depth, a spatial excursion that seems drawn more with light than with a chisel.

It's a clever curatorial choice: to remember that the young Michelangelo's education also involved understanding relief as a narrative surface. And it's almost natural, shortly thereafter, to encounter the nineteen-year-old Michelangelo's response: the Madonna of the Stairs .

Here, the young Buonarroti already demonstrates a mastery uncanny for his age: he takes Donatello's lessons and filters them into a more powerful, tighter, more "muscular" register despite the smoothness of the relief. This is the point where Florence ceases to be merely a reference and becomes a springboard. Even at his youth, Michelangelo already knew which path to take.

Arrival in Bologna: the lesson of terracotta and monumentality

When Michelangelo arrived in Bologna in 1494, the city was not just a safe haven following the political turmoil of Florence. It was a sculptural laboratory of the highest caliber. The first inevitable encounter was with the work of Niccolò dell'Arca , arguably the most "modern" of the artists then active in the city. For Michelangelo, who defined himself primarily as a sculptor (and not a painter, as history often leads us to remember because of the Sistine Chapel), the impact of Niccolò's art must have been profound. Michelangelo arrived in the city in 1494, the year of the Apulian artist's death, and worked on the marble Ark of San Domenico, which remained unfinished. However, he could not remain indifferent to Niccolò's other masterpiece: the Lamentation over the Dead Christ.

The latter was a work in polychrome terracotta, not marble: a choice of material that allowed Niccolò a plasticity and speed of execution unimaginable with stone. That way of making the material vibrate, of shaping figures that cry out with an almost theatrical and disjointed pain, speaks a different language, more dynamic, almost pre-Baroque. It demonstrates how a great artist can bend any material to his expressive will, a lesson the young Florentine observed and absorbed.

The other important artist he compares himself to is the Sienese Jacopo della Quercia , author of the panels on the façade of San Petronio. Jacopo's soft monumentality—a dense yet velvety sculpture, capable of deep breaths and solemn poses—is a reference that Michelangelo deeply assimilated and metabolized. This is the most crucial work to study to understand its direct influence on the young Michelangelo, especially considering his stay in Bologna in 1494. In the panels depicting biblical scenes, particularly The Creation of Adam and The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden , the simple yet monumental pose of the figures is clearly visible, directly inspiring the celebrated Creation of Adam at the center of the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

The Historical Context: From the Bentivoglios to the Popes

The exhibition then broadens its gaze to the context. First, we are in Bologna in the late fifteenth century, when Giovanni II Bentivoglio governed the city like a Renaissance lord, despite not having the official title. The lively, courtly, and cultured atmosphere to which Giovanni II aspired is reconstructed through works by Francesco Francia and Lorenzo Costa .

This is the city that welcomed Michelangelo on his first visit: open, receptive, but politically complex. It's important to remember this: contexts shape artists as much as they shape masters.

A few years later, the landscape changed: the Bentivoglio family was expelled, and Bologna entered the direct orbit of the papacy. Enter Julius II della Rovere , the warrior pope, also known as "the terrible." It was he who called the artist back to Bologna in 1506 for his second visit. He commissioned a monumental bronze statue, destined for the façade of San Petronio. Michelangelo completed it amidst countless technical and logistical challenges (the city was even gripped by the plague), working on a titanic undertaking. It was one of the first times since antiquity that large bronze statues had been cast. Michelangelo succeeded, and the statue was housed in the niche above the entrance to the Basilica of San Petronio. Unfortunately, the statue was short-lived. Completed in 1508, it was demolished a few years later during a revolt and, according to the chronicles, the bronze was melted down by Duke Alfonso d'Este to make a cannon, the "Giulia" (it's a case of saying... adding insult to injury!).

Despite previous stormy relations with the pontiff, this work marked the definitive reconciliation between Pope della Rovere and the artist. It was precisely from this renewed trust that the commission, entrusted by the Pope himself, to fresco the Sistine Chapel vault arose.

Michelangelo's legacy in Bologna

The final section of the journey looks the other way around: who, in Bologna, responded to Michelangelo? The most interesting case is Alfonso Lombardi , author of a Saint Proculus that openly dialogues with the figures sculpted by Michelangelo years earlier for the Ark of San Domenico and demonstrates his own stylistic influence.

I also think of his other beautiful work, the Dormition of the Virgin, in the oratory of the Battuti Confraternity, where Lombardi harmonizes a theatrical scene of apostles at the Virgin's bedside, but with a tension and muscularity of the subjects that are very reminiscent of the Florentine artist. These are not, therefore, slavish imitations, but assimilations: Michelangelo's grandeur and formal energy circulate, are observed and requested by Bolognese patrons even after the artist is no longer there.

Conclusions

Overall, the exhibition is intellectually stimulating. The curatorial approach is intelligent, reconstructing a little-known chapter within the biographical flow of the great artist. My only flaw: I would have preferred more works and perhaps a more in-depth reconstruction (perhaps multimedia or through sketches) of the lost statue of Julius II, or a greater focus on the original panels by Jacopo della Quercia.

It's an exhibition that "narrates" the context very well, but "shows" fewer works than one might expect. Therefore, the true protagonist of the exhibition is Bologna. And the invitation that can be drawn from a visit is to wander the city and search for traces of the great artist's passing, in the little he left behind and the much that remained before and after him.

For more information, this is the link to the MICHELANGELO IN BOLOGNA exhibition

If you want to discover Bologna with a focus on the artistic aspect, this is my city tour page: Bologna Walking tour

If you like these artistic-cultural articles, there is also this blog article, linked to the period of Julius II, Details of the Bramante Staircase

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