While in Florence over the new year I was truly privileged to get a private viewing of 'The Secret Room' in which Michelangelo spent a couple of months hiding for his life. It was a truly profound experience. We also manged to locate the windows of the room from the street, (the last image).
The drawings in the "Secret Room"
When cleaning trials were conducted in a narrow corridor beneath the floor of the New Sacristy that had been used as a charcoal store until 1955 and had lain empty since then, numerous figure sketches of different sizes, drawn in charcoal and sanguine and in many cases overlapping, emerged from beneath two layers of plaster on the walls.
The museum's then Director attributed the majority of them to Michelangelo, surmising that the corridor had been the artist's lair in 1530 when the Prior of San Lorenzo had hidden him from the wrath of Pope Clement VII, who was furious because the artist had been the Republican government's (1527-30) supervisor of fortifications. Granted a pardon after a couple of months, Michelangelo returned to work.
The drawings, which scholars continue to study today, include works now in the Sacristy such as the legs of Giuliano Duke of Nemours, citations of Classical statues such as the head of Laocoön and drawings that can be linked to other sculptures and paintings.
