Michelangelo: The last decades

Join curators Sarah Vowles and Grant Lewis as they introduce and explore the context, themes and highlight objects of the new exhibition Michelangelo: the last decades.

In 1534, already the most celebrated artist in Europe, Michelangelo left Florence for Rome, never to see his native city again. He was 59 and this move began a dramatic new chapter which would fundamentally shape his experiences as an artist and as a man.

The exhibition and this talk follow the last 30 years of Michelangelo's remarkable life, after he had been summoned back to Rome by Pope Clement VII, to paint a fresco of the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel. The move brought him new commissions and reunited him with some of his closest friends – and fuelled the dynamism which Michelangelo brought to his work in the final decades of his life, as he explored salvation and confronted his mortality.

This event is part of the public programme supporting the exhibition Michelangelo: the last decades (2 May – 28 July 2024).