From 14 November 2025 to 15 February 2026 a great new exhibition at Palazzo Fava celebrates the genius of Michelangelo with an innovative focus on his ties with the city of Bologna.
Michelangelo (1475 – 1564) could never forget Bologna. It was the city that offered him shelter on two separate occasions – once when he was a youth fleeing Florence, the second time when he was a successful artist – and that, on both occasions, had a deep impact on his artistic training. It is precisely this dual relationship that spawned the idea for the exhibition entitled “Michelangelo and Bologna”, hosted at Palazzo Fava from 14 November 2025 to 15 February 2026, celebrating the 550th anniversary of the great artist’s birth with a novel account of his ties with the city.
Promoted by the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio in Bologna and produced by Opera Laboratori, the exhibition is curated by Cristina Acidini and Alessandro Cecchi, the President and Director respectively of the Fondazione Casa Buonarroti in Florence, with the patronage of the Regione Emilia-Romagna, the Comune di Bologna, the Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna and the Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna. The exhibition was made possible with the generous support of Intesa Sanpaolo.
«After the exhibition entitled Ai Weiwei. Who am I exploring the work of one of the world’s leading contemporary artists – explain Patrizia Pasini, President of the Fondazione Carisbo, and Renzo Servadei, Sole Director of the Genus Bononiae special purpose company – we are now hosting a project devoted to one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance. Michelangelo and Bologna is more than just an exhibition, it is an invitation to visitors to revisit some of the sights in our city in a new light. This, because the project unfolds in the city’s streets and squares, urging visitors to rediscover the places, from the Basilicas of San Domenico and San Petronio to the Oratory of St. Cecilia and the Pinacoteca Nazionale, where the legacy of Michelangelo and the Renaissance can still be seen. In that sense, the exhibition does not end at Palazzo Fava, it extends out into the larger urban environment, helping to bolster and consolidate a sense of belonging and of collective identity. Forging ties with local communities allows visitors to enhance memories, stories and experiences, generating new forms of shared narrative. This exhibition project explores the city’s very soul, forging bonds of cohesion between the people and the territory and helping to make culture more accessible, a mission of crucial importance for the Fondazione if it is to have a positive impact on the present and future of the community.» In the spirit of this vision of openness and participation, an initiative entitled “suspended ticket” is to be launched to tie in with the “Michelangelo and Bologna” exhibition: visitors will have the opportunity to purchase an additional ticket to leave at the reception as a gift for people belonging to local associations that care for the weaker sectors of the population. This gesture of generosity and sharing, in the Christmas period, is intended to reiterate the value of inclusion and hospitality – themes also found in Michelangelo’s history: When he fled Florence, he was made welcome in Bologna, finding in this “foreign” land a place of artistic growth and rebirth.
«We are proud – adds Beppe Costa, President and Managing Director of Opera Laboratori – to pursue our collaboration with the Fondazione Carisbo for the Genus Bononiae project, a project to whose vision of an enhancement of artistic heritage capable of combining scholarly stringency with the ability to popularise we wholeheartedly subscribe. I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to the curators, Cristina Acidini and Alessandro Cecchi, for the meticulous scholarship and sensitivity with which they have built an exhibition capable of reconstructing the deep bond between Michelangelo and Bologna. This exhibition is a virtuous example of synergy among institutions in view of our precious collaboration with the Casa Buonarroti, represented by the two curators, Cristina Acidini and Alessandro Cecchi, and with the exhibition’s lenders and supporters. A special word of thanks also to His Eminence the Very Reverend Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi and His Eminence the Very Reverend Cardinal Augusto Paolo Lojudice who have loaned works of outstanding value, thereby allowing us to stage a rich, choral narrative. Thanks to this synergy, it has proven possible to reconstruct a crucial moment in the story of Michelangelo. Thus Bologna has confirmed its role as a primary venue for research, conservation and narration in the field of Italian art, and this exhibition marks a new step along the path shared by Opera Laboratori and the Fondazione Carisbo for the promotion of major cultural projects of national and international scope and importance.»
As the curators have stressed, this project is a product of the will to recognise the role that Bologna played in the growth and maturity of Michelangelo’s genius.
The exhibition, divided into six sections, showcases over fifty exhibits, including marble sculptures, drawings, books of the period and archive documents, to reconstruct the artist’s two periods of residence in Bologna that were to mark authentic turning points in his career. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published by Sillabe and edited by Cristina Acidini and Alessandro Cecchi.
In the course of his first visit, the young Michelangelo, barely twenty years old and fresh from carving the Madonna of the Stairs, arrived in Bologna shortly before the Medici were expelled from Florence. A guest of Giovan Francesco Aldrovandi, a member of the Bentivoglio court, he was introduced into a cultured, cosmopolitan environment where 15th century Emilian sculpture and the legacy of Jacopo della Quercia pointed him in the direction of a new sense of monumentality.
It is this that shines through in the three statues he made for the Arca di San Domenico depicting St. Petronius, St. Proculus and a Candle-bearing Angel, three youthful masterpieces that marked his first public success. «The year, or possibly just a little over, that he spent in Palazzo Aldrovandi in Borgo Galliera – explain Cristina Acidini and Alessandro Cecchi – was to prove crucial for his training, allowing him to cultivate his study of art and literature and to immerse himself in Bologna’s vibrant cultural life. His encounter with the central and northern Italian sculptural tradition provided the young artist with a formal and iconographical repertoire that was to resurface, profoundly revisited, in the most important commissions of his mature years, first and foremost in the Sistine Chapel ceiling.»
His second period of residence in the city, from 1506 to 1508, was played out in an altogether different context. He was now famous, but he was still restless and ambitious. Summoned by Pope Julius II to cast a colossal bronze statue of the pope for the façade of San Petronio, he had to address an unprecedented technical and conceptual challenge. Now lost, that statue came to symbolise the difficult balance between art and power, tension and greatness that was to plague Michelangelo throughout his life.
«This sculpture, of major technical complexity and strong symbolic value – stress Acidini and Cecchi – should be interpreted as an act of self-representation of papal power, in which the construction of the political and ideological image is entrusted to the artist, who takes on the role of mediator and interpreter.»
What survives of Michelangelo’s sixteen months in Bologna is the precious documentation comprising over thirty letters, mostly from the correspondence between Michelangelo and his younger brother Buonarroto, now in the Archivio Buonarroti, that tell of the difficulties encountered in everyday life and further aggravated by a return of the plague, and of the technical difficulties involved in casting the statue.
«Michelangelo is not a motionless monument, he is a living artist in constant dialogue with his own times and with tradition – conclude the curators –. From that standpoint, five hundred and fifty years after his birth, this tribute to Michelangelo acquires the value of a historical and critical exploration of his career and his legacy, conveying the profound significance of a dialogue, between the artist and Bologna, that proved capable of making a deep impression on the history of modern art.»
The exhibition opens with an overview of the artistic and cultural context in which Michelangelo operated. His youthful Florentine masterpieces such as the Madonna of the Stairs are displayed alongside work by Tuscan masters and by sculptors working in Bologna. Donatello was an important example, his stiacciato technique, exemplified here by the Blood of the Redeemer, serving as a crucial model of sculpture and composition for the young Michelangelo. At the same time, Jacopo della Quercia supplied formal and iconographical examples that were to resurface, profoundly revisited, in Michelangelo’s mature work. In parallel, the tradition of Bologna’s patron saints Petronius and Proculus, exemplified by paintings, frescoes and sculptures, provided him with a stable iconographical and compositional repertoire of motifs that were to materialise in his statues for the Arca di San Domenico – which can be seen in the Basilica of San Domenico, the exhibition’s external second venue – confirming the deep bond between his sculptural practice and local religious culture. In the exhibition, the work of Ercole de’ Roberti, Francesco Francia, Lorenzo Costa and Amico Aspertini conjures up the art scene in Bologna under the Bentivoglio family, where politics, faith and culture were interwoven in powerfully allusive images. Alongside the marble sculptures, the drawings and the paintings, documents and correspondence serve to illustrate the dense network of relations between Michelangelo, the Bentivoglio court, the Dominican friars of San Domenico and papal patronage.
The layout, devised and produced by Opera Laboratori, offers an immersive and scenographic tour designed to guide visitors on a journey through art, history and memory in the rooms of Palazzo Fava, with a full programme of guided tours and educational activities, produced with technical support from Pilot.
Exhibition factsheet
Exhibition title: Michelangelo and Bologna
Curated by: Cristina Acidini and Alessandro Cecchi
To run: 14 November 2025 – 15 February 2026
Exhibition venue: Palazzo Fava. Palazzo delle Esposizioni, via Manzoni 2, Bologna
Opening hours: Tuesday to Sunday, 10.00 am to 7.00 pm. Closed on Monday
Designed by: Fondazione Carisbo and Opera Laboratori
In conjunction with the: Fondazione Casa Buonarroti
Under the patronage of: Regione Emilia-Romagna, Comune di Bologna, Chiesa di Bologna, Alma Mater Studiorum –Università di Bologna and Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna
With the support of: Intesa Sanpaolo
Technical sponsor for educational activities: Pilot
Catalogue published by: Sillabe
Admission: full price €14, concessions €10, university students on Tuesdays €7
Information and reservations:
www.genusbononiae.it | prenotazioni@operalaboratori.com | T. 055 2989818
Exhibition lenders: Casa Buonarroti, Archdiocese of Bologna, Archdiocese of Siena – Colle di Val d’Elsa – Montalcino, Diocese of Montepulciano – Chiusi – Pienza, Università degli Studi di Padova, Casa Martelli di Firenze, Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna, Pinacoteca di Bologna, Museo Civico Archeologico di Bologna, Museo Civico Medievale di Bologna, Archiginnasio di Bologna and Archivio di Stato di Bologna.
FONDAZIONE CASSA DI RISPARMIO IN BOLOGNA
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