Michelangelo collected Etruscan works … Well yes, Michelangelo Buonarroti collected works from the Etruscan period, but it was not the famous Michelangelo that we all know, but the great -grandson that in the first decades of the seventeenth century, the preparation of the family home began in via Ghibellina in memory of the illustrious ancestor. In addition to making four rooms decorate from the best Florentine artists of the moment such as: Pietro da Cortona, Artemisia Gentileschi, Domenico Passignano, Cristofano Allori, also lavished to collect those “anti -anti” who were fashionable at the time. The love for the classical art of the period allowed the new fashion of the collecting of antiquities, Michelangelo himself shared this passion with various representatives of the Medici family possessions of a significant collection of antiquity.
But the real collection of the Buonarroti family was increased by another descendant of the family, Filippo official of the court of Cosimo III de Medici. Scholar of Numismatic and Etruscology, Filippo managed over time to keep a small collection of about 150 pieces in Palazzo Buonarroti, contribution to the family Memorial Museum. The antiquities remained in the palace until 1881, until they were stored in the new Florentine archaeological museum established in 1882. After the return of some work to Casa Buonarroti in 1965, it was only in 1996 that the pieces of the archaeological collection returned all to theirs place. In the collection of the Buonarroti family, some pieces of the Etruscan nucleus, attract the attention of the public on the visit, certainly the funeral urns still with their vivid bright colors, and clearly the stars of the Fiesolano type of Larth Ninie.
A naked male image armed with a spear and an ax is depicted, the long foliage could perhaps bring the owner back to the owner an aristocrat, or in any case of a ruling class inside the Etruscan community. Exposed in the windows there are various ceramics always of Etruscan production, small bronzes and a series of Roman lamps. On the walls of the room there are two Roman statues of the first century AD, integrated by some anatomical parts in Serena stone, restoration carried out in 1627 by Antonio Novelli and Bastiano Pettossi. Ancient testimonies held in life by the descendants of the most famous sculptor of the Renaissance: Michelangelo Buonarroti …. hoping with these curiosities to have awakened the desire to deepen and visit the Buonarroti house.
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