Madonna di Manchester

1487–1494 · Luogo di lavoro

Florence

c. 1490 – 1492

At the Medici court: philosophers and future popes

Michelangelo lived in the Palazzo Medici, came to know the philosophers of the Platonic Academy — Marsilio Ficino, Angelo Poliziano and Pico della Mirandola — and befriended Giovanni and Giulio de' Medici, the future Popes Leo X and Clement VII.

8 April 1492

Death of Lorenzo de' Medici

The death of Lorenzo the Magnificent changed Michelangelo's circumstances: he left the security of the Medici court and returned to his father's house.

1494

Flight from Florence: Venice and Bologna

When the Medici were expelled from Florence with the rise of Savonarola, Michelangelo left before the upheaval was over, first for Venice and then for Bologna. There he carved some of the last small figures for the Shrine of St. Dominic and studied Jacopo della Quercia's reliefs.

1494–1496 · Luogo di lavoro

Bologna

25 June 1496

Arrives in Rome; a “Bacchus” for Cardinal Riario

Michelangelo arrived in Rome aged 21 and on 4 July began, for Cardinal Riario, an over-life-size statue of the Roman wine god Bacchus. The cardinal rejected the finished work, and it went to the garden of the banker Jacopo Galli.