Michelangelo nella cerchia dei Pomponiani. Committenti ed umanisti del primo soggiorno romano (1496 – 1501)

Michelangelo Buonarroti arrived in Rome in 1496 at the age of 21, driven by a desire to engage with “le maraviglie ch’udiva de gli antichi”. The same reverence for Antiquity that defined his first Roman sojourn inspired the patronage and collecting projects of Cardinal Raffaele Riario and Jacopo Galli, the artist’s first patrons in Rome.
This book reconstructs the social, cultural, and theoretical context of Michelangelo's early artistic production in Rome by analyzing the connections between patrons, humanists, and artists, interwoven through a principle of “transitivity” within networks of sodalitas. Within this framework, the central roles of Riario and Galli emerge distinctly, celebrated in the encomiastic writings of humanists close to the Roman Academy of Pomponio Leto, who praised them as intellectuals and Renaissance patrons embodying classical values such as Virtus, Liberalitas, Sapientia, along with the aspiration to the divine through the beauty of forms. These values and antiquarian interests, rooted in Classical and Renaissance literary and philosophical traditions, contributed to the construction of a shared cultural identity that shaped the patronage and informed the content of Michelangelo’s Roman works. These commissions includes both profane subjects, such as the Bacchus and the Cupid- Apollo, and sacred subjects, all of which were tied to the patronage of Riario and Galli.
Adopting an interdisciplinary methodology that integrates primary sources and previously overlooked humanistic texts, this study offers new insights into the origins of Michelangelo’s works and on a critical moment in the history of Renaissance collecting and patronage.