Michelangelo: The British Museum Follows a Titan Into Old Age

We picture Michelangelo as the young giant of the Sistine Ceiling and the 'David'. The British Museum's 2024 exhibition, 'Michelangelo: the last decades', told a different story — that of the artist's long, searching old age in Rome.

Through his powerful late drawings, architectural designs and intimate letters, the show revealed a man wrestling with faith, mortality and the meaning of his own genius as he laboured over St Peter's and his haunting late 'Crucifixion' studies.

It was a rare, moving portrait of one of history's supreme artists not at his most triumphant, but at his most human.

Image: “Michelangelo Buonarroti - Studies of a Horse with Two Nude Riders and a Male Torso - Google Art Project” — Michelangelo, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.