Autumn/Winter 2022

For the duration of the Artemsia UpClose
project, a life-size photograph of the artwork has
taken its place inside the ceiling’s monumental
frame, to avoid a gaping hole and assure the
visitor Artemisia’s painting – under restoration
in the adjacent Model Room, will return to her
usual ‘height’ once Florence and the world has
had a chance to see her up close. As a sidebar,
the ‘Model’ in whose shadow the Inclination’s
restoration is underway, is the architectural
model of San Lorenzo Church that Michelangelo
designed in circa 1518, by request of the Medici
pope, Leo X, the second son of Lorenzo the
Magnificent. Michelangelo had lived with the
future Pope Leo X – then known as Giovanni –
for part of his youth, after being discovered by
Il Magnifico in the San Marco sculpture-garden
workshop, and invited to live in the Medici
palace and be educated together with the
Medici children.
When Artemsia’s guests move from the
Model Room, and walk towards the Gallery,
they will cross the museum’s Marble Room,
newly restored by Friends of Florence, and
host to Michelangelo’s Madonna della
Scala (c. 1491) and Battle of the Centaurs
(c. 1492). There is a figure among the latter
relief’s mass of wrestling bodies that
Artemisia used as a source of inspiration
for the positioning of her own allegorical
figure. Look for the leaning figure on the
left-hand side who is holding a cube-like
stone which he is preparing to launch into
the chaos – he is Michelangelo’s man who
inspired our woman. RC
Autumn / Winter 2022 • Restoration Conversations 59