“Beauteous art, brought with us from heaven, will conquer nature; so divine a power belongs to him who strives with every nerve.”
Michelangelo Buonarroti
The pope’s men were hunting Michelangelo, so he went underground and covered the walls with drawings.
He hid in a cellar under a trapdoor, beneath the chapel where he’d been carving Medici tombs. For about two months in 1530, he is believed to have sketched in charcoal to kill the time, waiting to learn if he’d live.
Then the drawings vanished under plaster for more than 400 years.
