About the P. A. Munch Lecture 2026
The talk traces how Michelangelo learned to operate within the realities of Roman patronage—its intertwined networks of antiquarians, Roman nobles, and Curial elites—while maintaining an artistic identity shaped by his Florentine training. By revisiting the episodes surrounding the Sleeping Cupid and the commission of the Bacchus, it highlights the tensions between his Florentine background and Roman expectations.
Rather than treating Michelangelo’s early Roman years as a false start, the lecture presents them as a formative and decisive phase. It shows how the Roman milieu played a crucial role in shaping his approach to antiquity, patronage, and artistic authorship at a turning point in his career.
About the Speaker
Kathleen Christian is Professor of Early Modern Art at the Institute für Kunst- und Bildgeschichte, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Director of the Census of Antique Works of Art and Architecture Known in the Renaissance. Her extensive publication record includes numerous volumes and studies on the reception of antiquity in Early Modern Rome, which adopt a broad, interdisciplinary perspective that sheds new light on Italian Renaissance art.
Her lecture draws on her recently published monograph, Raffaele Riario, Jacopo Galli, and Michelangelo’s Bacchus, 1471–1572 (Harvey Miller, 2025), in which she analyzes previously-unpublished and overlooked sources to reassess Michelangelo’s collaboration with Cardinal Raffaele Riario and the merchant-banker Jacopo Galli, highlighting its fascinating artistic outcomes.
Interested in Attending?
The event is free and open to everyone. To attend in person, please register online by 27 April at 16:00.
The lecture will be followed by a reception at the Institute's roof terrace.
About the P. A. Munch Lecture
The P. A. Munch Lecture is an annual event organized by the Norwegian Institute’s postdoctoral research fellows in honor of the Norwegian historian Peter Andreas Munch (1810–1863), an important medievalist who was among the first non-Catholic scholars to gain access to the Vatican Archives.
To learn more about this scholar and previous lectures, please visit our website:
The P. A. Munch Lecture.