Berlinde De Bruyckere Confronts Michelangelo's River God at Florence's Accademia delle Arti del Disegno

Florence's Accademia delle Arti del Disegno has launched the immersive project Invito con Michelangelo, curated by art historian and academic Carlo Falciani in collaboration with Galleria Continua. The first artist invited to engage with Michelangelo Buonarroti's celebrated Dio fluviale (River God, c. 1524–25) is Belgian artist Berlinde De Bruyckere (Ghent, 1964). For the project, De Bruyckere created Knoop (2026), a site-specific installation made of iron, plastic, wax, and various resins, evoking a body through multiple states of fabric. The work responds to Michelangelo's clay model, begun during his work on the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence, whose supine male figure—headless, armless, and partially finished—reflects the non finito aesthetic central to his practice. De Bruyckere, daughter of a butcher, has often cited her early exposure to animal carcasses and viscera as formative for her art. The Accademia delle Arti del Disegno was founded by Giorgio Vasari under Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici; after reforms under Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo of Lorraine in the late eighteenth century, it reached its current configuration in 1937. Since 1970 it has been housed in Palazzo dei Beccai, opposite the church of Orsanmichele. The exhibition juxtaposes De Bruyckere's material-driven sculptures with Michelangelo's rare preparatory model, creating a dialogue across centuries.