Senior Curator Dr. Hannah Higham explores the history of the Royal Academy’s Michelangelo sculpture: ‘Madonna and Child with the Infant St. John the Baptist’.
The ‘Taddei Tondo’ remains the only marble carving by Michelangelo in the UK, entering the Royal Academy collection in 1830. Its composition and subject – the infants St. John the Baptist and Christ with a bird – have been admired and copied by many students and artists over the years.
In this talk, Dr. Hannah Higham will trace this rare work’s journey to the Academy – from its origins in the sculptural traditions of Florence and its commission by the Taddei family around 1504, to its impact on the Royal Academicians of the nineteenth century and beyond.
Dr. Hannah Higham joined the Royal Academy of Arts as our new Senior Curator of Collections in April 2023, having previously worked as the Senior Curator of Collections and Research for the Henry Moore Foundation. She holds an MA from the Courtauld Institute and a PhD from the University of Birmingham on early sixteenth-century Florentine Sculpture.
