Week 6/7: St. Peter's and Michelangelo

St. Peter's was briefly touched upon in the Bramante overview, as he was the original designer of the "New St. Peter's". This week we will discuss the contributions of Antonio da Sangallo and Michelangelo in the ongoing process of design and construction. The evolution of St. Peter's in Rome, under Pope Paul III Farnese, and Michelangelo's role and other works will be explored here. Starting off in Rome, we will also revisit San Lorenzo in Florence where Michelangelo was ordered to design a facade as well as the Medici funerary chapel. Pictured above is a projection of Michelangelo's final design on the still bare exterior of San Lorenzo.

Michelangelo (1475-1564)

Michelangelo Buonarotti was born in Caprese (Tuscany) and died in Rome. He was an accomplished sculptor, painter, and architect who represented High Roman Renaissance and the concept of disegno. He apprenticed as a painter, taught himself to sculpt, and later studied anatomy by dissection. Early on he was favored by Lorenzo the Magnificent, and he would continue to have a demanding work relationship with the Medici family. When Lorenzo died, Michelangelo travelled on to Venice, Bologna, and Rome where he would work for various Popes and create some of his most memorable work, such as the Sistine Chapel (Creation of Adam detail above), the Last Judgement, David, and St. Peter's. While Michelangelo never formally learned architecture, he perceived it as an extension of sculpture. Buildings were, to Michelangelo, dynamic sculptures.

St. Peter's, the finished product!

As Michelangelo worked diligently to stay true to Bramante's original plans, he was not the last to work on St. Peter's. Michelangelo had reverted back to the Greek cross plan, devised 5 cupolas, redesigned the dome; he was sucessful in strengthening and unifying the whole structure. In 1626, Carlo Maderno brought the design back again to a Latin cross plan and went on to create the facade. Using monumental orders and imbueing the basilica with a sense of plasticity and force, St. Peter's stood out as a sign of power and success.

Brunelleschi's San Lorenzo (1421-1470) Michelangelo's facade

Back in Florence, remember San Lorenzo? The plain exterior was the result of a common problem plaguing Renaissance churches: how to get a Classical temple front on a Christian church. Here we have an interesting image of Michelangelo's design superimposed as a virtual reproduction on the actual and still bare exterior of San Lorenzo. While working for Julius II in Rome, Michelangelo was called in to take on the project. Leo X was made Pope in 1513 and being a Medici, he wanted Michelangelo working on San Lorenzo. He later decided the New Sacristy in the Medici chapel was more important and Michelangelo was sent to design the funerary chapel.



You can see he might have been looking at Sangallo's original concept, which merged the stories to create a palace like facade with a rectangular shape. This design features
-paired columns and pilasters (Brunelleschian influence)
-niches between columns (Bramantean influence)
-complex rhthym
-no iconography or surface decoration, with the possible exception of the circles (may have depicted St. Lawrence)

Laurentian Library, San Lorenzo

Commissioned by Medici Pope Leo X, Michelangelo worked on the Laurentian Library in 1525. While the New Sacristy was a transitional project in Michelangelo's architectural career, the Laurentian Library could be seen as a more successful venture into Mannerism. Michelangelo had consciously moved away from the proportional rules of Vitruvian theories; his motivation was not in perfecting old traditions, but in exploring new ones. His architecture is based on anatomy and the concept of living organisms, a radical departure from static to dynamic and plastic. The vestibule features
-recessed columns impossibly supported on brackets
-columns and brackets are not located on the same plane
-pilaster frames on tabernacles taper at the bottom and are topped with capitals that are too narrow
-sense of organic unity and 3 dimensionality
-expressive, cascading stairs which seem to flow and spread on their descent

The stairway leads you up into the library, situated on higher ground to protect the collection from dampness and provide natural lighting. In the reading room, the ceiling is seemingly supported by wall pilasters and the windows are recessed with just a touch of flourish. Michelangelo contrasts the reading room (with its linearity, grace, and lightness) with the more sculptural staircase and vestibule. He is very interested in themes of compression and tension, the vestibule is animated, with remarks on the relationships between weight and support, while the reading room is a great relief of open space.
Although neither the New Sacristy or the Laurentian Library were completed by Michelangelo, they remain important milestones in architectural history.