sforzinda: Michelangelo, Vestibule of the Medici Library in San Lorenzo, Florence (begun 1519).
sforzinda: Michelangelo, Vestibule of the Medici Library in San Lorenzo, Florence (begun 1519). Perhaps the most famous of the “licentious” architecture is the ricetto (vestibule) of the Medici Library in Florence, one in a series of works designed by Michelangelo for the complex of San Lorenzo, upon his return from executing the Sistine Chapel ceiling in Rome. Although Michelangelo never considered himself an architect, his important earlier works (such as Julius II’s tomb, or his unbuilt façade for San Lorenzo) were set within a substantial architectural framework. With Leo X’s support, Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici commissioned Michelangelo to design the New Sacristy for San Lorenzo as a family mausoleum (prompted by the death of his cousin, Lorenzo de’ Medici in 1519), as well as the Library complex (the vestibule, reading room, and a rare books room). After the election of Giulio as Clement VII in 1523, the library project was revived, and after much discussion, it was decided to locate the reading room as a third storey (the raised location would protect the books from dampness, and it also enabled a east-facing façade as set out by Vitruvius for designing libraries in his Ten Books on Architecture). Visitors arriving at entry level are surrounded by solid basement walls, and only after ascending halfway up Michelangelo’s extraordinary staircase (designed 1558, executed by Bartolomeo Ammannati in stone rather than wood as it originally was planned, thereby emphasising further its sculptural qualities) in the vestibule, can one begin to glimpse the Reading Room (begun 1524), which reveals Michelangelo’s sophisticated architectural framework. His three projected spaces are considered in sequence from vestibule to the rare books room (which never was built, but an autograph plan by Michelangelo exists). Much of the vestibule itself was executed under the supervision of Giorgio Vasari. The central flight, which incidentally was planned in walnut to match the reading desks in the library, and was in much smaller scale (but Clement VII wanted a staircase that took up the whole vestibule), was described by Michelangelo as “overlapping oval boxes.” The fact that this extraordinary work was completed by Vasari and Ammannati explains the influence of Michelangelo’s Florentine architecture on the next generation of artists. -- source link
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