Michelangelo's New Sacristy at the Medici Chapel
Built as an additional place of burial for the members of the Medici family, Michelangelo was commissioned to design 4 tombs, however only 2 were completed. It is quite an example of Mannerist architecture, as he plays small tricks with your eye and its view of perspective, as well as taking classical orders and portraying them in a way never before seen. The clerestory windows, for instance, are projected and angled out, creating a false perspective when viewed at the correct angle. It has a coffered dome which, similarly to the Pantheon, creates another false perspective as the increasingly smaller coffers make it seem like the dome is taller than it really is. Even though it is rendered in somewhat of a Romanesque style with its rounded arches, just the way that he takes the Corinthian pilasters and intersperses half-rounded niches between them gives the whole composition a feeling of tension. He will overlap pilasters, break typically Classical forms, and create an undulating, complicated, sculptural wall plane that further pushes it into the realm of the Mannerist.
Michelangelo really was the archetypical Renaissance man. As mentioned before, he sculpted the David and Pieta all before he was 30 and was quite a prolific artist throughout his lifetime. Raised in Florence but taught most of what he knew in Rome, Michelangelo had a wealthy patron in the Medici family which obviously helped him in life get the kinds of commissions he searched for. Giorgio Vasari one said about the Pieta, “art improves on what nature has created”, referring to the lifelike quality and the expression of pain and despair on Mary’s face. The middle of his life was spent painting the Sistine Chapel and being the chief architect of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. He is buried in the church of Santa Croce, and even some of his drawings are still being uncovered today, a testament to the volumes of work he completed throughout his life.
Location: Palazzo Medici / Palazzo Strozzi
Designed by Bartolomeo (a student of Brunelleschi) and commissioned by Cosimo the Elder, a prominent member of the Medici family, the exterior of this structure is what definitely interested me the most. It has a tri-partite design, typical of houses of this time. The lower floor has a look that can be described as rusticated: the stones have been left uncut and raw, giving the entire story a very rough and crude appearance. The 1st floor, referred to here as the Piano Noble, is faced with ashlar and is a bit more refined, although you can still see the outline of each individual stone and the coursework. Finally, the 2nd floor has a smooth, refined finish. My guess as to why the architect decided to give the building this particular look was that the ground floor was where all of the common people inhabited; and these people were unsophisticated and lower on the social ladder. As you move up, however, in life and on the building, you become more refined until you reach the top floor. The people that inhabit this floor are rich, high-minded aristocrats who look down on the commoners with an air of disdain, as if they are more polished than the plebs. Conceptually, the building works the way it is shown on the outside. In addition, each of the floors gets shorter from the ground floor up, further emphasizing that there are fewer polished people in the world and more unrefined people that make up the working class, a kind of societal pyramid. Bookending the structure on the top and bottom are an 8’ cornice line that really defines the edge of the building, and a line of benches at the exterior ground plane.
In the same vein as the Palazzo Medici, the Palazzo Strozzi was also a statement of family power for this wealthy family. Commissioned in 1489 but finished in 1536, it features the same tri-partite division on the exterior: rustication ground floor, smooth refinement on the top floor. Amazingly, its square footage is more than 50% greater than that of the White House.
Location: Palazzo Pitti / Boboli Gardens
Luca Pitti, who was another wealthy Florentine banker and the unofficial 1st citizen of Florence, built this large Palazzo on the opposite side of the Arno away from the heart of the city in 1441. It was again left to (who else) Brunelleschi to design, with Vasari coming later on in the process to add additional wings. Once the Medici family pushed out the Pittis, they took control of the Palazzo and used it as lodging for guests and was their residence until the 18th century; today it houses a museum. There is really no other way to describe this structure other than it is a foreboding, imposing, and unwelcoming massive Palazzo in which its mounded entry places it even higher up from the street and the average person. The family who built this especially wanted to show off their power, so much more than any of the other families who built similar building types closer to the heart of the city. It also features the same rusticated feel as the previous two examples: each stone is left uncut and raw; the gates over the windows and the lion heads below them only serve to add to this effect. The Palace of Versailles actually drew inspiration from this building.
Behind the Palazzo is an expanse of gardens designed by Niccolo Braccini in 1550. The Boboli Gardens is a very interesting study in Baroque cultivated landscape, as it plays with your sense of perspective when viewing it from the Palazzo. Its main axis features an incline off in the distance which could seemingly go on into infinity: you can’t see over the ridge, so your expectation is that it could extend indefinitely. Obviously, it doesn’t and as we got to the top of the hill we realized this to be true. Nonetheless it affords wonderful views of both the Palazzo and the rest of Florence and has water features that needed to be supplied through an aqueduct, as there was no natural supply to feed the fountains.
Final Impressions:
I have a much different impression leaving Florence than I did leaving Rome. Rome, to me, seemed like it was caught between the Classical world and the Modern world; unable to determine what kind of identity it should take on. Florence, on the other hand, seems more content to be exactly what it is: a Renaissance city with a true identity. There didn’t appear to be any excavations happening in Florence while we were there. You can easily view the city in its entirety simply by walking around it. It’s definitely also at a smaller scale than Rome and has a more comfortable feel to it. Rome seemed to be more along the lines of a large metropolis, like Boston or New York. I would compare the walkability and scale of Florence to that of Charleston, SC, a city I lived in for 3 years. Both of these cities were more or less resistant to any major changes in the fabric of their city, as an ordinance in Charleston prevented any building in the downtown area to be greater than 5 stories. In the same sense I could not imagine a modern glass and steel building to occupy any of the spaces around the Duomo in Florence, save for the small shops that line the ground floor of the buildings. I can appreciate Florence wanting to remain with the same character it has possessed since the Renaissance, but at what cost? Is it “stuck” in this particular aesthetic purely for the tourists? What will the city look like in another 500 years? My guess is that it will remain just the same as it is today: quaint, walk-able, a reminder of Florence’s great artistic past, and one of the best examples of how life was in the Middle Ages.
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