Michelangelo
1475-1564
The genius was born in Italy | Youth.
Years of study.
1488-1495 / Rome.
"Pieta".
1496-1501 / Florence.
"David".
1501-1505 / Rome.
Tomb of Pope Julius II.
1505-1545 / Rome.
Frescoes of the Sistine Chapel vault.
1508-1512 / Florence.
The Medici tombs.
1516-1534 / Rome.
Late works.
"The Last Judgment".
1534-1541 / Architecture.
The Cathedral of St. Peter.
1538-1564 | site map | home page
Architectural projects (1538-1564)
In the late period of creativity, when pictorial images lose their heroic beginning in Michelangelo's painting, sculpture and graphics, acquiring features of increased emotionality, pessimism, doom, when Mannerist tendencies were widely spread throughout the art of Italy, Michelangelo turned to other areas of art — poetry and architecture.
Only in the art of architecture, Michelangelo remains faithful to the precepts of his heroic years, his faith in the boundless creative power of the artist is fully manifested again.
It is not necessary to depict the visible world; the great impulse that stubbornly fills his soul, let it find its expression not in sensory reality — it is too deceptive!
— and in the coupling, struggle and victory of slender and stable forces, whose names are a column, a cornice, a dome, a pediment.
And here there is no betrayal of the ideal of human beauty, which he believed and worshipped, because, as we know, Michelangelo asserted the dependence of architectural parts on the human body.
Since ancient times, Michelangelo has been revered as the "father of the Baroque", he took up architecture when he was already mature and famous, and devoted the last decades of his life almost exclusively to architecture.
Architecture has occupied a certain place in Michelangelo's work before.
But it was either directly connected with his paintings and sculptural works, as in the paintings of the Sistine Chapel vault or when creating the ensemble of the Medici Chapel, or it represented episodic orders that remained in the projects.
Such was the order of Pope Leo X for the reconstruction of the facade of the Church of San Lorenzo in Florence, commissioned by Michelangelo in 1516.
Michelangelo glorified his name by creating the interior of the Laurentiana library, a magnificent example of sculptural thinking in architecture, with the famous staircase, which, according to V. N. Lazarev, is like a "lava flow flowing out of a narrow doorway", and whose curved steps seem to us eternally mobile in their seemingly unstoppable alternation.
although Michelangelo turned to her late, he also glorified his name in this art.
Michelangelo approached the problems of architecture primarily as a sculptor.
He did not receive any special education in this field, but contact with the works of outstanding architects of that time — Bramante, Giuliano da San Galo and others contributed to his mastering this specific profession.
He proved himself as an outstanding urban planner in the design of the Capitoline Hill during the grandiose reconstruction of the ancient Roman square and the installation of an ancient equestrian statue of Emperor Marcus Aurelius (1537-1539) in the middle.
Michelangelo showed his architectural talent in the construction of the Cathedral of St. Nicholas.
Peter (he owns the western facade and the drum with the dome) (1546-1564).
Remaining until the end of his life the architect of the greatest cathedral of the Christian world, and until the end of his life fighting with envious and ill wishers, he also composed:
- the project of the fortifications of the Borgo,
- crowned with a huge cornice, a masterpiece of Renaissance architecture, the Palazzo Farnese in Rome (1546-1547),
- the reconstruction project of the old Santa Trinita Bridge (1560), according to which Ammanati built the bridge 10 years later,
- project of the Roman city gate of Porta Pia, named after Pope Pius IV (1561),
- the project of rebuilding the ancient baths of Diocletian into the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli (1563)(nothing remains of Michelangelo's project, it was completely rebuilt in the XVIII century), and
- project of the Church of Santa Giovanni de Fiorentina (1559-1560),
- plan of the tomb of the relatives of Pope Julius III Uncle Antonio, Cardinal de Monti, and Messer Fabiano, the pope's grandfather, in the church of San Pietro a Montorio, (1549) and the tomb of the Marquis of Marignano, brother of Pius IV in the Milan Cathedral (in 1560, Michelangelo was then about 85 years old).
Michelangelo violated the architectural traditions of previous generations.
In his buildings, the order often lost its tectonic significance, turning into a means of decorating walls, creating enlarged masses that amaze people with their scale and plasticity.
In the architecture of Michelangelo, a brilliant sculptor and painter, the plastic principle prevails, the emphasized identification of the plasticity of forms and their intense dynamics, the intense, rich chiaroscuro relief of the wall, strongly protruding pilasters, plastically expressive platbands, the "grand order"play an important role in creating dynamic contrasts of the masses.
Michelangelo's buildings prepare the ground for the Baroque, but their majestic tectonicity remains a purely Renaissance feature.
Michelangelo perceived architecture as a reflection of human beauty, he said: "There is absolutely no doubt that architectural parts are similar to parts of the human body.
Anyone who has never been able or does not know how to reproduce the human figure well, especially as far as anatomy is concerned, will never understand this."
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