Michelozzo
Michelozzo | |
---|---|
Born | Michelozzo di Bartolomeo Michelozzi c. 1396 |
Died | 7 October 1472 |
Resting place | Monastery of San Marco |
Nationality | Italian |
Known for | Sculpture, Architecture |
Movement | Early Renaissance |
Spouse | Francesca di Ambrogio Galigari (7 children) |
Michelozzo di Bartolomeo Michelozzi (1396 – 7 October 1472) was an Italian architect and sculptor. Considered one of the great pioneers of architecture during the Renaissance, Michelozzo was a favored Medici architect who was extensively employed by Cosimo de' Medici. He was a pupil of Lorenzo Ghiberti in his early years, and later collaborated with Donatello.
Known primarily for designing Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence, he is often overshadowed by his contemporaries Donatello in sculpture and Brunelleschi in architecture.
Life
Early life
Michelozzo was born in Florence in 1396. He was the son of Bartolomeo di Gherardo Borgognone and Antonia. Borgognone was of French origin and arrived in Florence from Burgundy at an unknown date.[1] Borgognone lived and worked in the Santa Croce quarter of Florence as a tailor, and was made a Florentine citizen on 9 April 1376.[2] Michelozzo had three brothers named Leonardo (b. 1389/90), Zanobi (b. 1391), and Giovanni (b. 1403). By 1391, Michelozzo's family had moved to the San Giovanni quarter, where they continued to live throughout his life.[1]
Little is known about Michelozzo's childhood, other than that he received a comprehensive education in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and that he began working as a die-engraver for the Florentine mint in 1410. As an engraver, Michelozzo learned how to cast, chase, and gild copper and bronze, two of the metals in which the Medieval and Renaissance goldsmith most commonly worked. He also gained immense precision of hand and a mastery of sculptural design in miniature.[3]
Beginning in the early 1420s, Michelozzo became a member of the Arte dei Maestri di Pietra e Legname, one of the Guilds of Florence that represented the master stonemasons, wood-carvers, and sculptors. He later served as one of the consuls of the Guild in 1430.[1]
Michelozzo's father died sometime before 1427, and his mother passed sometime between 1433 and 1442.[1] Michelozzo retained the family residence on Via Larga, which was near the Medici Palace and next door to the humanist Bartolomeo Scala. In addition, Michelozzo possessed a house and garden in S. Domino a Brozzi.[1]
Apprenticeships
Beginning in 1420, Michelozzo studied under
Under
Influences and patronage
Cosimo dei Medici
Few historians have disputed Cosimo's close relationship to Michelozzo, who was the Medici architect for nearly forty years. "Michelozzo was more agreeable and accessible to the advice and desires of Cosimo than the turbulent Brunelleschi, and was willing to follow the strong personal tastes of his patron."[1] Their relationship was best described by Angelo Fabroni in 1789, who said: "Cosimo loved Michelozzo dearly and relied on him, not only because of his natural talents (he considered nobody, not even Brunelleschi, superior in all architectural judgments), but also because of his good qualities and worthy character."[6]
Michelozzo enjoyed a close relationship to Cosimo dei Medici throughout his life, and according to Giorgio Vasari in The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, from Cimabue to Our Times, was motivated by his great love and fidelity for Cosimo to accompany him into exile in Venice from 1433 to 1434. Historians have cited this as an unparalleled example of esteem between artist and patron. Vasari also claimed that Michelozzo built the library of San Giorgio Monastery in 1434 for Cosimo, though this claim contradicts the original description and documents of the library, which indicate that although the library's construction was started by Cosimo, it was largely built under the direction of Medici bank manager Giovanni d'Orino Lanfredini between 1467 and 1478, which was well after Michelozzo's departure from Venice.
The large
Filippo Brunelleschi
According to "Architecture in Italy, 1400-1500, Volume 53", Michelozzo's architecture contrasts with Brunelleschi in its closer adherence to the "immediately preceding Gothic tradition, the Gothic classicism which appears in the Loggia dei Lanzi or the monastery of S. Matteo."[5] Ludwig Heydenreich and Paul Davies argue that all of Michelozzo's buildings are "works of considerable standing...the most independent architect after Brunelleschi."[5]
Personal life
Michelozzo married Francesca, daughter of Piero di Ambrogio Galligari, in late January or February 1441. At the time of their marriage, she was 20 years old, and he was 45.[1] Francesca's dowry of 425 florins was about average for an upper-middle-class family at that time. The size of her dowry indicates a considerable rise in Michelozzo's social position.[8]
In 1441, Michelozzo launched a legal complaint to remove himself from the responsibility of his two older brothers' debts. Andrea di Benozo, representative for Giovanni, Zanobi, and Michelozzo, elected arbitrators to weigh the complaints. After studying documents and proofs for six weeks, the arbitrators found that the two brothers were the cause behind most of Michelozzo's debts, and they were required to relinquish their inheritance in partial compensation for the amounts they owed.[1]
Children
Four boys and three girls resulted from Michelozzo's marriage to Francesca, of whom five survived their father. Bartolomeo, who became a sculptor, was born in 1442; Piero in 1443; Antonia in 1445; Niccolo in 1447; Marietta in 1453; Bernardo in 1455; and Lisabetta in 1459.
Two of his sons, Niccolò and Bernardo, were partially educated by the Medici and may have lived in the Palazzo Medici during their youth. They later achieved success in the highest humanistic circles of Florence.
Bernardo became a member of the household of Lorenzo il Magnifico as the tutor of Piero de Medici. In 1500, he was made a Florentine canon and was employed by Giovanni de Medici, first as his Chamberlain and then as his Secretary and Referendary.
Like Bernardo, Niccolò studied with
Works
Palazzo Medici
Brunelleschi's influence on Michelozzo is evident in the palazzo's design, especially in the late-medieval bifora windows, the symmetry and the dominance of the entrance axis, and the combination of traditional and progressive elements. The arcades and entablature of the palazzo's courtyard also follows the model of the loggia of the Spedale degli Innocenti, which is symptomatically Brunelleschi's earliest and most un-Vitruvian building.[9]
One of Michelozzo's most well-known architectural projects, the palace led to the development of a new architectural type: the Florentine Renaissance palace. Among the many Michelozzo innovations on the facade, the most notable include: "the use of bugnato digradante (large unevenly-cut stones which grow lighter as they ascend on the upper stories), the classical columns and fluted capitals in the bifore windows, the great classical cornice crowning the building and the small ones dividing the stories, the massive rectangular proportions of the block of square, and the regularity of the disposition of the windows, which, however, are asymmetrical in regard to the doors."[1]
San Marco
The fundamental basis of all monastic compounds built by architects during the Renaissance, this was one of Michelozzo's first and most influential architectural projects in Florence. Constructed at the expense of Cosimo dei Medici, the project began sometime between the years 1437 and 1438. Reconstruction included the church, sacristy, cloister, monastic living quarters, and the library. San Marco has been called the first Renaissance church, though it seems to be a compromise between the Trecento tradition and the Renaissance spirit. The plain white walls without frescos differ from the coloristic tradition of the Trecento and were essential to Michelozzo's architectural concepts and preference for large, unadorned surfaces, subtly articulated by necessary structural members in grey pietra serena.[1] Like many of his projects, San Marco was constructed with incredible rapidity. Unlike Brunelleschi, Michelozzo was able to finish what he started, largely due to Michelozzo's efficiency and due to the availability of adequate financing from Cosimo throughout the campaign.
The first part undertaken by Michelozzo was "the rebuilding of the old refectory, where a low vault, supported by consoles much like those in the sacristy at S. Trinita, was built to sustain the cells above. Work began on the church in 1438 and was probably completed three years later, though certainly by 1443 when it was consecrated by Pope Eugene. Using the perimeter of the former Trecento church, Michelozzo added a polygonal apse, similar in form to that at Bosco ai Frati; it was lighted by three long round arch pietra serena windows which can still be seen in the upper story of the convent. The pointed entrance arch rested on two pilasters with large, classical Corinthian capitals surmounted by a dado decorated with the Medici balls (also still visible). In front of the apse was the Capella Maggiore, covered with groin vaulting. The nave was a single open space without aisles, adorned with ediculas or altars (three on each side), and covered with a wooden beamed ceiling. Separating the nave and the Cappella Maggiore was a high wall (tramezzo) with two doors. In the later remodelling of the church, the wall was removed and the doors were transferred to the polygonal apse where they are now located. Their fluted pilasters are crowned with composite capitals identical to those in the Barbadori Chapel in S. Felicita by Brunelleschi, and above the architrave with classical mouldings, the frieze is decorated, like the capitals at Bosco ai Frati, with the Medici balls."[1]
Choir of the Santissima Annunziata
Commissioned by Lodovico Gonzaga, lord of Mantua and general of the Florentine troops, the choir was created in commemoration of Gonzaga's father and "for the celebration of masses for his soul."[9] Cosimo had already commissioned Michelozzo with the construction of the church's vestibulum and atrium in order to continue Brunelleschi's idea of a forum all'antica. In designing the Santissima Annunziata, Michelozzo followed the model of the Minerva Medica in Rome, making the inner plan round, creating a dome that was as hemispheric the Pantheon, and detailing it with a ten-sided exterior with deep, over-semicircular chapels. He also opted for a drum and a dome without ribs. Though the Santissima Annunziata was Michelozzo's attempt to surpass Brunelleschi on his ground, "a comparison of the two ground plans suffices to show how utterly superior Brunelleschi's is."[9]
Santa Croce
In the May 1966 issue of The Burlington Magazine, Howard Saalman wrote that "the language of the details of the Ex-Dormitory and the Ex-Library wing points to Michelozzo. If Vasari is right and Michelozzo did work at Santa Croce (and there is no reason to doubt it in spite of the lack of documentation) then Michelozzo and his circle probably handled the entire operation as at San Marco, SS. Annunziata and elsewhere."[10]
Michelozzo added various parts to the church and cloister of Santa Croce, including "the loggia in front of the Ex-Dormitory and Library (octagonal columns with foglie d'acqua capitals) which originally extended across the cloister to the elevated loggia on the south side of the church, running along the eastern flank of the San Giuliano (Mellini) Chapel...which divided the first cloister into two parts before its destruction in the nineteenth century."[10] Additionally, the Cerchi Chapel on "the ground floor of the Ex-Library wing at the end adjacent to the Ex-Refectory is evidently inserted into older peripheral walls which survived the 1423 fire. The language of the details (pilasters flanking the opening into the little square choir, capitals of the lunette vaults of the hall in front of the choir - which overlap older windows in the side walls) is that of the Michelozzo circle."[10]
Other notable works
From 1461 through 1464, he constructed the Walls of Ston in Ragusa, the largest medieval wall in Europe.[11]
Death and legacy
In spite of
One of the most influential, yet unknown, architects of the
In his careful treatment of architectural ornament, "Michelozzo was able to adopt ideas and turn them to good account as well as to transmit new ones. The styles of Manetti, Bernardo Rossellino, Giuliano da Maiano, and even of Giuliano da Sangallo are unimaginable without the support and influence of Michelozzo's artistic idiom in addition to that of Brunelleschi, and later, of Donatello."[5]
See also
- Tomb of Antipope John XXIII
- Tomb of Cardinal Rainaldo Brancacci
- Walls of Dubrovnik
- Palazzo dello Strozzino
- San Girolamo, Volterra
- Villa San Girolamo
References
- ^ ISBN 0-8240-2678-0.
- ^ Fabriczy, Cornelius von. Michelozzo di Bartolommeo. pp. 59ff.
- ^ Lightbrown, R.W. (1980). Donatello & Michelozzo: An Artistic Partnership and its Patrons in the Early Renaissance. London: Harvey Miller.
- ^ Krautheimer, Richard; Krautheimer-Hess, Trude (1982) [1958]. Lorenzo Ghiberti. Princeton Monographs in Art and Archaeology. Vol. 31 (1st Pb. of 2nd ed.). Princeton: Princeton University Press., p. 87 and 408, Dig. 100.
- ^ a b c d Heydenreich, Ludwig Heinrich (1974). Architecture in Italy, 1400-1500, Volume 53. Yale University Press. p. 30.
- ^ Fabroni, Angelo (1789). Magni Cosmi Medicei Vita. p. 154.
- ^ "I Luoghi della Fede: Chiesa di San Girolamo". web.rete.toscana.it. Archived from the original on 21 June 2017. Retrieved 7 February 2018.
- ISBN 978-1442611825.
- ^ a b c d Frommel, Christoph Luitpold (2007). The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance. New York: Thames & Hudson Ltd, London. p. 29.
- ^ a b c Saalman, Howard (1966). "Michelozzo Studies". The Burlington Magazine (Vol. 108, No. 758): 242–250.
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- public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Michelozzo di Bartolommeo". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 18 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 371. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
Further reading
- Caplow, Harriet McNeal. Michelozzo, 2 vols. New York: Garland, 1977.
- Ferrara, Miranda, and Francesco Quinterio. Michelozzo di Bartolomeo. Florence: Salimbeni, 1984.
- Lightbown, Ronald W. Donatello and Michelozzo: an artistic partnership and its patrons in the early Renaissance. London: H. Miller, 1980.
- Michelozzo: scultore e architetto (1396–1472). Florence: Centro Di, 1997.
- Carchio, Maria, and Roberto Manescalchi, La scoperta di un Michelozzo inedito: una scala dimenticata nel convento dell’Annunziata, Firenze: Ananke n°43, September 2004.
External links
- The Gubbio Studiolo and its conservation, volumes 1 & 2, from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Michelozzo (see index)
- Firenze by Net
- Artist Biography site
- Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. .