Architecture

Michelangelo’s architectural commissions included a number that were not realised, notably the façade for Brunelleschi’s Church of San Lorenzo in Florence, for which Michelangelo had a wooden model constructed, but which remains to this day unfinished rough brick. At the same church, Giulio de’ Medici (later Pope Clement VII) commissioned him to design the Medici Chapel and the tombs of Giuliano and Lorenzo Medici. Pope Clement also commissioned the Laurentian Library, for which Michelangelo also designed the extraordinary vestibule with columns recessed into niches, and a staircase that appears to spill out of the library like a flow of lava, according to Pevsner, … revealing Mannerism in its most sublime architectural form.

In 1546 Michelangelo produced the highly complex ovoid design for the pavement of the Campidoglio and began designing an upper storey for the Farnese Palace. In 1547 he took on the job of completing St Peter’s Basilica, begun to a design by Bramante, and with several intermediate designs by several architects. Michelangelo returned to Bramante’s design, retaining the basic form and concepts by simplifying and strengthening the design to create a more dynamic and unified whole. Although the late 16th-century engraving depicts the dome as having a hemispherical profile, the dome of Michelangelo’s model is somewhat ovoid and the final product, as completed by Giacomo della Porta is more so.