Michelangelo, Vestibule of Laurentian Library

3D Model

Michelangelo, Vestibule of Library (Ricetto), 1524-58, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence

During the pontificate of the Medici Pope Leo X (1513-1523) Michelangelo was charged with the task of building the Medici Chapel next to San Lorenzo and, in 1524, the Laurentian Library. These plans were interrupted for many years, after the Medici were driven out of Florence in 1526. A task quite new in the history of art was entrusted to Michelangelo when the Medici asked him to build the Laurentian Library. The columns, deeply set in the walls, with their anthropomorphically gigantic appearance, and the organic élan of the staircase show that, even as an architect, Michelangelo never began from abstract geometrical laws, but only from the human body.

-WGA