Week 4 Notes – High Renaissance: Michelangelo & Palladio

Assignment & Course Logistics

  • Current deliverable: Assignment 1 = Tasks 1–3
    • Weighting: lowest of three overall assignments (practice run)
    • Strict word limit: 100 words total for written components
    • Submit through Turnitin by Sunday 23:59 (legal‐deadline tradition)
    • Recommended: upload earlier to check file readability; Turnitin flags common errors (wrong file-type, corrupt pdf, too large)
    • Use intervening days to incorporate tutor critiques; listen even when comments are aimed at peers (transferable advice)
    • Manage time around other courses; “no-work Sunday” option = submit earlier
  • Studios (shoots): 2-4 pm & 4-6 pm today—target Task 3 for feedback
  • Lecture media: PDF of slides is usually uploaded pre-class (aim ≈ 1 h before start) but not guaranteed—sit closer to screen for cursor explanations
  • Course calendar: 9 lectures / 10 teaching weeks—today = Week 4 (mid-point)
  • Upcoming content: Today = High Renaissance (Michelangelo + Palladio) → next week: beginnings of modernity & the theatre theme

Rapid Recap — Alberti & Early Renaissance (Week 3)

  • Driving question: “Why do we build?”
    • Ancient pessimism: humans = “buffeted by fortune”
    • Buildings & arts provide stability, civilise behaviour, foster public discourse
  • Decorum = balanced appropriateness
    • Between pagan external ritual & Christian interior spirituality
    • Between city façade (ornate) & rural shell (plain) → site decorum
    • Between Doric–Ionic–Corinthian (Ionic = median “just right”)
  • Proportion / Consonantia
    • Musical ratios – e.g. 1:1, 2:3, 3:4
    • Even number of vertical supports, odd number of openings
    • Sensory confirmation: we can see, touch, hear harmonious order
  • San Andrea, Mantua (Alberti, 1470)
    • Façade fuses Triumphal Arch + Etruscan temple rhythm: narrow – wide – narrow bays echo inside nave
    • External-internal reciprocity; building–city analogy: “A small city is like a large house”
    • “Power of beauty”: correct proportions could pacify even an angry army
  • Necessity of Artifice
    • Wall dressing (marble revetment ≈ cosmetics ↔ cosmos) allows proportion to be read
    • Modern “truth-to-materials” often neglects this communicative layer

High Renaissance Context (c. 1500–1540)

  • Patronage shift to Rome: Pope Julius II vows to “equal the Ancients”; recruits Michelangelo, Bramante, Raphael, etc.
  • Raphael’s School of Athens: visual manifesto—Ancient & contemporary thinkers in one perspectival space (architecture by Bramante)

Donato Bramante (1444–1514)

Tempietto, S. Pietro in Montorio

  • Commemorates site of St Peter’s crucifixion
  • Doric order (male saint → decorum)
  • Vertical stretch > Roman antecedent → connects martyr to heaven
  • Geometric contraction toward cella (columns → pilasters): spatial pressure, bodily analogy

Cloister of Santa Maria della Pace, Rome

  • Lower arcade: 4 arches (slow rhythm)
  • Upper trabeated level: 8 bays (double speed) + tight console rhythm (fast)
  • Tripartite musical composition likened to Bach
  • Function: monks circulate/chant/read; architecture mirrors footfall tempo; embedded seats in wall recesses reinforce body-space dialogue
  • Now a public café—recommended visit

Michelangelo (1475–1564)

Body-Centric Aesthetics & Cross-Disciplinary Drawing

  • Treats painting, sculpture, and architecture as inter-linked “sister arts”
  • Studies anatomy via dissection; sketches muscles → retranslate into wall profiles & mouldings
  • Freehand curvature (no compass) valued for vital line quality

Painting Highlights

  • Doni Tondo (Holy Family): triple figure spiral; ambiguous transfer of Christ (Incarnation vs. Deposition)
  • Sistine Chapel Ceiling (1508-12)
    • Painted “structure” (ribbed beams) = fiction guiding viewer
    • Alternating \text{narrow} \rightarrow \text{wide} panels generates breath-like rhythm
    • Key scenes: Creation of Sun/Moon/Planets; Creation of Adam (ideal body proportion = divine template)
  • Last Judgment (1536-41): visceral portrayal of salvation vs. damnation; self-portrait in flayed skin (torment iconography)

Sculptural / Graphic Studies

  • Bacchus: intoxicated sway → warning on excess
  • Chalk studies: limbs in torsion (contrapposto), thumbs, feet + simultaneous architectural mouldings (fillet, cyma recta/reversa)
    • Deep shadow in moulding = metaphor of death (tombs)

Architectural Works

Medici Chapel (New Sacristy), San Lorenzo, Florence
  • Wall = muscular relief: recessed plane → pilaster → secondary setback → projecting mould → blind window panel
  • Result: undulating “body under skin” rather than flat surface
  • Integrates tomb sculptures (Night, Day, Dawn, Dusk) within dynamic niches
Laurentian Library Vestibule (1524-59)
  • Freestanding columns cut into wall recesses; brackets appear to slip
  • Staircase as molten lava; three flowing flights converge into reading room (calm after struggle)
  • Design drawings show stairs interwoven with nude studies—direct body-to-form translation
Capitoline Hill Redevelopment, Rome (c. 1536-47) – YOUR ANALYSIS TASK
  • Trapezoidal piazza oriented toward St Peter’s (symbolic re-focus from ancient Forum)
  • Central equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius (antique revival)
  • Palazzi facades: giant Corinthian pilasters + subordinate Doric portico
    • Interwoven orders; deep-set windows, thickened piers → light/shadow articulation
    • Entablature proportioned to full facade height (innovation)
  • Piazza pavement = star-burst ellipses (later addition) emphasise convergence

Key Michelangelo Take-aways

  • Wall = animate, not inert
  • Compression/expansion rhythm evokes bodily breathing & movement
  • Architecture as stage-set for civic transformation (echoes triumphal arch logic)

Andrea Palladio (1508–1580)

Civic Palaces in Vicenza

Palazzo del Capitaniato (aka Curygati)

  • Sited by canal arrival point; double-height loggias greet visitors
  • Statues enliven skyline; Doric below + Ionic above
  • Lower arcade ceded to public passage (shade, weather shelter)

Palazzo Valmarana (1565)

  • Narrow street context → layered richness
  • Giant Composite pilasters (order → order)
  • Behind them: smaller orders, stringcourses, rusticated basamento
  • Visual experience changes as one approaches (eye-level intricacy)

Villas: Typologies & Agro-Hydraulic Integration

Villa Barbaro at Maser

  • Axial alignment with foothills; water logic:
    1. Alpine spring → cistern (drinking)
    2. Kitchen court (washing/cooking)
    3. Front troughs (livestock)
    4. Irrigation of fields
  • Central sala frescoed with rustic/mythic scenes; broken pediment balcony manifests family hospitality > strict structural grammar

Villa Rotonda (1550)

  • Suburban pleasure villa (non-working)
  • Perfect bilateral & diagonal symmetry; four identical porticoes
  • Central domed sala—each room sized by musical ratios; pure expression of harmonic ideal

Palladian Principles

  • Interweaving orders (giant vs. minor)
  • Clear reading at urban distance; tactile detail close-up
  • Architecture fosters civility: greeting, procession, conversation
  • Rural vs. suburban distinction mirrors Alberti’s site decorum

Cross-Cutting Themes & Theoretical Threads

  • Body → Building Analogy: anatomical study informs wall articulation & mouldings
  • Rhythm / Movement: narrow-wide bays, stair flows, column spacing = spatial choreography
  • Theatre of Memory: architecture encodes history, myth, civic identity
  • Moral Programme: beauty aimed at social harmony (Alberti), later appropriated for papal grandeur (Julius II)
  • Artifice vs. Truth: surface dressing necessary for communicating proportion; modernist honesty questioned

Numerical / Formal References

  • Musical consonances: 1:1 (unison), 2:3 (perfect fifth), 3:4 (perfect fourth)
  • Giant order spans full facade height; entablature depth may exceed classical \frac{1}{4} column diameter rule
  • Medici Chapel wall modulation: 5-plane sequence (deep recess → pilaster A → shallow setback → moulding projection \approx 1/2 module → blind window)

Practical Skills & Studio Pointers

  • Sketch constantly: freehand captures life; practice → proficiency (drawing ≠ talent)
  • When analysing:
    • Identify orders and note their proportional rules
    • Trace compression/expansion axes
    • Shade deep reveals to understand light logic
  • For Capitoline assignment: produce plan/section elevations + 100-word interpretive text (focus on interwoven orders & civic intent)

Ethical & Philosophical Reflections

  • “Power of beauty” sometimes fails (e.g. 6 Jan Capitol riot) ⇒ re-evaluate Alberti’s optimism
  • Renaissance oligarch patrons commissioned public-minded art; contrast with contemporary billionaires funding private spaceflights
  • Architecture still carries responsibility to shape behaviour and enrich lives despite day-to-day professional constraints