Laurentian Library

The Medici library at San Lorenzo has one of the strangest rooms of the Renaissance: a tall vestibule where the columns are set into the wall and a staircase that flows out over the floor. Michelangelo turned the rules of architecture upside down and opened the way to Mannerism.

In 1523 Pope Clement VII, a member of the Medici family, commissioned Michelangelo to design a library for the family’s book collection at the monastery of San Lorenzo in Florence. The library was to sit on top of the monastery building, which limited both weight and space. Work began in 1524, but Michelangelo moved to Rome in 1534 and work came to a halt. The staircase was built in 1559 by Bartolomeo Ammannati following Michelangelo’s instructions and a clay model. The library opened to the public in 1571.

You first enter the vestibule, the ricetto, which is tall and cramped. There the columns do not stand free but are set into recesses in the wall, and beneath them are brackets that carry nothing. The windows are blind. All this goes against the classical rules, according to which columns should carry and brackets support. The staircase in the middle flows out like lava and divides into three flights, of which the central steps are curved. The long reading room, by contrast, is calm and bright, with rows of wooden benches and desks also designed by Michelangelo and a ceiling with carved patterns.

The library still holds one of the world’s most important collections of manuscripts, among them early copies of Virgil and the Codex Amiatinus, the oldest surviving complete Latin Bible. The vestibule has become a key work of Mannerism, the later phase of the Renaissance in which artists played with the rules. It influenced the Baroque and has been studied by architects up to our own time. The room shows that Michelangelo thought as a sculptor, with the wall as a body full of tension.