Arts & Humanities

摘要

As the definitive mannerist architect, Michelangelo challenged conventions of form, space, order, and scale. Brothers (architecture, Univ. of Virginia) presents the possibility that Michelangelo may have been among the first to conceive of drawing as a means to architectural design. Appropriately, she begins with an analysis of the artist's drawing techniques and their incorporation into the Sistine Chapel ceiling figures, reminding us that painter-architects were more the norm than the exception. The particular contribution here, however, lies in Brothers's analysis of the most celebrated of Michelangelo's architectural work, the Lau-rentian Library vestibule, which links the upper cloister and the reading room at San Lorenzo in Florence. For this, architecture becomes the subject, no longer subordinate to sculpture, no longer framing the human figure. Each detail of the space is described in relation to the architect's drawing skills and innate sense of architectural composition. Although not as well illustrated as Giulio Carlo Argan and Bruno Contardi's Michelangelo: Architect and far narrower in its perspective, this book will substantially deepen larger collections on architecture of the late Renaissance.