. . -..--;:. ,.---::. , - > :.- . - C- i . '-.* -'-- ... MC. - .-''4b.a. ..d ' . -5.s ------;." iV . ---. - -.. ---7 .-&. %,y------.- ---. - -':'Jr' 3- . 4 - - - .---+. .-. L... ------.-*>:- 2 $""""""""""""""""""""?-2e..d.:::--h.'q , , k, 7 z; .-:! $: . . ? a . .

PAPER THRESHOLD: THE DRAWNGS OF

A mEsis SUW~TO THE F~cu~rvOF GRADUATE STUDcES AND RESEARCH IN PAITnAL NLFiLLMENT Of THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OC MASCEROF ARCHITEC~URE National Library BiMiothègue nationale 1+1 of Canada du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographie Services services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395, nie Wellingtori OttawaON KlAW OtÉawaON KlAW canada canada

The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence aliowing the exclusive permettant à la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribute or seU reproduire, prêt&, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/nlm, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique.

The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts fiom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. Paper Threshold: The Drawings of Michelangelo

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Reading Between the Lines

Threshold of Three

Hyper-dialectic Michelangelo

Resolution of Love

Threshold I VISION

Drawing Fire

The Drawing of Disegno

Drawing Sketches

Drawing lnner and Outer Visions

Lineamenta of Alberti

Vasari's Speculation

Michelangelo's Concetto

Riddles On 'The Road to Prato'

Phantasia Th reshold

Beauty and Bees

Liver Divination

Bittersweet Visions

Michelangelo and Dioncrates: Colossal Artifice

Table of Contents - Threshold II ACTION

The Artist as Entrepreneur

The Drawing of the Soul

Drawing Bodies, Building Temples

Contrapposto Positioning

The Drawing of the Asterisk

The Drawing of the Triangle

Michelangelo and Albrecht Durer

The Face of San Lorenzo

Flesh Facade

Animated Constructions

The Drawing of the Interface

The Drawing of the Mode//o

The Inter-Connection of Diverse Parts

The Drawing of Profil10

The Drawing of the Flesh

The Drawing of Modani

The Drawing of the List

The Drawing of the Signature

Orawing on the Wall Drawing as De-Signing - Phantasia Destructuring

The Drawing of the Musde

The Drawing of the Stair

Table of Contents Threshold III LOVE

Between the Christian and Pagan - Drawings for Tommaso The Orientation of Desire

Hemaphrodism of the Soul

Diotima's Difficult Love

Tommaso de' Cavalieri -The Love of Which I Speak

The Rape of Ganyrnede

The Confrcrpposto of Ganymede

Tender Buttocks: The Ganymede of Poliphili

Ganymede in the VauR

Ganymede Paired with Tiiyus

Tityus Paired with Prometheus

The Curse of Prometheus

The RectoNerso of Tityus and the Risen Christ A Conceptual Space: Ganymede - Tityus - The Risen Christ The Mam'age of Poetry and hiesis

Threshold Dovetail

Library Choreography

The Poem at the Threshold

Pain Threshold

Poetry and Poiesis

CONCLUSION

Threshold Crossing

Bibliography

Chronology

Table of Contents Acknowledgements

For both the construction of the threshold and guidance in my passage I thank Dr. At berto Parez-Gomez for his support of my efforts, considered criticism and teaching a philosophy centred on love. For the opportunity to study original drawings and documents of Michelangelo, I wish to recognize the cooperation of the British Museum's Room for Drawings and Prints in London, the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, and the Biblioteca Laurenziana in . I wish to acknowledge Tracey Eve Winton for being my humourous muse and careful transiator, Terrance Galvin for his intelledual astuteness, Dr. Neil Hartrnan and Ross Boyd for consciousness proof-reading and Marta Franco for insightful comrnentary. Thanks to Sheryl Boyle for her Hemetic sense, and Jessica Hecht for her 'Breathing Apparatus'. I wish to acknowledge the financial support of Fonds pour la Formation de Chercheurs et l'Aide d la Research (FCAR) and McGill University Fellowship. As a final note, I give thanks to Susie a Spurdens for directions within the labyrinth, especially the map to Alberto's backdoor at the beginning of it ail.

i Acknowledgments Abstract

The following thesis is a meditation on the drawings of Michelangelo that are connected to his three projects at San Lorenzo and a series of 'gift' drawings for Tomasso de' Cavalieri. The drawings offer a glimpse of his radically inventive imagination that calls for an architecture rooted in the sou1 and based on the appearance of a 'live' and an ernotive body. Engaged within a holistic fabrication of architecture, both the recto and the verso of the sheet are constnicted as palimpsests compfised of design sketches, figurative studies. poetic fragments and pragmatic calculations. As instruments of communication, MichelangeIo's paper templates are intermediaries between the 'Divine One's' mindful hand and the scarpellini's chisel. A line can be traced from the outline of his disegno, the profillo of a face and the cut line of his modani Poetry and profiles cross- pollinate in a poiesis of architecture that culminates at a threshold - the hinge between being and becoming - the place where Love tosses in his sleep.

Cette thèse prend comme objet les dessins que Michelange a tait pour ses trois projets à San Lorenzo et ceux offerts en cadeaux a Tomasso delCavalieri. Les dessins nous permettent de discerner l'imagination inventive et radicale de Michelange, et sa vision pour une architecture enracinée dans l'âme et basée sur l'apparition d'un corps 'vivant' et emotif. Lancé dans une reconstruction totale de l'architecture chaque feuille, dont le recto et verso comprennent des esquisses de dessin, des études figuratives, des fragments poétiques et des calculations pragmatiques, est construite comme un palimpseste. Consideré commes des instruments de communicaiton, les patrons en papier de Michelange sont d'intermediaires entre la main pensante de 1' 'Étre divin' et le ciseau du scarpellini On peut tracer une ligne de l'esquisse de son disegno au profillo d'une visage dessiné, ou a la ligne coupée de son modani. La poésie et les profiles s'interpénètrent dans un poiesis d'architecture qui mène à un seuii - le lien entre l'être et le devenir - le lieu où l'amour se tourne et retourne dans son sommeil. Paper Threshold: The Drawings of Michelangelo

Reading Between the Lines

Michelangelo did not write a treatise,' but he did leave an incredible legacy through his artistic production which crossed the boundaries of poetry, painting, sculpture and architecture. His body of work is so extensive, that its study should warrant a focus on one of its parts, one of his 'phases'. in order to approach an understanding of his 'holistic' vision.

His drawings offer a type of visual treatise, a datum and a point of depaiture for an interpretative study. They offer a common 'surface of speculation' where various artistic modes intersect and his process of working can be re-created. His design drawings are not merely re-presentations, but are instants in which the dynamics of his architecture are present

' Atthough Michebngelo expressed a desire to write a treatise, he never wrote one. From Condivi's account of Michehngeb's intentions, the major t heme of Michelangelo's t reatise wouM have been the hurnan body that would have been written expressly for painters and sculptors with particular attention on the skeleton. writes: "...he often had in his mind the wish to write, for the sake of sculptors and painters. a treatise on the movements of the human body, its aspect, and corrceming the bones. with an ingenious theory of his own, devised after long practice. He would have done it had he not mistwted his powers. lest they should not suffice to treat with dignity and grace of such a subject. like one practiced in the sciences and in rhetoric." Ascanio Condivi, Life of MichelangeIo, tram Charles Holroyd (London: Duckworth and Company. 1911). p. 69.

Conceming the documentation of Buonarroti's thoughts, a biography was written by Michelangelo's young disciple, Ascanio Condivi, who wrote while Michelangeb spoke. Vita di Michelangelo was published in 1553. Later after Michebngelo died in 1564, Vasari. wrote an account of Michelangelo's life in which he incorporated some of Condivi's material as well as conversations that he had with Michelangeb in the 15501s,that was part of Vasafis first book. Vasari's second expanded book on Michelangelo was published in 1568. As well, there are The Dialogues of Rome by Francisco de Holbnda. De Holbnda vent over a decade in the humanist circles of ltaly and was a Portuguese miniature painter. Also in existence are Mlchelangelo's conversations in the 1540's with his friend the Florentine humanist. Donato Giannotti. The most solid reconstruction of Mlchehngeb's conceptions rest within his letters and poems. Conceming the latter Luigi del Riccio. a friend of Michebngelo, insisteci that a selection of 105 poems shouid O be published. However, this project was abandoned upon the death of del Riccio.

1 Introduction Woodcut, Hypnemtomhia Polyphili (1499) Polyphilo with Logistica and Thdernia confronts aie Ihree doors. This thesis reads between the lines of the early drawings of Michelangelo and 0 focuses on a dissertation that reflects on his thinking and making. Most of the drawings are connected with his projects for San Lorenzo's church and library, between 1527 and 1~34.~These years marked Michelangelo's return to Florence, his initial development as an 'architect', the beginning of his relationship with a young Roman nobleman, Tomasso de' Cavalieri and his subsequent departure to Rome in 1534. The drawings of this period include: rectoherso architectural design drawings, a series of paper templates for the stonecutters and 'gift' drawings for de' Cavalieri.

Threshold of Three

The thesis is structured in three parts: "Vision", 'Action" and "Love" which relate and mirror the three modes of living outlined by Aristotle - vita contemplativa. vita activa and vita voluptuaria. This link, in turn, refers to the three thresholds t hat conf ronts Polyphilio in the early Renaissance treatise. Hypnerotomachîa 0 Polyphili (1499). These thresholds, frame three different modes of interpreting the life and work of Michelangelo. The thematic culmination of the thesis is the threshold which lies between the ricetto and the reading room of the . Analogically, this threshold is frarned as vifa voluptuaria, the middle door of erotic knowledge which Polyphilio uttimately chooses.

Michelangelo's vision is rooted in the imagination which, in the context of the Renaissance, lies between the intellect and the senses (the experience of the 'live' world). Phantasîa marks an Aristotelian threshold where the body and mind meet. Michelangelo's work is founded on the marriage of the hand and the intellect. This understanding differs from the separation of mind and body that is rooted in Plato's statement of the thing as a mere shadow of the idea. However, it is not until the time of Galileo Galilei (1564-1 642) that the closed world of the

See Chronology in Apperidix. 2 lnt roduct ion cosmology evident in the Renaissance is dissolved with the discovery of infinl~.~ The world of sense can no longer be trusted. Galileo goes outside of the 'live' world of experience and proves his scientific hypothesis through abstract mathematical models that operate outside the constraints of earth's gravity. time and a particular space. One kind of motion replaces the multiple and distinct celestiai and terrestrial motions of Aristotie.'

"The 'new science' of Galileo was more than just another cosmological hypothesis; it implied a radical subversion of the traditional astrobiological world view. The new science pretended to substitute for reality of the live world. infinitely diverse. always in motion and defined by quaiities. a perfectly intelligible world. determined exclusively by its geometrical and quantitative properties."

The world of experience and the surface of appearance are doubted - empirical study, which is outside the realm of the everyday world as lived, becomes the mode for the discovery of an abstracted 'truth'.

René Descartes (1596-1650) in his Discourse on Method and the Meditations, provided a type of proof which separated the body from the mind. in his statement. "1 think. therefore. I am." The modem scientific sensibility was born and the imagination as a place of synthesis and knowledge is not re-addressed until lmmanuel Kant (1724-1 804).' Michelangelo and the cosmology evident in the Renaissance offer a vehicle to explore the nature of imagination and the

' Alexander Koyré, From the Cbed WoM to the Infinite Universe (London, 1 970). ' The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, ed. Robert Audi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 291. Alberto Perez-Gomez, Architecture and the Cnsis of Modem Science (Cambridge. Mass.: MIT Press, 1983). p. 19. René Descartes, Discourse on Methodand the Mditatrions, trans. F. E. SutclifFe (Loridon, Penguin Classics, 1968), p. 54. Descartes expresses with mathematical certainty, the prove of his 'existence': Yhsn, examining attentively what I was, and seeing that I could pretend that I had no body and that there was no woriâ or place that I was in. but that l could not, for al1 that, pretend that I did not exist , and t hat, on the contrary, f rom the very fact that I thought of doubting the trut h of ot her t hings, it followed very evidently and very certainly that I exkted. .." Descartes, Discourse on Method and the Meditatbns, p. 54. ' lmmanuel Kant's epoch-making Cnïique of Pure Reason was published in 1781. Kant argued that no evidence of human freedom is forthcoming from empirical knowledge.

3 Introduction Study for a Resurrection Florence. Casa Buonarroti, 33.1 x 19.8 cm Black Chaik merger of the mind and body. The drawings stand as thresholds in themselves 0 - intermediaries between Michelangelo's inner vision and the outer world.

As part of the 'live' world, Michelangelo drew the human body and his architectural projects in an animated state. The drawing evokes motion and emotion. Unlike his contemporary and rival , Michelangelo's drawings rarely contained sketches of machines or instruments. they almost exclusively focused on the human body as an analogy of the larger world:

"The extensive universalism in portraying the manifold aspects of nature that Leonardo called for in the painter was not accepted by Michelangelo. Instead, ho sought to arrive at a universalism in depth.' For him, al1 the aspects and forces of the macrocosm should be comprised in the human body."

Michelangelo as a man of 'action' was not removed from the working- world. His drawings for the facade of San Lorenzo. the Laurentian Library and the a are a testament of both his poetic and pragmatic abilities. This is evident in the many (paper) temptates he made for his stonecutters. Likewise, there are the architectural design drawings that contain sketches of the human figure, fragments of poetry and lists of calculations. The drawings are palimpsests. which reveal the inter-connectedness of Michelangelo's imagination.The drawings are not objectified from the process of designing. but

' "Depth and 'bacK (and 'behind') - It is pre-eminently the dimension of the hidden. There must be depth since there is a point whence I see - since the world surrounds me. Depth is the means the things have to remain distinct, to remain things, Mile not being what I look at present. It is pre-eminently the dimension of the simuttaneous. Wlhout it, there would not be a world or Being, there wouid only be a mobile zone of diiinctness which couiâ not be brought here without quitting al1 the rest - and a 'synthesis' of these 'views'. Whereas, by virtue of depth, they coexist in degrees of proximity, they slip into one another and integrate themselves. It is hence because of depth that the things have a flesh: that 6,oppose to my inspection obstacles, a resistance which is precisely their reality, their 'openness', their totum simul. The look does not overcome depth, it goes around it." Maurice Merleau-Ponty, uWorking Notesn, The Visible and the Invisible (Evanston, III: Northwestern University Press, 1968). p. 21 9. O Charles de Tolnay, The Artistic Character of Micheiangelo", The Complete Work of Michelangelo (New York: Reynat and Company, 1965). p. 44.

4 lnt roâuct ion Study for a Resurrection Florence. Casa Buonarrob. 33.1 x 19.8 cm Black Chaik are a means of developing the conceno as well as the basis for the work at hand.

The drawings emerge from Michelangelo's composite philosophy which incorporates both a Christian and Platonic sensibility within the realm of am biguity, Buonarroti defies easy academ ic categorization. Eugenio Garin States that 'Michelangelo' is a philosophy in itself. It is not necessarily Christian or Platonic but proposes to hold both in the same space without collapsing. A living tension is the result. "..Amay be asked, did he atso learn and make his own al1 the complex and muddy culture of Ficinian Neoptatonism and work out his synthesis of antiquity and Christianity in conformity with the modes and symbols of the great Platonist ? To explain the genesis and significance of his works, is it required to make of him a thoroughgoing and conscious participant in that reality ? That is precisely the problem: not to explain some of his images, as could easily be done. by referring back to the writings of Ficino, Pico or others of their group, but to demonstrate that the vision of humanity - for what is involved - expressed in his 'stones' and his pictures is translated into words ..."lt is not," Tolnay concedes. "a mere illustrative translation in imagery of a given philosophic system, but a philosophy in itself - a creative synthesis in visual syrnbols of transcent idealism." " 'O

The drawings in themselves formulate a philosophy of inclusion which bring together disparate parts to form a cohesive whole. Michelangelo's drawings approach a kind of hyper-dialectic in which different philosophical and artistic positions are held simultaneously. The 20th century philosopher, Merleau-Ponty articulates the notion of hyper-dialectic as a strategy to transcend the dialectic. He dismisses the notion of either/or for an inclusionary philosophy of both as a way of approaching truth: "...the only good dialectic is the hyperdialectic. What we cal1 hyperdialectic is a thought that on the contrary is capable of reaching truth because it envisages without restriction the plurality of the relationships and what has been called am biguity." "

'O Eugenio Garin, 'Miche4ngelo's Culutal Formationn, The Complete Workof Mkhelengeb (New York: Reynal and Company, l965), p. 527. " Maurice Merleau-Ponty, "Interrogation and the Dialectic", The Visible and the Invisible (Evanston, III.: Northwestem Universly Press, 1968), p. 95.

5 Introduction Copy Made AIter Mithelangolo,The Rapo of Ganymodo Royal Library, Windsor Cas* 19.2 x 26 cm Black Chalk The drawings offer glimpses that form part of the emotional content of the overall 0 work. They are not descriptive or prescriptive but evoke response. Michelangelo rarely drew hard-line drawings or perspectives and as such does not offer an objectified view. Drawing is a verb.

Michelangelo' s drawings offer a model of working that only a few contemporary architects. such as Carlo Scarpa, have approached. Drawing instead of a descriptive tool '* is an interpretative one. which calls on the participation of the fellow artis?, architect or workman. Michelangelo's ambiguous drawings offer multiple readingç. In some drawings the recto and the verso of the sheet contain opposite yet inter-related themes. The sheet is the flesh of Michelangelo's thought, in which opposite forces meet. A living tension is the resuit - a tension that denies disclosure and collapse but rather insures the body of his work will always carry an unfathomable depth. That live beat continues, his work continues to engage the modem imagination through its nonperspectival and a t herefore, nonobjectifying approach to designing practices. The Resolution of Love

Love is an underlying emotion in the work of Michelangelo. Being a Christian and a devout Catholic, his work cannot be separated from his love of God. As well as his love of men, in particular, Tomasso de' Cavalieri, was an operative part of his artistic production. The thesis will examine the nature of love in the Renaissance and the rnyths of Antiquity that provide the theme for several drawings that were presented as gifts to de' Cavalieri. Michelangelo's sexual orientation and its celebration form a guiding force which infiitrate his poetry, drawing and architecture. If love brings two people together, eros is also a underlying force in the creation of metaphor. Metaphor, like love, offers us a resistance to the flattening of the 'live' world of our contemporary, technological landscape.

" Our contemporary architectural drawing practices. in contrast to Michelangelo. derive from the tradition of descriptive geometry which was formulateci by Gaspard Monge's Géumdtne DescrNtive in 1795.

6 Introduction Vision

Drawing Fire

Only with fire can the smith shape iron from his conception into fine, dear work; neither, without fire, can any artist refine and bring gold to ifs highest state, nor can the unique phoenix be revived unless first burned. And so, if 1 die burning, I hope to rise again brighter among those whom death augments and time no longer hurts.'

Let the story begin with the end. Blacken paper floated in the air as a fire illuminated a dark room. It was Saturday, February 12th, 1564. As the story goes, Michelangelo "...burned or caused to be bumed two lots of a large number of drawings, sketches and cartoons, no doubt with some of the verses. He made a simple declaratory will, leaving his sou1 to God, his body to the earth, and his possessions to his nearest relations, in three sentences."

Fortunately, some of the drawings have survived as testament to the genius of Michelangelo. Most of these drawings may be found in Archivio Buonarroti and Casa Buonarroti in Florence, the Vatican Library in Rome, the Room of Drawings and Prints at the British Museum in London, the Royal Library at Windsor Castle and the Ashmolean Museum in ~xford?Other drawings, although documented in Michelangelo's correspondence, remain lost.

In viewing the drawings, we come close to the evident relation between the hand and the mind in the work of Michelangelo. Confronted with the originals, one

1 Sonnet, ca. 1532, probably for Tommaso de* Cavalieri. Among the earliest of the poems that Michefangelo prepared for publication in 1546. Michelangelo Buonarroti, 73e Poetry of Michelangelo, trans. James Saslow (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1gQl), p. 157. George Bull. Michelangelo: A Biogaphy (London: Penguin Books, 1896). p. 413. "or a complete listing of the locations of Michelangelo's drawings woridwide see: Charles de Tolnay, Corpus dei Disegni di Michelangelo, (Novara: lstituto Geographico de Agoçtini, 1980), vols. I - IV.

7 Threshold 1: Vision feels what Walter Benjamin (1892-1 940) articulated in describing the ditference 0 between the copy and the adual work. He points out the importance of aura, in his sem inal essay, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical ~eproduction.~If it is in the copy of the work that the aura of the work of art withers, conversely it is within the 'presence' of the original that history (the story) bewmes alive in the vibrancy of the 'real' work. The experience of viewing the drawings bewmes a meditation, a kind of reverse process, of tracing the Iine back through its subtle nuances to Michelangelo's vision - a 'drawing-out' of his imagination.

As a comprehensive reproduction of Michelangelo's drawings, Charles de Tolnay, in his Corpus dei Disegni di ~ichelangelo,~documents six hundred and thirty-three drawings attributed to Michelangelo. In its four volumes, the Corpus contains full colour reproductions of the drawings, some of them full scale and where necessary both the recto and the verso of the sheet. A vast majority of the drawings are palimpsests (especially when backlit) wmprised of quick architectural sketches, overlaid with partially rendered nude figures, fragments of poetry, accounting lists and charts. The drawing can be seen both as a screen to look through and a mirror that reflects the world and work of Buonarroti. These drawings, together with Michelangelo's letters and poetry, are an assemblage of 'paper works' that fomi a type of composite treatise in which his thoughts on painting, sculpture and, in particular, architecture may be illuminated.

The Drawing of Disegno

Michelangelo in his dialogues with Francisco de Hollanda states the primacy of drawing as related to the power of design:

4 Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1968), pp. 21 7- 251. 5 Within the Corpus dei Disegni di Michelangelo, Volume I is comprised of drawings up to 1520, Volume II deals mostly with drawings for the Medici Chapel up to 1534, Volume III includes drawings up to Michelangelo's death in 1564. Volume IV is a composite volume that includes many of his architectural design drawings and foms the basis of my thesis. Where possible, the same sheet numbers for Michelangelo's drawings indicated in de Tolnay's Corpus are also used in this thesis.

8 T hreshold 1: Vision "Let this be plain to all: design (O desenho), or as it is called by another name, drawing (debuxo), wnstitutes the fountainhead (fonte) and substance (corpo)of painting and sculpture and of architecture and every other kind of painting (genero de pintar) and is the root of al1 sciences (sciencias). Let him who has attainad the possession of this be assured that he possesses a great treasure; he will be able to make figures taller than any tower (feguras mais altas que nenhuma torre), both painted and cawed, and he will find no wall or side of a building that will not prove narrow and small for his great imaginings (manhanimas imaginaçbes). He will be able to paint very smoothly (mui suavemente) with more skill, daring and patience (saber, ousadia e paciencia) than mere painters an; finally, the scant space (pequeno spap) of a piece of parchment he will be most perfect and grand, as great as in al1 other ways of working."

In the words of Michelangelo, the master of the painting, sculpture and architecture, drawing is identified with disegno as the source from which springs art in al1 its forrns7 Disegno is linked with the Renaissance ideas of God, man and the individual imagination. Phantasia, the vision of 'great imaginings', is the key to unlocking this Renaissance mindset. A fundamental tenet of its a philosophy is the divine nature of man. Michelangelo's knowledge of God may consist of becoming like God in order to see God.

Paracelsus (1493-1 541 ), a Swiss chemist, physician, natural philosopher and a proponent of Renaissance mysticism, declares the imagination to be like the "sun whose light is not tangible but which can set flame to a house." The

6 Francisco de Hollanda, Four Dialogues on Painting, trans. A.F.G. Bell (London, 1928), p.68. Cited in, Summers, Michelangelo and the Language of Arf, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), p. 259. Summers points out: 'The rernarks on the colossal achievements of disegno recall not only Michelangelo's vision in the quarry but also the scherne of his master to fresco the walls of the city of Florence." ~bid..526. Heidegger like Michelangelo makes the analogy of water in relation to the genesis of a work. 'To create means to fetch frorn the source. And to fetch from the source means to take up what springs forth and to bring what has so been received." Martin Heidegger, 'What Are Poets FOI?", Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), p.120. a Richard Kearney, The Wake of the Imagination (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988). p. 159. Richard Keamey points out the condemnation of the imagination stems from both biblical and a Greek culture: 'Adam's sin was to have sought to becorne 'like god' by aquiring the imaginative

9 Threshold 1: Vision transcendental Sun is within man's grasp and he is capable of harbouring the 0 divine flame. Within the Renaissance, the stigma of the Promethean theft is removed and through the imagination man "...bas the power to decipher the

hidden cosmic design." 'O This, as well, is mirrored by the ltalian thinker, Giordano Bruno (1548-1 600) who hailed the imagination as the creative source

of thought, " 'the first vestment' of the Spirit which precedes and indeed creates

both reason and the body." l1 It is through the imagination that the artist can discover the base, 'the root of al1 sciences'.

Cennino Cennini brings together painting, poetry and science for the creation of the centaur: ".. .painting.. .demands fantasy and skill of hand, to find things, not seen, seeking them beneath the shadows of the natural, and fixing them with the hand, showing that wbich is not, to be. And rightly deserves to be seated at the rank of science, and to be crowned together with poetry. The reason is this: that the poet with science is free to be able to bind together, yes or no, as he pleases, according to his wish. Similarly, the freedorn is given the painter to compose a figure upright, seated, half man, half horse, as he pleases, acwrding to his fantasy." l2

Imagination is a vital faculty, a threshold, in which the intellect and senses are united in an effort to understand the world, as a fundamental component in the formulation of knowledge. Disegno is the source. lt is the fountainhead (fonte)

from which "Architecture and sculpture are as rivers that are borne from it." l3 Disegno unites the arts and differentiates art from 'craft' - the painter bewmes a real painter under its influence. In this Iight, disegno is like a soul, that infuses

knowledge of good and evil. And Prometheus' crime was to have given men direct access to the fire of the gods thus enabling thern to becornes creators of their own world ....once man had received the stolen fire, he could not retum or ignore it. Imagination was an inalienable part of his inheritance." lbid., p. 424. 9 The myth of Prometheus is rnirrored in MichelangeIo's drawing of Tityus paired with the Risen I)ohrist on the drawing's verso. Please see Love. Chapter III, of my thesis for futther discussion. Kearney, The Wake of the Imagination, p. 160. 11 Cennini, C., Il libm del' arte, ed. H. 1hompson (New Haven, 1932-33), 2 Vols., Cap. 1. Cited in: Summers, Michelangelo and the Language of Art, p. 160- 12 Su mmers, Michelangelo end the Language of Att, p. 133. a l3Summen, Michelangelo and the Language of Art, p. 257.

10 Threshold 1: Vision a bodyt4with life and lifts man from the weight and the slavery of 'work'. Disegno as 'root of al1 sciences' arises from an essence - a seminal seed. Therefore, in the process of design the smallest piece of parchment, the faintest line may wntain the masterpiece. For Paracelsus seeds are ".. .forces and archetypes of finest corporeality hidden in objects of nature and imprinting on them a certain signature." l5 The artist who can draw16 well, finds his fortune in the simplest outline. If God is the centre He is also the circurnferen~e.'~

Drawing Sketches

"...But my opinion is that he who knows how to draw well and does merely a foot or a hand or a neck, can paint everything created in the world; and yet there are painters who paint everything there is in the world so imperfectly and so much without worth that it would be better not to do it at all. One recognizes the knowledge of a great man in the increasing fear with which he does a thing the more he understands it... And not only is this as I tell you, but there is another wonder which seems greater, namely, that if a capable man merely makes a simple outline, Iike a person about to begin something, he will at once be known by it - if Apelles, as Apelles; if an ignorant painter, as an ignorant painter, And there is not necessity for more, neither more time, nor more experience,

14 As Merleau-Ponty pointed out: 'Descartes once said profoundly, the sou1 is nOt merely in the body like a pilot in a ship; it is wholly intenningled with the body. The body, in tum, is wholly animated..." cited in: Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Primacy of Perception (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), p. 5. l5 Walter Pagel, Paracelsus: An lntrodudion to Pt~ilosophicalMedicine in the Era of the Renaissance (New York: Kargerm, 1Q82), p.86. l6 The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines 'draw* as to pull, as a boat from water, a pen across paper. Also, to haul in, to attract, to take out (as a cork or a tooth), to take or get from a source, :i trace. to make one's way. Drawing in architecture. encompasses many of these definitions. This is in reference to Nicholas of Cusa's (1401-64) concept. He was a German philosopher and an important Renaissance Platonist. Cusa's central insight was that al1 oppositions are united in their infinite measure, so that what would be logical contradictions for finite things coexist without contradiction in Gd. Cusa attacked Aristotelians for their unwillingness to give up the principle of non-contradiction. Cited in, Robert Audi, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 531. The concept of the centre and the circumference is also present in Dante Alighieri's La Vita Nuova: 'As I looked at him again I saw Mm weeping piteously and he seemed to be waiting for me to say something; so taking courage, I began to talk with him as follows: 'Lord of nobility of soul, why do you weep ?" And he replied: Ego tanquam centrum circuli, cui simili modo se habent circumferentiae partes; tu autem non sic ( I am Iike the centre of a circle, to which the parts of the circumference are related in similar manner; you, however are not.)" Cited in: Dante Alighieri, La Vita Nuova, trans. by Barbara Reynolds (London: Penquin Classics, 1969), p. 42.

11 Threshold 1: Vision nor examination, for eyes which understood it and for those who know that by a single straight line... n 18

Vasari characterized sketches as '... a certain kind of initial drawings made to establish the fom of the poses and the first arrangement of the work." The essence of design that transcends time is captured within the moment of the gestural sketch. Disegno is the critical factor that distinguishes 'craft' from the 'art' of drawing and painting. A 'capable man' in the space of the sketch can envelop the genesis of the work. In a twe and opposite way, the finished work of an artist may have no bearing at al1 if it is not founded in the simplest sketch. The quickness of the sketch mirrors both the vitality of the mind and the profundity of thought. Many of Michelangelo's drawings consists of simple line drawings in some cases rnerely one or two strokes of a Pen. They appear as a type of shorthand in which the gesture of the line is indicative of the whole architectural choreography.

Drawing Inner and Outer Visions

The relationship between the subject and the object, between man and his world, is a central theme in the history of art. In the late Middle Ages, the work of art did not arise by man coming to terms with 'nature', but rather by the projection of an 'inner image' into matter. The early Renaissance was marked by the distancing of the outer world from the inner idea. One of this period's theorists, Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1 472) ". .. believed that the mental ability to perceive beauty could be attained only by experience and practice..." l9A vision which dampened the primacy of the individual imagination in favour of a more rationally-based approach to architecture. This theory arose more or less concurrently with a revival of Neoptatonic philosophy which took place within the sarne Florentine cultural circle. One of its proponents was Marcilio Ficino (1433-

- - -- l8Francisco de Hollanda. Dialogos em Roma (Porto, 1MO), p. 239. Cited in Robert J. Clements. Michelangelo: A Self-Portrait (New York: New York University Press, 1968), pp. 12-13. l9 , Idea: A Concept in M meory (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. 1968). p. 59.

12 Threshold 1: Vision 1499) who translated the works of Hernies Trismegistus and Plato. This a philosophy would later have influence in a more 'subjective' vision of art theory in the Late Renaissance. There would be a shift from Alberti's rational lineamenti and 'outer' vision to Giorgio Vasari's (151 1-1 574) more speculative notions of disegno interno or 'inner' vision.

The Lineamenta ~f Alberto

Disegno, first classified by Leon Battista Alberti in, della Pittura (1435-36) is central to the codification of artistic practices in the Renaissance. Alberti divided

painting into three categories: 20 circumscriptione, compositione, and ricevere di lumi. Circumscnptione and disegno were, for Alberti, one in the same. " Circumscriptione is nothing but the disegniamento of the border.. .a good circumscription, that is a good disegno... n 21

For Alberti, the best disegno is that which we do not see. The line of the outline should not be so apparent as to sacrifice depth. Alberti argued that a good disegno should not be readily apparent in the finished work. "1 Say that this circumscription ought to be made up of Iines of most subtle, almost such as will tend to escape notice.. .Because circumscription is nothing but the disegniamento of the border, which, when done with too apparent a Iine, will not indicate a margin or surface, but a break."

20 Likewise, a contemporary of Alberti, Piero della Francesca in his treatise, De propsectiva pingendi, divided painting again in t hree parts. Disegno, along wit h ~~mmens~rati~and colorare is one of the three categories. Piero explains, 'By disegno we mean the profiles and contours which are contained in the thing." Piero della Francesca, De prospectiva pingendi, ed. N. Fasola (Florence, 1942), p.63. 2 1 Leone Battisa Alberti, della Pittura, ed. L-Mallé (Florence, 1950) p. 82. a 22 Alberti. della Pittwa, p. 82.

13 Threshold 1: Vision As an extension of his thoughts on circumscription in relation ta architecture and not painting, Alberti in his De Re AedRScatorfa, (1450~" starts his Book I on the su bject of 1 ineaments:

"Let us therefore begin thus: the mole matter of building is wmposed of lineaments2' and structure ... Nor do lineaments have anything to do with material, but they are of such a nature that we may recognize the same lineaments in several different buildings that share one and the same form, that is when the parts, as well as siting and order, correspond with one another in their every line and angle. It is quite possible to project whole forms in the mind without any recourse to the material, by designing and detemining a fixed orientation and wnjunction for the various lines and angles. Since that is the case, let lineaments be the precise and correct outline, wnceived in the mind, made up of lines and angles, and perfected in the leamed intellect and imagination." ''

Alberti articulates a separation of drawing and building through a division between Iineaments and building - a distancing between the mind and the material world. Although lineaments, as described by Alberti seem to have an a objectifying quality in their 'precise and correct outline', this has to be qualified in the working context of the Renaissance. For an understanding of this subject, Alberto Perez-Gomez points out that, "In the Renaissance, architectural drawing was perceived as a symbolic intention to be fulfilled in the building..mot a set of instructions for building, the distance between the idea and matter, between design and construction, would be reconciled through the architectJsown

involvement in building." 26 The contemporary split between a building and the working drawing would only happen after the invention of descriptive geometries

23 Alberti presented Pope Nicholas with a version of his architectural treatise in 1450. It came to be printed in 1486 sorne fourteen years after the Alberti's death. The introduction was written by Angelo Poliziano and addressed to Lorenzo denMedici.From introduction, Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, translated by Joesph Rykwert, Neil Leach, Robert Tavemor Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1988), pp. xvi, xviii. I4 '...the word lineamenta has kentranslated variously as designi (Bartoli). rneaning drawings and designs... We have translated it therefore as 'Iineaments" for the most part, which encompasses 'lines," 'Iinear characteristics," and sol by implication, design ..." from the Glossary, Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of BuiMing in Ten Books, trans. by Joseph Rywert, pp. 422-423. 25 Alberti, On the M of Buiidiing in Ten Books, trans. Rykwert, p. 7.

14 Threshold 1: Vision in the 18th century by Gaspard Monge, in which drawings became a instrumentalized and unambiguous. For Edmund Husserl (1859-1 938)27the beginning of the crisis of modem man and his world, "coincides with the end of classical geometry, a geornetry of the Lebenswelt, the world as lived, and the appearance of non-Euclidean geometries." '' At this point "Mathematical thought has been substituted for metaphor.. .n 29

Alberti continues in Book II to dampen the architect's enthusiasrn as any sign of imagination seems to be ternpered by a certain coolness. He cautions the architect to be prudent and wise in his decisions. The lineaments of Alberti's disegno are sober lines tempered with the consideration of hindsight:

"...allow the proposals to settle a while, and wait until your initial enthusiasm for the idea has mellowed and you have a clearer impression of everything; then, once your judgment is govemed by soberer thoughts than your enthusiasm for inventions, you will be able to judge the matter more thoroughly. For in every undertaking time brings to light many observations and considerations that might otherwise have escaped the notice of even the most capable of men." "

Alberti's treatise della Pittura focuses more on technique than on speculation. It is more concerned with seeing with the outer eye. Panofsky's writings on the Renaissance frames art theory as it developed in the fifteenth century in Florence: "The purpose of art theory.. .was primarily practical. only secondarily historical and apologetic, and in no way speculative. That is, it aimed at nothing more than, on the one hand, to legitirnize contemporary art as the genuine heir of Greco-Roman antiquity and... on the other hand, to provide artists with firm

26 Alberto Perez-Gornez. 'Architecture as Drawing'. Journal of Architectural Education. Vol. 36 SyVlnter. 1982). p. 3. Husserl is considered the founder of Phenomenology. His philosophy is directed towards the integrating of science and wider foms of human adivity. Al berto Perez-Gornez. Architectum and Me Criss of Modem Science (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1983). p.S. 29 Pe rez-Gomez. Architecture and the Cnsis of Modem Science. p. 6. 30 Alberti. On the Art of Building in Ten Books. Book II. trans. Rykwert. p. 35.

1s Threshold 1: Vision and 'scientifically' grounded niles for their creative activity." 31 It would seem that through following treatises on painting like that of Alberti, a formal and objective correctness would be reached. "Hamony of proportions and harmony of wlours and qualities - this is what Alberti and other art theorists in the Early Renaissance understood to be the nature of beauty." 32

Vasari's Speculation

In Giorgio Vasari's Florentine Acaderny, disegno moves from the margins of speculation to the centre. Disegno for Vasari and the members of his sixteenth century academy was far more than a technique for production. "The activity and idea of disegno was, for Vasari, more than simply the drawing of lines. Like the apprehension of the icon, it was a drawing-out as well - an epiphany that was an explication as much as it was a revelation." Vasari considered Michelangelo the preeminent master of disegno. Disegno was the evidence of the making of the work, of the drawingaut of the work, the working through of the artist, and the residue left in the artists' wake.

For Vasari and his contemporaries, disegno was the overriding vehicle for the making of any work of art. In, The Lives of Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects (1550), Vasari explains that, through disegno the project emerges and becomes sensible to the maker.

"Because design, father of our three arts, architecture, sculpture and painting, proceeding from the intellect, draws from many things a universal judgment, similar to a form or idea of al1 things of nature, which (forma or idea) is most singular in its measure; from whence it is that not only in human bodies and those of animals, but also in plants and in buildings and sculptures and paintings it knows the proportion that the whole has with the parts and that the parts have among themselves and with the whole together. And because from this knowledge arises a certain concept and judgment that is formed in the mind, which (conceffo

3 1 Panofsky, Idea, p. 51. 32 Panofsky, Idea, p. 54. Georges Dodds. 'On Disegno. Liminality and the lnner €yenl Histoncity of the Gaze. ColIected a Papers 1993 - 1994, Ivan Illich Seminar (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1994). p. 48.

16 Threshold 1: Vision or judgment) expressed with the hands is called disegno; one may conclude that this disegno is nothing else than an apparent expression and declaration of the concetto that is held in the mind (animo),and of that which is also is imagined in the mind (mente) and fabricated in the idea.. .n 34

Like Michelangelo's wmrnentary on drawing, Vasari links the three arts with the disegno. In a rather concise way he explains that design proceeds from the intellect and draws out the idea from the experience of the world. The idea is no longer present a prion in the mind of the artist (as in the Medieval 'inner vision') but arises as a concefto that is engendered on the basis of experience. This idea is then manifested by the hand. As Panofsky points out: "The idea no longer dwells or preexists, but rather arises, acquired, foned or sculpted." IS

Michelangelo's Concet20

Michelangelo avoided the use of the word idea. As Panofsky points out, "He instead used concetto. Concetto when it does not simple stand for 'thought', a 'concept', or 'plan', means the free, creative notion that constitutes its own object, so that it in turn can become the model for extemal shaping.. .n 36 Michelangelo's theory of concetto is veiled in his omate garrnent of poetry, in this case articulated as a love poem, Non ha I'oltimo arfïsta aicun concelto.

Not even the best of attists has any conception mat a single marble block does not contain within its excess, and that is oniy attained by the hand that obeys the intellect. ''

Gio~io Vasari, Le vite de' pi<) ecce/lentipitton scultori ed amhitettori, ed. O. Milanesi, (Florence, 19û6), 8 vols., vol. 1, p. 168. Cited in Summers, Michelangelo and the Language of Art, p. 519. Summers points out that Vasari's definition of disegno, important in any discussion of concetto, is based upon Aristotle's definition of scientific knowfedge, 'art anses menfrom many notions gained by experience one universal judgment about a dass of objeds is produced." S um mers, Michelangelo and the Language of MIp. 187. 35 Panofsky, Idea, p. 62. 36 Panofsky, Idea, p. 119. 37 .Varchi explained the term intelktzfto in lhree ways: the intellect is fint of al1 identified with the human soul; it is also that part of the sou1 that concerns itself with the intelligible; and in another aspect it is the fantasia ...disegno makes possible the imaginings, not of ideas, but of beautiful

17 Threshold 1: Vision MichelangeIo Drawing for Marble Bloclo Archivio Buonarroti Florence. ltaly

The Three Rings of Micheiangelo Detail of Drawing for MarMe Blocks Archivio Buonarroti Florence. Itaiy The pain 1 flee from and the joy 1 hope for are sirnilarly hidden in you, lovely lady, lofty and divine; but, to rny mortal harrn, my art gives results the reverse if what I wish. Love, therefore, cannot be blamed for my pain, nor can your beauty, your hardness, or your scorn, not fortune, nor my destiny, nor chance,

if you hold both death and mercy in your hean at the same time, and my lowly wits, though burning, cannot draw from it anything but death. '

In the initial Iines of the poem, the mncetto is explained as being present in the marble block, potentially it contains al1 the figures that can be imagined and carved." The task of the artist is to reveal this conception through a process of subtraction," in which the work of art acts as a revelation. Michelangelo, presented with the marble's inert matter, makes it alive with transcendental but evident Iight of his divine grace. The hammer of the lowly artisan transcends its a position to be like that of the Creator. The artist is a magician who can reveal the things, made perfect by art. The fantasia becomes the wings by wtiich we escape ouf mortal prison." Summers, Michelangelo and The Language of Art, p. 205. 38 Saslow, The Poetry of Michelangelo, p. 302. 39 As a testament of his belief that figures were present in the raw block of Stone. Michelangelo made a number of drawings specifying the general shape and dimensions for the roughed-out blocks of marble and macigno to be quamed for both his sculptural and architectural projects. On each 'stone' he also drew three interiocking rings that represented the three arts. The rings are interiaced in such a way that the circumference of each passes through the centre of the other two, so that they are equally united and separate. This symbol was not only his signature but indicated his 'organic' theory of aft in which painting, sculpture and architecture were inter- related. 40 In a letter addressed to Bendetto Varchi. Michelangelo expresses the process of suôtradion in sculpture and in an opposite way, painting as a additive process of layering. 60th are actions rooted in disegno. The letter is dated, March, 1547. '1 admit that it seems to me that painting may be held to be good in the degree in whicti it approxirnates to relief, and relief to be bad in the degree in which it approximates painting. I used therefore to think that painting derived its light from sculpture and that between the two the difference was as that between the sun and the moon. Now, since I have read the passage in your paper... l have altered my opinion...p ainting and sculpture are one in the same ...By sculpture I mean that which is fashioned by the effort of cutting away, that which is fashioned by the method of building up king like ont0 painting. It suffices... to say sculpture and painting proceed from one and the same faculty of understanding." Michelangelo Buonarroti, fhe LeIters of Michelangelo, trans. EH. Ramsden (London: Peter Owen Lirnited, 1963), p. 75.

18 Threshold 1: Vision invisible. This is dependent on a hamonic correspondence between the tempo 0 of the hammer and the temperament of the artist. Marsilio Ficino suggests: "...chiseling and warming up, when done in hamony, like the heavenly harmony which once poured power in the material, arouses that power and strengthens it the way wind does a fire, and makes manifest what was hidden before, as fire will bring out letters written in onion juice that were previously invisible... n 41

As the poern indicates, the manner in which the figure comes into being is dependent on the skill of the artist, in the way it 'obeys the intellect'. A relationship has to be established between the hand and the mind analogous to the harmony between earthly action and heavenly movement. The brillance of the artist's concetto is matched with the skill of his hand. This is analogous to the relationship between Buonarroti and his beloved. It is only because of Michelangelo's 'mortal harrn' that death is drawn forth instead of love and his art does not equal his expectations. He can only be a master of the arts by being a master of the art of love which insures harmony between the hand and the heart, the lover and the beloved, man and God. The division between the subject and the object is resolved through love, qualified as a 'holistic' engagement in the world. A harmony ensures a universe. In order for 'a joining' be achieved a correspondence rnust occuf that circumscribes movement and 'being moved'- motion and emotion in a graceful embrace. "As movement in the heavens is lightest, freest and thus the most graceful, perfection as a state of grace or being most fully alive is achieved the more our movements 'adjust to' and 'fit' with

those of the heavens." 42

Fortunately there exists an extensive commentary on the sonnet Non ha I'ottjmo artista in se alcun concetto which was explicitly approved by Michelangeto himself. Written by Benedetto Varchi (1502-1565). who made it the principal text

4 1 Marsilio Ficino, The Book of Life. trans. Charles Boer (Dallas: Spring Publication), p.151. 42 Helmut Klassen. MicheI~ngeIo:Architecture and the Vision of Anatomy (Montreal: McGill a School of Architecture, History and Theory Program. Master Thesis, 1WO), p.32.

19 Threshold 1: Vision of his first Lezzione on Michelangelo's poetry and artistic ideas, it was delivered 0 to the Florentine Academy in March, 1547:

"In this place our Poet's concete denotes that which, as we said above, is called in Greek idea, in Latin exemplar, is 'model'; that is, that fom or image, called by some people the intention, that we have within our imagination, of everything that we intend to will or to make or to Say; which (form of image), although spiritual.. .is for that reason the efficient cause of everything that can be said or made. Wherefore the Philosopher (Aristotle) said in the Seventh Book of the First Philosophy (Metaphysics): "The active form, as regards the bed, is in the sou1 of the artisan.n n 44

Varchi, instead of aligning himself with the Platonists, interpreted Michelangelo's poem in an Aristotelian sense. 'In itself the thought that the 'idea' of the work of art is present in the artist, is just as Aristotelian as the notion that the work of art itself lies in stone or wood. It would only be 'Platonic' only if an unconditional supremacy of the ldea in relation to the realized work of art were maintained... n 45 Varchi in his cornmentary poem speaks of the influence of both Plato and ~ristotle,~in the work: "...ail Michelangelo's compositions are full of Socratic love and Platonic conceM.. he is the new Apoilo and the Apelles, and he does

not Say words, but things, taken not only from Plato but also Aristotle." 47

Riddles On "The Road to Prato"

In literary terms, Michelangelo expressed his theory of art through his letters, poems and, in the case of "The Road to Praton,as a riddle. Buonarroti speaks of the imagination as a necessary component in the creation of knowledge

43 Varchi later in his cornmentary says, ' that concatto equals intention... concetto is the &ma Fens that exists in the sou1 of the artist.' from Summen. p. 212. Benedetto Varchi, Due Lezioni di messer Benedetto Varchi (1 549). p. XCIV. in Panofsky's ldea: A Concept in AR Theor',in Italian, pp. 119-120. " Panofsky, Ides, pp. 120-121. 46 Summers commente on the Platonic and Aristotelian sensibilities inherent in the poem: 'For Plato, the imitative work was at two removes from ideal reality. He assumed that the artist works from appearance, and the question of the transformation of appearance either in the rnind of the painter or in its translation into Iines and colour did not arise. Aristotle, on the other hand, was concemed above al1 to explain how things corne to be as they are, and he defined the intention forrned in the artist's mind as one of the causes by virtue of which matter is transfonned." Sumrners, Michelengelo and the Languege of Ad, p. 21 0.

20 Threshold 1: Vision founded upon poetic truth. It was written while Michelangelo was at work on the 0 Medici Chapel sculptures and has been dated between 1525-1528. The purpose of this troubling document is unknown. The arguments, more ingenious and paradoxical than logical, are spun with a considerable amount of punning. The animated riddle is situated on a road to 'somewhere' in which knowledge is gained in passage. As if on a pilgrimage, the nomadic artist founds the truth by the way of the false.

"On the way of the true there is not any truth, but only the imagination of truth; and the twth is there where it is; as, on the road to Prato, Prato is not to be found but in the imagination, but rather is found where it is. So it is by way of the false, that the false is not found but in the imagination, if not there where it is, as has been said: Prato is never found on the way to Prato, but only where it is. And one is more certain of being outside Prato when he sees it at am's length, than he is when ten miles distant, unable to see it at ail. So, whoever is nearer the truth when he sees it, more knows himself not to be at the truth than does he who is far from it in a place from which he cannot see it; and (he who is nearer the truth) is more unhappy in al1 his works." "

The riddle is an indication of Michelangelotsthinking in which contraries are set in opposition. Double negatives create a positive. This is evident in his program for the sculpture of the Medici Chapel. Within its square room he placed the figures of and Day, Ousk and Dam on opposite sides of the roorn. The concept of opposites is as well present in the vestibule of the Laurentian Library, where a slippage seems to occur between the structural and decorative architectural components. There are various examples in his drawings in which the subject matter of the recto and the verso of the sheet are diametrically opposed.* In his many poems and in his theory of art in general, 'Aruth and falsehood are set symmetrically and antithetically as absolute principles...so that the area between them, the realm of human experience, bewmes the realrn of

47 Varchi, Due lewoni, p. 52, cited in Sumrners, MichelangeIo and the Language of Art, p. 206. " 1 Ricordi di Michelangelo. ed. Bardeschi Ciulich and Bamcchi, pp. 368-369,autograph dated after 1527. Cited in: Summers, Michelange/o and the Language of AR, p. 201 . 49 For the pairing of opposites on the recto/vecso of drawing sheets see Chapters II and III of my thesis.

21 Threshold 1: Vision the false a perfect this angle is the the true a perfect square that sits well way that leaves square that srts well on each side from the true on each side and goes ta the false mezo

th is angle is the way that leaves frorn the false and goes to the true

A graphic representation of the ride. 'The Road to Prato- as presented by Summers. M~chelangeloand the Language of Art. p 200. the imagination. compounded equally of the false and the true." In Francisco de Hollanda's Three Dialogues, there is a passage in which Michelangelo articulates his artistic theory similar to "The Road to Praton. Michelangelo comrnents on the importance of daring 51 as a critical component of any artistic endeavour:

"...poets and painters have power to dare, I mean dare to do whatever they may approve of ...for whenever a great painter does a work which appears to be false and lying, that falsity is very tnie, and if he were to put more truth into it. it would be a lie..." 52

The "Road to Praton continues with a second part. He describes God as the ultimate lirnit in which the imagination is absent and absolute truth exists. Within the realm of the 'live' world man is left with his imagination.

"The space of the way of the false is that space of the imagination that diminishes the more as it approaches the truth, as shown above (the upper triangle); the space of the way of the true is knowledge (of the true) that increases the more as it nears there (the lower triangle); and, as it is approached, he who has more knowledge, also knows more and more that he is outside of it. Let us Say that the true is four braccia on every side and that, in the true, imagination is absent, as is certain, because whoever sees God, who is tnith, may imagine no more; and so who distances himself from the true, diminishes the truth for himself and his imagination increases." "

Michelangelo in this passage constructs his riddle as a geometric construction, as a square, composed of two triangles. The square is the truth, analogous to God, comprised equally of the true and the false. Within the realm of God

1 Ricordi di Michelangeo. ed. Bardeschi Ciulich and Barocchi. pp. 368-369 cited in Summers. Michelangelo and the Language of Art, p. 202. Michelangelo is responding to a verse wtitten by the great Roman pet, Horce who wrote this verse on the abuse of painters in his text, Ars poetica: 'Painters and bards, you'll Say. the world agrees, Are free to dare whatsoever flights they please." Cited in Robert J. Clements, MichelangeIo, A Self-Porbait (New Yorlc: New York University Press, 1968). p. 166. 52 Cle ments. Michelangelo, Michelangelo. A Self-Pmaif, p. 1 68. 53 Sum mers. Michelangelo and the Language of Art, p. 20 1 .

22 Threshold 1: Vision imagination diminishes, as He knows all. Mankind distanced from God can only 0 seek Him through the invention of phantasia.

Truth is discovered by the way of the false, by the way of imagination, which itself stands at a threshold between the intellect and the senses. Truth is fitted out in a garment of fiction, disguised in the construction of metaphor and myth. Within the context of our scientific and positivistic determinism, Gianni Vattimo postulates it is only within the oscillation between fact and fiction that the truth of the fable can be read. Vattimo calls for a "...fictionalized experience of reality... as our only possibility for freedom." " In the same sense, Michelangelo and his work are riddled in ambiguity Hich is a doubtful construction that holds the possibility of a double meaning. It lingers at a threshold. hovering between eitherfor - defying easy classification. Ambiguity weakens the hard 'scientific' fact, which is uncomfortable in the realm of nuance and the parade of double identities. Ambiguity offers a valid strategy of resistance within the context of our objectified, technological cultural landscape.

The Phantasia Threshold

Phsntasia is seen as a departure from Alberti's more sober geometrical projections. In Aristotelian terms, phantasia is a way of seeing that is situated between sense and the intellect. Because these two do not mix, sense must rise and the intelligible must descend. In this way phantasia is an 'intermediary' vision, situated between the worlds of fact and fiction. It is the place of myth. Phantasia is a way of artistic 'seeing' revealed as a rnannered construction of artifice. Phantasia enables the artist to "see clearly". It is like sense in that it perceives the particular, corporeal and present. However, ". .. it is superior to

54 Gia nn i Vatt imo, The End of Modemitjt: Nihilism end Henneneutics in hst-modem Culture, trans. Jon R. Snyder (Battimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1988), p. 29.

23 Threshold 1: Vision sense in that, with no extemal stimulus, it yet produces images, not only present, a but also past and future and as such cannot be brought to light by nature." "

Beauty and Bees

Because beauty is scattered, it is the responsibility of the artist to gather many things into one like a bee that cross-pollinates and gathers nectar from one flower to the next. The artist becomes a vagabond in his endless search for beauty. The senses of sight, hearing, smell and touch are never satisfied. His lack of being 'full' leads hirn to create in order to satiate his desire. "If we consider the delight of sense perception, we shall see therein the union of God and the soul. Indeed, every sense seeks its proper object with longing, finds its delight, and never wearied, seeks it again and again, because, 'the eye is not

filled with seeing, neither is the ear filled with hearing'." ~6 It is only God himself who is satiated, for he is both the centre and the circumference. For man it is only the grotteschi that fiil the eye.

Liver Divination

Melancholy, especially in the Renaissance, is tied to phantasia. Melancholy is a side-effect of phantasia and those born under Saturn, as was Michelangelo, were especially vulnerable. "As a faculty of the soul, the phantasia was not isolated, but rather existed in vital relationship to other faculties, mental states and activities. Perhaps most important for our present purposes, there was a close connection between fantasy and another pillar of the Renaissance psychology of genius: melancholy. Both active fantasy and melancholy were considered mixed blessings, capable of giving rise both to sublime thoughts and to madness."

55 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. De imaginatom (1501). Cited in Summers. Michelangelo and the Language of A/t, p. 113. Sumrners. MidielangeIo and the Language of Art, p. 95. 57 Surnrners, Michelangelo and the Language of AR, p. 117.

24 Threshold 1: Vision The brilliant vision of phantasia is wntrasted by the darkness of melancholy. In a terms of the Renaissance body as constructed through the lens of Antiquity, it was not only the eyes, but the liver that was described as both the organ of vision and passion. In Timaeus, Plato describes the belly as the counterbalanced by the liver which is smooth, close textured and bittersweet. The liver is a mirror. At night it is the place of divination and dreams. Reason and understanding are beyond it. The complement of the liver is the spleen. Its texture is hallow and bloodless in order to absorb and clear away the liver's impurities, like a duster kept handy to clean the mirror." In this base part of us, there exists a place for prophecy, epiphany and vision. Michelangelo in many of his letters, wrote that he had a vision as if in a dream. In a letter to Vasari he tries to recall the stairway for the Laurentian Library:

"As regards the staircase for the Library, of which I have heard so much, believe me, if I were abie to remember what I proposed to do with it no entreaties would have been necessary. 1 recall a certain staircase, as it were in a dream, but I do not think it is exactly what I thought of then.. .n 59

Bittersweet Visions

Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) proposed, in his Book of LifeJWthe care of the four humours of the body which are: blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile (choler): the latter two being located in the liver. One bile is bitter, the other sweet. The liver is the site of bittersweetness. In order to avoid the blackness of rnelan~hol~,~'Ficino prescribes various treatments for the balancing of the

" Plato, Timaeus and Critias, trans. Desmond Lee (Harmondsworth: Penquin Books, 1965). pp. 99-1 00. 5S Michelangelo, The Letters of Michelangelo, trans. EH. Ramsden, p. 157. The letter was dated September 28, 1555 from Rome. 60 Marsilio Ficino divides his Book of Life into three books. The first is titled, "On Caring for the Health of Students", the second, 'How to Prolong Your Life" and the third, "On Making Your Life Agree With The Heavens". The book is composed as a guide for the good health of men of letters who are subjed, more than others, to melancholica. 61 Ficino explains the buming of black bile: 'When the buming occurs, it is hamful to judgernent and wisdom, for when this humour rises and bums, it makes you upset and angry, what the Greeks cal1 'Mania,' what we cal1 madness. But even when it is extinguished, and its subtler and a clearer parts broken, and alf that is left is a fou1 soot, it makes you dull and stupid ...Only that

25 Threshold 1: Vision humours which are imperative for clearer artistic vision. During the Renaissance, beauty was a sign of a balanced proportioning of the humours. The Hermaphrodite, the offspring of Hermes and Aphrodite was thought to be the body of perfect balance and therefore clearest vision.

Ficino comments that there are three reasons why scholars become melancholics: "The first is heaven-caused, the second is natural and the third is human." 62 The heaven-caused condition develops because "...Mercury, who invites us to begin our studies, and Satum, who works them out and has us stick to them and make discoveries, are said by Astronomers to be wld and dry ...The natural cause seems to be that in the punuit of knowledge the soul is removed from external things to intemal things, as if moving from the circumference to the centre. While one is looking at this centre of man, it is neccssary to remain very still, to gather oneself at the centre, away from the circumference." " The human cause is through ourselves. "Because with Sagittarius, the mind often violently dries up and a great part of its moisture is wnsumed." "

Michelangelo's melancholic vision is a phantasia rooted in the world of experience. In his fervour he created images of artifice. "Fervour sharpens and illuminates the powers of the mind and one of the powers sharpened is phantasia; it brings forth strange and unheard inventions of the mind; it arranges these meditations in a fixed order, adoms the whole composition with unusual interweavings of words and thoughts." " Ink, graphite or chalk on a sheet of paper become one of the first articulations of Michelangelo's poetic visions. His drawings are transfonative thresholds that articulate a realm of possibility black bile, therefore, which we have called natural, is condudive to judgement and wisdorn. But not always! For if it cornes alone, it is too black, darkening the spirit with a thick mas. scanng the soul, and thus blocking thought ...Let black bile abound then, but very thinfy."Cited in Marsilio Ficino, The Book of Lik, trans. Charles Boer (Dallas: Spnng Publications, 1980), p. 8-9. " Ficino, The Book of Li&, p. 6. 63 Ficino. fhe Book of Lit@,p. 6. This echoes Nicolaus of Cusa, in which God is both the centre and the circumference. Ficino. The Book of Life, p. 6.

26 Threshold 1: Vision Francesca di Giorgio Martini Dinocrates Trattati di architettura ingegneria e arte militare (Milano Edizion~il polifilo. 1967) f 27V TAV 210 between his inner visions and the outer world. "His perspectiva is phantasia, the 0 power of metaphor: constnrcting artifice ftam bodily fragments, capable of biending together the most distant objects or keeping apart those that are naturally most intimately connected. His building, perhaps the most outstanding architecture of his century in Europe, are remarkably original, for they are based on an embodied approach to the task of building that rejects architectural

projections and lineamenti" 66 Alberti's lineaments are replaced by the sensuous 'live' line which weaves across the divide of the true and the false in the construction of the fantastic. In the eyes of Michelangelo, "Truth must be set out in a garment of fiction... n 67

Michelangelo and Dinocrates: Colossal Artifice

Michelangelo in his daring " visions is like Dinocrates, the architect of Alexander the Great, who had fantastic visions of sculpting Mount Athos into the figure of a man who held in his hand a great city. In commemorative poems to miche lange!^, Fabio Segni wmpared Michelangelo to Dinocrates as the greatest architect of antiquity? The story of Dinocrates is relayed in the architectural treaties of Virtruvius, Alberti, Francesw di Giorgio Martini (1439- 1501 ) and Francesw Colonna (1433-1 527). Michelangelo's vision at Carrara's marble quarry mirrors the vision of Dinocrates. This vision at once illustrates the nature of his phantasia and the connection with the colossal visions of Antiquity

- -- - 65 Summers, Michelangelo and the Language of Art, p. 36 also see Boccaccio, On Poetry, p. 39. 66 Albe rto Perez-Gomez and Louise Pelletier, Architectural Representation and the Perspective Hinge, p. 45 67 Summers, Michelangelo and the Language of Art, p. 233. 68 Daring, in ternis of the Renaissance, refers both to the highest powers of conception and the highest s~ilfin execution. Sumrners, MichelangeIo and the Language of Art, p. 127. 69 Fabio Segni, was a minor poet in the cirde of Borghini (who placed the inscription 'II Divino Michelangelo' on Buonarroti's tomb), writes of Michelangelo:

Halt, wayfarer - 1 shall make you see a mamel: This little urn mntains Apelles and Dinocrates and Phidas. Does fhen a single tomb enclose three men ? You en: One only rests hem, but of threefold stature.

C ited in The Divine Michelangelo: The Florentine Academy Homage On His Death in 1564, translated Rudolf and Margot Wiikower, (London: Phadion Press, 1964), p. 78.

27 Threshold 1: Vision ultimately mirrored in Buonarroti's design of the San Lorenzo facade. a Michetangelo's vision, perhaps tinged with a hint of irony, is retold by Condivi:

"...seeing a mountain that looked out over the sea, he was taken with the desire to make a colossus that would appear from afar to sailors, having been greatly attracted by the suitability of a mass of Stone, from which it might readily have been carved; (he was also inspired by a desire to emulate) the ancients, who, having been in that sarne place, perhaps with the same purpose as Michelangelo, either to while away the tirne of for whatever other purpose, had left behind them certain sketched and imperfect traces that bear good witness to their artifice. And certainly he would have done it, if he had had time enough, of if the undertaking for which he had wme had permitted; one day I heard him lament greatly that he had not ...n 70

This vision of Michelangelo parallels the story of Dinocrates as it was told by Vitruvius:

"When Alexander was master of the world, the architect Oinocrates, confident in his ideas and his skill, set out from Macedonia to the amy, being desirous of the royal cornmendation... Now he was of ample stature, pleasing countenance, and the highest grace and dignity. Trusting then in these gifts of nature, he left his clothes in the inn, anointed himself with oil; he wreathed his head with poplar leaves, cavered his left shoulder with a lion's skin, and holding a club in his right hand, he walked opposite the tribunal where the king was giving judgement.

When this novel spectacle attracted the people, ~lexander"saw him. Wondering, he commanded room to be made from him to approach, and asked who he was. And he replied: " Dinocrates, a Macedonian architect, who brings you ideas and plans worthy of you, illustrious prince. For I have shaped Mount Athos into the figure of a statue of a man, in whose left hand I have shown the ramparts of a very extensive city; in his right a bowl to receive the water of al1 rivers which are in that mountain." Alexander, delighted with his kind of plan, at once inquired if there were fields about, which could furnish that city with a corn supply. When he found this could not be done, except by sea transport, he said: "1 note, Dinocrates, the unusual formation of your plan, and am pleased with it,

70 A. Condivi, The Life of MichelangeIo Buonamti by His Scholar Ascanio Condivi, trans. Charles Holroyd (London: Ballantyne and Company, 19111, p. 26. 71 Dinocrates sought Alexander the Great's attention not only by his vision but by the beauty of his body, as he presented himself with his skin oiled and draped in animal skins. Dinocrates appeared as an image of desire - an erotic fantasy with fantastic visions to lure Alexander the Great.

28 Threshold 1: Vision but I perceive that if anyone leads a colony to that place, his judgement will be blamed." " Alberti, as well, writes about Dinocrates and his power of imagination in his Ten Books on Architecture. However, the praise of Dinocrates' phantasia is tempered by, "men of prudence, who would not criticire, provided they offered some advantage, but would not praise unless they were necessary." 73 Francesco de Giorgio in his Traftati de architeftura ingegneria e arte militare, draws the figure of Dinocrates, who disguised himself as Hercules in order to catch the eye of Alexander the Great. He understood the tale as an ingenious allegory, to the point that cities should be anthropomorphic. Francesco Colonna, in the midst of the vision of "immensa e tenibile" architecture in the opening pages of Hypnerotomachia Polyphili praises Dinocrates' "alt~ssimoconcepton, which "sencia fallo excede la insolentia Aegyptica" (which exceeds the insolence of the

Egyptians)." 74 Vitruvius, comments on Dinocrates in Book II of his treatise:

"Thus, Dinocrates, commended by his face and the dignity of his person, reached to this distinction. But nature has not given me his stature, my countenance is unwmely with age, ill-health has taken away my strength. Therefore, although I am deserted by these defenses, by the help of science and by my writings I shall, I hope gain approval." ''

Vitruvius draws a correlation between the nature of the architect's body and the quality of his vision. Dinocrates possesses a body of beauty and conceives of fantastic visions of a city in the form of a colossal body. Phantasia is the meeting point between the two. Vitruvius, whose stature is not as glortous as Dinocrates' seeks Ceasar's approval by the help of science and his writings, unlike Dinocrates, who first caught Alexander the Great's attention by virtue of his imagination. Dinocrates anointed with oil and crowned in a wreath of poplar leaves is presented as Hercules with a power of vision to match.

" Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture. tnns. Frank Oranger (Cambridge. Mas: Harvard University Press, 1931) p. 75. Alberti, On the M of Building in Ten Books. trans. Rykwert. Book Six. p. 160. 74 Summers, MichelangeIo and the Language of Ad. pp. 126-1 27. '' Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture. trans. Oranger. Book II, p. 75.

29 Threshold 1: Vision ACTION

The Artist as Entrepreneur

With my beadtoward heaven, !feel my memory-box atop my hump; I'm getting a harpy's breast; and the brush that is always above my face, by dnbbling down, makes if an ornate pavement. My loins have entered by belly. and 1 make my ass into a crupper as counterweight; without my eyes, my feet move airnlessly. 1

Michelangelo's poem written Mile he was working on the (1508- 1512) is a testament to his involvement in the work at hand. With a small crew of helpers, Michelangelo almost single-handedly painted the Sistine Chapel fresco. The manifestation of his architecture would prove to be a more collaborative effort.

O Disegno links the three arts and provides the source for artistic action. Because architecture is a collaborative art, architectural drawings are not only expressive but communicative. In this way, the nature of Michelangelo's engagement in the projects of San Lorenzo differs from his painting and sculpture. In a recent book entitled, Michelangelo as ~ntrepreneur,William Wallace places Michelangelo within the worksite at San Lorenzo. The book builds a working context for the figure of Buonarroti that negates the image of the artist as a deified genius. The 'divine Michelangelo' becomes the working Michelangelo, a master builder engaged in the daily work of manifesting his disegno.

The drawings associated with Michelangelo's three projects at San Lorenzo are 'active'. As non-objectified drawings engaged in the process of disegno, the layered drawings record Michelangelo's shifting vision. They are riddles to be

1 Michelangelo, The Poetty of Michelangelo, trans. James Saslow, p. 70. William Wallace, Michelange10 at San Lorenzo, me Genius as Entrepreneur (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1994).

30 Threshold II: Action unraveled. The orientation of the sheet, in many cases is ambiguous. They a necessitate a reading through their rotation. In some drawings there is a strong connection between the recto and the verso of the sheet. As well, there is a temporal quality to the drawings. Variations of an architectural component appear as multiple images that trace a thought process. The paper's thickness is a liminal space3 in which the drawing sheet is a threshold, an interface between the world of ideas and the world of action. The sheets are constructions layered with architectural sketches, body fragments, poetry and administrative lists. The initial marks of Michelangelo's sketches seem to be Iayered through time to become a complex assemblage of his phantasia. They are not merely an expression of an idea but a means of developing a concetto. The line is liminal, phantasia begets phantasia.

The Drawing of the Soul

'Three things must be rernembered in understanding this section. (1) That Plato (like al1 Greeks) believed that al1 motion must have a cause; (2) that the soul, as a self-mover, is for hirn the ultimate cause of motion; (3) that he held that reasoning consisted essentially of judgments of sameness (affirmation) and difference (negation)." '

Action is the definitive word in the work of Michelangelo. As an artist and architect engaged directly with his work, he rejected the static, geometric body as a model for his art and architecture. lnstead he adopted a body of qualitative proportion - a soulful body of dynamic balance. This body of action is mirrored by the movement evident in his drawing, his disegno, that forms the impetus for his architecture. Michelangelo began with the first motion, the soul, and worked outward. As Plato reminded us: "God did not of course contrive the sou1 later than the body, as it has appeared in the narrative we are giving; for when he put them together he

3 The Latin, limen, Iiminis signifies threshold. The Concise English Dictionary, Seventh Edition, edited by J.B. Sykes (Oxforb: Clarendon Press, 1982). 4 Commentary of Plato's limaeus cited in: Plato, fimaeus and Critias, trans. Desrnond Lee a (London: Penquin Classics, 1965), p. 46.

31 Threshold II: Adion would never have allowed the older to be controlled by the younger. But god created the sou1 before the body and gave it precedence both in time and value, and made it the dominating and wntrolling partner. And he composed it in the following way and out of the following constituents. From the indivisible, eternally unchanging Existence and the divisible, changing Existence of the physical world he mixed a third kind of Existence intermediate between them; again with the Same and the Different he made, in the same way, compounds intermediate between their indivisible element and their physical and divisible element: and taking these three components he mixed them into single unity, forcing the Different, which was by nature allergic to mixture, into union with the Same, and mixing both with Existence."

Drawing Bodies, Building Temples

The body in motion did not lend itself to a static geometrical proportioning. Michelangelo rejected Albrecht Dürer's 'stiff figures and departad from Vitruvius' description of a well proportioned body inscribed within the geometrical constraints of a circle and a square? Instead, Michelangefo's figures are often depicted in contrapposto position, a stance in which weight is transfened to one leg, rather than it being evenly distributed to two. Michelangelo's proportion was 'imperfect' for he believed that if any rule at al1 was to be given for the measures and variety of the body it must begin from the living, moving body. For him the body was not a objectified form but a gestural figure. His sketches of bodies, that layer many of his architectural drawings, attempt to capture the movement of muscles and limbs that connect to the life of the world and the cosmos. This dialectic of the body's multiplicity paired with its overall unity is key for Renaissance architects: "The human body is significant for the allegorical tradition because its workings are most multiple and complex, and because its

5 Plato, Tmaeus and Cn'tras, trans. Desmond Lee, p. 47. As a model which Michelangelo would uitimately question, Viinivius in his Ten Books of Architecture describes his figure of proportion: 'For if a man lies on his back with hands and feet outspread, and the centre of the circle is placed at his navel, his figure and toes will be touched by the circumference. AIso a square will be found deswibed within the figure, in the same way as a round figure is produced ...Therefore if Nature has planned the human body so that the members correspond to their proportions to iîs complete configuration, the ancients seem to have had reason in determining that in the execution of their works they should observe an exad adjustment of the several mernbers to the general pattern of the plan." Viruvius, Ten Books of Architecture, trans. Granger, Book Ill, p. 161.

32 Threshold II: Adion harmonious placing in the cosmos was most assured. According to this point of view, man is internally multiple and diverse but unified on the outside in his divinely ordained place in the cosmos."

The body is a temple and accordingly the temple is to be built based on the qualities of the human body. Vitruvius in Book III of his Ten Books on Architecture, describes the human body under the heading, The Planning of Temples: "...without symmetry and proportion no temple can have a regular plan; that is, it must have exact proportion worked out after the fashion of the mernbers of a finely-shaped human body." '

Architecture founded on the temple, is the intemediary between the body and God. Through a harmony with architecture, the body resonates within the macrocosm, The body in terrns of the design of a temple is critical because: "...without the Church being built in accordance with essential mathematical harmonies... there is no sympathy between the microcosm of man and the macrocosm of God...p rayer is not effective."

Contrapposto Positioning

There are three major drawings that document Michelangelo's study of human proportions. The first drawing (circa 1515), in red chalk, is part of a collection at Windsor Castle in the Royal Library. The second (circa 1501-04) is an engraving 'after Giovanni Fabbri after Michelangelo', the third (circa 1513-1 516) at Casa Buonarroti in Florence is a quick ink drawing. All the figures are drawn with their heads in profile and the lower body in a contrapposto position with oblique frontal views of emotive, muscular bodies. This is in contrast to the 'static' Virtruvian figure that stands perfectly symmetrical inscribed within a geometrical construction. Although Michelangelo prescribes to Vitruvius' basic proportioning

7 Leonard Barlran, Naturie's Work of Art: The Human Body as Image of the Worid (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975), p. 121. VRnivius, Ten Books ofArchifBCtum. trans. Granger. Book III. p. 158.

33 Threshold Il: Action MichelangeIo Proportion Studies # 61 Charles de Tolnay: Corpus dei Disegni di Michelangelo. (Novara: lnsituto Geographico de Agostini. 1980) Windsor. Royal Library 28 9 cm x 18crn. red chalk systems, his proportional studies are not necessarily descriptive of it. lnstead of a geometry or number, body parts are the measure of the whole body. The figure, in turn, is played against the datum of a subdivided parallel Iine.

The Windsor sketch, Shet YB1 of deTolnayls Corpus, includes in light pencil, an outline of the hand and wist drawn in the upper right hand corner of the sheet. This is paired with a similar line drawing in the lower left hand corner of a knee and foot. As deswibed by Vitnivius, the hand with the wrist are the same height as the face, and both are one-tenth the height of the human body: "For Nature has so planned the human body that the face from the chin to the top of the forehead and the roots of the hair is a tenth part; also the palm of the hand

from the wrist to the top of the middle figure is as much." 'O Michelangelo's figure, as indicated by a series of horizontal markings on the left hand side of the sheet, is ten or so faces high. As well, the knee as drawn seems to correspond, as well, to one-tenth the part of the body. The foot, as prescribed by Vitnivius

"As a sixth of the height of the body." " The three fingers of the hand, which form one third of a face, rests on the arm next to the elbow, which in turn is also a third (see inset image). The lower part of the hand at the wrist is also marked out as a third, "tenoduna testa." '*The face drawn in lighter pencil is not rendered as muscular as the lower body. It is drawn in profile, with an expressive and concentrated scowl. The mouth is show as parted, as is the case in al1 three drawings. Summers sunnises that this reflected, "...Ficino1s idea that the opening of the mouth and the half circles of the ears and eyes are the same

size." l3The face as indicated by Vitruviusl forms a module from which the rest of the body can be devised. For Michelangelo, the face which marked man's

Barùan, Nature's Work of Art, p. 140. 10 Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architectura, trans. Frank Granger, Book III, p. 159. 11 Ibid, p. 159. l2 This note is written on the Windsor Proportional Study. in what appears to be, Michelangelo's handwriting. 13 Surnmers, Michelangek and the Language of M,p. 388.

34 Threshold II: Action after Michelangelo der Anetomischen Abbildung appearance in the world, was important for its profile, as well, as its expressivity. a The face of man marked his appearance in the world.

The Drawing of the Asterisk

The second drawing, a copy of the 'Fabbri engraving after Michelangelo', is divided into three zones, as indicated by a subdivided line to the right of the figure. The upper and lower body is divided by a third interstitial zone wmprised of the hip, the wrist and the groin. These are points of action, making and procreation. The hip, rnarked by an asterisk, is a joint, a hinge between the upper torso and the legs that allows the body to move in space and to pose, in contrapposto position, when standing. The second joint, the wrist ensures movernent of the hand and therefore the ability to make. The third point, the groin is an erogenous zone, essential for its seminal and procreative adivity. In Michelangelo's construction of the body it is the groin that is the centre of the body and not the navel, as indicated by ~irtnivius." Eros is the centre that forms 0 the middle - a threshold - halfway between the foot that walks the earth and the head that contemplates the heavens. The joint is a joining.

The Drawing of the Triangle

The head profile of the figure in the 'Fabbri' drawing is divided into three as prescribed by Vitruvius: "... a third part of the height of the face is from the bottom of the chin to the nostrils; the nose from the bottom of the nostrils to the line between the brows, as much; from that Iine to the roots of the hair, the forehead is given as the third part." l5

This expressive facial profile is part of a wnstructed triangle,'= that spans from the front of the face to the back of the head. The second side of the triangle

l4 UN^^ the navel is naturatly the exact centre of the body.' ViUuvius, The Ten Books on Architecture, trans. Granger, Book III, p. 161. '' Vitruvius. The TmBooks on A/chitectu#, trans. Granger, Book III. p. 15Q. l6 Fire, as indicateâ by Plato in Tirneeus, is an element in the form of a triangle. It is appmpriate that the head king the hottest and the highest part of the body be constructed as a triangle. The pnvate reading room in the Laurentian Library, that was never realized, was also configured as a

35 Threshold II: Action MichelangeIo Proportion Studios # 60 Chartes de Tolnay: Corpus dei Disegni di Micheiafqelo. (Novara: lnsituto Geographico de Agostini. 1980) Florence. Casa Buonarroti 17 x 17 cm, pen and wash

Proportional Study Francesca di Giorgio Martini Traitab ch architettura ingagneria e arte rnrlitare (Milano: Editioni il polifilo. 1967) forms the jaw bone and encompasses the ear. The third side traces the hairline a and terminates at the top of the forehead. The larger triangle implies smaller triangles that can be scribed within it. One triangle is formed by the three points comprised of the chin, the eyebrow and the earlobe. This organization envelop the faculties of speech, sight and hearing.

Three is the operative number in the construction of the drawing. The body as indicated in this drawing is 9 113 faces high. There is a synthesis between the geometry, nurnber and the 'live' body. "As the forrn bewmes more real it deviates from its geometrical basis; but at the same time the foms of geometry are made to Iive, and there is a synthesis. The universal becomes visible in the particular, as the particular heightened by art seeks the level of the universal;

what pleases the mind and what pleases the eye are the same." "

As weli, there is a diagram of a skeleton in the lower left hand area of the sheet. A square seems to be formed by the two axes of the body. As Summers points a out, "the whole construction is reminiscent of Leonardo's Vitmvian proportion drawing (dated 1485-90)' or about fifteen years before the likely date of the

drawing upon which the engraving is based." la

The third drawing, Sheet # 60 in deTolnay's Corpus was executed between 1513-1 516. The drawing is comprised of figures once again in a contrapposfo position complete with an enlargement of the weight-bearing, right leg of a male figure. A pattern of horizontal lines appears ta be a scaling device. A profile of a

triangle. The Laurentian Library itself can be seen as construction of the human body. The private reading room as the head, the public reading room as the torso, the legs and feet as the vestibule and the erogenous middle zone as the threshold between the ncetto and the reading room. See Chapter III for further discussion. " Summen. MicheIangelo and the Language of Art. p. 393. laIbid.. p. 389. Leonardo da Vinci's famous drawing of the Vinivian man in the Accademja in Venice usually dated about 1490 is clearly based on Francesca di Giorgio Martini's drawing of the same subject in his Tratt8ti. It is known that Leonardo owned and annotated a copy of di Giorgio's first treatise. Cited in: Richard Betts, 'Stnidural Innovation and Structural Design in Renaissance Architecture," Journal of the Society of An Histonans (March, 1993), p. 18.

36 Threshold II: Action face is drawn in the lower left hand area of the sheet. The profile appears Iike an 0 x-ray with its skeletal structure of the face and the ghosted image of the flesh.

Michelangelo and Albrecht Dürer

As recorded by Condivi, Michelangelo's response to Albrecht Dürer's Four Books on Human Proportion was not favourable:

"1 know well that when he (Michelangelo) reads Albrecht Dürer he finds him very weak, seeing in his own mind how much more beautiful and useful his own conception would be. To tell the truth, Dürer only treats of the proportions and diversities of the body, for which one cannot make fixed niles, making figures as stiff as posts; what matters more, says nothing of human movements and gestures." ''

Michelangelo, who studied anatomy,*O was to write a treatise himself on the human body as Ascanio Condivi is quoted as saying, it would treat "al1 manner of human movements and appearances and (also) the bones, with an ingenious

theory discovered by him through long practice." " In Vincenzo Danti's treatise, 0 Trattato delle perfette pmpo~ioni,~he indicates a reference to qualitative proportion in which he addresses 'pure intentional forms' which move with age and m~vernent.~~However, as Summers has pointed out, neither Danti nor Michelangelo intended that qualitative proportion should replace quantitative proportion, "rather the former outranked the latter, exactly as the judgernent of

the eye was superior to the 'compasses of the hand'." 24 As Michelangelo said: "lt is often necessary for the working painter to have the compass in the eyes,

19 A. Condivi, The Life of Michelangelo Buonenoti by His Scholar Ascani'o Condivi, trans. Charfes Holroyd (London: Ballantyne and Company, 191 l),p. 69. 20 Sum mers, Michelangelo and the Language of An, p. 382. Vincenzo Danti, referring to some unknown source to us, claimed that Michelangelo studied anatomy for twelve years. 2 1 Summers, Michelangelo end the Language of AR, p 381. 22 Vincenzo Danti was a sculptor and part of Michelangelo's urcle late in his life. His treatise, II primo libn del trattato delk pedbtte propzïoni di futte le cosa che imifare e tihane si possano con I'arte del disegno, which was puMished in 1568 in Florence, is thought to approach the Michelangelo's views on anatomy and the aRs. 23 Summers, p. 382. 24 Summers. p. 383.

37 Threshold II: Adion San Lorenzo, Florence (photo: Alinan) since it is not possible for him so easily to observe the measure with a compass

in foreshortening." 2s

As indicated in Michelangelo's architectural drawings, the body, with its graceful movements is usually present, sornetimes emerging from the sheet as a ghosted image. The sensibility inherent in the theory of qualitative proportion is evident in the architectural drawings of Michelangelo in which design sketches are layered with fragrnented images of the human body. The drawings are comprised of 'live' lines that are not geometrical constructions. Even intricate architectural profiles are drawn in free-hand. As well, Michelangelo very rarely drew in perspective. Consistent with this non-objectifying sensibility, Michelangelo avoided the distancing of the body through the process of dissection." Rarely do the bodies sketched by Michelangelo appear as anatomical diagrams. In contrast to da Vinci and Dürer, who regarded anatomy as dissection of cadavers. following Andreas Vesalius's De humani corpons fabrica (1543), Michelangelo's anatomy always focused on the live body. associating beauty with health. He acknowledged the life of the mole through the articulation (the hinge) of fragments of the human body.

The Face of San Lorenzo

The facade of San Lorenzo and its many drawings is an example of Michelangelo's beliefs in action. Through his various design studies, the emotive body becomes the basis of a metaphoric architecture.

The present day location of San Lorenzo was the site of periodic building activity beginning with its consecration by St. Arnbrose in 393 AD . The Early Christian church was renovated in 11 th Century. The modem appearance of San Lorenzo

25 Summers, p. 387. 26 Helm ut W. Klassen, Michelangelo: Architectum and the Vision of Anatomy. (Montreal: McGill School of Architecture, Thesis in History and Theory, 1990).

38 Threshold II: Action is the result of a total rebuilding program, begun by Brunelleschi in 1419 and cornpleted several decades after his death in 1446.

The story of the facade of San Lorenzo begins in 1515. A wmpetition was held for its design when the first Medici Pope, Leo X (151 3-21 ) decided to finish the Church. The main cornpetitors were Michelangelo, Antonio da Sangallo (Elder), Andrea and Jacopo Sansovino and amongst ~thers.~~Unfortunately, only a few drawings of da Sangallo's project survive and the drawings of the remaining competing projects have been iost.

It seems that Michelangelo was first engaged in the project to direct its sculptural program and not as a cornpetitor for the architectural commission. However, Michelangelo could not separate the sculpture from the architecture and was eventually appointed as both sculptor and architect. This integrated approach made the architecture, the niche and the sculpture part of an organic whole. This project exemplified the fluidity of Michelangelo's artistic practice.

As Ackerman has outlined, the process of the design changed drastically from one stage to the next. Initially, the sculpture seemed to dominate with the architectural challenge of uniting the central and outer bays of the facade becoming more of an issue as the design progressed. The drawing which probably won him the commission is the one which unites the entire facade with a similar height and the central nave articulated by a pediment. This design was probably presented to the Pope in 1516 (see Sheet # 501).*' This independent structure was to be constructed of solid marble as in Antiquity. Indeed, the architecture, Iike the sculpture, would be hewed out of a solid block of marble. Many drawings were done specifying the dimensions of the marble block for various components of the facade.

27 James Ackeman, The Amhiteclwe of Michelangelo (London: Pelican Books, 1961), p. 55. 28 Ackerman, me Architedure of MicheIengao, p. 59.

39 Threshold II: Adion

Flesh Facade

1 see in your beautiful face, my lord, what can scarcely be related in this life rny soul, although still clothed in its flesh, has already tisen offen with it to God. "

Michelangelo did several drawings for the facade of San Lorenzo. Through the process of design, the facade was transfomed from a veneer that corresponded to the outline of the existing rubble facade to a semi-independent building of a certain depth. The facade was no longer a thin layer to be attached to the old facade, but a three dimensional structure in its own right. The facade was not skin deep but was transfomed from an inert plane to a many-layered epidemis. The niche, frame and pediment were inextricably bound together foning an anatomy of architecture.

Animated Constructions 0 There are several drawings in the Corpus that deal with the elevation of San Lorenzo and trace the development of the facade from a veneer to a three- dimensional construction. One of the initial studies is Sheet # 498 a composite drawing which includes a sketch proposal for the facade, various profile outlines, a column in the form of a human body and various notes, one naming Carrara, the site of the famous marble quarry. The facade sketch, in the lower half of the sheet, contains three different heights for the central nave of the ~hurch,"each one seems progressively lighter, with a degradation of line tone from the highest to the lowest. The sketch mirrors others drawn by Michelangelo in which the human figure is presented in motion, for example, the figure of a Risen Christ. Within the drawing, various positions are outlined, one on top of the other, which when combined, present the figure as if animated. The architecture and the figure are represented in a state of flux.

29 Michelangelo, Poetry of M'chelangelo, trans. Saslow, p. 195. Poem written to Tomasso de' Cavalieri, ca. 1534,

40 Threshold II: Action Project for the Fadeof San Lorenzo # 499 Recto Charles de Tolnay: Corpus dei Disegni 6i Michelangelo. (Novarar Insituto Geographico de Agostini. 1980). p. 37 Casa Buonarroti. 91A Florence. ltaly approx. 90 x 90 mm

Womiin's Head, Loft Profile with Turban # 499 Verso

Study for the Facde of San Lorenzo Sketch of An Arm and Head Fragment # 500 Recto # 500 Verso Charles de Tolnay Corpus dei Disegni di Michelangelo. (Novara: Insituto Geographico de Agosbni. 1980). p 38 Casa Buonarrob Florence The Drawing of the Interface

Within the Corpus, there are several drawings that make an explicit connection between the face and the facade. The face becames the profile for the cornice studies which follow. However, profil10 is also linked with the entire architectural relief of the facade. Although later than Michelangelo, Vincenzo Scamoui, in L 'ldea della Architema Universale (16 15), translated Virtruvius' scenographia as profillo, "ScamouiJsdefinition of scenographia does not refer to a precise mode of drawing (such as a section of perspective) but rather a manner of representing the relief in depth of a facade ...n 31

On the recto of Drawing # 499 is an elevation sketch of one of the earlier conceptions for the facade. With an emphasis on horizontality, the three levels of the facade are divided into three layers of approximate equal height with the central nave clearly articulated. The verso of the sheet contains the left profile of a a woman's face with turban on the top of her head. A block seems to be drawn as if incised in her face. The shape encornpasses her lower chin and jaw bone and extends to the top of her head. Lines which appear like chisel marks are drawn within a the outline of the rectangle inscribed within the face. The drawn line on paper is analogous to the chiseled line in marble. The 'incised block' is the connection between the sculpted face and the architectural facade. Marble is the common material. The marble cut from the quarry is laid block by block to reveal the architecture of the facade. In a similar and opposite way, a block of marble is sculpted by the artist through a subtractive process to reveal the face.

Another face appears in Drawing M00. The sketch of the facade on the recto is a more elaborate version of the facade than in the previous drawings. Michelangelo's project completely masks the outline of the central nave evident

30 De Tolnay suggests there is a reference in this scherne to the Pantheon with the articulation of the central porch, that seems to projed forward. 3 1 Alberto Perez Gomez + Louise Pelletier, Architecture Representation and the Perspective Hinge (Cambridge, Mas: The MIT Press, 1QW), pp. 105-06.

41 1hreshold II: Adion Facade of San Lorenzo (Ultimate Version) with Sketches of a Foot and a Right Foreann

# 501 Recto Ch- de Tdnay: Corpus dei Oisegni di Michdangelo. (Novars lnsibto Geographico de Agostini. 79ûû). p. 384 Casa Buonarroti. 43A florence. ltalv approx. 212 x 144.5 mm

Study of a Oead Pope Su for the Tomb of Pope Juli R 501 Verso in the existing rubble facade of San Lorenzo. On the sheet's verso, a drawing of a a face is rotated 180 degrees to the facade. It is a ghosted image, barely legible, of a head with eyes and a small mouth.

The sheets and their rectolverso can be read as a construction, the face being analogous to the facade. Proportion in Greek is ana~ogia.~In this sense proportion is qualitative, in which it operates on analogy, simile and metaphor. The making of metaphor being "the act of drawing figurative tnith out of literal

falsity ..." 33 The face, is not just a unit of measure as mentioned in Vitruvius, it is for Michelangelo a metaphor for an architecture of qualitative proportion. For Michelangelo, proportion was necessarily qualitative because he dealt with the 'live' body of movement and humours. In the Renaissance, beauty was related to health and the balancing of the humours. The constitution of the body and beauty were closely related. Cosmetics and cosmography were intertwined, a harmony between the body and the heavens was essential.

On the recto of Sheet fi01 is a drawing of the facade of San Lorenzo, the most elaborate to date for Pope Clement, on the verso is a cartoon apparently of Pope Julius II and his tomb. While sketching the facade of San Lorenzo, Michelangelo remained under contractual obligation for the realization of Julius Il's Tomb. The drawing is a cartoon which depicts an (Michelangelo himself ?) trying to support the deadweight of a sleeping or deceased Pope. The cartoon is a commentary on both the Tomb of Julius II and the solid marble facade of San Lorenzo which because of their sheer scale and amount of marble must have concerned Michelangelo. While the tomb was partially completed in a much scaled down version, the Facade of San Lorenzo, proved to be unrealizable.

'' Barkan, Nature's Work of Art, p. 137. also in Vitruvius, Book III, Chapter I: The Planning of Temples, p.159. Aflalogy in defined in the Concise Oxford Didionary as an agreement, similarity, pmcess of reasonhg from parallel case, (in biology) resemblance of fundion between ofgans essentially different. Barkan, Nature's Work of Art, p. 3.

42 Threshold II: Action

Given that the Popes (Julius II, Leo X) were the patrons of MichelangeIo's work a to date, there is a hint of humour and irony in the drawing as the angel attempts to prop up, for appearance, the weighty body of the naked Pope, wmplete with his ceremonial hat. The feat seems almost unrealizabte for the smaller and diminished angel. One patron replaced by another, one grand vision with an ironic twist on its back. It portrays the character of Michelangelo as bittersweet, the freedom to design the unfathomable, twinned with the weight of its realization.

The Drawing of the Modello

The developed version of the facade was translated by Michelangelo into a 'hard-lineJdrawing on Sheet # 503 which depicts a partial plan for the facade building of San Lorenzo. A wooden model of the facade was made by Baccio d' Agnolo in 1517? There are several drawings in de TolnayJsCorpus that seem to be done for the construction of the model and are not scaled 'construction' drawings in the contemporary sense of the word. lnstead these are full size drawings done exclusively for the making of a model. There is one example in which a column, drawn full size, relative to the model was reconstructed from three sheets (Sheets #198, #199 and #POO). The versos of these sheets were subsequently were used for sketches for the Medici Chapel tombs. These sheets are now split up between the Casa Buonarroti and the British Museum. The three versos once formed a single very large sheet with one red-chalk drawing on it which was the section of a Corinthian wlumn. Michelangelo drew the section with great care and on an exceptionally large scale; in fact, he first drew in three vertical ruled lines as a guide, one of which runs down the centre of the section. These features point to a specific purpose. The rneasurements of this red-chalk section agree almost exactly with those of the lower order Corinthian

" Ackennan. The Architectm of Michelange/o. p. 61. This model is on display at the Casa Buonarroti in Florence and was part of a major exhibition of Renaissance raodels in Venice's Palazo Grassi. A photograph of the model is inciuded in the exhibition catalogue: The

43 Threshold II: Adion Wooden Model of San Lorenzo Facride Casa Buonarroti Florence. Italy wlurnns of the wooden model of the San Lorenzo facade now in Casa * ~uonarroti." The drawing is a full scale working drawing that is tum is a template for the maker of the model to follow.

Although the model has a scale, the drawing was done at full scale relative to the model. It was not objectified from the actual work at hand, but was drawn for the model maker to carve the wooden modello. The drawing was not a fomal exercise but was part of the process of fabrication, as will also be seen in the construction of templates from full sale drawings in the construction of the Medici Chapel and the Laurentian Library. Alberti advocated the use of models in his treatise and it seems fitting that Michelangelo would use a model as an operative part of the process of disegno for both his sculpture and architecture- The scale model was a plastic realization of the disegno, that existed in space and could be viewed with the body of the observer in motion.

"For this reason I will always commend the time-honoured custom, practiced by the best builders, of preparing not only drawings and sketches but also models of wood or any other material. This will enable us to weigh up repeatedly and examine, with the advice of experts, the work as a whole and the individual dimensions of ail the parts... lt will also allow one to increase or decrease the size of those elements freely, to exchange them, and to make new proposals and alterations until everything fits together." "

The Inter-Connection of Diverse Parts

The 'organic' sensibility, evident in Michelangelo's fabrication of architectural models and his portrayal of the 'Iive' figure of the man, emphasized a continuous and organic relation between the whole and its parts. This philosophy was mirrored in a letter written by Michelangelo to Pope Paul Ili in 1550, in which he referred to the changes he made to the design of Saint Peter's which

Renaissance hmBNnellesctii to Micî?e/angelo:fhe Representation of Architecture, ed. Henry Millon and Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani (Venice: Bompiani, 1994). The reconstruction of the three drawings is put forth by: Michael Hirst, MichelangeIo and His Drawings (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), p. xv. 36 Alberti, On the AR of Building in Ten Books, trans. Ryûwert, Book Two, p. 34.

44 Threshold II: Adion Coner Codex Study of Antique Architecture London. Soane Museum.

Michelangelo # 51 6 Recto Charles de Tolnay: Corpus dei Disegni ck Michelangeio. (Novara: lnsituto Geographico de Agostini. 1980). p. 47 British Museum London, England 289 x 218 mm superseded those of his predecessor, Antonio da Sangallo. In Sangallo's modal, 0 the Tuscan order was used in the main elevation, the lonic in the lower arcades of the drum and the Corinthian in the upper arcade. Michelangelo instead used only the Corinthian order throughout his design.

"When a plan has diverse parts al1 those that are of the same character and dimension must be dewrated in the same way and in the same manner; and their counterparts likewise. But when a plan changes its form entirely it is not only pemissible, but necessary to Vary the omament also and (that of) their counterparts likewise. The central features are always as independent as one chooses - just as the nose being in the middle of the face, is related neither to one eye nor to the other.. ..

It is therefore indisputable that the limbs of architecture are derived fonn the limbs of man. No-one who has been or is not a good master of the human figure. partiwiarly of anatomy. can wmprehend this." 37

Although this statement obviously refers to Vitruvius' De Architectura, Book III, where the Roman architect related the exact proportion between temples and a a finely shaped body, Michelangelo spoke in ternis of a qualitative proportion in which the human body is not an objectified figure but a 'live' body of movement. In this interpretation he differed from most of his wntemporaries' interpretations of the Roman precedent.

The Drawing of Profil10

In de Tolnay's Corpus dei Disegni di Michelangelo there is a series of drawings which are studies of Roman monuments. These include Sheets # 511-520. The original drawings are wrrently divided between the Casa Buonarroti in Florence and the British Museum in London. The drawings are generally thought to have been executed between 1515-1 517. Several of them are drawn on similar sized sheets (in particular Sheets #SI 2,1W14, #SI?- MZO) which measure approximately two hundred and eighty-five millimeters by four hundred and thirty

37 Michelangelo. The LeHers of MicheIange/o. tram. EH. Ramsden. vol. 2. p. 129.

4s Threshold II: Action Various Architectural Studies of Antquity # 51 1 Recto Charkw de Tolnay: Corpus dei Disegni di Michdangdo. (Novara- lnsituto Geographico de Agosani. 1980). p. 45 British Museum London. Engiand approx. 288 x 217 mm

?: ; : : .. ., .. p: .<. ,. +& Studios for the Facade of San Lorenzo .;.'. . ... +: ,* 8+++ # 511 Ve'lS0 .... *.v.y?.4 .... .e ,/..: . h. :: ...... ;, A.. .: :..P. . ; . Charles de Tolnay- Corpus dei Disegni dc MichelangeIo, .y.$,. < . .'*-* . .,.. .: ,..y . ..r+:. . . >...... :. : ...... y. . . .:::y .:...... 1 &/...... (Novara: Insituto Geagaphico de Agostini. 1980). p 45 millimeters. Although Michelangelo's sheets have no sign of sewing, it has been O considered that he intended to compose them as a notebook? It is also speculated that the drawings were done by a pupil under Michelangelo's direction with the Master's occasional intervention. Although some of the drawings, particularly, Sheet #511 and #513 are definitely in the hand of Michelangelo. A Michelangelo scholar, Thomas Ashby, posited in an article published in Papers of the British School in Rome of 1904~that the drawings were studies of an album of drawings now known as the Coner Codex. This point was confirmed again in 1953 by another scholar, Johannes Wilde, in an exhibition of the Michelangelo drawings at the British ~useum."The Coner Codex is so named after its previous owner Andreas Coner, a Gerrnan priest who lived in Rome. The drawings, that were later bound as an album, were executed around 1515 by Giovan Battista Cordini da Sangallo, a Florentine who lived in Rome. It is surmised that he was from Florence because he used as a unit of measure the Florentine braccia. The original album can now be found at the Sir John Soane Museum in ond don."

The drawings are wnceived as part of the preparation for the design of the facade of San Lorenzo. The recto of Sheet # 51t wntains a series of cornice profiles as well as soffit and capital designs. There are many architectural sources mentioned as possible references for the drawings. These include such Roman monuments such as the Arch of Constantine, Temple of Vesta at Tivoli, and the Arch of Setfimio Severo. The verso of the sheet wntains a study of a

Letter probably to Cardinal Cervini (Member of the Academy of Vinivius), regarding changes to Saint Peter's, December, 1SSO, (Michelangleo received commission for St. Peter's in 1546 under Pope Paul III, the same year he was bestowed the Supreme order of Roman citizenship.) Michael Hirst, MichelangeIo and his ~whgs.1988. 39 Thomas Ashby, 'Sixteenth-Century Drawings of Roman Buildings Attributed to Andreas Coner", Papers of the British School at Rome, I 1, 1904, pp. 1-96. Johannes Wilde, British Museum Catalogue, Ralian Dniwhgs in Me Depedment of Pnnts and Drawings in the British Museum, MEchelangelo and his Studio, London, 1953. 4 1 Giulio Carlo Argan, Bruno Contardi, Micf?el~ngelo,&'chitecl. trans. from Italian, Marion L. Grayson (New York: Harry Abrams, 1993, p. 154.

46 Threshold II: Action Studies of Roman Monuments # 5 1 8 Recto Charles de Tolnay Corpus dei Disegni di Michelangelo. (Novara. Insituto Geographico de Agosani. 1980). p. 48. Casa Buonarroti Florence. ltaiy 285 x 430 mm column and five designs for the facade of San ~orenzo.'' Words, in the hand of 0 Michelangelo, also appear on the sheet. They are porta (door) which refers to the profile of the architrave, pilastn (pilaster) in reference ta the outline of a pilaster which appears on the second level of the San Lorenzo facade design and ~(raccia)"dieci which may have indicated the measure of the interco~urnnation.~"

Sheets # 5174520 are al1 similar in terms of page sire, subject rnatter and general drawing style. De Tolnay in the Corpus. notes that the drawing are studies. derived from the Coner Codex, which document Roman monuments. The drawings include oblique projections of friezes, various sketches of ionic capitals and outlines of volutes, cornice profiles and column bases. However, the studies are more artistic than archeological in their focus. The content of the sheets deviate from the Coner Codex in that certain elements have been eliminated or combined with other elements to create a more interpretative study a of Antiquity. Essentially, the drawings are a collection of architectural studies that would become the basis of Michelangelo design for the facade of San Lorenzo and indeed for his other projects. lt is interesting that al1 the drawings are done with red chalk (sanguigna), which unlike ink, is a more plastic material for the articulation of the undulating line of the profile and the intricate elaboration of the cornices and capitals represented in MichelangeIo's studies. The chalk is responsive to the inflections of intensity within the line. The darker outlines of the profiles contrast the ghosted images of the capital decoration. There is a certain rnuscularity and movement in the line as it appears denser at

*' de Tolnay. Corpus. p. 45. The braccia as explained by Giovanni Paolo Lomauo: 'From the propoitions of man's body (the most absolute of al1 God's creatures) is that measure taken which is called Brachium. wherewith ail things are most exactly measured. being drawne from the similitude of mans Amie. which is the third part of his length and breadth. and the Anne containeth three heads or spans... There are also two other kindes of measures in mans body used by the Geographers. the one a foote, the other a Pase. drawne likewise from the foote and pase of a man. These were first invented to measure the earth withall: because it was troublesome to bowe downe the anne in measuring thereof." Barûans, Nature's Work of AR, p. 126.

47 Threshold II: Action LI... a -. .. .-..:*..- ,I ...... :. Cr ...... -". .C.. c. .. 9.- 9.- r- .-.:,...-a,: -, ....r r-.. r-a" 'r... L., ,..: .. me..> y*... "Y.,.'.". .". . .*. .. .* L. W.- .. ..e,h,,- a.. .> " :.<.. Ii .<<. *..<. - -. .. ..ci ..A .. %":' '7.. . ,W. ..n .id rd . .+.."'

Sebastiano Serlio Tutte l'opere d'architettura et prospetiva trans. Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks (New Haven: Yak University Press. 1996). p. 105 Book III: On Antiquities the points of greatest articulation. The medium of the red chalk is analogous to a the modeling material used by Michelangelo which was a terracotta clay. Michelangelo made small study models for his sculpture, in partiwlar for his famous statue of David and the sculptural program for the Medici Chapel which included the River Gods, Day, Night, and Dam. He also used the clay to create architectural models, in partiwlar one for his design of the San Lorenzo facade because he disliked the wooden model of Baccio d'Agnolo. His architecture, like his sculpture and his drawings was an organic construction that demanded a plasticity of form.

In many of the studies the entablatures and comices are cut in section, while other profiles appear more as a lins on the sheet. The section line gives weight to the mass of the architecture and denotes the outer limit of the marble, the actual appearance of the building. The line of the profile is analogous to the circumscribed line, the outline of a painting, as indicated by Alberti. Disegno is the outline synonymous with the profile line. Although Scamoui's treatise L'idea della architectura universale was not published until 1615, he did therein attribute multiple meanings to the Vitruvian word scenographia, and particularly his association of the word profillo with modello. It seems that the word profillo was often used as a synonym of disegno, the lines expressing the "outlinen of a concetto formed in the mind of the artist. *

These profile drawings with their bold outlines, seem to have weight, as if cut from a single block of marble. This is consistent with the idea that Michelangelo conceived the facade of the San Lorenzo not as a veneer, but as a solid mass of marble as in the tradition of Antiquity. In Sebastiano Serlio's (1475-1 554) treatise," Tutte I'opere d'achitettura et prospectiva, there are several drawings

44 lndicated by Wilde in de Tolnay, Corpus, p. 45. 45 Alberto ferez-Gomez, Achiteciuml Repsentation and the Pempeciive Hhge, p. 166- 46 The seven books which make up the ArchiteItre were published separately. Book IV was first published in 1537. The treatise documents the wonders of the antique world which begins Wh the Pantheon, as an 'architectural exemplaf, in Book III. Serlio draws several Roman

48 Threshold II: Action Ten Comice Profiles, (Verso) # 250 Verso Charles de Tolnay: Corpus dei Disegii âi MichdangoIo. (Novara: lnsituto Geographico de Agostlni. 1986). p. 38-40 Haarlem. Teylers Museum 33 3 x 23 cm.Mack and red chalk of cornices and column bases of Roman buildings, particularly in Book III: On Antiquities and Book IV: On the Five Styles of Buildings. As in Michelangelo's drawings, Serlio uses cut away section drawings in which the side faces, in perspective, are drawn in combination with a true elevation/section of the cornice profile." The receding side serves to emphasize the profile of the element under discussion. As a comparison, Serlio's drawings articulate composite parts that make up the various layers of construction in contrast to Michelangelo's sections that appear as a solid mass with no intemal division.

The Drawing of the Flesh

As a continuation of Michelangelo's studies of cornice outlines, there is one drawing in the Corpus, Shet #250, which appears as a collage, in which multiple profile cuts are paired with a drawing of a cnicified Christ. On the recto of the sheet, the profiles seem to be part of the architecture of the ffesh. One of the outlines incorporates Jesus' pierced side? The verso wnsists of wmice outlines superimposed on a ghosted image of Christ's body. The inked liner of his sinewy body, which have bled through the sheet, provide a faint outline of the draped body of a dead, yet triumphant, Christ. This image provides the background for the circumscribed lines of cornice details. The lines intersect the body of Christ and follow the outline of his pectoral and abdominal muscles, his ribcage and the folds of his flesh. These diagonal lines of the architectural details 'cut' across the flesh to create a 'refracted' image of Christ's body. The

monuments found in the Coner Codex. 'Serlio's treatise generally refleds the development in the Renaissance of rational, humanistic thinking, indeed, in frequently placing the te~tnext to a full-page illustration, the Architettura refleded the layout of contemporary 'scientific' treatises. These included the fully illustrated anatomical woric De humani -ris fabrica /ibn septem, published in Basel by Andreas Vasalius in 1543." from introduction, Sebastiano Serfio, Book 1-V of 'Tutte I'opere d'architettwa et prospectiva, trans. Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), p. xix. 47 This type of projection is temed sciogapl,y, a plan, ichvaphy and a sedion/elevation, orthography. 48 "One of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water." The New Oxford Annotated Bibk (New York: Oxford University Press), John 19, verse 34.

4Q Threshold II: Adion Study of a Crucifiction # 250 Recto Charles de Tolnay: Corpus dei Disegrii di Michelangelo. (Novara: fnsihrto Geographico de Agostini. 1980) Haarlem. Teylers Museum 33.3x 23 cm.biack and red chaik 'cut' recalls the passage in the New Testament in which Christ's pierced side O provided proof of his earthly yet etemal presence for a 'doubting f ho mas'.'

The profiles are indicative of a living architecture. David Surnmers comments: "It has often been remarked that MichelangeIo's drawn architectural profiles are sculptural in charader and a sheet such as the Crucifixion study shows in a comparison of its recto and verso how similarly he conceived of living form and the complex and living profiles of architectural ornament, contours in fact deterrnined by a hand that had traced and retraced, thousands upon thousands of times, the living human form." "

The line between the body of Christ and the outline of his disegno are dissolved in the thinness of the sheet, in the thickness of the 'flesh'. As a devout Catholic, Michelangelo was profoundly influenced by his belief in the reality of Christ as God incarnated in a mortal body. His work seems intent on dissolving the opposition between life and death; "it thus reveals the 'fiesh' of the world, the primordial substance of the live universen '' 'Flesh' is the hinge between body and world; as human beings we are immersed in the 'fabric' of the world, as articulated by 20th Century philosopher Merleau-Ponty: "Visible and mobile, my body is a thing among things; it is caught in the fabric of the world, and its cohesion is that of a thing. But because it moves itself and sees, it holds things in a circle around itself. Things are an annex and a prolongation of itself; they

49 The cut and the body of Christ is a reminder of the New Testament story of a 'doubting Thomas', who placed his hand 'in the side' of his flesh as proof of a resurreded Christ: 'Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, 'We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, 'Unless I see in his hands the prints of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe." Eight days later, his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. The doors were shut, but Jesus came and stood among them, and said, 'Peace be with you." Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side; do not be faithless but believing.", The New Oxford Annotated Bible, John 20, verses 24- 27.

50 Summers, Mjchelangelo and the Language of Ml p. 154. 5 1 Alberto Perez-Gomez + Louise Pelletier, Architecture Represerttation and the Pefspedh Hinge, p. 40.

50 Threshold II: Adion Template for Volute Brackets, Medici C hapel with list of twenty-three marbie carvers. dated April 15. 1525 deTolnay ambutes the template for volute in the Laurentian Library

# 540 Recto Charles de Tolnay: Corpus dei Oisegni d Michelangelo. (Novara: Insituto Geographico de Agosüni. 1980). p. 61 Florence. ltaly Casa Buonarroti. 1.59. FOL 151 295x 187mm are encnisted in the flesh, they are part of its full definition; the worid is made of O the same stuff of the body." '* Flesh, as a starting point, is an element that enables us to transcend the dialectic between the mind and the body. Flesh is a first element, which marks man's appearance in a thick and vivid present. As Merleau-Ponty States: "We must not think the flesh starting from substances, from body and spirit, for then it would be the union of contradictories, but we must think of flesh as an element, as the concrete emblem of a general manner

of being." 53

The Drawing of Moduni

In de Tolnay's Corpus, Sheet #54û is not a drawing but an access of paper analogous to the waste from a block of marble, removed to reveal the profile, the surface, the appearance of the work. Because al1 the architectural and most of the ornamental carving in the Medici Chapel was exeaited by Michelangelo's assistants, it was essential to provide them with precise drawings, templates, and models. Sheet #540 is a negative profile of the sinuous curve and volute of the small marble brackets under the two segmental pediments of the ducal tombs. This template also contains a list, in the hand of Michelangelo, of the carvers employed in the Medici Chapel. The negative is a fragment of paper left in the wake of the construction. The template was derived from an original line drawing. The Iine drawn by the architect or the master mason became the guide for the cutting of a tin sheet, which fomed a full scale template used in the repetition of the 'original' line'. "ln Michelangelo's records there are occasional notices of the purchase of large sheets of paper (carta per mondani) and sheets of tin in order to make templates (ferro stagniato per fam modenature). In one instance when Michelangelo recorded purchasing sheets of tin to make templates for the library, he first wrote 'for modelsJ(pe' modegli); this was

52 Merieau-Ponty. 'Eye and Mind'. Ihe mmacy of Perceplion, and other Esseys on PhenomenologrCal Psychology, the thePniophy of Art, History and PolifiCs, Ed. James M. Edie (Evanston, III.: Northwestem University Press, 1QW), p. 163.

51 Threshold II: Action crossed out and replaœd by 'molds or patterns' (modanr)." " The metallic and reflective surfaces of the templates are analogous to the quicksilver figure of Hermes, the messenger. Like him, the templates are the intermediary.

The 'contemplative' drawn Iine is transformed into a 'live' line of the template in which the working drawing becomes active. The 'working' is no longer descriptive but is literally 'working' as a verb. The distance between the drawing and the work collapses as the drawing is wnsumed in the process of stonecutting. The sheet of paper, presented in the Corpus of the de Tolnay is less a drawing and more a type of wnstrudion, an 'instrument' or a tool at the threshold between the drawing of the architect and hands of the workmen. The template is a full scale. paper-thin model, 55 an original to be imitated. 'According to Italian, French and Spanish etymological dictionaries, 'model' was used during the Middle Ages as a synonym of 'module', and it generated the words 'molding' and 'mold'. lt irnplied a one-to-one relationship between the preexisting order of the universe and human artifacts created as a mimesis of divine purpose." 56

The Drawing of the List

The recto of Sheet #540 contains a list of the twenty-three stonecutters. It presents Michelangelo in close contact with the construction of the chape1 and the stonecutters involved. However, this was just a partial list of employees. As William Wallace in his book. Michelangelo as Entrepreneur, indicates, "one hundred and sixtysight Stonecarvers worked on the Medici Chapel," with

53 Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The lntertmning -The Chiasm'. me Visble and meInvisible Evanston, III.: Northeastem University Press, 1968). p. 147. Wallace. Michdangelo at San Lorenzo. p. 170. " From ltalian and French the worûs modello and moâèh? passed to other European languages. According to the Oxford English Didionary. the worû 'madel' was also used as a synonym of "module" in sixteenth and seventeenth-century English usage. Furthemore. during the same period the word 'modell" referted to the mole idea of building, whether in drawings or in relief gnd often implying scale). as opposed to a partial sketch or image of a pmjed. Perez-Gomez, Achitectwal Repsentation and the Perspective Hin~e.p. 106. 57 Wallace, Michelangelo at San Lmnzo, p. 106.

52 Threshold II: Action Michelangelo as foreman who kept the records. Altogether, about one-third of a Michelangelo's assistants in the Medici Chapel, and fully haIf of those working on the Laurentian Library, are listed according to their nicknames which indicates Michelangelo's familiarity with the work crew. The list includes, Stick (Bastone), the Box (Casella), the Basket (Faniera), the Sheaf (Covone), the Gloomy One (el Gngia), to name just a few." The list of nicknames is an indication of the infrastructure that Michelangelo had developed over his years. Michelangelo was careful in selecting his workers and as a consequence, he enjoyed a remarkable degree of stability and wntinuity in his labour force. Long familiarity and the dense web of social and professional relations helped ensure cooperation beween master and assistants. The construction process, Iike every other wmponent of Michelangelo's work was integrated with his life, his beliefs, his being. "Unlike Brunelleschi, for example, Michelangelo grew up with stonecarvers. He was aquainted with some of his assistants from childhood and more importantly was a resident of their tom, familiar with their world and their work. He did not, like Antonio da Sangallo or Palladio, become an architect by rising from the building trades, nor was he a stonemason as his father had feared, but he had a greater technical and practical knowledge of these professions than most of his wntemporaries."

Both the familiarity with the workmen and strong wnnection to the work at hand is evident in one of Michelangelo's letters dated July 1524, addressed to one of Michelangelo's senior assistants Bartolomeo delle Chorte. Michelangelo's involvement with the work is manifest at every stage of design and construction: in making drawings and cost estimates, in procuring materials and in this case checking the marble. Letter to Meo Delle Corte from Michelangelo: "Meo - I am again being urged to begin work and to send as soon as I can to replace the marble that is faulty. So please will you be in the

" Wallace. MichelangeIo at Sen Lorenzo, pp. 101-102. For a total listing of the enployees see pp. 197-200, which lists the Stone and marble carvers (scarpelini),the marble sawers (segaton), smiths (fabbn) and manual labourers m ma no val^, as well as their daily wage and days worked between March, 1524 and August, 1525. 59 Wallace. Michelangeb at San Lmo.p.102.

53 Threshold II: Action <. -+&+& PW '1 W~W- Profiles of Base Mouldings for the Medici Chapel hi Casa Buonarroti. z.:-+ dq& nrwrnj ,<, .y Florence, ltaly 14. ,f 283x214mm 3. -* *e: '-.*.-. :x-+~ Red Chalk and Pen 4 ?"Y..

-*. et--- .. *?.% *-<.* ;:y * $?] <.<*iC - &,UL*- < - . -...... :$-?A. ,, w; o.- 4 ...... ,& &* n...... -. . .- .... ,*, ...... 4 ..--S... ancesco di Giorgio Martini, Cornice Profila with Inscribed Heaâ ,S.; z ?. S>P.L3~f.4. .. Trattati di architettura ingegneria o arte militare - ':' ., . . ' 4~ r- i.tik ...... (Milano: Edizioni il polifilo. 19673 :-.?.;:h;& . ,. f 37 TA" y* O --..-. - .....+.....-..J " .. s . .=.,.. Piazza of San Lorenzo tomorrow morning a Iittle earlier than usual, so that we can examine two pieces of mahle that are there for any flaws, before we are bothered by the Sun, so that we can move them inside and you can leave. Get some of the others to come with you; and send for Forello, so that we can move them inside with the tackle." "

Michelangelo the Divine is now Michelangelo the entrepreneur, not necessarily in direct contact with the work at hand, but directing the architectural work, without distancing himself from the process. The lone artist of the Sistine Chapel is now framed as the administrator, the collaborator, who possesses the ultimate vision of the Chapel, its concetfo. He is still within the thickness of the work, but working in a different capacity, in which his drawings are his hand in the work.

The Drawing of the Signature

Many of Michelangelo's drawings demonstrate his quest for the perfect pdlo, the most personal signature of a cinquecentm architect. The profile, like the face, is individual and expressive. In many cases, the profile cuts, particularly for the cornices, appear as faces, with high foreheads, long noses and diminished mouths and chins (Sheet #536 Recto). This is also evident in one of Michelangelo's studies where he drew an eye as part of the composition to create an expressive silhouette wmplete with an open mouth and beard. The 'mouth' of the figure, in its three variations, appears as if it is animated. The profile of the molding is distorted in the process of Michelangelo's play (see drawing opposite). Michelangelo's countless profile studies are the key to his expressive architecture. Buonarroti's studies can be seen as comparable to those of Francesca di Giorgio Martini (see inset image), although this architect's connections between the human body and architecture are more literal than Michelangelo's metaphoric a~lusions.~'Martini was 'descriptive' of the human

Michelangelo. Lemof Michelangelo. trans. EH. Ramsden. p. 155. Forello refers to Forello de la Porta alla Croce. one of the many scarpellini employed in the maales for the Medici Tom bs. Di Giorgio in his Trattaio. demonstrates with illustrations. that there is a direct correspondence between members of a body and a fortified city. He tikens a fort to the head and the civil authorities to the body's tissues such as bones, newes and flesh. Plans of churches and the

54 Threshold II: Action Profile # 536 Recto Charles de Tolnay: Corpus dei D~segnldi Michdangelo. (Novara. Insituto Geographlco de Agostini. 1980). P. 60. Archivio Buonarroti Florence. ltaly approximately 285 x 200 mm form in his work, whereas Michelangelo's distortion was the basis of his creative invention.

Buonarroti's full scale profiles, outlined in pen or pencil on paper, were cut to become templates or modani. Some of the surviving paper templates, both negatives and positives, are documented in de Tolnay's Corpus. The actual activity of cutting a white sheet of paper can be seen as being analogous to chiseling a block of Carrara marble or macigno stone. The disegno which is the outline, is the cut Iine to make the modani which in tum served to create the architectural detail. In the etymological sense, dé + tailler means 'to cut' in ~rench.~

These modani became Michelangelo's signature within the carving of the architectural works. Other Renaissance atchitects like Filippo Brunelleschi are known to have guarded their modani with great care, obviously partaking in the medieval craft tradition in secrecy while Michelangelo displayed his immense virtuosity through innumerable permutations of moldings and profi~es.~The drawings provide a glimpse on a minute level of Michelangelo's methods and degree of his participation in the work. They are a means by which his ideas were accurately translated into stone. The modani were the key to the modeling of his architecture. "The root of madeilo clearly is present also in the Italian word modani, used during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries interchangeably with modelli and profili to designate the drawings for cutout templates by stonecutters to carve building details. Modani not only were the sole "instrumentalndrawings absolutely "required" for the construction of building

-- composition of columns are literally understood as isornorphic to parts of the human body. See, Lawrence Lowic, 'The Meaning and Significance of the Human Analogy in Francesca di Giorgio's Trattato," Jownal of the Society of Art Histmans, XLll:4 (Decernber, 1983). pp.360-370. Diller + Scofidio, Flesh, Architecfwal mbes (New York: Princeton Univenity Press, 1994). from introduction by Georges Teyssot, p. 8. 63 AIbero Perez-Gomez. Architectural Repsentatjon and the Perspective Hinge, p. 107.

5s Threshold II: Adion Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Module Geometrical Method for Designing a Church Tranat~dl arch~tetturatngegneria e arte mllitare (M~lanoEd~z~onr ~f pof~filo. 1967) 1.41 V TAV 234 until the Renaissance, but they were a fertile ground for displaying the a architect's erudition and capacity for invention." "

The early Renaissance painter, sculpture and architect, Francesco di Giorgio Martini in h is second treatise, Trattati di architeftura ingegnena e arfe militare " used the module, the quadrature, within his disegno. The quadrature was one of the well-kept secrets of the medieval masons and was the key to the module for the whole building. There are no known written descriptions of quadrature that predate Martini's ~rattai.~~'His theory prescribes that forms, proportions and structure for a given building should de designed by a single integrated procedure.. .Di Giorgio uses a circular arc and its chord to generate a subtended segment of radius which he calls a module for the whole building..." " There is reason to believe that the quadrature was used to calculate the dimensions of structural forms including piers and buttresses. The quadrature, Iike the profilli, were modules for building that were the signature-the architect's secret.

Drawing On the Wall

In some cases full scale drawings of architectural elements were done as a base for the construction of the templates. In this conte*, there is a strong lins Iinking full-scale drawings, the cutting of templates and the carving of the architectural detail. Drawing was not an objectified and reified adivity; it was part of the process of making. Michelangelo not only drew full scale on paper, he also drew on the walls of a project for the construction of another. Drawings were made on the walls of the Medici Chapel for the realization of the windows of the

" Alberto Perez-Gomez. Architectural Representafion and Me Perspective Hinge, p. 107. 65 Francesco di Giorgio completed his first treatise in about 14751476 and his second 1489- 1492. He treats the same subjeds in both, but in different ways. 66 Richard J. Betts, 'Structural Innovation and Structural Design in Renaissance Architecture.' $oumal of the Society of Ai1 Historians (March. 1993). p. 11. Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Trattati, ed. Corrado Maltese (Milano: Edizioni II Polifilo, 1967), pp. 233-243 and pp. 399-401. cited in Richard J. Betts, 'Structural Innovation and Structural Design in Renaissance Architecture", Journal of the Society of Art Historians, p. 11 .

56 Threshold II: Adion Laurentian Library. Michael Hirst in his book, Michelangelo and his ~rawings~ 0 points out that Michelangelo's largest architectural drawings were discovered as recently as 1976, made not on paper but on the two lateral walls of the choir (or altar chapel) of the New Sacristy. Almost fifty architectural drawings have been found there, not al1 by the artist himself, together with some autograph written inscriptions. Two of them are without doubt by Michelangelo himself and are of particular interest in any survey of his drawing pradice. They are full-scale orthogonal elevations, drawn in black chalk, for the interior and exterior windows of the reading roorn of the San Lorenzo ~ibrary." It has been suggested that the wall was plastered expressly to serve as a drafting surface, as was often the case in a medieval tracing house." In this case the Chapel wall with its intonam surface, was the vertical equivalent to the drafting floor of the Medieval cathedral workshop. On this giant drafting board, ruled drawings, wmputations and doodles were drawm7'

These full scale drawings, made for Michelangelo's masons, sewed as a contractual agreement between the two. The line of the modani was the contractual Iine 'cut in stone', sealed by Michelangelo's signature, his profillo. The tracing of the full sized drawings for the making of templates as the basis of agreements with scarpellini is a traditional practice dating back to Antiquity. This tradition remained alive among the cathedral builders of medieval Europe and well into the Renaissance. The history of this way of working is outlined by Tracey A. Cooper in which she discusses the two Greek ternis anagrapheus, which probably alludes to template designs for details, and hypographe, which

" Michaal Hirst. Michelangelo and his Ikawiiigs (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988). 69 Drawings on paper for these windom had been sent to Rome and were retumeâ by the Pope, with his approval, in April of 1525, 11 Certeggio di Michelangelo, ed. p. Barocchi and R. Riston Florence, 1965-1983), Vo1.3, p. 141. Io C. Elam, 'The Mural Drawings in Michelangelo's New Sacrîsty", Buriingaon Magazine, 123 $1981) pp. 593-595. ' Further evidence of Michelangelo full scale sketches exists in a uypt located under the aitar of the Medici Chapel. It is thought that Michelangelo may have sought refuge hem when his life was threatened in 1530. The room measures approximately twelve feet by thirty feet and is

57 Threshold II: Action Studies for the Stairs of the Laurentian Library Profile of Column Bases and Figurative Studies

# 525 Recto Charles de Tolnay: Corpus dei Disegni ôi Micheiangeio. (Novam lnsituto Geogaphico de Agostini, 19ûO). p. 53 Casa Buonarroti Florence. ltaiy approximaîeîy 390 x 240 mm

Studies for the Stairs of the Laurentian Library Profile of Column Bases and figurative Studies

# 525 Verso / Partial View Charles de Tolnay Corpus dei Disegni dr Michelangelo. (Novara lnsituto Geographico de Agostini. 1980). p 53-54 Casa Buonarroh Florence. I taly approximately 390 x 240 mm likely refers to the full-size drawing of a profile incised on the wall or the floor of 0 a site. In addition, the Greek terrn paradeigma probably was associated with three-dimensional foms or models. While modani was generally not diswssed in printed architectural treatises, there is evidence that a book planned by a well- known sixteenth-century architect Bartolomeo Arnmanati was to include modani among the subjects of interest for theory?

In making these scaled wall drawings, its seems to be the case that Michelangelo was again asserting his traditionalism with regards to means, while pursuing his radically novel stylistic ends. Traditionalism is matched with an equal and opposite force of innovation. MichelangeloJslines are 'live' lines cornposed for a 'compressive and expansiveJarchitecture of the moving body.

Drawing as De-signing -Phantasla Destructuring

Sheet # 525 of the Corpus, is more a construction than a drawing. It uses super- a imposition and rotation as strategies to 'de-sign', to remove wmmon signing and destructure reality. Summers comments that Michelangelo's fonnal manipulation of inversion, rotation and interlacing were also evident in the architectural fantasies as described by Francesw Colonna in Hypnerotomachia PolyphilC "The concave molding of the head of a dolphin; the part toward the putto has been inverted and the other has been twisted around toward a vase with an open mouth, ending in a stork's head, its beak at the open mouth of a monster

about eight feet high. Large charcoal sketches cover most of the wall's surface and include many !i urative dudies, one in paiticular for the figure of Giuliano de' Medici. Duke of Nemours. %PBartolomeo Ammanati (1 51 1-1595) was involveci in the realization of Michelangelo's staircase of the Laurentian Library's Ricet?o. In a letter written by Michelangelo in 1558 he instwcts Lionardo di Buonarroto Simoni to ask Ammanati where to send a sketch clay mode1 he has done of the staircase. See, Michelangelo, The LeIters of M'chelangelo, trans. E.H. Ramsden, pp. 184- 185. '' Tracey A. Cooper,'l Modani: Template Drawings", in The Renaissance lfwn BNnelleschi to Michelangelo: The Repn3Sent8tion of ArchitBCtum, ed. Henry A. Milton and Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani, exhibition catalogue (Venice: Bompiani, 1MM), pp. 494-500. Also see, Perez- Gomez, Architectural Representation and the Fe~specthteHinge, p. 1O?.

58 Threshold II: Action Studies for the Stairs of the Laurentian Libmry Profile of Colurnn Bases and Figurative Studies

# 525 Recto / Parital View Charles de Tolnay: Corpus dei Disegni di Michelangelo. (Novara. Insituto Geographico de Agoshn~.1980). p. 52. Casa Buonarroti Florence. ltaly approxirnately 390 x 240 mm with its face tumed on its back." 74 Like Michelangelo, Colonna's phantasia is a 0 twisting of the 'real' to achieve a more intense expressivity. This mirrors contemporary artistic practice in which the basic aim of aesthetic experience put forth by the artist is the 'making of the strange' as Gianni Vattimo articulates: ".. .aesthetic experience appears to be an experiment of estrangement, which then requires recomposition and readjustment. However, the aim of this is not to reach a final rewmposed state. Instead, aesthetic experience is directed towards keeping this disorientation alive." 75

Michelangelo is at a creative threshold, in a liminal phase of creation. A contemporary anthropologist, Vicor Turner explains, 'lt is primarily during this liminai phase that the mimesis of architectural spewlation occurs. Within the

l iminal ity of mimesis, conventional attributes are, by necessity ambiguous," 76 In his other book, Rom Ritual to Theatre: The Humans Setiousness of Play, he continues: 'In liminality people 'play' with the elements of the familiar and defami larize them.. .Then factors or elements of culture may be recombined in numerous, often grotesque ways, grotesque because they are arrayed in ternis of possible or fantasied rather than experienced combinations."

The drawings that comprise Sheet f525 is a de-signing of several elements simultaneously. There is an oscillation between the body and architecture. What appears to be a full scale (real scale) undulating Iine of a facial silhouette on the recto of sheet is transfomed within the thickness of the paper, to an articulated profile of a column base. The full scale of the face becomes the given scale of the architectural detail. Their design echo the columns of the Pantheon in Rome and are similar to those indicated by Sebastiano Serlio (1475-1 554) in his Book II I of Tutte L 'Opere d'Architeftura et Prospective. Other architectural profiles are

74 Su mmers, translation of Hypnerotomachia Polyphili, cited in Michelangelo and the Language of Art, p. 150. 75 Gianni Vattimo, me Tmnspwent Society (Balimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 1992) p. 51. 76 Victor Turner, me Rituel Process (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company) pp. 94-95. 77 Victor fumer, From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play (New York: PAJ Publications, 1982) p. 27.

59 1hreshold II: Adion Detail: The Drawing of the Ellipse The Drawing of the Muscle

# 525 Recto / Parttal View Charles de Tolnay. Corpus dei Disegni di Michelangelo. (Novara lnsltuto Geagraphico de Agoshni. 1980). p 52 Casa Buonarroti Florence. Itaiy drawn with an expressive muscularity on the front and the back of the sheet. Lines are scribed over other lines. The sharpness of the ink lins gives way to the plasticity of the red chalk line. In reference to this, Merleau-Ponty cumments on the importance of multiple lines: "to trace just one single outline sacrifices depth - that is, the dimension in which the thing is presented not as spread out before us but as an inexhaustible reality full of reserves."

The drawing achieves depth through the layering of various sketches and the interconnections between them. The drawing sheet is the surface of play in which various correspondences, slips and misses occur between its recto and verso. It is within these alignments and disjunctures, especially when read back- lit, that multiple readings of the sheet are possible. The 'worked' drawing is a palimpsest pregnant with possibilities, it is an active assemblage. a 'working' drawing in a process of becoming.

The Drawing of the Muscle

As mentioned. the head drawings (recto Sheet # 525) are matched with profiles for column bases and comices. (On Sheet # 528, a cornice is drawn as if it were a head.) The other drawings of lower torsos and legs, with their highly defined muscles. (recto and verso of Sheet # 525) refer more closely to the design for the stair and step configurations.

The Sheet # 525 wntains four versions of the Laurentian Library's vestibule stair. As de Tolnay has suggested, Michelangelo worked backwards, with his initial studies drawn on the verso of the sheet, culminating with three schemes on the sheet's recto." The first sketch of the stair is composed of two staircases that run parallel to each other. lts structure is engaged with the vestibule's walls. In the middle scheme, the staiway seems to be a three dimensional body that

Merleau-Ponty. Sense and Non-sense. p. 15. 79 de Tolnay. Corpus. pp. 53-55.

60 Threshold II: Action fioats in the space with the two staircases placed on diagonals. In the bottom a version, the two stairs are united by a third element, an elliptical form which occupies the middle area between the two flanking staircases. This ellipse when traced corresponds exadly to an ellipse implied by the outline of a muscle in the upper part of the leg of the male figure which 'floats' above the sketch. The ellipse implies compression - an appropriate geometric expression for an architecture of muscularity and movement.

The Drawing of the Stair

This final study of the stair is the beginning of the staircase's ultimate design. In a letter written in 1555 by Michelangelo addressed to Vasari, he described the vestibule stair as wmposed of a nurnber of oval boxes, each a palmo (seven and one-half inches) in depth, but not of the same length and breadth. Michelangelo specified that these boxes should diminish and narrow as one ascends towards the reading room threshold. This undulating middle staircase, reserved for the 'Signiore' is flanked on each side with a straight bank of 'servant' stairs. The mole staircase is separated from the wall by about three palmi so that the vestibule is entirely unencumbered and free on al1 sides?

The 'disengaged' staircase which appears as a free standing form within the fabric of the vestibule is riddled with subtle contradiction. The rise of the middle stair is an inch less than that of the two flanking stairs. One step at a time, the staircase engages the 'contemplative scholar' in a range of carefully choreographed movements. The 'slow' middle stair, interrupted by three elliptical landings, provides a direct route to the reading room doorway. The 'faster' side stairs are teninated by an intenediate landing. At this point of disorientation, within the 'subterranean' depths of the vestibule, the body must tum left or right and ascend the middle stair. Three staircases merge to bewme one. Confusion gives way to the regular rhythm of the reading room.

80 Michelangelo, The Letters of Michelangeb, trans. Ramsden, p. 157.

61 Threshold II: Action EfeWonof Wall and Cornice Profiles Laurontian Library

# 528 Recto Charles Q Tdnay: Corpus dec Disegni di Michelangeio. (Novaia: Insiîuto Geogaphico de Agostini. 1980). p. 56. British Museum London. Enqiand 282 x 258 mm

Cornice Profiles Laurentian Library # 528 Verso The muscularity of the architecture is expressed in the compressive and expansive quality inherent in both the architectural detail and space of the vestibule and the reading room. Within the undulations of the cornice profiles, as indicated on Sheets # 128 and M32,a compressive quality exists which extends through the entire architecture of the vestibule. An organic cohesiveness is the result, in which the line of the profile inherently contains the whole disegno. The claustrophobic nature of the vestibule is reinforced by the sheer number of architectural elements. As William Wallace points out, the vestibule contains twenty-four columns, an equal amount of pilasters, twenty large consoles, ten tabernacles, and at least two doors, a staircase, and altogether more than five hundred feet of entablature and an equal amount of cornice and dado molding. In cornparison, fourteen monolithic macigno8' columns were erected in the nave of Brunelleschi's San Lorenzo. In the library vestibule, Michelangelo installed nearly twice as many columns in one-twelfth the space in one-tenth of the tirne.'* The vestibule's claustrophobic character was also increased as its vertical dimension grew. This was in response to Pope Clement IV veto of a skylight, which meant extra wall height was required to accommodate windows in the upper storey of the vestibule. As Ackerrnan explains:

"The restricted width and expanded height of the vestibule made an interior of a strange, irrational quality, unique in the Renaissance.. ..(MichelangeIo) used the demand for heightened proportions as an inspiration to conjure a new spirit from existing motifs.. .. .Columns, pilasters and tabernacles grew as the body grows: with the heightening of the walls, the mernbering expanded; and since here only upward growth was possible, vertical accents overcame the horizontal as if by biological necessity." "

81 Macigno is a darkly wloured, Florentine stone, used extensively by Michelangelo in the Medici Chapel and the Laurentian Library. " Wallace. Michelangelo al San Lmnzo, p. 150. " Ackeman. me hhitectum of Midiel8ngelo. p. 108.

62 Threshold II: Adion Profiles for the Ricetto of the Launntian Library

# 532 Recto Charles de Tolnay: Corpus dei Disegni ch Michelangelo. (Novara: lnsituto Geographico de Agostini. 1980). p. 58. Casa Buonarroti Florence. ltaly 268 x 2t2 mm Ackerman goes on to describe the columns which are placed in the reœsses. The columns seem to be removed from their function and appear as statues in their niches, supported by volutes, which are drawn both from the front and side on the recto of the Sheet # 528. The architecture parades as sculpture, disengaged from the structural make-up of the Library. This appearance is deceiving. and as Ackeman has demonstrated in his study of the structural system of the vestibule, the wlumns actually do serve as the chef support for the roof. There is a slippage between appearance and the reality of the building construction. "In the final design, then, the structural function of the colurnn and the wall are exactly opposite of their visual function." "

"Everywhere in the vestibule MichelangeIo's licentious use of classical vocabulary, obscuring the actual relationship of load and support. created paradoxes for his academic wntemporaries. On the lower level, the volutes, which others used as svpporting members, stand in a plane well foward of the columns, sustaining nothing but themselves... the tabernacles, niches and door frames show an extraordinary fertility of invention; striking in themselves, they are given more impact by our foreknowledge of the ancient models from which they en."

The truth must be paraded by way of the false in the sumptuous garment of fiction. As Gianni Vattimo proposes, "...inthe idea that the whole is false precisely to the extent that it is realized there lies a new philosophy of history in ernbryonic form. This would be characterized by the replacement of the linear and the cyclic models with one that could only be defined as ironic and distortive.. .(that is) ironic-herrneneuticodistortive."

84 Ackeman. me Architecture of Michelangelo. p. 111. Vattimo. me Transpamnt Society, pp. 87-88. This quote is a contracted version of the original text.

63 Threshold II: Action LOVE Between the Christian and the Pagan: Drawings for Tomasso

Cruel, harsh, pitiless heart, cloaked with sweetness and filled with bitterness, your fidelify, born info time, lasts less than any flower does in the sweet spnng.'

Love is a central force within the work of Michelangelo. The love of which Michelangelo speaks2 is a difficult love that denies categorization. It is eros, the bittersweet13that is caught between the contemplation of beauty and the consummation of desire. Eros lives because the hunger of desire can never be satiated. Eros is the live state of love which lives in the liminal state between being and becoming.

"To catch beauty would be to understand how that impertinent stability in vertigo is possible. But no, delight need not reach so far. To be running breathlessly, but not yet arrived, is itself delightful, a suspended moment of living hope."

As in Dante's relationship with Beatrice, Michelangelo is kept at a constant distance from his 'love'. The undercurrent of his artistic expression is centred around this liminal condition. MichelangeIoYsletters, poetry and in particular his drawings for Tomasso de' Cavalieri are a means of expression - a mirror of his desire. The works are not an objectification of his love, but rather are gifts that capture, within their exchange, the ambiguity and changing nature of love itself. The 'gift drawings' are part of the courting of the young Roman nobleman. The sheet of the drawing is a place activated by a desire to communicate emotion.

1 Michelangelo, The Poefty of Michelangelo, trans. by James Saslow. 'Incornplete draf?of a sonnet, wfltten on the back of a letter to MichelangeIo in Carrara from Stefano di Tomasso in Florence, dated April20, 1521. The poem relates the Petrarchan antithesis of sweet-bitter." Comrnentary by Saslow, The Poetry of Michelangelo, p. 87. 2 The phase, 'The love that dear not speak its namen is attributed to Alfred Douglas. 3 "It was Sappho who first called eros 'bittersweet' frorn Sappho's glukupikron, which literally translated is 'sweetbiitter', our standard English translation inverts her actual term.' Cited in: Anne Carson, Ems the BMemweef (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 3. 4 Anne Carson, Ems the B~ersweef,p. xi.

64 Threshold III: Love a "Across this space a spark of eros moves in the lover's mind to activate delight. Delight is a movement of the soul, in Aristotle's definition. No difference: no movement: no eros." Dante wote that love is movement; it is both motion and ernotion which lead Michelangelo to 'draw the body' as a gesture of his love:

"..A speak of love as though it were a thing in itself, and not only a substance endowed with understanding but also a physical substance, which is demonstrably false; for love is not in itself a substance at ail, but an accident in a substance. That I speak of love as if it were a bodily thing, and even as if it were a man, appears from these three instances: I Say that I saw him coming; now since 'to corne' implies locomotion and, according to the Philosopher, only a body in its own power is capable of motion from place to place, it follows that I classify love as a body...."

The Orientation of Desire

In the Renaissance treatise, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499), Poliphilo is in search of his love Polia. In one incident they board the ship of Cupid. "It is no coincidence that Cupid plays the role of navigator and that Love becomes Tecton, the mythical carpenter, shipbuilder, and pilot, the Homeric ancestor of the architact." 'The winged Cupid flies above the earth and with his bow, shoots arrows at unexpecting terrestrial targets. These anows are the pangs of love. Perhaps to spike Eros' arrows, Michelangelo designed a salt-cellar, with the figure of Cupid on its lid, for the open wound of love.8 Salt stings with a healing effect. As pointed out by Paracelsus, the sanguine character, which is the most balanced, is rooted in the salty. "The body has four kings of taste-the sour, the sweet, the bitter, and the salty ... They are to be found in every creature, but only in man can they be studied... Everything bitter is hot and dry, that is to Say, melancholic... The sweet gives rise to the phlegmatic, for everything sweet is cold and moist, even though it must be compared to water ...The sanguine originates

5 Anne Carson, Ems the Bittersweet, p.66. Alighieri Dante, La Wa Nuova. trans. Barnara Reynolds (London: Penquin Classics. 1969), pp. 72-73. 7 Al berto Perez-Gomez, Polyphilo or The Dark Forest Revisiied: An Emtic EHphany of Architecture (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994), p- xviii.

65 Threshold III: Love a in the salty, which is hot and moist... If the salty predominates in man as compared with the three others he is sanguine; if the bitter is predominant in hirn, he is choleric. The sour makes him melancholic, and sweet, if it predominates, phlegrnatic, Thus the four tempers are rooted in the body of man as in a garden mold." As well, Paracelsus posited that the most balanced body is that of the hermaphrodite. Born of Hernies and Aphrodite, its body encompasses both the male and the female - it exists as a threshold between each.

Hemaphrodism of the Soul

Because love is animated, orientation of desire is essential for navigation within love's changing nature. However, Michelangelo denies easy categorization in the realm of sexual orientation. He transcends easy classification in the 19th century term as hornosexual. As Foucault has indicated the creation of the terni homosexual as a 'sexual sensibility' was not until 1870:

"We must not forget that the psychological, psychiatric. medical category of homosexuality was constituted from the moment it was characterized - Westphal's famous article of 1870 on "contrary sexual sensationsncan stand as its date of birth - less by a type of sexual relations than by a certain quality of sexual sensibility, a certain way of inverting the masculine and the feminine in oneself. Homosexuality appeared as one of the foms of sexuality when it was transposed from the practice of sodomy ont0 a kind of intertor androgyny, a hermaphrodism of the soul. The sodomite had been a ternporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species." 'O

8 The drawing and design of the salt-cellar is attributed ta Michelangelo, British Museum, London. Paracelsus. Selected Wings. trans. Nocbert Guterman (New York: Princeton University Press. 1951), pp. 19-20 'O Michel Foucauit. me Uistory of Sexuality (New York: Vintage Press. 1980). p. 43. Hafperin credits the introduction of 'homo-sexuality' into the English language in 1892 to Charles Gilbert Chaddock. See: Halperin, One Hundmd Years of Homosexuality, p.15.

66 Threshold III: Love a Following Foucault's documentation of the terni 'homosexual', David Halperin in his book, One HundM Yeam of ~omosexuality," argues against the labeling of homosexuality in ternis of a twentieth century mentality when describing the erotic models and values of Greek culture or by extension any past culture. In

these cultures, "the social body precedes the sexual body" l2and sex was a manifestation of personal status - a declaration of social identity. It was the older man, the scholar, that pursued the love of male youth.

To ciassify Michelangelo in temis of the modern rigors of sexual orientation would nullify the ambiguity implicit in his work. He stands at the threshold in which love wavers between a wsmic and bodily love of man. As well, as articulated by James Saslow, Michelangelo in many of his poems engaged in the practice of gender inversion, in which male or female are virtually interchangeable. Even when the gender is clearly male, the nature of the love is veiled; a depth is created within the space of ambiguity. In this poem fragment O written explicitly to 'my dear lord', Tomasso de' Cavalieri, Michelangelo expresses his 'chaste' intentions,

You know that 1 know, my lord, that you know that 1 corne closer to take delight in you, and you know 1 know you know just who 1 am: why fhen delay our meeting any longer.

If 1 love you, my dear lord, only what you love most in yourself, do not be angry, for if's one spirit falling in love with another What I yearn for and learn from your fair face is poorly understaad by mortal mine whoever wants to know it must die first. j3

" David Halperin, One Hundgd Yom of Homosexualily and OMer Essays on G#ek Love (New York and London: Routledge, 1990). " Halperin. One Hundmd Years of Homosexuality, p. 38. '' Saslow, The Poehy of Micheangelo. pp. 154-1 55.

67 Threshold III: Love 0 The 'love of the same sex' has to be viewed within the totality of the Renaissance itself. This love was an implicit part of the intellectual circles of the Renaissance. Plato's Symposium. and the various Pagan myths concerning homosexual love, in particular the myth of Ganymede, were interpreted and re- invented as part of the herrneneutic circle of the Renaissance. Leonard Barkan, in his book, Transuming Passion, spewlates that homosexuality is inextricably linked with the development of a Renaissance sensibility. He refers to Alanus de Insulis' Cornplaint of Nature that is, 'constructed out of a ruling metaphor that links homosexuality to humanistic innovation and neologism." '' Barkan outlines his argument:

"Alanus, speaking from inside the very humanism that he is attacking and speaking in an extravagant version of the very linguistic practices that he deplores, both describes and enacts cultural self-consciousness. For pre- Renaissance (as perhaps for Renaissance) humanism, homosexuality is no randomly chosen element in the development of this self- consciousness. The othemess of pederastic practices is more than analogous to the othemess of antiquity; these practices also characterize Antiquity ...That myth of origins will for several centuries provide an alternative metaphorics for humanism - involving erotic rather than procreative relations between masters and pupils, between past and present." l5

The hornosexuality of Antiquity, within the context of late Medieval Christianity, is just one of the factors that is part of the creation of a renewed self- consciousness that can be seen as a contributhg factor in the development of the Renaissance. As Barkan argues, "medieval humanistic revival of both literary

and erotic antiquity is linked to cultural self-awareness." l6 Michelangelo. particularly in the series of the de' Cavalieri 'gift' drawings, is an interpreter of these pagan myths as viewed with a Christian sensibility.

14 Leonard Ba&an, Tmnsuming Passion, Ganymede and the Erclfics of Uumanism (Stanfo rd: Stanford University Press, 1991), p. 50. 15 Leonard Barkan , Tmnsuming Passion, p. 53. l6Ibid, p. 53.

68 Threshold III: Love Male-male relations, which is not in the realm of procreative relations, can be framed as an erotic phenornenon. It is distanced from 'nature' and exists in the realm of 'artifice' and 'culture' - a world mapped out by phantasia. Distance from the object of desire, was especially a part of the male-male love dynamic - a perfect place for eros to inhabit. Marsilio Ficino in his Commentary on Plato's Symposium wrote of homosexuality as a 'msmic love' that rises above the physical. Like Michelangelo he wrote poems to hie beloved Giovanni Cavalcanti saying that the two "have only one soul." l7In his letter to Cavalcanti he distinguishes between a love of thinking, seeing and hearing and stupid, gross and ugly lust:

"Certainly, love (as al1 philosophers define it) is the longing for beauty. The beauty of the body lies not in the shadow of matter, but in the light and grace of form; not in dark mass, but in clear proportion; not in sluggish and senseless weight, but in hanonious number and measure. But we come to that light, that grace, proportion, number and rneasure only through thinking, seeing and hearing... However, it is not love when the appetite of the other senses drives us rather toward matter, mass, weight, and the defonnity that is the opposite of beauty or love, but a stupid, gross, and ugly lust." l8

Michelangelo's 'male-male love' was an operative and vital part of his the poetry and drawing. As Merleau-Ponty pointed out in his commentary on Cézanne, a man's life and his work are intricately linked. "Although it is certain that a man's life does not explain his work, it is equally certain that the two are connected. The truth is that this work to be done called for this life..... Here we are beyond causes and effects: both corne together in the simultaneity of an etemal Cézanne who is at the same time the formula of what h8 wanted to be and what

he wanted to do." l9

" Saslow, Poetty of Michelan~elo.p. 152. l8Marsi lio Ficino, Meditations of the Sou/, Selected Letfers of MafsiIio Ficino. tmns. by the Lation Members of the Language Department of the School of Ecanomic Science, London (Rochester,Vermont: lnner Traditions International. 1996). p. 173. Ficino in his Commentary on Plsto's Symposium separates the six senses, touch, taste and smell belong to the body and matter. Reason, sight and hearing, pertain to the soul. Ibid., p. 238. Merieau-Ponty, 'Cbzanne's Doubt" in Sense and Nomsense, p. 20.

69 Threshold III: Love a The avoidance of labeling Michelangelo as 'homosexual' does not endorse its denial in the realm of intellectual scholarship. In the first printed selection of Rime by Michelangelo's grandnephew. Michelangelo the Younger in 1623, the gender of many of the poems was changed so as to avoid any 'unorthodox' readings of the work. It was not until 1893, that John Addington Symonds (1840- 1893)20 in the first English translation of Michelangelo's poems issued a "stinging denunciation of earlier editors who have falsified or reinterpreted the poet's

manifest love of men as an allegory for love of women or God." 2' In many of Michelangelo poerns, both a Christian and a pagan love are articulated. James Saslow, a recent translator of Michelangelo's poetry, comments on the Michelangelo's curse: "The crux of Michelangelo's erotic dilemma was that he was both exceptionally loving and passionate toward men and exceptionally endowed with moral scniples... interpretation would do well to heed Symonds's perceptive suggestion that "the tragic accent discernible throughout MichelangeloJslove poetry may be due to his sense of discrepancy between his a own deepest emotions and the customs of Christian society. n II 22 Indeed, a society that framed male-male relations as a criminal actn

20 Symonds was one of the first to study 'Greek love" in English. His studies were explicitedly designed to promote judicial refonn (particularly the Labouchere Amendment of 1885, under which Oscar Wilde was convicted). His three studies of 'Greek Love" include, Studr'es of the Greek Poets, 1873, A Roblem of Modem Ethics, 1 896, and A Problem in Greek Ethics, 1901 . Symonds was a poet, historian, essayist, and semlogist. He was eleded as a fellow at Magdalen College at Cambridge. He traveled widely, and was mamed with four daughters. Among his male lovers was a Swiss youth, Christian Buol and an Itatian gondolier, Angeio Fusato. In Symonds' day, homosexuality was termed, among others, 'sexual inversion' and 'Uranianism'. From introduction by Robert Peters in, Symonds: Mak Love (New York: Pagan Press, 1983), p. 1. Symonds also pointed out that the Greeks worshipped Ems, as they worshipped Aphorodite, under the two fold names of Ouranios (celedial) and Pandemos (vulgar); and Milethey regarded the one love with the highest approval ...they never publicly approved the other. Symonds, A Problem in Greek Ethics, p. 6. 2' Saslow, me Poetry of Michelangelo. Introduction, p. 54. 22 Saslow, The Poetry of Michelangelo, Introduction, pp. 17-18. 23 In ternis of Florence during the Renaissance, male-male relations was a criminal offense. Michelangelo denied rumoun of his malemale affairs as documented in Condivi's Mi?.Saslow outlines the crime of sodomy in Florence: 'Since the time of Dante, who consigned his prominent Florentine predecessor Brunetto Latini to the same circle of the lnfemo as the sodomites - Florence had been proverbial for sodomy. The practice was continually attadced by the clergy; Tuscan moralists from St. Bernardino to Savonarola inveighed against its prevalence. lncreasingly strong punitive measures to control homosexual sex were enacted by civil authorities in the course of fifteenth century; most notable

70 Threshold ill: Love Diotima's Difficult Love

This discrepancy is, in a metaphoric sense the in-between space in which Michelangelo worked. Love as defined by Plato is caught in the threshold, born of both poverty and invention, it exists as a paradox of itself. Diotima explains the nature of this difficult love to Socrates:

"On the birthday of Aphrodite there was a feast of the gods, at which the god Poros or Plenty, who is the son of Metis or Discretion, was one of the guests. When the feast was over, Penia or Poverty, as the manner was, came about the doors to beg. Now Plenty, who was the worse for nectar, came into the garden of Zeus and fell into a grave sleep; and Poverty considering her own straitened circumstances, plotted to have him for a husband, and accordingly she lay dom at his side and conceived Love, who partly because he is naturally a lover of the beautiful, and because Aphrodite is herself beautiful, and because he was born on Aphorodite's birthday is her follower and attendant. And as his parentage is. so also are his fortunes. In the first place he is always poor, and anything but tender and fair, as many imagine him, and he is hard-featured and squalid, and has no shoes nor a house to dwell in; on the bare earth exposed he lies under the open heaven, in the streets, or at the doors of houses, taking his rest; and like his mother he is always in distress, he dwells in want. Like his father too, whom he also partly resembles, he is always plotting against the fair and the good; he is bold, enterprising, strong, a hunter of men, always at some intrigue or other, keen in the pursuit of wisdom, and never wanting in resources; a philosopher at al1 times, terrible as an enchanter, sorcerer, sophist; for he is neither mortal or immortal, he is alive and flourishing at one moment when he is In plenty, and dead at another moment, and again alive by reason of his father's nature. And this again is a quality which Love inherits from his parents; for he is wealthy and wise, and his mother is poor and foolish." "

was the institution of Ufficali de' notti, a special tribunal empowered to receive and investigate anonymous accusations of sodomy and other crimes. The ultirnate penaity for chronic offenders was death; in pradice these judges were usually more lenient." James Saslow, Ganymede in the Renaissance, HornosexuaIity in Ad and Society (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), p. 47. "The records of Florentine Utltciali de' noffi, which survive for the period 1432-1 502, provide documentation for accusations of sodomy against Leonardo da Vinci in 1476 and against Botticelli in 1502 and one of his genoni. ' Saslow, Ganymede, p. 214. '' Plato, cited in On Homosexue/ily=Lysis, Phaed~rs,end Symposium, trans. Benjamin Jowett with Selected Translations by Eugene O'Connor (Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1Wl), pp. 136-1 37.

71 Threshold III: Love Michelangelo and his work lingers at the threshold. His life and his art are riddled with a difficult love which resonate with Diotima's story conceming the conception of Love. A love that is forever seeking a home, dwelling in want, resulting in a lack that calls to be filled. Somewhere between discord and concord, a tension results - this is the beat of real Iife. A beat that can be discerned in the implied movement of MichelangeIo's drawings and the emotion of his poetry.

Tommaso de' Cavalieri: The Love of Which I Speak

Michelangelo met Tommaso de' Cavalieri (ca. 1509-87) in the spring of 1532, during a visit to Rome. Michelangelo, then aged fifty-seven, forrned an immediate and excited attachment to the twenty-three year old Tommaso. After their initial meeting, Michelangela wrote letters to his friends that expressed his infatuation with Tomasso. The following letter was written to Sebastiano del Piombo in Rome in August, 1533:

"...If you see hirn, I beg you to commend me to him a thousand times, and when you write to me tell me something about him to put in mind of him, because if he were to fade from my memory I think I should instantly fall dead." 25

The letters reveals a hypersensitivity of sight and vision, not only of physical presence but also the soul, which revealed Micheiangleo deeply held belief that transcendence was possible through the experience of the beautiful. In a letter, written by Michelangelo and addressed to Tomasso on July 28th' 1533, he indicates how love feeds both his body and soul:

"1 could (as soon) forget your name as forget the food on which I live - nay, I could sooner forget the food on which I live, which unhappily nourishes only the body, than your name, which nourishes body and soul, filling both with such delight that I am insensible to sorrow or fear of death, which my memory of you endures."

25 Michelangelo. trans. Ramsden. me Lemof MicheIange/o. p. 185. 26 Michelangelo. trans. Ramsden, The Lette= of Michelangelo, p. 184.

72 Threshold III: Love a Michelangelo's relationship to Tomasso de' Cavalieri is not a peripheral occurrence but central to the study of Michelangelo views of love, Antiquity and Christianity. This relationship was the inspiration for over forty love p~ems,~' several letters and more importantly, in relation to this thesis, a series of drawings. presented as gifts to the young Tommaso. Michelangelo's many poems articulate a diffiwlt love that is at the threshold of an erotic yet Platonic love. As Saslow points out "Cavalieri was for him what Ganymede was to Jupiter

or Alcibiades to Socrates." " This love of which Michelangelo speaks, celebrated in Antiquity by the writings of Plato is transfomed to a 'spiritual' love within the framework of Christianity. This tension between a Pagan and a Christian love is manifested in Michelangelo's work.

ln a sonnet. written for Tommaso de' Cavalieri (circa 1534)'" the language and metaphor are thoroughly Neoplatonic, praising the transport of the soul, through the medium of physical beauty, to knowledge of the divine source of al1 beauty. This mirrors Ficino's Commentary on Plato's Symposium, in which the splendor of heavenly light can be admired and astound one through the body / see in your beautiful face, my lord, what can scarcely be related in this life: my soul, although still clothed in its flesh, has already risen offen with if to God. And if the evil, cruel, and stupid rabble point the finger at others for what they feel themselves, my intense knging is no less welcame to me, nor my love, rny faith, and my virtuous desite.

'' lndicated by Saslow in. The Poetry of Michelangelo, p. 16. '' Saslow, Ganymede, p. 16. This sonnet was written on the verso of a sheet of diagrams for the cutting of an architectural block, Sheet # 485r. in de Tolnay's Corpus. Ficino comments: 'Beauty is a certain act or ray from it (God) penetrating thmugh ail things: first the Angelic Mind, second into the Soul of the whole, and the other souls, third into Nature, fourth into the Matters of bodies... so anyone who looks at and loves the beauty in those four, Mind, Soui, Nature, Body, is looking at and loving the splendor of God in them, and. though this splendor, God Himself. Cited in: Ficino, Commentary on Mo's Symposium, trans. Sears Jayne (Dallas: Spring Publication, 1985), Speech II, Chapter 5, pp. 51-52.

73 Threshold III: Love To people of good judgement, every beauty seen here resembles, more than anything else does, that merciful fountain from which we al1 derive; nor have we another sample or other fruit of heaven and earfh; so he who love you in faith rises up to God and holds death sweet. "

Michelangelo's meeting of the young Roman nobleman marks a period of transition in Buonarroti's Iife and his gradua1 move to Rome. In the story of Michelangelo, this time was highly charged. In January of 1529, he was appointed as fortifications' director in which he drew up plans for the defense of his beloved city of Florence. In 1530, after the fall of the Republic, he miraculously escaped the hired assassins of Duke Alessandro de Medici. And in 1534, his father, Ludovico Buonarroti died at the age of ninety. It was later that year that Michelangelo left Florence pennanently for Rome. His relationship with Tomasso would continue there and Cavalieri would later be appointed to complete Michelangelo's projects for the Roman Campidoglio and the Vatican basilica of St. Peter's, and would be one of an intimate group at the Michelangelo's deathbed in 1564. Michelangelo's relationship to de' Cavalieri would be one of the most profound and long-lasting relationships of his life.

Drawing formed a basis for their initial relationship in which Tomasso was a student of the master draftsman, Michelangelo. Tomasso proved, as his many drawings indicate, a serious student. As an admirer and a teacher. Michelangelo presented a series of drawings to Tomasso. Vasari records among Michelangelo's gifts a series of four drawings on mythological subjects: "The Rape of Ganymede", "The Punishment of Tityusn, "The Fall of Phaetonn,and a "Children's BacchanaIn, as well as, a portrait of Tomasso and another of Cleopatra. Of these, it is generally assumed that the first made, the two referred

" Michelangelo, Tho Poedy of Michelangelo. tnns. Saslow. p. 195.

74 Threshold III: Love ta in Cavalieri's letter to Michelangelo on New Year's Day 1533, are the related 0 subjects of Ganymede and ~it~us.~*

Michelangelo's suffering of Tityus and the figure of Ganymede constitute a pair of drawings symbolizing the dual nature of love - one horizontal and earthbound, the other transported to the heavens.

The Rape of Ganymede

The first drawing presented to Tomasso was based on the myth of Ganymede. The subject matter expresses the dual nature of Michelangelo's love, as James Saslow in his book, Ganymede in the Renaissance, points out : 'The iwnographic meanings that Michelangelo and his contemporaries would have read into the image of GanymedeJsabduction derived from two complementary sources: medieval Christian glosses on classical myth, and antique concepts as resumcted and reinterpreted by Renaissance humanists. Michelangelo, who was both a devout Catholic and educated in the Neoplatonic circle of Medicean ~lorence,~would have been well aware of both sets of meaning." Y

Even within the early tradition of the myth of Ganymede, there exists a division between a Greek or Latin interpretation. In his thorough study, The Neoplatonic Movement and Michelangelo, which remains the fundamental summary of this aspect of the Renaissance iwnography of Ganymede, Panofsky divided the medieval and the Renaissance interpretations of Ganymede into two categories, each based on precedents in Greek and Latin authors.

"ln the fourth century B.C. we find two already opposite conceptions: while Plato believed the myth of Ganymede to have been invented by the Cretans in order to justify amorous relations between men and boys or adolescents, Xenophon explained it as a moral allegory denoting the

32 Saslow, Ganymede in the Renaissance, pp. 17-18. 33 Michelangelo education within the Neoplatonic circJes of Florence began in 1489, when he started studies in the Medici Garden at San Marco. Michelangelo Iived through several generations of Florentine Neoplatonists and continued to maintain contact with them. Donato Giannotti, the fnend in his old age, was a pupil of Francesco da Diaccetto, who was a pupil of Marsilio Ficino. See, Summers, Michelangelo and the Language of Art, p.15. " Saslow, Ganymede in the Renaissance. p. 21.

75 Threshold III: Love superiority of the mind in camparison with the body; according to him the very name of Ganymede, supposedly defived from Greek words 'to enjoy' and 'intelligence', would bear witness to the fact that intellectual, not physical advantages win the affection of the gods and assure immortality." 35

This dual nature of love, amor spirtualis et carnalis, is expounded by the quattrocentro's preeminent Neoplatonist, Marsilio Ficino who declared, 'Let there be two Venuses in the soul, the one heavenly, the other earthly." " The dual nature of love is also expounded upon in MichelangelotsRime. The poem makes reference to the myth of Ganymede, with its mention of feathen, wings and flight:

Violent passion for trernendous beauty is not perfarce a bitter modal enor, if if can leave the heart melteâ thereatter, So that a holy dart can pierce it quickly.

Not hindering high flight to such vain fury, Love wakens, muses, put the wings in feather, As a first step, so that the sou! will soar And rise to its maker, finding this tm scanty.

The love of what I speak of reaches higher; Woman's too much unlike, no heart by mhts Ought to grow hot for her, if wise and male.

One draws to Heaven and to earth the other, One in soul, one living in the sense Drawing its bow on what is base and vile. 37

35 Erwin Panofsky, " The Neoplatonic Movement and Michelangelo", in Studies in ICOnO~raphy: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (New Yorlc: Oxford University Press, 1939), .213-214. 'Marsilio Ficino, Commentan'um in CoMomatonis (1 474). tnns. Sears R. Jayne (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1943), p. 191. 37 Michelangelo, 7be Complete Paem and Selected Letters of MIChelangelo, trans- Creighton Gilbert (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), p. 145.

76 Threshold III: Love The Contrapposto of Ganymede

Ganymede, son of the king of Troy, was the most beautiful of youths. Zeus, desiring him for his cup bearer and bed cornpanion, swooped down disguised as an eagle and abducted Ganymede. To console his hapless father, Zeus assured him that his son wouid have immortality in the role of service to the most powerful gods. He also gave him two fine horses. Robert Liebert, in his book, Michelangelo. A Psychoanalytic Study of His Life and Images, commented that the Zeus-Ganyrnede myth gained immense popularity in Greece and Rome because it afforded religious justification for a grown man's passionate love of a boy. The myth was employed by Plato in Phaedrus to justify his own attraction towards his students. Over the course of the Middle Ages, it was reinterpreted in keeping with Christian mortality. Thus, a parallel was drawn between the ascension of Ganymede to Olympus and that of Saint John the Evangelist to Heaven. 38 a The prevailing comrnentary on Dante in the Renaissance by Cristoforo Landino (1529), provided the transition to the Neoplantonic concept of the myth in Michelangelo's day. According to this, Ganymede represents the more spiritual realm of the Christian sou1 - the mind - leaving behind earthly and corporeal elements, to ascend to a state of ecstatic contemplation. Thus, over the course of many centuries, by Michelangelo's day, the Ganymede myth's original, frankly homosexual message, had become subsumed into a spiritual abstraction. The contemporary version of the myth gave Michelangelo license to exploit the theme without impunity in communicating to Tommaso his feelings and fantasies, which were rooted in the pagan beginnings of the myth. The inherent ambiguity of the work was a means of subliminal communication.

38 Robert Liebert. Michelangelo. A Psychoanalytic Study of His Li& and Images (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), p. 277.

77 Threshold III: Love ~ichelangeloMerisi de Caravaggio a Michelangelo's Ganyrnede with legs slightly spread, echoes the contrapposto position of his proportional studies (see Action: Chapter II).This position is imbued with sexual tension:

"Michelangelo's Ganymede, with eyes closed and right arm limply draped over the eagle's wing, is enraptured as the eagle spreads his legs and buttocks. The figure of this athletic youth is a masterful rendering of the ecstasy of passive yielding to anal eroticism in the embrace of a more powerful being." "

The word contrapposto refers not only to the figural position but also the artistic 'positioning' of the work. Like the figure of Ganymede it holds two meanings at one time. The drawing can be argued two ways, as a rape or a spiritual ascension to the heavens.

"The word contrapposto, now exclusively used for a figural posture in which the weight of the body is shifted to one leg with a consequent adjustment of parts of the body, is taken from the Latin contrapositum, in turn translated from the Greek antithesis, a rhetorical figure in which opposites were set directly against one another. In the Renaissance, contrapposto had a wider meaning than it has now, and could refer to any opposition - chiamsuro. for example, or the juxtapositions of old and Young, male of fernale." "

Tender Buttocks: The Ganymede of Poliphili

The Ganymede of Hypnerotomachia Poliphili is decidedly more tender and the sexual overtone more gently overt. Poliphilo observes a carving of the myth of Ganymede in the keystone of a vault. The myth is scribed in the architecture of a dream within a dream. The eagle was carved of sardonyx and the little child in white onyx. The power of the eagle is augmented by a younger and more fragile Ganymede in scanty garô. There is an allusion, especially in this passage, of an

------

39 Liebe rt , Michelangelo, A Psychoanalytical Study, p. 278. LiebeR comments that the unrestrained anal eroticism in Michelangelo's Ganymede seems to have affected both and Caravaggio sufficiently to cause them to paint their own versions of the subjed, which are direct repudiations of Michelangelo's sensibility. 40 Su mmers, Michelangelo and the Langusge of Art, p. 76.

78 Threshold III: Love alchemical Ganymede. His herrnaphroditic beauty lifted by an eagle, a bird a invested with multiple alchemical significance.

"1 admired, little less, with astonishment then, in a pugnacious and more than black stone, an eagle, which was al1 drawn out of the solid mass with his wings spread open. He had amorously carried off an ingenuous and most delicate boy by his scanty gannent. So very cautiously that his deep and hooked talons did not inadvertently offend the tender flesh. And thus, drawing with his claws, by the extreme flap of the garrnent, spreading his feet tumed towards the fleshy and adorable breast, from the navel downwards he laid bare the suspended child. Whereas the tender buttocks were diverted between the plumatile thighs of the bird. This most beautiful little boy, worthy of he who had seized him, had in his countenance openly expressed being terrified of falling. Then, with both of his little amis open, with his plump hands tightly clinging onto the wing- qui Il bone, he had fastened himself to the extended wings, that is the remex, that moveably attached bone which is cannected to the body. And withdrawing his swelling and childish legs upwards, he had his little feet projeding over the dilated tail. This, very beaut iful, ttespassed in tuming under the soffÏt of the arch. This little child was in the white vein of the agate, or onyx artificiously exacted. And the bird was of sardonyx which is the other vein married together with it. I was stupefied by this most exquisite expression, thinking: How had the elegant artifex so perspicaciously imagined how to apply this stone most aptly to such a use and design!" "

Ganymede in the Vault

The eagle which lifts Ganymede is a symbol of both Christ's resurrection and an emblem of St. John the Evangelist, owing to his 'insight into the divine', and his power to behold divine light. Accarding to a medieval legends, the eagle could look at the sun without being blinded and trained its young to do likewise, bringing them up on its wings. Thus it was seen as representing Christ, who çazes on God the Father and raised men up to contemplate the divine

4 1 Francesw Colonna, Hypnerotomachie Poliphili (Venetian Edition, 1499), trans. f racey Eve Winton (Cambridge: Ph.D. Dissertation, 1998) 2 V (c vi L-RI. 42 From footnotes cited in: Marsilio Ficino, Meditafions of the Soul, trans. Language Department of the School of Economic Science, London, p. 233.

79 Threshold Ill: Love MichelangeIo, The Punishment of Tityus (Rotated) # 345 Recto Charles de Tolnay: Corpus dei Disegni di Michelangelo. (Novara: Insituto Geographico de Agostini. 1986) Royal Library. Windsor CasUe. 19.2 x 33.3 cm Black chalk It seems appropriate that Ganymede was recommended by the painter and 0 friend of Michelangleo, Sabastiano del Piombo, to be the subjed of the fresco for the cupola of the Medici Chapel. On July 17th, 1533, Sebastiano wrote the artist, wha was then at work on the Medici Chapel in f lorence:

"Regarding the painting that is to be done in the vault of your lantern... lt seems to me that the Ganymede would go well there, and you could give him a halo so that he would look like St. John of the Apocalypse when he was carried up to heaven."

Within vault of the chapel, the spiritual aspect of the Ganymede myth is heightened and the erotic connotation, although residual, is still implicit. The project of the fresco represents a merger of the myths of Antiquity and the stories of Christianity.

Ganymede Paired with Tityur a To understand Michelangelo fully, the Ganymede drawing cannot be considered apart from its companion drawing, Tityus, Sheet # 345 in de Tolnay's Corpus. Michelangelo knew the myth of Tityus specifically through Ovid and as a general part of his humanist education. The giant Tityus, a mortal son of Zeus. was one of the four notorious sinners tortured in Hades. His sin had been trying to rape Leto, the mother of and Artemis, as she perforrned a sacred devotion. Apollo and Artemis slew him with a volley of arrows. Tityus was then further punished by being stretched out over nine acres in Hades with his arms and legs pegged to the ground while two vultures perpetually devoured his liver - the seat of passion and of camal desire. Thus, Tityus syrnbolized the agony that debasement of the soul, through sexual overindulgence, was thought to deserve.

43 Letter from del Piombo cited in Saslow, Ganyrnede in Me Renaissance. p. 42.

80 Threshold III: Love Michelangelo,The Punishment ofTityus (Rotated), Detail # 345 Recto Charles de Tolnay- Corpus dei Disegni di Micheiangeio. (Novara. Insituto Geographico de Agostini, 1980) Royal Library. Windsor Castle. 19.2 x 33 3 cm Black chalk Tityus Paired with Prometheus

The myth of Tityus is mirrored in the myth of Prometheus:

"Prometheus stole fire from the Gods and bestowed it upon man. Zeus punished Prometheus by chaining him to a rock and sending an eagle to devour his liver. With the use of this stolen fire, man was able to invent his own world, creating the various arts which transmuted the order of nature into the order of culture. The stigma of theft was thus attached to imagination, undersood broadly as that Promethean foresight which enabled man to imitate the godan'

Prometheus meaning fore-sight (pro-metheus)," designates the power to anticipate the future. The liver of Prometheus, as the seat of passion, as pointed out by Plato in Tirnaeus, is a mirror of divination, especially at night. 'When the mind wants to cause fear, it makes use of the liver's native bittemess... By contrast, gentle thoughts produce images of the opposite kind... using the organ's innate sweetness to render it straight and smooth and free." a The liver, the seat of passion and prophecy, like eros henelf is bittersweet. The eagle devours the liver every night, only for it to grow back during the day and the torture ta be repeated.

The Curse of Prometheus

One interpretation of MichelangeIo's drawings is that he himself is TityuslPrometheus, left to suffer for his passion and his illustrious imagination. A bittersweetness abounds. Passion and imagination allow him to soar to unimagined heights and plummet to the deepest depths. The lover bewmes the

44 Richard Keamey, The Wake of Imagination (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 1988) . 80. "Kearney. The Weke of Imagination, p. 80. Jean Pierre Vernant in his book, Myth and Thought among the Greeks, writes that the narne Prometheus is derived from the Indo-European root, man-, has the meaning of 'prudent, circumsped', which was a quality that the Greeks already ascribed to him. as opposed to his brother Epimetheus, the ciumsy, thoughtless one. Vemant goes on to link Prometheus and technology, particularly the connedion between fire and crafts. The theft of fire by Prometheus must be paid for in the fomi of work. Fire gives man the ability to change his world, but this is only passiMe through endless exertion. Jean Pierre Vemant, Myth end Thought among the Greeks (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul), pp. 237-240. 46 Plato, Timaeus and CMias, trans. Desmond Lee, p. 99.

81 Threshold III: Love Michelangelo.The Punishment of Tityus (Rotated) # 345 Verso Charles de Tolnay Corpus dei Disegni di Michelangelo. (Novara- Insituto Geographico de Agosbni. 1980) Royal Library. Windsor Castie. 192x333cm Black chalk prisoner; the artist becomes a slave. Eros and work have similar dynamics. Michelangelo in one of his sonnets makes an allusion to Tityus. He also articulates a bittersweetness in his love of Tomasso.

then who wtll win out behveen sweefness and sorrow ? If, to be happy, I must be conquered and chained, it is no wonder that, naked and alone, an armed cavalier's pnsoner I remain. 47

Michelangelo suffers as a supreme lover and maker of the arts. One of Prometheus' responsibilities is the distribution of the stolen Rame among mankind. He is entrusted with the mission of distributing suitable qualities to all beings of creation. All skills corne from Prometheus. However, the talents that are implanted in each man are also his curse. The brighter the imagination, the hotter the flarne, the more it consumes and burns. The most talented man is ladened with unending toil. Prometheus, the deity of technology, the father of al1 the arts and crafts and a symbol of man himself is eternally punished.

The RectoNerso of Tityus and the Risen Christ

One of the most remarkable occurrences in Michelangelofs corpus of drawings is the verso of the Tityus sheet. He virtually traced the outline of the figure of the recumbent and helpless Tityus but, by turning it ninety degrees, transformed it into the figure of Christ Risen, in the act of triumphaf ascension. Here within the space of the recto and the verso of a single sheet the Pagan world of Antiquity and the Christian world are brought together. Like a metaphor, two disparate wor(l)ds are brought together. The muscular, hairless body of Christ arises from the earth as a triumphant, heroic figure. Tityus, lies horizontal, bound to a rock, a Pagan myth tempered with Christian guilt and punishment. It is not clear which figure was drawn first however: "...one presupposes that the hastily sketched

2 7 An armed cavalier is a pun on the name of Cavalieri. Michelangelo, The Poetry of Michelangelo, trans. Saslow. pp. 226-227.

82 Threshold III: Love MichelangeIo, The Punishment of Tityus (Rotated) # 345 Verso Charles de Tolnay. Corpus dei Disegni di Michdangelo. (Novara: Insituto Geographico de Agoshni. 1980) Royal Library. Windsor Castre. 19.2~333cm Black chaik Christ is traced from the finished Tityus simply because one associates tracing 0 with a less perfeded work. .. n 48

A Conceptual Space: Ganymsde - Tityus - Tho Risen Christ

In his book, Transuming Passion, Leonard Barkan points out: "Whatever the chronology, the sequence Ganymede -Tityus - Risen Christ, or Risen Christ - Tityus - Ganymede exists in a conceptual unified space, a psychic and hermeneutic palimpsest.. .Most important is the transumptive palimpsest or cycle: that is, the movement between layers of typology - ChristianIPagan- which is also a movement between topological thinking and the representation of repressed desire." *

In al1 three drawings, as was evident in Michelangelo's proportional studies, the figures are in a contrapposto position. However, Tityus is not standing but is posed in a reclining position. The drawing seems to be constructed in anticipation or as a result of the Risen Christ on its verso. This figure, as well, seems to be riddled in contradiction. It is not clear if the figure of Christ is emerging from his tamb or ascending into heaven. In wntrast to the traditional image of Christ, he appears as a heroic charader with an athletic physique. His animated condition is made apparent by his arms which are drawn as multiple images.

Tityus/Prometheus on the recto is etemally bound to the earth which appears as a 'rock cloud' in the drawing. Is his world as hard as a rock or as soft as a cloud ? "Moreover, only Tityus's right arm and right foot are tied to the rock. His left leg is free from bonds and is relaxed. There are no scars frorn the bird's pecking on his supple abdomen. His facial expression is ambiguous. This relative freedom from external restraints has been interpreted as signifying

" Barkan, Transuming Passion. Ganymede end Me Uotics of Humanism. p. 92. a Barkan, Transuming Passion. p. 92. 83 Threshold 1II: Love Negative of Templete for Reading Room Threshold # 538 Verso Charles de Tolnay: Corpus dei Disegn~di Michelangelo. (Novara Insituto Geographico de Agostinc. 1980). pp 60-61 Archivro Buonarrob Florence. ltaiy 164 x 184 mm spi ritual rather than physical enslavement. Thus, the question is left open whether Tityus is suffering at all."

With respect to Tityus's position, it is similar to Ganymede's, rotated ninety degrees. As well, the figure of Tityus has a resemblance to Adam in the Sistine Chapel's, the 'Creation of Adam'. Tityus is submitting to the eagle in a passive and a receptive pose that echoes Adam's moment of animation by God, as he rests, out stretched on the earth, his hand extended towards the Creator.

The Mamage of Poetry and Poiesis

As in the TityuslPrometheus figure, eros and work merge in a residual construction of Michelangelo's. It is comprised of a draft of a love poem written on a paper left-over from a template cut-out made for the stonecutters. It is difficult to surmise if Michelangelo's 'construction' was accidental, sub-conscious or intentional. Like a collage, we perhaps can see it as a chance collision in which the adjacency of one thing with another, is transfomative in the reading of either one of the elements. Poetry and profiles, love and work overlap and infiltrate each other. 'The crisp angularity of his moldings finds its counterpart in the lapidary style of his poetry and vice versa."

In de Tolnay's Corpus, Sheet #538 is the paper negative of a template. The positive was used as the profile to cut the magcino Stone for the threshold between the ricetto and the reading rodm of the Laurentian Library at San Lorenzo. On the surviving negative is scribed a draft of a love poem written by Michelangelo to Tomasso de' Cavalieri in 1533. This leftover negative of the cutout sheet has survived because Michelangelo either subsequently or immediately used it to draft a sonnet for Tomasso. The love poem literally saved the leftover paper from the garbage bin. As Michelangelo wrote: '... a written or

Liebert. Michelangelo, A Psychoanalylic SIudy of His Lilir and Images. p. 281. Wallace. Michdangel0 af San Lorenzo. p. 173.

84 Threshold III: Love Drawing for Threshold between Vestibule and Reading Room, Laurentian Libnry # 534 Recto Charles de Tolnay: Corpus dei Disegni d Michdangdo, (Novara: lnsituto Geogaphico de Agostini. 1980). p. 59-60. Florence. ltaiy Casa Buonarroti. 1. 57. fol. 144 240 x 125 mm painted page or sheet is better thought of than any swap or shred..." 52 Although a the positive was consumed in the process of wnstnidion, the negative exists because of it. The cutout is an invaluable part of Michelangelo's work because in it exists the concurrent activities of writing, drawing, cutting, carving and building.

Threshold Dovetail

In De Tolnay's Corpus, Sheet 1 534 is a recording of five profiles used to carve the doorway between the vestibule and the reading room. On the recto and verso of the sheet are full sale outlines of the jambs, threshold, and wrnice details. It is known that on August 30, 1533% Michelangelo wntracted Francesco del Lucchesino (Ceccone) and his cornpanions to carve these architectural elements specifically designed by himself. The profiles are a testament to MichelangeloJsinvolvement in the library project, as well as, the importance he placed on even the smallest detail. The negative of the outline a evident on Sheet # 538 dovetails exadly with a profile drawn on the recto of Sheet # 534. Michelangelo's disegno of the threshold inwrporates the toms molding of the tread and stepped fasciae under its lip. A profile (as discussed in Chapter II) was then cut from the sheet, probably for a tin template. The threshold profile inwrporates a step that marks the transition between the top elliptical landing of the vestibule staircase and the pattemed floor of the reading room. This step is seven and threequarters inches high and the nosing of the tread extends two inches. The threshold, like the vestibule staircase, engages the body, as one 'steps' into the deep doorway as the passage to the reading room.

52 Michelangelo, The Poetry of Michelangelo, trans. Saslow, p. 212. 53 Wallace, Michelangelo at San Lorenzo, p. 173.

85 Threshold Ili: Love Plan ~aurentianLibrary kckerman, The Architecfure of M~helangdo,p. 73. 1 Library Choreography

In reference to Michelangelo's 'organic' conception of architecture, the disegno of the threshold cannot be separated from the overall design of the library. It is a holistic assemblage in which the written word, the books, the desks, the floor patterns, the cawed wooden ceiiing, the windows, the structure and the general spatial sequencing are part of an integrated architecture infomed by the body and the organization of knowledge.' One line from a book or the outline of a template is the key to the whole.

In terms of its general organization, Ackerrnan has pointed out: "Michelangelo's consciousness of geometrical sequence of his scheme: square, long rectangle and triangle suggests the aptness of his decision to articulate the upright, vertical vestibule actively, and the rewmbent, horizontal reading room passively." This carefully choreographed series of spaces also refer, in an anafogical way, to the body. In particular to Michelangelo's proportional study re- presented by Giovanni Fabbri, in which the body is wmprised of three zones - the upper and lower body separated by an interstitial, erogenous zone. As a line of speculation, the compressed, cubi~,~~top-lit vestibule with its staircase refers to the lower body and man's darkened state of ignorance. The long rectangular reading room with its articulated, ribbed bays refers to the upper body. The unrealized triangular private reading room is the head of the body, enlightened

54 The library itself contains U desks on each side of the one hundred and fifty foot reading room. According to a catalogue of 1581 the 2,978 books contained in the library were ordered from the back to the front, as well as, from one side to the other. The west side bank of desks contained books of pagan or profane knowledge, organized by Aristotle's tree of knowledge. This row begins with latin rhetoric and progresses with Greek oration, Latin and Greek history, Latin and Greek ethics, Greek philosophy and ends with Hebraic texts. The east bank of desks contains sacred texts. It begins with the Cabala. Subsequent desks contain Italian, Latin and Greek poetry, astronomy. The series ends with Latin and Greek bibles and theology. Upon crossing the threshold between the vestibule and the reading room there begins a journey. The scholar is introduced to tools of leaming that lead him onward to knowfedge of the divine. Ben Nicholson, Canadian Centre for Architecture Exhibition, Montreal, Canada, 1997. Website: http://HMMl.niChols0nren.c0rn " Plato assigns the cube to the eallh; '...for it is the most immobile of the four bodies and the most retentive of shape, and these are charaderistics that must belong to the figures with the most stable faces." Plato, Tirnaeus, trans. Oesmond Lee, p. 78.

86 Threshold III: Love Negative of Template for Reaâing Roorn Threshold, ûetail # 538 Verso Charles de Tolnay: Corpus dei Disegni di MichdMgdo. (Novara: Insituto Geographico de Agostini, 1980). pp 60-61 Archivio Buonarroti Florence. ltaiy 164 x 184 mm by knowledge. The threshold at the entrance of the library hall is the in-between zone that marks the transition between the vita activa of the vestibule and the vita contemplativa of the reading room. This threshold is the middle door of vita voluptuana. As Diotima explained to Socrates, love sleeps in the threshold.

The Poem at the Threshold

As previously mentioned, the threshold negative contains a draft of a love poem addressed to Tomasso deJCavalieri. The completed poem is translated as follows: 1 don 't know if it is the longer-for light of its first maker, which my soul feels; or whether, fmrn my memories of people some other beauty shines forth in my heart; or whether reports or dreams bring some one before my eyes and prssent to my head, lea ving behind something unknown and smatfing that is, perhaps, what now leads me to weep. What 1 feel and se&, and who might guide me to it, are not within me; nor can 1 see clearly where 1 might find them, though othen seem to show me. This, lord, has happened to me since 1 saw you: a biffer sweetness, a yes-and-no feelin moves me; certainly if must have been your eyes.47

Michelangelo does not mention the word love in the poem. However, he does begin with "the longer for light of God" and end with the eyes of his "lordJJ, Tomasso. The poem begins in confusion. He is unsure of the source of his emotion. 1s it the celestial rays of divine love that his soul feels? Or a memory derived from an image - a composite picture of man's beauty that he has stored in his heart, like a bee that wllects sweet nectar? Or is it an image from a dream, an intemal vision. a prophecy that is presented to his eyes? The light of love that he senses has blinded him.

56 Poem for Tommaso de' Cavalieri (full poem deriveâ from fragment of text fmm. De Tolnay. Corpus, Sheet 1538.) Michelangelo, The Poe@' of Michel8ngk0, trans. Saslow, p. 186.

87 Threshold II!: Love Michelangelo seems to be caught in a threshold condition between sleep and 0 consciousness - as if half-awake at or dusk. In his emotional confusion, he attempts to decipher the nature of his love for the young nobleman. Being at the threshold of a relationship, he is unsure of its direction. A "yes-and-non feeling moves him. Michelangelo weeps to cool the heat of his heart. There is a feeling of loss, a 'smartingJ,a lad< of something. This is rooted in desire, for "...desire can only be for what is lacking, not at hand, nor present, not in one's possession nor in one's being."

The line of the poem, "What I feel and seek, and who might guide me to it are not within me ..." perhaps can be illuminated by Aristophanes. It was he, who in the context of PlatoJsSymposium put forth the story of mankind's original nature. He explained that although we may have been at one tirne whole, capable of rolling like a sphere, we are now split like flat fish, in constant search of our other half, to make us complete." We only get a complete picture of ourselves, when our image and our desire is mirrored" in our beloved. Desire cannot be

57 Carson, Eros the Biltersweet, p. 10. 58 Aristophanes explained that the 'sexes were originally three in number, not two as they are now: there was man, woman, and the union of the two having a name corresponding to this double nature (Le. the androgynous)..,primeval man was round and had four hands and four feet, back and sides forming a circle ...When he had a mind he could walk ... and he could roll over and over again ...Tenible was their sight and strength, and the thoughts of their hearts were great, and they made an attack upon the gods." As a punishment Zeus diswvered a way to punish them, "1 will cut them in two and then they will be diminished in strength and increased in numbers..." The result of Zeus' punishment is that, 'Each of us when separated is but the indenture of a man, having one side like a flat fish ...always looking for his other half." As well, Aristophanes goes on to refer to male-male attraction. '...men who are a section of the male follow the male, and while they are young, king a piece of the man, they hang about him and embrace him... And when they reach manhood they are lovers of youth ...and such a nature is prone to love and ready to retum love." Plato, 'Symposium", Lysis, maedms, and Symposium, trans. Jowett, pp.121-126. 59 As Marsilio Ficino writes, in one of his letter 'Whence the reciprocity of love is bom", the lover fashions '...in his mind the image of the one he loves, and so his mind becomes, as it were, a mirror in which the fom of the beloved is refleded." Ficino in another letter to Girolamo Amaui says: '. ..the desire of the erring mind, essentially weak or self-seeking, suffers these frustrations deservedly. Since this desire feeds on the winds of the worid, just when it seems to be growing most it is not so much growing as swelling; thus the stronger it appears, the weaker Ït is. Therefore human love is a thing of anxious fear. Divine love. however, kindled by the flames and viflues and glowing strong from celestial rays, seeks to retum to the sublime heights of heaven that no fear of earthly ills can ever trouble. Of such a kind is our mutual love, Amaui. Therefore, as you are sure of your love toward me, so be just as sure of love toward you. Far be it that one

88 Threshold III: Love seen and understood without the 'othef. In an analogical way, the negative of 0 the threshold template and the love of the poem scribed on it, are molded to receive their "other half ". Negatives are matched by positives. However, in terrns of love, the promise of attraction and fulfillment is matched by the potential of repulsion and rejection. Eros is a bittersweet construction.

" 'Sweetbitter eros' is what hits the raw film of the lover's mind. Paradox is what takes shape on the sensitized plate of the poem, a negative image from which positive pictures can be created. Whether apprehended as a ditemma of sensation, action or value, eros prints as the same contradictory fact: love and hate converge within erotic desire."

Pain Threshold.

The residual effect of Michelangelo emotional tunnoil is something 'unknown and smarting." Bittersweet eros is a suffering that is a smarting. This smarting is

a pain and "pain has tumed the threshold to stone." 6' Pain is a compressive force, that calls for release. Pain is a void that is filled with tears. It is a blow, that 0 awakens us from our sleep, a shock which founds a world. Pain can be

human heart should fail to respond to another that is aiways calling. Even strings seem to respond to strings that are similarly tuned, and one lyre resounds in answer to another; indeed a solid wall may echo to one who calls." Cited in Ficino, Letters of Ficino, pp. 174-176. 60 Carson, Bos the Bittemweet, p. 9. 61 Heidegger, 'Language". Poefry, Language, niought, p. 204. The full version of the poem by Georg Trakl. cited in: Heidegger, 'Language', Poefry Language Thought, pp. 1 94-1 95.

A Winter Evening

Wndow with falling snow is mayed, Long tolls the vesper bell, The house is provided well, The table for many laid.

Wandering ones, more than a few, Corne to the door on darksome courses. Goiden blooms the hee of -ces Drawing up the earth's cool dew.

Wandering quietly steps withril; Pain has tumed the threshohi to stone. There lie, in limpid brightness shown, a Upon the table bread and wne.

89 Threshold III: Love attractive. "PainAears asunder, it separates, yet so that at the same time it 0 draws everything to itself, gathers it to itself." The gathering happens in the between and creates a middle. "The threshold is the ground beam that bears the doorway as a whole. It sustains the middle in which the two, the outside and the inside, penetrate each other. The threshold bears the between." "

The drawing is a threshold, between inner vision of the artist and his outer world. The lines of a drawing gather like liner of poetry. Words create worlds. Drawing is another kind of writing, both are from the same pen. The lines create a 'drawing' together of many parts. The drawing is a joining in that it is a synthesis. "...the pen drawing of a plan or sketch, draws and joins together what is held apart in separation. Pain is the joining agent in the rending that divides and gathers. Pain is the joining if the rift. The joining is the threshold." "

Poetry and Poiesis

"Poiesis as a form of rewnciliation between man and the world, which were perceived as the two poles of a sacred living totality, this link was broken in the Galilean Revolution.""

Heidegger articulates this link between poetry and poiesis, particularly in his essay "Building Dwelling Thinking". Making is, in Greek, poiesislMand 'poetic

creation, which lets us dwell, is a kind of building." 67 Michelangelors poemlprofil/o 'collage' is a chance meeting, a wupling, a constnicted metaphor, that transforms through the imagination, the reading of both the template and his writing. Both are a kind of qualitative measuring. "In poetry there takes place what al1 measuring is in the ground of being. Hence it is necessary to pay heed to the basic act of measuring. To write poetry is measure-taking, understood in

" Heidegger. Poetry Language Thought, p. 204. 63 Heidegger, Poeûy Language Thought, p. 204. 64 Heidegger. Poetry Language mought, p. 204. Perez-Gomez. Architecture end the Uisis of Modem Science. p. 10. Heidegger, -... Poetically Man Dwells...', Poetry Language mought, p. 214. 67 Heidegger. Poetry Language fhought, p. 21 5.

90 Threshold III: Love the strict sense of the word, by which man first receives the measure for his breath of being." "

Poetry is an oblique truth that is aletheia; truth being unveiling. as opposed to truth as correspondence. The template prescribes a correspondence of profile to Stone. It is both a 'drawing' and a type of building. The template is also like a poem, in that it is an analogy, a proportioning. The design of its outline is analogous to the profile of a face. The face of emotion and appearance is the flesh of the interface? In the process of bewming, the line stands at the threshold between the visible and the invisible. The template implies its mate. Building marries it to the earth. Building is dwelling which is first poetry.

Poetry allows man to dwell, that is "to spare, to preserve the fourfold " in its essential being." " "Poetry is what first brings man ont0 the earth. making him belong to it, and thus brings him into dwelling." "Yet man is capable of dwelling only if he has already built, is building, and remains disposed to build, in another way." 73

"Poetically man dwells." ''

68 Heidegger. Poetry Language Thought, p. 222. 69 "For the world and the things do not subsist alongside one another. They penetrate each other. Thus the two traverse a middle. In it they are at one. Thus at one they are intimate. The middle of the two is intimacy -in Latin, inter. The intimacy of world and thing is not a fusion. Intimacy obtains only where the intimate - world and thing - divides itself deanly and remains separated. In the midst of the two, in the between of world and thing, in their inter...', Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, p. 202. 70 The fourfold is to save the earth, to receive the sky as sky, to await the divinities and to initiate their own nature. 71 Heidegger, p. 150. 72 Heidegger, p. 218. 73 Heidegger, p. 217. 74 Heidegger. p. 213. This is taken from a late poem by HUlderlin.

91 Threshold III: Love

Threshold Crossing

Although not necessarily conclusive, this thesis exists as a network of interdependent ideas that are bounded by the theme of threshold; a place of refuge and resistance in the wntext of a contemporary culture framed by the rigours of scientific methodologies, technological domination and rigid professionalism. Within wntemporary architectural practice, computer generated drawings, in the guise of conceptual design drawings and wntract documents, comprise the work of the architect, who, in turn, seems increasingly distant from the act of drawing architecture.

The words and drawn works of MichelangeIo offer a way to reinforce a theoretical threshold in the recreation of an in-between world comprised of nuance and ambiguity in which the 'truth' is not founded upon empirical scientific fact but instead nested in the constructions of metaphors, riddles, poetry and myths. Within our increasingly seamless, transparent and information-based a society, Michelangelo's phantasia, offers a knowledge founded by the way of false in which the Cartesian division of the mind and the body is tempered by the Aristotelian meeting of the intellect and the senses. lmmersed in the opacity of the live word, phantasia creates an artifice in which diverse parts and images of the world as experienced are amalgamated in monstrous and distorted constructions riddled in ambiguity.

In the context of the Renaissance, disegno was centred on speculation and was comprised of both the inner power of phantasia and its joining to the 'realityJof the world through the work of the hand. Disegno, as a faculty of the artist, guided the action of craft and existed in-between contemplation (within the mind) and action (of the body). lnherent in disegno existed a nourishing tension between patient craftsmanship and intellectual vigour. Within Michelangelo's artistic process drawing existed as an initial manifestation of phantasia scribed by his a hand on a sheet of paper. In this Iight, drawing is a threshold in the most

92 Conclusion fundamental sense of the word. It is a point in a process in which sornething a becomes (in)perceptible, a crossing in which the invisible becomes visible or vice versa. The sheet of the drawing is analogous to the interface of the flesh that marks the threshold between the invisibility of the body's interior and its appearance in the world.

The power of Michelangelo's disegno was rooted in the drawing of the live human body of qualitative proportion. His images of the body constructed from sensate judgement of the eye rather than the measure of normative proportion, are drawn as foreshortened, gestural figures that evade an objective, quantifiable representation of the body. A proportion based on analogy was favoured over an exact one-to-one correspondence of a body scribed within the rigours of a geometrical construction. These 'live' figures, like the architectural sketches that would later follow, indicated a creative force of animation, not fixed but evolving as a continuous fabric in which even the most disparate parts are linked.

The possibility of Michelangelo's 'difficult' beauty rested on his supreme ability to draw together images of diverse parts and works in his re-combined constructions of artifice. Like the movement of a body which is dependent on a tension between its parts, a discordant relation exists as a fundamental component of his work, in which one force is set against the other. This is mirrored in the Renaissance concept of contrapposto, that not only encompasses the asymmetrical and possibly erotic positioning of the body while posing, but also the general idea of antithesis in which opposites are set against each other. The latter definition is a quality of Michelangelo's disegno that is especially evident in the construction of rectolverso drawings in which subject matter, in some cases, diametrically opposed to each other are brought together on the opposing sides of a single sheet of paper. In a literary tradition, the a bringing together of opposites is analogous to the poetic construction of a

93 Conclusion metaphor, in which a word although not literally applicable is imaginatively linked to another word. lnherent in the metaphor is a tension between the imagined and the real. For example, although a Sun maybe like a blood orange. the realities of the Sun and the blood orange remain. The dynamic construction of the metaphor acts as a hinge in the metamorphosis of the two wor(l)ds. Infiltration, contamination and distortion is an operative part of artistic creation in the realization of a renewed transformative vision of the world. In a true and opposite way, these confused and rnonstrous metaphoric images are a way of founding poetic truths that clarify the wor(l)d. The Sun is a blood orange.

Michelangelo's drawings, as a surface of speculation demonstrate a circular process in which the drawings of qualitative proportions of a 'live' human figure gives way to a parallel anthropomorphic architecture that, in its realized state, engages the body and sou! of each inhabitant. In tum, as physical objects, MichelangeloJsarchitectural drawings, ghosted with images of the human body, are interfaces that literally require 'bodily' interaction in the process of their interpretation and use. For example, in order to discover the wnnection between the sheet's recto and verso, it must be read by holding the drawing, like a screen, up to the light or by turning the page. As well, because of the sheet's ambiguous orientation, rotation becornes both a means of revelation and re- interpretation. In another way, the drawing is also a template and as such is a tool of the stonecutter. The outline traced with the modani is the line that guided the hammering of the scarpellini's chisel. In contrast ta the abstract and dimensioned drawings of contemporary practice, the template is a ready-to-use, in situ, 'working' drawing that is an integral part of the construction process. The Iine between drawing and construction is paper thin.

Like contrapposto and metaphor, Love, the child of Plenty and Poverty, who sleeps in the threshold (as explained by Diotima), brings opposites together in a a dynamic unison. The love of Michelangelo's poems is animated by eros, defined

94 Conclusion by a 'lacking', a void that demands to be filled. Like the liver which is the organ a of both prophecy and passion, love is both bitter and sweet. As well, love like phantasia is linked with melancholy. As Ficino suggests, the artist is prone to melancholia because he loves too much, in his passion he becornes dry and bitter, full of sooty vapours. Love and art have similar dynamics and outcomes. Tityus is punished for his passions, and Prometheus is candemned for his vision, bath mythical characters are bounded to the earth, their livers are devoured by birds of prey.

As present in his poems and drawings for Tomasso de' Cavalieri, love pemeates Michelangelo's work. Love, in a basic sense, is a full engagement in the presence of a world constructed of the flesh, resistant to the forces of objectification. The art of love is a necessary component in the sympathetic correspondence between the artist's hand and his intellect, in the 'drawing-out' of the world. The separation of the subject and the object is resolved through the bonding agent of a bittersweet love rooted in insatiable desire. The result of artist's making is a work pregnant with possibilities with a power to break forth - a fecundity in a work of art that can arouse more thoughts than those contained within it.

The interstitial spaces of the joint, the abyss, the chiasm and the gap are constructions of the threshold. The are not identifiable as objective space, they are situations of passage and transformation in which two things corne together, separated by the third space of the in-between.

The chiasm is a cleavage that can separate but also make one belong to the same world - a world that is not projective, but forms a unity across incompossibilities - a merger of the world of self and the world of the other.' Within incompleteness and indeteminacy there is a potential for transformation,

' Merleau-Ponty. 'Woflcing Notes', me Visibfe and the Invisible, pp. 21 4-21 5.

95 Conclusion a a tension between a finished work and its beginning, the elemental state of art in which, "the visible is pregnant with the invisib~e".~Within the space of the chiasm, the sense of objective spatiality is replaced by the idea of transcendence.

Michelangelo through the divine gift of grace, revealed an art and architecture that cannot be captured by the words that may describe or obliquely illuminate it. The lines of his poetry, disegno, profil10 and modani are intertwined. The outline of the scarpellini template is layered with the lines of his love poetry scribed on its negative. Poetry and poiesis merge in the creation of the threshold of vita voluptuaria. As with Polyphilio, the passage through the threshold does not mark the end, instead the threshold holds the paradox of being both the end and the beginning of the journey.

* Ibid.. p. 216.

% Conclusion Paper Thnshold: The Drawings of Michelangelo Bibliography

Ackeman, James S.. The Architecture of Michelangelo. London: Pelican Books, 1961.

Alberti, Leon Battista. On Painting. Trans. by J. Spencer. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1966. 1st Latin edition,1435.

Alberti, Leon Battista. On the Art of Building in Ten Books, Trans. Joesph Rykwert. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996.

AlighieB, Dante. La Vda Nuova. Trans. Barbara Reynolds. London: Penquin Classics, 1969.

Argan, Giulio, Michelangelo: Archifect. Trans, Marion L, Grayson. New York: Harry Abrams, 1993.

Ashby, Thomas. 'Sixteenth-century drawings of Roman building attributed to Andreas Conef, Bntish Papers of the British School of Rome. 11 (1904).

Audi, Robert. The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Balas, EdÏth. MichelangeIo's Medici Chapel, A New lnterpretation. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1995.

Barkan, Leonard. Nature's Work of Art: The Hurnan Body as Image of the World. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1975.

Barûan, Leonard. The Gods Made Flesh, Metamorphosis and the Pursuit of Paganism. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1986.

Barkan, Leonard. Transuming Passion, Ganymede and the Erotics of Humanism. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991.

Beck, James. Michelangelo and the Medici Chapel, photographs by Aurelio Amendola. London, Thames and Hudson, 1994.

Benjamin, Walter, -The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", Illuminations. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken Books, 1969.

Betts, Richard, "Structural Innovation and Structurat Design in Renaissance Architecture", Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. (March, 1993).

Bull, George. Michelangelo, A Biography. London: Penguin Books. 1996.

Buonarroti, Michelangelo, me Complete Poem and Selected Letters of Michelangelo. Trans. Creighton Gilbert. Princeton: Prin~etonUniversity Press, 1980.

Buonarroti, Michelangelo, The Lettem of Mr'chelangelo, Trans. EH. Ramsden, from the Original Tuscan, 2 Vols., Stanford, 1963.

Buonarroti, Michelangelo. The PoeW of Michelangelo. Trans. wÏth Intro. by James Saslow. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991.

97 Bibliography 0 Carson, Anne. Eros the Binemweet. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986. Cennini, Cennini. The Craftsmen's Handbook (II li.deIl' arfe). Trans. Daniel V. Thornpson. New York: Dover, 1960.

Clements, Robert John. Micttelangelo's Theory of Art. New York: New York University Press, 1961

Clements, Robert John. Michelangelo, A Seif-Portrait. New York: New York University Press, 1968.

Colonna, Francesca. Hypnerotomachia Poli'phili (reprint 1499 edition). New Yorlr: Garland Publishing, 1976.

Condivi, Ascanio. The ii& of Michelangelo by His Scholw Ascanio Condivi. Trans. Charles Holroyd. London: Duchuorth and Company, 1911.

Couliano, loan P., Eros and Magic in the Renaissance. Trans. Margaret Cook. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 1987.

de Hollanda, Francisco. Fow Dialogues on Painting. Trans. A.F.G. Bell. London, 1928.

Descartes, René. Oiscourse on Method and the Meditations. Trans. F.E. Sutcliffe. London: Penguin Classics, 1968.

de Tolnay, Charles. The Att and Thought of Michelangelo. Trans. Nan Buranelli. New York: Pantheon Books, 1964.

de Tolnay, Charles. Michelangelo. 5 Vols. Princeton, 1969.

de Tolnay, Charles. Corpus dei Disegni di Michelangelo. Volumes 1-IV, Novara: lstituto Geografico de Agostini, 1980.

Diller + Scofidio. Flesh, Architectural Robes. New York: Princeton University Press, 1994.

Dodds, George. 'On Disegno, Liminality and the lnner Eye", Histoncifv of the Gaze: Ph.0. Seminar with /van Illich 1993-1994, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, 1995.

Dürer, Albmcht. Vier Bücher von menschlichen Proponion. Nuremberg: In aedib. Vidual Durerianae, 1532.

Dürer, Albrecht. The Human figure by Albrecht Dürer The Complete Dresden Sketchbook. Trans. Walter L. Strauss. New York: Dover Publications, 1972.

Elam, C. 'The Mural Drawings in Michelangelo's New Sacristy", Burlington Magazine. 123. (1 981).

Feher, Michel, Fragments for a History of the Human Body, Parts One - Three, New York: Zone Books, 1989.

Ficino, Marsilio. Commentaty on Plato's Symposium on Love. Trans. Sears Jayne. Dallas: f exas, 1985.

Ficino, Marsilio. De tnplici vria; (with) Apologia quaedam. Florentiae: A. Mishominus, 1489.

98 Bibliography Ficino, Marsilio. The Book of Li&. Trans. Charles Boer. Dallas: Spring Publications, 1980.

Ficino, Mamilio, The Cettes of Mwsilio Ficino. Trans. Latin Language Department of the School of Economic Science. 4 Vols., London, 1975-1 988

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. New York: Vintage Press, 1980.

Halperiri, David. One Hundred Years of Homosexuality and Other Essays on Greek Love. New York: Routledge, 1990.

Heidegger, Martin. Poelry, Language, Thought. Trans. Albert Hofstadter. New York: Harper and Row, 1971.

Hint, Michael. Michelangelo and his Drawings. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988.

Husserl, Edmund. 'Phrïosophy and the Crisis of European Man", Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy. Trans. Quentin Lauer. New York: Harper and Row, 1965.

Keaney, Richard. 73e Wake of the Imagination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988.

Klassen, Helmut. Micf~,~langelo:Architecture and the Wsion of Anatomy. M-Arch. Thesis, McGiII University, 1990.

Koyré, Alexandre. Froni :,9e Closed World to the Infinite Universe. London, 1970.

Lang, S. "De Iineamenfis: L.B. Alberti's Use of a Technical Terrn." Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 28 (1965): 331 -335.

Liebert, Robert. Michelangelo, A Psychoanalytic Study of His Life and Images. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1983.

Lowic, Lawrence. 'The Meaning and Significance of the Human Analogy in Francesco di Giorgio's Trattato." Journal of the Society ofArt Historians, XLll:4 (December, 1983).

Martini, Francesco di Giorgio. Trattati di Architettura, ingeneria e arte militam. Two Vols. ed. C. Maltese. Milan, 1967.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The Primacy of Perception, and other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History and Politics. Ed. James M. Edie. Evanston. III.: Northwestern University Press, 1964.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The Visible and the Invisible. Evanston, III.: Northwestem University Press, 1968.

MiIl on, Henry A. me Renaissance Wm BNnelleschi to Michelangelo: The Representation of Architecture. Venice: Bompiani, 1994.

Monge, Gaspard. G4ométn'e Descriptive. Pans, 1795.

Nelson, John Charles. Renaissance Theory of Love: The Context of Giordano BNno's *Goici furon ". New York: Columbia University Press, 1958.

99 Bibliography Panofsky, Erwin. Idea: A Concept in AR Theoty. Columbia. University of South Carolina Press, 1968.

Paracelsus. Selecled Wngs. Trans. Norbert Guterman. New York: Princeton University Press, 1951.

P&er-Gbmez, Albefto. 'Architecture as Drawing", Journal of Archit8CIunl Educ8tion (JAE), Vol. 36 (1982).

Pérer-Gbmez, Alberto. Archifectum and the Cn'sis of Modem Science. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1983.

Pérez-Gbmez, Alberto. Pblyphilo or The Derk Forest Revisited: An Erotic Epiph8ny of Architecture. Cam bridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994.

P&er-Gbmez, Alberto + PelWer, Louise. Architecture Representation and the Perspeciïve Hinge. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997.

Pemg, Alexander. MichelangeIo's Drawings, The Science of Ataibution. Trans. Michael Joyce. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991.

Piero della Francesca. De piospecliva pingendi Piem della Francesca. Ed. N. Fasola. Florence, 1942.

Plato. fimaeus and CMas. Trans- H.D.P. Lee. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1965.

Plato. (On Homosexuality): Lysis, Phaedms and Symposium. Trans. Benjamin Jowett. Buffalo: Prometheus Books. 1991.

Saslow, James. Ganyrnede in the Renaissance, Homosexuality in Art and Society. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986.

Serfio, Sebastiano. Tutte L'Opere d1Amhitetturaet Prospectiva. Books 1-V. Trans. Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.

Scamoui, Vincenzo. L'Ide8 della Architettufa Universale. 2 Vols. Venice, 1615. Reprint, Bologna: Amaldo Fomi editore, 1982.

Summers, David. 'Contrapposto." AR Bulletin, 59 (1977): 336-361.

Summers, David. 'Maneira and Movement: The Figura Serpentinamin Art Quarterly, 35 (1972 ): 269-301.

Summers, David. Michelengelo and the Language of m. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981.

Summers, David. 'MichelangeIo on Architedure." Art Bulletin, 54 (1 972): 146-157.

Symonds, John Addington. Male Love: A Problem in Greek Ethics 8nd Other Writings. New York: Pagan Press, 1983.

Symonds, John Addington. fhe Li& of MichelangeIo, 2 Vols. London, 1950.

The Complete Works of Michelangulo. New York: Reynal and Company, 1965.

100 Bibliography Turner, Victor. The Ritual hxess. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company.

Turner, Victor. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Serïousness of Play. New York: PAJ Publications, 1982.

Tusiani, Joseph. The Complefe Poems of Michelangelo. New York: The Noonday Press, 1960.

Varsari, Giorgio. Lives of Artisfs. Trans. George Bull. London: Penguin Books, 1972. First Edition 1550.

Varsari, Giorgio. The Great Mastem. Trans. Gaston Du Cl de Vere. Park Lane: New York, 1986, particulariy Michelagnolo Buonmti, pp. 205-328.

Vattirno, Gianni. The End of Modemity: Nihilism and Hemneutics in hst-modem Cuitun?. Trans. Jon R. Snyder. Baîtimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1988.

Vattirno, Gianni. The Transpmnt Sociefy. Trans. David Webb. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1992.

Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture. Trans. Frank Granger. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983.

Wallace, William. Michelangelo at San Lorenzo: fhe Genius as Entrepreneur. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Wilde, JOhannes. Italian Drawings in the Department of Pnnts and Drawings in the Mtish Museum, Michelangelo and His Studio. British Museum Catalogue. London, 1953.

Wittkower, Rudoif and Margot. The Divine Michelangelo, The Florentine Academy's Homage on His Death in 1564. London: Phaidon, 1964.

Wittkower, Rudoif. ldea and Image: Studies in the kalian Renaissance. London, Thames and Hudson, 1978.

Yates, Frances. Giordano Bnrno and the Hennetic Tradifion. Chicago, 1964.

Zucarro, Romano Alberti e Fmderico. Origine E Propss Dell'Accademia Del Desirno di Roma (Pavia, 1604, Reprinted: Frienze: Leo S. Olschiki, 1961).

1O1 Bibliography Chronology ca. 27 BC Marcus Vitnivius Pollio: De Architectura 1404-1472 Leon Battista Alberti 1433-1499 Marsilio Ficino 1435 Alberti, De Pictura 1452-151 9 Leonardo Da Vinci 1455 Alberti: manuscript for De re aedficatona 1457 Johann Gutenberg publishes the first printed book in Mainz. 1463 Ficino: translation of Corpus Henneticum 1464 Filarete: manuscript 1469 Lorenzo de Medici, the Magnificent, becomes lord of Florence 1475 di Giorgio Martini: Tratto de architeitwa, ingegnena e arte militare 1475-1 554 Sebastiano Sertio 1475 Michelangelo is bom at Caprese 1484 Ficino: Commentary on Plato 's Symposium on Love 1488 Michelangelo begins his apprenticestiip in Ghiriandaio's worlcshop. 1489 Ficino: Three Books on Life 1489 Michelangelo leaves Ghirlandaio's worlcshop and begins studies in the Medici Gardens at San Marco. 1492 Lorenzo the Magnificent dies and is succeeded by his son Piero 1493-1541 Paracelsus (Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim) 1499 Colonna: Hypnefotomachia Polipnili 1508-151 2 MichelangeIo paints the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel under Pope Julius II. 1509 Pocioli: Divina pportione 1513 Jutius II dies, Giovanni di Medici, son of Lorenzo the Magnificent becomes Pope Leo X. 1513-16, Carves and two slaves for Tomb of Julius II 1516 Signs third greatly reduced contract for Tomb of Julius II 1517 Facade of San Lorenzo commbsioned by Leo X 1518-19 in quames of Pietrasanta and Serravezza to look for marble. 1619-1634 Medici Chapel 1520 Facade of San Lorenzo annulled 1521 Leo X dies 1523 The pontification of Clement VI1 begins 1524 Wooden models for architecture portions of Medici Tombs lS24-lS34: Laumntian Libmry, Commissioned by Clement VII, 1626 He begins work on the statue of Giuliano de Medici and the figures of NigM and Day. 1527 Rome sacked, Republic proclaimed in Florence after explosion of the Medici family 1528 Michelangelo begins as an advisor on the fortifications of Florence 1529 In January he draws up plans for the defense of the city. He flees to Venice. 1530 Orders issued for assassination of Michelangelo by Alessandro de Medici. Michelangelo is pardoned by Pope Ckment VI1 and worlr resumes on Laurenziana and in the New Sacristy. 1530 After a siege of ten months, Florence falls into the hands of the emparor, who appoints Alessandro de Medici governor. 1631 Dawn, Night, Twilight, finished for Medici Chapel 1532 He meets Tomasso de' Cavalieri and makes drawings for him. 1533 The Last Judgement ir commisdoned by Clement VII. 1534 Michelangelo's father, Ludovico Buonarroti dies at the age of ninety. Michekngelo moves to Rome for good and begins work on the Last Judgement. 1534 Pope Clement VI1 dies

102 Appendix: Chronology 1535 Pope III eleded as new Pope 1535 Last Judgment at Sistine Chapel 1535 Michelangelo is appointed 'chief arctiitect, sculptor and painter' of the Apdstolic Palaces. 1536 His friendship with Vittoria Colonna begins. 1537 Serlio: ArchiteRufa, Book IV published 1537 Michelangelo is made a Roman citizen. He work on the setting for the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius. 1538-39, new construction at 1542 Signs contract to finish three figures for the Tomb of Julius II 1543 Nicholas Copernicus enunciates his heliocentric theory. 1545 He finishes the Tomb of Julius II in San Pietro in Vincoli. 1545 With the help of del Riccio and Donato Giannotti, he plans to print a collection of his Rime. The project is ended with the death of del Riccio. 1546 Death of Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, Michelangelo is appointed architect of the fabrication of Saint Peter's and wins the cornpetition of Palauo Famese. 1549-50 Designs ceiling, floor, and desûs for Laurentian Library 1550 Julius III ascends the papal seat. 1550 Giorgio Vasari publishes the first edition of his Lives, in which the only one devoted to a living artist is that of Michelangelo. 1552 Construction of the fiight of steps leading to the Capitol is completed. 1553 Ascanio Condivi: Via di Michelangeb 1555 Marcellus II is pope for a month; he is succeeded by Paul IV Carafa. 1555 Designs stairs for Laurentian Library, mutilates Pieta in Florence Cathedra1 1558 New design for Laurentian Library staircase 1559 He sends a model to Arnmannati for the staircase of the Biblioteca Laurenziana to be built in wood 1559 Pius IV de Medici is eleded to the papal throne. 1561 Michelangelo completes the wooden model for the dome of Saint Peter's. 1564 Michelangelo dies on February 18th in his Roman house near Trajan's Forum. His body is taken to Florence by his nephew Lionardo and buried at Santa Croce. 1568 Vasari's second book on Michelangelo is published 1600 Giordano Bruno burned in the Campo di Fiori 16 15 Scamoui: L'Ides della architectuna universale 1637 Decartes: Discourse on Methods 1897 First Critical Edition of Michelangelorspoem by Karl Frey

1O3 Appendix: Chronology