This is the entrance or vestibule to a library, one of the first in Europe since classical times to offer access to a secular collection of books and manuscripts. It’s above the cloisters of the church of San Lorenzo in Florence and was designed by Michelangelo for the Medici. When he left for Rome in 1534 it was incomplete and was eventually finished by pupils working from his drawings and verbal instructions.
It’s a tour de force of architectural conceits which presuppose a familiarity with the rules of classical tradition for the good reason that Michelangelo is breaking them. Here are a few examples: pairs of columns that don’t touch the ground and are embedded into the wall which seems to break forwards in front of them; to either side blank niches with rounded pediments that seem too heavy for the slender tapered pilasters supporting them; in the corners the columns are uncomfortably squashed like commuters on a rush-hour train; the triangular pediment above the main entrance to the reading room itself is deliberately left incomplete, as if broken, and appears unsupported; the balustrade on the staircase is actually too low to offer any support while the curved central flight of steps seems designed to trip. Above are more recesses so that these interior walls seem to oscillate forwards and backwards, as if they were breathing or pulsating, but leaving us unsure as to exactly where the plane of the wall really lies. Nothing seems to make sense.
Once you’ve negotiated the stairs and find yourself within the reading room itself, however, all is ordered, sober and rationally organised. It’s well lit, pilasters behave properly, even the patterning on the tiled floor mirrors that of the elaborately carved wooden ceiling. The engaging disobedience or cultivated confusion of the architecture in the hall outside suddenly falls into place. In here, with books, with learning, with the ideas, values and knowledge they embody, everything makes sense. Without them, out there, it’s chaos
