'Tuscan dispositions': Michelangelo's Florentine architectural vocabulary and its reception

ABSTRACT

At a time when the language of classical architecture and the architectural orders was being codified into a systematic set of rules, Michelangelo's Florentine architecture, which frequently ignored or broke the rules in the interests of sculptural expressiveness and visual effect, presented something of a theoretical problem. This article considers the 'reception' of Michelangelo's architectural vocabulary, and the terms in which rule-breaking and architectural licence were discussed in Florence under the Medici duchy, where debate about architecture was unusually fervent and sophisticated, and 'Tuscanness' was a cultural as well as a political goal. Taking his lead from the influential Book IV of Serlio's architectural treatise, Vasari invoked the idea of the 'composite order' as a category which could encompass Michelangelo's architec-tural unorthodoxy within the language of the orders. Vasari's usage can also be linked with contemporary discussion among members of the Florentine Academy about the status of Tuscan language as directly descended from the ancient Etruscan, and as a language 'composed' of many elements. However, some commentators, including Vasari himself in the second edition of the Lives, and Cosimo Bartoli in his Ragiona-menti accademici, were uneasy about how much licence was actually acceptable at a time when orthodoxy was beginning to prevail in other Italian centres. While Michelangelo's own work remained above explicit criticism, certain of his 'presump-tuous' followers, especially Battista del Tasso were condemned for producing 'mon-strous things, worse than the Gothic.' Bronzino's satirical verses on rule-breaking in architecture are also considered here, along with Philibert de l'Orme's appropriation of Michelangelesque vocabulary, the much more strictly Vitruvian treatise of Giorgio Spini and the analysis of Michelangelo's Florentine architecture found in Francesco Bocchi's Le Bellezze di Fiorenza of 1591.