Editing Renaissance architecture (section)

====Laurentian Library====
Michelangelo was at his most Mannerist in the design of the vestibule of the [[Laurentian Library]], also built by him to house the [[House of Medici|Medici]] collection of books at the convent of [[San Lorenzo, Florence]], the same San Lorenzo's at which [[Filippo Brunelleschi|Brunelleschi]] had recast church architecture into a Classical mold and established clear formula for the use of [[Classical orders]] and their various components.

Michelangelo takes all Brunelleschi's components and bends them to his will. The Library is upstairs. It is a long low building with an ornate wooden ceiling, a matching floor and crowded with corrals finished by his successors to Michelangelo's design. But it is a light room, the natural lighting streaming through a long row of windows that appear positively crammed between the order of pilasters that march along the wall. The vestibule, on the other hand, is tall, taller than it is wide and is crowded by a large staircase that pours out of the library in what [[Nikolaus Pevsner]] refers to as a "flow of lava", and bursts in three directions when it meets the balustrade of the landing. It is an intimidating staircase, made all the more so because the rise of the stairs at the center is steeper than at the two sides, fitting only eight steps into the space of nine.

The space is crowded and it is to be expected that the wall spaces would be divided by pilasters of low projection. But Michelangelo has chosen to use paired columns, which, instead of standing out boldly from the wall, he has sunk deep into recesses within the wall itself. In the Basilica di San Lorenzo nearby, Brunelleschi used little scrolling console [[Bracket (architecture)|bracket]]s to break the strongly horizontal line of the course above the arcade. Michelangelo has borrowed Brunelleschi's motifs and stood each pair of sunken columns on a pair of twin console brackets. Pevsner says the "Laurenziana [...] reveals Mannerism in its most sublime [[architectural form]]".<ref name= Pevs /><ref>Ludwig Goldscheider, ''Michelangelo'', 1964, Phaidon.</ref>
[[File:Church of the Gesù, Rome crop.jpg|thumb|left|Il Gesù, designed by Giacomo della Porta, 1568-84]]