SPEAKER 1: We're in
the vast complex that is San Lorenzo in Florence
in Michelangelo's Laurentian Library vestibule. That is the staircase moving
up into the library itself. SPEAKER 2: Well, it's a whole
room including a staircase that moves up into the library. The staircase is
broad and spills out into this room, which
is itself quite small. It leaves almost no space
in front of the staircase. SPEAKER 1: The staircase
has such a sense of momentum because it seems to literally--
at least in its central aisle-- to pour forward almost as
if it's pools of liquid. We don't feel like
the wall that's opposite it gives it enough
room for it to continue, and it might actually
in a sense, swamp us. SPEAKER 2: Yeah. I was not at all prepared for
how overwhelming the staircase would be in this space. It just fills it up. SPEAKER 1: The staircase
has two rectilinear aisles on either side, and they
make the organic quality of the central piece feel even
more round, even more liquid. The staircase is thought to
be perhaps the very first freestanding staircase
in architectural history. It's made out of the
same cool, gray stone that Brunelleschi had so often
used in the previous century. SPEAKER 2: Although the plan
was to make it out of wood. SPEAKER 1: Yeah. The original specs
by Michelangelo were that they
were to be made out of walnut, which would
have matched very nicely the desks and the
wood in the library above seeing as if the
library itself was somehow pouring out and down. SPEAKER 2: Right. And it would have warmed up
the space a little bit more, I think. SPEAKER 1: And of
course, the space is intensified, not only because
of the scale of the staircase in relationship to the cubic
dimensions of the room, but also because of the wild
structures that Michelangelo creates that surround
the staircase. SPEAKER 2: Yeah. The walls are-- SPEAKER 1: Well,
are there walls? SPEAKER 2: It's hard to find
the walls because Michelangelo has covered them with
various elements borrowed from classical antiquity,
but really transformed described as a
mannerist architecture. And I think it makes sense
to use that term because when we think about
manners and we think about flaunting of the
rules, if anything, classical architecture has lots
of rules about how things are used, which element goes where,
what the proportions are, and Michelangelo is disregarding
all of that and recombining. There's a kind of freedom
here from that wait of classical antiquity. SPEAKER 1: So previous to this,
when architects looked back to the classical
tradition, they looked back to the books of Vitruvius
They looked back to rules, and you're absolutely right. Michelangelo is, in a
sense, taking the letter forms of antiquity but
creating new words out of them. These are clearly columns,
pediments, plasters, but they're used
and combined in ways that never existed in the
history of architecture previous. So let's just point
out a few elements. One of the most obvious as
we stand down at the bottom are the brackets,
which are usually used as an ornamental
expression of support for something heavy above, SPEAKER 2: And
which Michelangelo used in the new
sacristy in that way. SPEAKER 1: But here he's lifted
them out of that context, and instead they hang as opposed
to support something over them. So they have
absolutely no purpose, but they're even more powerful
and even more muscular. SPEAKER 2: Well,
they're oversized. SPEAKER 1: Especially
considering how low down on the floor. And so they are a clear
signal to anybody walking into this room,
here is a vocabulary that is being
reinvented, reused. SPEAKER 2: And they're reset. They're sort of set
back into the wall. Then we also notice other
things like the plasters that frame these blind windows
on either side of the doorway, were tapered downward and
which have fluting only at the bottom. SPEAKER 1: So the
tapering downward is sort of the oddest
kind of reversal. The ancient Greeks
often tapered upward in order to create the
illusion of height, but here, we have
that reversal, and it is this very curious,
willful reconfiguration the columns are
virtually freestanding but are existing in niches
as if they are sculpture. And I think that's
a metaphor that's important for Michelangelo. He is first and
foremost a sculptor, but he comes to architecture
and here frames architecture as if it were a figure,
as if this were sculpture. But there are some very
strange passages that result. Not only do we have a sense
that they aren't decorative when in fact, studies have shown
that those encased columns are actually structural, which
is an unexpected flip. But as those columns and
those base for the columns meet the corners, you
have the columns actually separated by a kind of
internal double-edged plaster. And so how does that even work? It's absurd for me to
even call them plasters, and yet that's
what they must be. SPEAKER 2: It really feels
as though those corners will receded where those capitals
come together in the plasterim between and these embedded
columns almost like there's a world behind the wall. There's something
mysterious in the corners and around and behind them. SPEAKER 1: There's
drama, there's mystery, and there's a kind
invitation to understand that these are elements that
can be moved and changed that pushes beyond the
constricture with which classicism had been
understood for so long. SPEAKER 2: It all implies
a kind of virtuosity and his knowledge of the
classical forms and to subvert them. SPEAKER 1: This is
a space that speaks to Michelangelo's
supreme self confidence. Shall we walk upstairs
and go into the library? SPEAKER 2: Yeah. SPEAKER 1: We've walked
up the staircase, passed the eddies, the pool at the
sides of each of the stairs, and we've entered into
the library, which is a much warmer space
because of coiffured ceiling and all of the
stalls for reading. SPEAKER 2: All of this
design by Michelangelo. After the drama
of the vestibule, there's definitely a
sense of relief and calm entering this library space. SPEAKER 1: It's a serious
space, and you feel that through the vocabulary
of classicism being used in a
more orderly manner. SPEAKER 2: Michelangelo is
still crowding the walls with these plasters
that seem very severe, the molding, the blind
frames at the top level above the windows. SPEAKER 1: The windows
are quite large, meant to let in as
much natural light to assist the
readers as possible. SPEAKER 2: So we also have a
very strong horizontal element formed by cornices
above the windows. SPEAKER 1: And a kind
of falls clear story. SPEAKER 2: Creating a
real sense of perspective. SPEAKER 1: And rhythm
and a kind of unity, so that as a reader,
perhaps, you feel as if you're one among many
engaged in a serious act. This was a library
that contained the manuscripts of
the Medici family. It's sort of useful to remember
that books were among the most precious objects
that one could own. They weren't paperbacks. These were handmade objects. This is a room that really
is a physical expression of the importance of learning in
15th and 16th century Florence. I can't imagine a better
exemplar and the importance of the classical as
only a point of origin, only a point of departure. Walking out of the
library and back down into Michelangelo's
vestibule, you're really struck by
just how he separates the library and a sense of
the rarefied from the world. SPEAKER 2: Yeah. The vestibule
really does provide a kind of point of transition. When you come out of the library
and you see that staircase with a rather steep
angle pouring down into this very narrow
space, you really feel like you're leaving one
world and entering another. And then, of course, when
you step out of the vestibule and into the cloister we're
yet in another world again. SPEAKER 1: So even in
this spiritual space of contemplation of the cloister
itself, the ancient tradition that is so different,
such a radical departure from the intensified,
invented environment that Michelangelo has created.