Michaelangelo's staircase

It is impossible (for me) to research the Medici Library in Florence (Laurentian Library) without covering the related topics of the Medici Family & their incredible history in Florence, and also the artists involved & architecture of the building in which the library is housed.  Michelangelo is undoubtedly the most well known of the architects involved and is responsible for the staircase that is much talked about. However, there are many more involved as well.  Also it is somewhat unique in that it is built in a cloister of the Medicean Basilica di San Lorenzo di Firenze under the patronage of the Medici pope, Clement VII.  

My research efforts have been intense to date, and I have a few issues to resolve in relation to the copying of images, so for this Blog, & at the present moment, there are no new images appearing - but I do hope to resolve this matter asap. Also interesting information and anecdotes have been found in various places. So here is an excerpt from Fodors Italy 2001 travelguide.

“Michelangelo the architect was every bit as original as Michelangelo the sculptor. Unlike Brunelleschi (the architect of San Lorenzo), however he was not obsessed with proportion & perfect geometry.  He was interested in experimentation & invention & in expressing a personal vision at times highly idosyncratic.  

It was never more idiosyncratic than in the Laurentian Library, begun in 1524 and finished in 1568, & its famous vestibolo (anteroom).  This strangely shaped anteroom has had scholars scratching their heads for centuries.  In a space more than two stories high, why did Michelangelo limit his use of columns and pilasters to the upper two-thirds of the wall? Why didn’t he rest them on strong pedestals instead of on huge decorative-curlicue scrolls, which rob them of all visual support? Why did he recess them into the wall, which makes them look weaker still? The architectural elements here do not stand firm & strong & tall, as inside the church next door; instead, they seem to be pressed into the wall as if into putty, giving the room a soft, rubbery look that is one of the strangest effects ever achieved by classical architecture.  It is almost as if Michelangelo purposely set out to defy his predecessors - intentionally to flout the conventions of the High Renaissance in order to see what kind of bizarre, mannered effect might result. His innovations were tremendously influential & produced a period of architectural experimentation, known as Mannerism, that eventually evolved into the Baroque.  (As his contemporary Giorgio Vasari put it, “Artisans have been infinitely & perpetually indebted to him because he broke the bonds & chains of a way of working that had become habitual by common usage”).

Nobody has ever complained about the anteroom’s staircase (best viewed head-on), which emerges from the library with the visual force of an unstoppable lava flow.  In its highly sculptural conception & execution, it is quite simply one of the most original & fluid staircases in the world.”

References. 

Lombardi, Matthew, 2006, Italy, Fodor's, New York.