Michelangelo and Mannerism

Abstract

The seminar is dedicated to the buildings of Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) in Florence and Rome. Their analysis in their personal and historical context will be introduced in each case by a short student presentation and concluded by an academic term paper.

Objective

The seminar pursues a deeper understanding not only of Michelangelo's specific "mannerism" but also of 16th century "mannerism" in general, finally its reception in the 20th and 21st centuries. Is it a matter of an epochal concept or a general phenomenon? In addition to these questions of content, the seminar places great emphasis on the guided learning and practice of scientific work, in particular the selection, elaboration and limitation of a specific topic and its appropriate presentation in speech and writing.

Content

In a letter to Paul III, Giovanni Battista da Sangallo, il Gobbo, pettily criticizes Michelangelo's design for the cornice of the Palazzo Farnese according to the Vitruvian criteria of ordinatio, dispositio, eurhythmia, symmetria, and decor, complaining in particular that the entablature did not conform to one of the canonical orders of columns, Doric, Ionic, or Corinthian, and was instead designed without any rule and according to whim and caprice, the result a bastard. Vasari (see below) is quite different, celebrating Michelangelo's inventiveness with the terms "licenza," "varietà," "extravagante," "bizzarro," "capriccioso," and "terribile." At the same time, he relativizes Vitruvius' authority by a historical finding: even if Vitruvius did not consider the composite order, history shows that it "has nevertheless been very common among the Romans and in their imitation among the moderns". Its principle is that of invention, and this justifies further invention. The composite column order has always led a special existence in relation to the other orders. Since it was never subordinated to a fixed regularity with reference to Vitruvius' authority, it remained "free" since the early quattrocento, i.e. it remained open for everything that had no place in the strict use of the canonical column orders: for the deviating proportion, for the "wild" ornament as well as for pictorial work. With regard to Michelangelo, however, Vasari means more than the composite column order. The composite in Michelangelo's work appears in his praise as the possibility, elevated to a principle, of inventing the architectural in itself. Until now, only the conventional canonical elements had been freely combined; Michelangelo, however, makes this vocabulary itself the object of change and invention. The pictorial malleability of architecture has become more significant than the realization of genre-bound prescriptions. The focus of the seminar is the architectural detail and its development in graphic design and execution, as well as the connection or dialectic between detail and large-scale form. The working hypothesis of the seminar is that in Michelangelo's work the observation of the architectural detail provides more insights into his artistic goals, but also into the origin of his ideas of form, than the analysis of the large form, and that significant innovations start from the detail and only gradually spread to the large form, from the order-bound elements to the relationship between order and wall, to the articulation in the large. Is the individual form to be understood from the whole? Or is it not rather the other way around? How did Michelangelo himself understand his architectural formal language in terms of its position in relation to Vitruvius and the classical orders of columns, and in terms of contemporary discussions about imitatio, licenza, and varietà? Does the architect Michelangelo think and work as a sculptor, as so often claimed? But what does that even mean? In addition to these questions about Michelangelo's "mannerism," we will deal repeatedly and then in a separate block with 16th-century "mannerism" in general, and finally - in a final unit - with its reception in the 20th and 21st centuries, for example in Robert Venturi's "Complexity and Contradiction" 1966. What can "mannerism" mean today?

Resources