Review: Michelangelo, Drawing, and the Invention of Architecture, by Cammy Brothers

Abstract

Cammy Brothers ; Michelangelo, Drawing, and the Invention of Architecture ; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008, 259 pp., 76 color and 199 b/w illus. $65, ISBN 9780300124897 Michelangelo emphatically declared that architecture non sia mia arte. So when and how did Michelangelo become an architect? One might speculate that designing the monumental tomb of Julius II in 1505 prompted him to think like an architect. Some scholars would point to the painted architecture of the Sistine ceiling (1508––12). Or one may legitimately argue that Michelangelo's career as an architect began only with the San Lorenzo faccade in 1516, when the artist was forty years old. As Cammy Brothers clearly demonstrates in her stimulating new study, Michelangelo came to architecture slowly. And much of this early activity——the tomb of Julius II, the Sistine Chapel, and even the San Lorenzo faccade——is, as Brothers ably describes, less architecture than a means of constructing a frame around figures. Michelangelo was still thinking primarily as a sculptor. Indeed, among its many contributions, the book describes the character and origins of Michelangelo's architectural thinking and tracks its gradual emergence from his work as a figurative artist. For Michelangelo, the ties uniting bodies and buildings were natural and multiple. The book considers the years 1505 to 1534 as critical in the formation of Michelangelo the architect. Brothers examines the interactions among different strands of the artist's activity, particularly in the arena of drawings. Thus, long before he built, Michelangelo had a well-developed foundation for his architectural thinking and practice. Drawing is key, as is evident in the title of the book and …