Michelozzo

Early life Michelozzo was born in Florence in 1396. He was the son of Bartolomeo di Gherardo Borgognone and Antonia. Borgognone was of French origin and arrived in Florence from Burgundy at an unknown date. Borgognone lived and worked in the Santa Croce quarter of Florence as a tailor, and was made a Florentine citizen on 9 April 1376. Michelozzo had three brothers named Leonardo (b. 1389/90), Zanobi (b. 1391), and Giovanni (b. 1403). By 1391, Michelozzo's family had moved to the San Giovanni quarter, where they continued to live throughout his life. Beginning in the early 1420s, Michelozzo became a member of the Arte dei Maestri di Pietra e Legname, one of the Guilds of Florence that represented the master stonemasons, wood-carvers, and sculptors. He later served as one of the consuls of the Guild in 1430. Under Donatello, Michelozzo assisted in the building of the sacristy of Santa Trinita, where "Ghiberti [had] started to fuse together late-Gothic and antique forms." Both Donatello and Michelozzo began as sculptors with an uncompromising dedication to antiquity, and this was evident when Donatello enlisted Michelozzo's help in the decoration of the tabernacle of St. Louis of Toulouse. Michelozzo also became the partner responsible for the architectural frames of Donatello's sculptures such as the funerary monument of Antipope John XXIII. In 1428, together with Donatello, Michelozzo erected an open-air pulpit at an angle of the Cathedral of St. Stephen at Prato, designed for the regular public displays of their famous relic, the Girdle of Thomas (Sacra Cintola). Though Donatello is the more well-known of the two, "it would be a mistake to underrate Michelozzo's share in the work, for where Donatello appears as the sole designer of architectural ornament his style is quite different. He completely subordinates the architectural setting to his sculpture and makes architecture, so to speak, its handmaid. The beautiful ornamental sculpture in Brunelleschi's Sagrestia Vecchia shows how far Donatello would go with his sculpture in order to provide it with an effective frame in the extraordinarily vigorous modelling of the broad, slanting surrounds of his overdoors and medallions." == Influences and patronage ==

Cosimo de' Medici in FlorenceFew historians have disputed Cosimo's close relationship to Michelozzo, who was the Medici architect for nearly forty years. "Michelozzo was more agreeable and accessible to the advice and desires of Cosimo than the turbulent Brunelleschi, and was willing to follow the strong personal tastes of his patron." Michelozzo enjoyed a close relationship to Cosimo de' Medici throughout his life, and according to Giorgio Vasari in The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, from Cimabue to Our Times, was motivated by his great love and fidelity for Cosimo to accompany him into exile in Venice from 1433 to 1434. Historians have cited this as an unparalleled example of esteem between artist and patron. Vasari also claimed that Michelozzo built the library of San Giorgio Monastery in 1434 for Cosimo, though this claim contradicts the original description and documents of the library, which indicate that although the library's construction was started by Cosimo, it was largely built under the direction of Medici bank manager Giovanni d'Orino Lanfredini between 1467 and 1478, which was well after Michelozzo's departure from Venice. The large Palazzo Medici in Florence, built by Cosimo, was designed by him; it is one of the noblest specimens of Italian fifteenth-century architecture, in which the great taste and skill of the architect has combined the delicate lightness of the earlier Italian Gothic with the massive stateliness of the classical style. With great engineering skill Michelozzo shored up, and partly rebuilt, the Palazzo Vecchio, then in a ruinous condition, and added to it many important rooms and staircases. When, in 1437, through Cosimo's liberality, the monastery of San Marco at Florence was handed over to the Dominicans of Fiesole, Michelozzo was employed to rebuild the domestic part and remodel the church. For Cosimo he designed numerous other buildings, most of them of noteworthy importance. Among these were a guest-house at Jerusalem for the use of Florentine pilgrims, Cosimo's summer villa at Careggi, and the fortified castello that he rebuilt from 1452 as the Villa Medicea di Cafaggiolo in Mugello. For Giovanni de' Medici, Cosimo's son, he also built a very large villa at Fiesole. Between 1445 and 1451, he also expanded Villa San Girolamo next to Villa Medici at the behest of Cosimo. Filippo Brunelleschi According to "Architecture in Italy, 1400–1500, Volume 53", Michelozzo's architecture contrasts with Brunelleschi in its closer adherence to the "immediately preceding Gothic tradition, the Gothic classicism which appears in the Loggia dei Lanzi or the monastery of S. Matteo." Ludwig Heydenreich and Paul Davies argue that all of Michelozzo's buildings are "works of considerable standing...the most independent architect after Brunelleschi." == Personal life ==

Michelozzo married Francesca, daughter of Piero di Ambrogio Galligari, in late January or February 1441. At the time of their marriage, she was 20 years old, and he was 45. In 1441, Michelozzo launched a legal complaint to remove himself from the responsibility of his two older brothers' debts. Andrea di Benozo, representative for Giovanni, Zanobi, and Michelozzo, elected arbitrators to weigh the complaints. After studying documents and proofs for six weeks, the arbitrators found that the two brothers were the cause behind most of Michelozzo's debts, and they were required to relinquish their inheritance in partial compensation for the amounts they owed. Children Four boys and three girls resulted from Michelozzo's marriage to Francesca, of whom five survived their father. Bartolomeo, who became a sculptor, was born in 1442; Piero in 1443; Antonia in 1445; Niccolo in 1447; Marietta in 1453; Bernardo in 1455; and Lisabetta in 1459. Two of his sons, Niccolò and Bernardo, were partially educated by the Medici and may have lived in the Palazzo Medici during their youth. They later achieved success in the highest humanistic circles of Florence. Bernardo became a member of the household of Lorenzo il Magnifico as the tutor of Piero de Medici. In 1500, he was made a Florentine canon and was employed by Giovanni de Medici, first as his Chamberlain and then as his Secretary and Referendary. Like Bernardo, Niccolò studied with Ficino from a young age and took part in the Platonic Academy, where he formed friendships with other Florentine humanists who shared his love for antiquity. He excelled in literature and philosophy, and he later became secretary to Piero di Cosimo and continued in the post under Piero di Lorenzo. In 1469, Niccolò began his political career as a notary in the Florentine Cancelleria, and he was often sent on important missions as ambassador for the Florentine Republic between 1489 and 1494. Following the downfall of the Medici, he was imprisoned for a brief time before clearing his name in 1496 and becoming the precounsel of the Arte dei Giucidi e notai and later succeeded Niccolò Machiavelli as the Second Chancellor of the Republic in 1513. == Works ==

Palazzo Medici When Cosimo began building the Palazzo Medici in 1444, he passed over Brunelleschi and gave his preference to Michelozzo. Like the exterior of the Palazzo Comunale in Montefiascone, that of the Palazzo Medici follows the tradition of the Tuscan late-medieval palazzo, but without the more eye-catching symbols of civic power, which would have been incompatible with Cosimo's role as primus inter pares and pater patriae. The palazzo's exterior is not articulated by Vitruvian orders, and its big arches of its ground floor are not aligned with the windows of the upper stories. Instead, Michelozzo focused on the contrast between surface textures, such as the contrast between "the natural rustication of the ground floor, the flat ashlared courses of the piano nobile and the smooth masonry of the upper storey." The exterior also differs from the palazzo in Montepulciano in its size, its more urbane character, and its massive classicizing cornice. "In its succession of dentils, egg-and-dart and consoles, Michelozzo directly followed the Temple of Serapis in Rome." Brunelleschi's influence on Michelozzo is evident in the palazzo's design, especially in the late-medieval bifora windows, the symmetry and the dominance of the entrance axis, and the combination of traditional and progressive elements. The arcades and entablature of the palazzo's courtyard also follows the model of the loggia of the Spedale degli Innocenti, which is symptomatically Brunelleschi's earliest and most un-Vitruvian building. Michelozzo added various parts to the church and cloister of Santa Croce, including "the loggia in front of the Ex-Dormitory and Library (octagonal columns with ''foglie d'acqua'' capitals) which originally extended across the cloister to the elevated loggia on the south side of the church, running along the eastern flank of the San Giuliano (Mellini) Chapel...which divided the first cloister into two parts before its destruction in the nineteenth century." ==Death and legacy==

in Florence In spite of Vasari's statement that he died at the age of sixty-eight, he appears to have lived until 1472. He is buried in the monastery of San Marco, Florence. One of the most influential, yet unknown, architects of the Early Renaissance, Michelozzo's designs paved the way for the rapid development of the Central Italian Palazzo type. He developed the aisleless church and became the pioneer of a plan-type of sacred building, which is the most important in modern times. He transformed secular building and his adaptability in use of traditional forms enabled him to evolve good compromise solutions for distant regions, such as Lombardy and Dalmatia. In his careful treatment of architectural ornament, "Michelozzo was able to adopt ideas and turn them to good account as well as to transmit new ones. The styles of Manetti, Bernardo Rossellino, Giuliano da Maiano, and even of Giuliano da Sangallo are unimaginable without the support and influence of Michelozzo's artistic idiom in addition to that of Brunelleschi, and later, of Donatello." ==See also==