Michelangelo's Ricetto at the Laurentian Library in Florence

Michelangelo was summoned in 1524 by Clement VII to build the family’s library at the family compound at San Lorenzo in Florence.Inthe library vestibule Michelangelo made the Ricetto, the most famous stairway/vestibule ever constructed. Michelangelo was no follower.Here in the vestibule he defied convention, first placing the columns in recession behind the surface of the wall, contrary to the Renaissance practice of projecting the columns forward to sustain lintels or entablatures. This leads us to believe that the wall supports the roof, not the columns, but that is not the case.The recessed columns serve as “an expressive motif,” to be sure, but they were an efficient substitute for the walls, whose thinness precluded use as support.

Adding to the “licentious use of classical vocabulary” are the volutes we see, which are in a plane far forward of the columns. James S. Ackerman. These “sustain..nothing but themselves.” The pilasters of the vestibule tabernacles amazingly narrow toward the base and not the top (Borromini was to copy this at the Propaganda Fide). The capitals are thinner and not broader than the shaft.The stairway is certainly the most impressive we encounter in all Italy.It “pours out into the vestibule as an alien intruder” with “softened convex treads” which spread “like a flow of lava.”The globules add to the effect.The railingless side flights are as unusual as they are hazardous. Michelangelo did so much with the small confined space he was given. The walls and the stairway here recede and project to give the Ricetto a beautiful consistency. Read Ackerman’s The Architecture of Michelangelo for more.