Well-Tempered Building:
Michelangelo's full-scale template drawings at San Lorenzo
JONATHAN FOOTE
Dissertation submitted to the faculty of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in
partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in
Architecture and Design Research
Committee
Paul Emmons, chair
Marcia Feuerstein
Jaan Holt
Federica Goffi
April 22, 2013
Alexandria, Virginia
Keywords: Architecture, Templates, Michelangelo, Drawing, Building, Renaissance,
San Lorenzo, Florence
Copyright © Jonathan Foote
ABSTRACT
This work questions the present migration toward prescriptive building procedures through a
micro-historical reading of Michelangelo's use of architectural template drawings. Examining the
artist's ten surviving paper templates (called "modani") from the façade of San Lorenzo (15161520), the Medici Chapel (1519-1525), and the Laurentian Library (1524-1527), Michelangelo's
template-making practices are mined for possible ways to reorient current thinking toward a
dynamic worksite that embraces, rather than shuns, in-progress alterations.
Taking the common word origin of 'template' and 'temper' as a starting clue, the relationship
between Michelangelo's template drawings and the building site are theorized as a process of
tempering, a 15th and 16th century term investigated through key sources such as Ficino's
writings on health (De vita), the commentaries on Vitruvius by Barbaro and Cesariano, and
Biringuccio's treatise on metallurgy (De la pirotechnia). From this, key connections emerge
between Michelangelo's template-making and contemporaneous practices of tempering, where
dynamic, in-situ material adjustments achieve great effect through tiny alterations. Whether in the
health of the body, music, or material techniques, tempering offers a method of in-progress
commensuration between axiomatic proportions and those of material, sensibly present
harmonies.
The tempering power of templates is investigated in three parts that follow the transmutation of
Michelangelo's templates between paper, tin, and stone. The investigation begins with paper
and, following a close examination of the extant drawings, discredits the common conclusion that
Michelangelo's templates were drawn free-hand. Rather, it is shown that the extant templates
are actually a small fragment of a once robust collection of parent and offspring templates related
through tracing. Next, parallel practices in bell-casting and column profiling are discussed in
terms of template materials, particularly tin, and how small adjustments may be leveraged to
great narrative and conceptual effect in the emerging work. The final part examines the San
Lorenzo building site through assembling the body of architecture, where templates are seen as
surrogate building stones in the conception and adjustment of the in-progress work.
The dissertation concludes with an assertion that Michelangelo's use of templates as instruments
for micro-interventions amidst an unstable building site serves as a marvelous exemplar for
tempering as a method for materializing the poetic image through disciplined practice.
Delirium for yours