Michelozzo (1435-1488) 
- Name:
- Michelozzo di Bartolomeo
- Dates:
-
Florence, 1396-1472
- Attivitą:
- sculptor, architect
- Places:
- Florence, Naples, Montepulciano, Venice
- Biographical information:
-
A pupil of Lorenzo Ghiberti from 1417 to 1425, Michelozzo worked with his master on the north door of the Baptistry, on the tabernacle and the statue of Saint Matthew for Orsanmichele (circa 1419-23) and then on the Strozzi Chapel in Santa Trinita. He worked at length in the Mint and was renowned as a caster of bells. Between 1425 and 1434 he went into partnership with Donatello. In this period he executed the funerary monument to the Antipope Baldassare Cossa in the Baptistery of Florence, the Brancacci Tomb in Sant’Angelo al Nilo in Naples, and the Aragazzi Tomb in Montepulciano (1427-38). It is also probable that he participated with Donatello on the decoration of the Old Sacristy in San Lorenzo.
A protégé of Cosimo il Vecchio de’ Medici, he also became the latter’s loyal friend, even to the point of accompanying him in exile in 1433 to Padua and Venice. Here, according to Vasari (1568), upon Cosimo’s orders he built a library for the convent of San Girolamo where they were staying.
In Florence, Michelozzo’s most famous works were commissioned by Cosimo. Upon his return from exile Cosimo launched the renovation of the church and convent of San Marco (1436-44), where the library reveals the quest for a balanced rhythmic and chromatic scansion of the space. Chosen in preference to Filippo Brunelleschi, Michelozzo was then appointed by Cosimo to construct Palazzo Medici in Via Larga (1444-59), which immediately became the prototype for the Renaissance mansion. Reinterpreting the mediaeval castle in a modern key, the artist also adapted the Medici residences in Mugello, the villas of Trebbio (in the late twenties) and Cafaggiolo (in the fourth decade), built the Villa of Careggi shortly afterwards and that of Fiesole in the 1450s. Also in Mugello he designed the church and convent of Bosco ai Frari and in Florence the Chapel of the Novitiate in Santa Croce (after 1440). From 1445 he began work on the enlargement and renovation of the church of the Santissima Annunziata, later completed by Leon Battista Alberti.
In 1446 with Luca della Robbia he accepted the commission for the door of the Sagrestia delle Messe in Santa Maria del Fiore.
The spaces designed by Michelozzo were at once harmonious and functional to the requirements of everyday life. A sculptor inclined towards a grave and sober classicism, and a discreet and sensitive interpreter of his commissioner’s taste, Michelozzo evolved a refined, austere and heterogeneous language, with elements derived from classicism, from the recent tradition of Florentine Gothic, or from the more recent and innovative trends, all brought into harmony by solutions of clear-cut elegance in tune with the contemporary humanism enthusiastically embraced by Cosimo il Vecchio himself.
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