| 11. Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raffaello and Other Great Personalities of the 16th Century |
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 Leonardo, although he had made his name in the Medici court,
where the work the family commissioned was intended to bring
glory to their name, carried out his initial artistic experiences
in Florence, where he stayed until 1482, in philosophical and
symbolic terms, albeit neo-platonic, but already direct and not
in complete conformity with the vague spiritualism which was the
Court's philosophy. This is the main
reason why he was not happy in the Medici circles and why he left
Florence to go to Milan. On his return in 1500 the city was still
Republican, but it would not be so for much longer (1512).
The vague neo-platonic and evasive ideology has now been replaced
by Machiavelli's harsh empirical conception of the modern state.
Michelangelo and Raffaello have already created a different
artistic atmosphere in Florence and, whilst Leonardo was
artistically involved in Milan, Michelangelo (from 1504 onwards)
moved the centre of art to Rome.
The great new patrons of this period are Popes Clement VII,
Julius II and Leo X. Raffaello came to Florence from Urbino in
the same year as Michelangelo's departure for Rome. He stayed
here for four years, long enough to leave a trace of his
different conception of art as a means of justifying its own ends
and as the fulfilment of the ideal form and technical perfection
which, together with the complex and dramatic in heritance left
by Michelangelo and the refined restless sensitivity of Leonardo,
form the basis of Mannerism. This style was already developing in
the town, thanks to painters such as Bartolomeo della Porta and
Andrea del Sarto, and later: Jacopo Carucci ("il
Pontormo"), the most restless and problematic of all the
artists working in Florence at that time, who considered art to
be above all a "conceptual" expression;  Rosso Fiorentino, in Florence since 1523, whose
images are arranged in dynamic Michelangelo-type structrures,
Agnolo Bronzino, who expresses himself in a very refined formal
purity in the un-glazed perfect reproduction of his portraits,
similar to cameos.
Michelangelo returned from Rome in 1516 to design the facade of San Lorenzo Church on request of
Pope Leo X, a Medici. This appointment was later cancelled and
converted into a project for the Church vestry for the tombs of
Lorenzo and Giuliano dei Medici. In the main room and the hall of
the Laurenziana Library, with its dominating central staircase
giving the impression of a cascading wave of a waterfall,
supported on the side by the balustrade and the thick line of
high stairs, Michelangelo anticipates the characteristic of the
Baroque style, which tends to force space inwards.
Following the seige of Florence by the Spanish in 1529 and the
fall of the Republic, in the meantime reestablished by Duke
Alessandro dei Medici, Michelangelo was forced to leave Florence
again. In 1534 he was re-called to Rome to undertake the Sistine
Chapel frescoes. Meanwhile the aspect of the town of Florence,
until then made up of streets and 15th and 16th Century palaces,
with internal courtyards and gardens, now tends towards spacious
piazzas, where meetings and theatrical representations are held.
Giorgio Vasari, painter, architect, art historian, transforms the Palazzo degli Uffizi into a large
urban hall. Bartolomeo
Ammannati, sculptor and architect, transforms Palazzo Pitti into a long
gable-surfaced structure. This building, together with the S.
Trinita Bridge, gives us an example of the extreme blithe and
refined elegance applied to a technical and rational object, also
seen in the fountain in Piazza Signoria, jewel-like with its
extremely elegant statues by Giambologna. Bernardo Buontalenti
who succeeded Ammannati as architect to the Medici family, gives
us the most lively example of the versatility of culture of that
period. This extraordinarily versatile character, capable of
reverting from urbanistic planning of the town of Livorno to
designing jewels for the Grand Duchess, who organized firework
demonstrations also prepared the plans for the Fortezza di
Belvedere, as well as constructing palaces.
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