Wall Painting of Adam: Sistine Chapel
Statue of David
Painting of Christ
Pieta, Mary and Jesus
Michelangelo was the greatest sculptor of the sixteenth century, as Donatello was in the century before him and Bernini in the century after him. We admire the products of his genius but we less frequently pause to consider the magnitude of the tasks he undertook, the problems he encountered, and the setbacks--even failures--he may have suffered. The Rome Pietà and the David, for example, are stunning accomplishments that obscure the more mundane facts of their creation. We tend to overlook that they were fashioned from raw and resistent stone, by hands that were strong and dexterous but also were occasionally tired or bruised. Before these sculptures became the sublime marvels we admire today, they were inert and spiritless material. Carving marble is extremely difficult. Forget the frequently invoked image of the artist "peeling away" layers of the stone, or "liberating" a figure from the block. Michelangelo's contemporary and biographer, Giorgio Vasari, vividly but inaccurately described marble carving as a gradual issuing forth from the block, like a figure that is raised little by little from a tub of water. With the twin achievements of the Pietà in Rome and the David in Florence, Michelangelo's reputation was now firmly established; he would never again lack for commissions. He was a creator of marvels and by far the greatest living sculptor; patrons, commissions, and opportunities proliferated. Michelangelo was once again in Rome, and once again assigned a task ill-suited to a marble sculptor: the painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo's lament that "painting is not my art" proved a hollow objection since the pope's stubbornness was greater than his. But like all commissions that Michelangelo initially resisted, once he reconciled himself to the task, he threw himself into it with unrestrained energy. For four years, from 1508 to 1512, Michelangelo struggled with the manifold difficulties of painting nearly ten thousand square feet of a highly irregular, leaky vault.
Florence Cathedral
The Cathedral or Duomo of Florence as we see it today is the end result of years of work that covered over six centuries of history. Its basic architectural project was designed by Arnolfo di Cambio at the end of the 13th century; the cupola that has made it a symbol for the whole of Tuscany was created by that genius of the Renaissance, Filippo Brunelleschi. Brunelleschi's dome consists of two layers, an inner dome spanning the diameter and a parallel outer shell to protect it from the weather and give it a more pleasing external form. Both domes are supported by 24 stone half arches, or ribs, of circular form, 2.1 metres (seven feet) thick at the base and tapering to 1.5 metres (five feet), which meet at an open stone compression ring at the top. To resist outward thrust, tie rings of stone held together with metal cramps run horizontally between the ribs. There are also tie rings of oak timbers joined by metal connectors. The spaces between the ribs and tie rings are spanned by the inner and outer shells, which are of stone for the first 7.1 metres and brick above. The entire structure was built without formwork, the circular profiles of the ribs and rings being maintained by a system of measuring wires fixed at the centres of curvature. Brunelleschi obviously understood enough about the structural behaviour of the dome to know that, if it were built in horizontal layers, it would always be stable and not require timber centring. He also designed elaborate wooden machines to move the needed building materials both vertically and horizontally. Having all but equaled the span of the Pantheon in stone, Brunelleschi was hailed as the man who "renewed Roman masonry work"; the dome was established as the paragon of built form.