Do you ever wonder what a church looked like without a façade? San Lorenzo church was a perfect example of a church that had no façade. This church originally had a plan to have a façade built by Michelangelo. According to the sketch plans by Michelangelo, it would have been the best architecture structure in the Renaissance history. Michelangelo worked hard to buy the best marble by traveling to another city that was once belonged to Florence, Pietrasanta, and to create several new designs. Unfortunately, Pope Leo X, son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, decided to terminate the plan in 1530 because Michelangelo was taking too long to create this piece, and obtaining the Carrara marble, a superior marble that the pope very much wanted, was too difficult. I’m sure that Michelangelo was a very busy man because he created more sculptures and architecture than I ever thought. In the Accademia, there were six unfinished sculptures by Michelangelo! In the Laurentian Library, another room attached to the church, Michelangelo created a magnificent architectural design in this room. The stairs of the vestibule to the library emphasized the room greatly. The stairs basically took up the entire room, and Michelangelo purposely designed it to be this way. The stairs looked like a giant amount of water rushing out of the doors to the library. The stairs on the sides of the middle stair were meant to be just a decoration and not meant to be stairs, but we could really still walk on these meant-to-be-decoration stairs. The columns in the room were just simply a decoration. They don’t act as a support like the Parthenon in Athens, Greece.

The New Sacristy which was located in the south transept had a set of Michelango’s very different work. When I first walked in and saw the sculptures, and the architectural design, I noticed that it was nothing compared to David. These sculptures were completed during the proto-Baroque era and toward the end of Michelangelo’s life. That explained why the sculptures looked different. The sculptures of the people looked like they were melting, but they were still beautiful because Michelangelo still had the talent of sculpting the muscles and the details of the wrinkles in the legs, in the chest, and in the arms.

San Lorenzo was not only famous for Michelangelo’s masterpieces. Brunelleschi designed the Old Sacristy, the nave of this cathedral. When I first entered this cathedral, I first noticed that the balance and the proportions were spectacular. There was a long stretch of arcades on the side aisles from the entrances to the opposite end. This created a great sense of rhythm, and because there were two rows of arcades, one on each side aisle, it also created a sense of equilibrium and symmetry. The capitals in the rounded arches were made of gray stone, and the capitals are toped with abacuses, and they harmonize with the plaster walls. The edges of the floor and the walls directed my eyes to an imaginary vanishing point on the wall on the opposite end of the entrance. This made me think about the one-point perspective theory that Brunelleschi created. Brunelleschi abandoned the traditional forms and used mathematical design instead, and that is what made the design of this nave so harmonious.

This San Lorenzo is a reconstruction of the original one that was consecrated in 393 by St. Ambrose of Milan. Brunelleschi was commissioned by the Medici family rebuild it. The building began in 1419, and it took a long time to finish the entire church because of lack of funding. Thus, it was finally finished, including the New Sacristy, in 1460’s. Brunelleschi got to only see the Old Sacristy in his lifetime which was finished in 1428.