Poetic architecture of Michelangelo/show Dec-Mar in Firenze

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Michelangelo feted as architect
Florence show unveils 'poetry' behind projects (ANSA) - Florence, October 26 - A new show here is set to celebrate the architectural genius of Michelangelo - perhaps the least-known aspect of the multi-faceted genius .

Some 40 original sketches at Florence's famed Casa Buonarroti will chart the creations of the Renaissance great, unveiling newly discovered buildings to set beside masterpieces like St.Peter's and the Capitol in Rome .

The thrust of the show, according to curator Howard Burns of the Scuola Normale di Pisa, is to illuminate Michelangelo's fundamentally "poetic" sense of architecture - as underscored by the poetical musings found on several newly discovered manuscripts .

"Michelangelo writes poetry in his architecture," Burns says. "One often comes across verses by the Master right next to the architectural drawings, expressing the pure emotion he felt after inventing such harmonious forms" .

Among the exhibition's highlights is a newly discovered sketch which Burns believes shows decorations for a Florentine church .

Computerised laser probes were used to uncover the red-pencil sketch on the back of a known drawing, Burns explained .

"I believe this shows the decorations for the annual feast at the Chiesa di San Felice," Burns told ANSA .

Burns' work on the show has led him to the conviction that a Florentine palazzo not far from the city's famed Palazzo Medici was designed by the multi-talented painter and sculptor, whose architectural credits also include Florence's Medici Chapels and Rome's Palazzo Farnese .

"I've compared the so-called 'kneeling windows' on Palazzo Medici, features attributed by many to Michelangelo, with the ones on the other building, which is now Palazzo Galli-Tassi," Burns said .

"I've been poring through the archives and I've found personal correspondence between Michelangelo and the man who commissioned the palazzo, former Florence governor Baccio Valori .

"Among other things, Michelangelo owed Baccio his life because he shielded him from a papal warrant after he built Florence's fortifications" .

Ironically, Michelangelo fortified the city - and used huge cotton bales to protect its great sites from cannon fire - against invading anti-papal Swiss troops in 1527, before those same imperial troops swept down to sack Rome .

But the Vatican was angered when the same fortifications defied a papal bid for independent Florence a few years later .

However, Michelangelo made his peace with the popes and spent the last years of his life in Rome, working on great projects including the Sistine Chapel for Medici pope Clement VII (1523-37) .

Earlier - as a sign of his up-and-down relations with the papacy - he had been commissioned to design arches for the grandiose Medici pope Leo X (1513-21), a son of Lorenzo the Magnificent who excommunicated Luther .

Michelangelo's design for Leo's arch, bought at a Sotheby's auction in 2002 by the Centro Internazionale di Studi Andrea Palladio (CISA), will also be on show .

Burns has curated the exhibit with CISA's Guido Beltrami and the London-based Michelangelo expert Caroline Elam .

Michelangelo: Architectural Drawings runs at the Casa Buonarroti from December 16 to March 19, 2007 .