Note 49 — Chapter III

In the plan of construction (a square crowned by a dome with fluted pilasters and niches with pediments) Michelangelo was influenced by Brunelleschi and Vitruvius, whom he was studying at that time. There was very little ornamentation and the idea of the plan was clear, simple and abstract. With Michelangelo, architecture is always a frame for his statues. He even went so far as to write, in 1560, to Cardinal Carpi that the divisions of architecture were the same as those of the human frame, and no one who was not "un buon maestro di figure" and did not understand anatomy could be an architect.