This summer ISI Florence professor Silvia Catitti published an essay on the patronage and construction history of Michelangelo’s Laurentian Library in Florence. Michelangelo is the most famous, best documented, and most widely studied artist of the modern era. In 1519 the Medici Pope Clement VII commissioned the Laurentian Library inside the canonry of the San Lorenzo Basilica. This building is universally acknowledged as a remarkable example of secular architecture in the Renaissance. Moreover, it is an iconic work summing up Michelangelo’s architectural career. Following the first influential discussions on the Library (James Ackerman 1961, Portoghesi 1964, Argan-Contardi 1990), highly specialized insights into diverse aspects of this building have been published.

Professor Catitti has written a comprehensive analysis based on her recent study of this subject. Not only does she summarize and re-examine already known information but also casts new light on overlooked passages in the history of the Library. Both its language and structure make this text accessible to students and non-specialists as well as professionals. The essay appears as the eighteenth chapter of the volume “San Lorenzo: A Florentine Church”. The comprehensive interdisciplinary book (759 pages), published by ‘I Tatti – The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies’, enjoys remarkable contributions by over twenty international experts from different fields.

The essays in the new reference volume on the Basilica di San Lorenzo will thus prove a useful tool for both teaching purposes and further research conducted by future generations of scholars.