Two exits from the false situation existed:  one was the picturesqueness of the Barocco style; the other was the specious vapid purity of the Palladian.  Michelangelo, who was essentially the genius of this transition, can neither be ascribed to the Barocco architects, although he called them into being, nor yet can he be said to have arrived at the Palladian solution.  He held both types within himself in embryo, arriving at a moment of profound and complicated difficulty for the practical architect; without technical education, but gifted with supreme genius, bringing the imperious instincts of a sublime creative amateur into every task appointed him.  We need not wonder if a man of his calibre left the powerful impress of his personality upon an art in chaos, luring lesser craftsmen into the Barocco mannerism, while he provoked reaction in the stronger, who felt more scientifically what was needed to secure firm standing-ground.  Bernini and the superb fountain of Trevi derive from Michelangelo on one side; Vignola’s cold classic profiles and Palladio’s resuscitation of old Rome in the Palazzo della Ragione at Vicenza emerge upon the other.  It remained Buonarroti’s greatest-glory that, lessoned by experience and inspired for high creation by the vastness of the undertaking, he imagined a world’s wonder in the cupola of S. Peter’s.

III

Writing in the mid-stream of this architectural regurgitation, Vasari explains what contemporaries thought about Michelangelo’s innovations.  “He wished to build the new sacristy upon the same lines as the older one by Brunelleschi, but at the same time to clothe the edifice with a different style of decoration.  Accordingly, he invented for the interior a composite adornment, of the newest and most varied manner which antique and modern masters joined together could have used.  The novelty of his style consisted in those lovely cornices, capitals, basements, doors, niches, and sepulchres which transcended all that earlier builders, working by measurements, distribution of parts, and rule, had previously effected, following Vitruvius and the ancient relics.  Such men were afraid to supplement tradition with original invention.  The license he introduced gave great courage to those who studied his method, and emboldened them to follow on his path.  Since that time, new freaks of fancy have been seen, resembling the style of arabesque and grotesque more than was consistent with tradition.  For this emancipation of the art, all craftsmen owe him an infinite and everduring debt of gratitude, since he at one blow broke down the bands and chains which barred the path they trod in common.”

If I am right in thus interpreting an unusually incoherent passage of Vasari’s criticism, no words could express more clearly the advent of Barocco mannerism.  But Vasari proceeds to explain his meaning with still greater precision.  Afterwards he made a plainer demonstration of his intention in the library of S. Lorenzo, by the splendid distribution of the windows, the arrangement of the upper chamber, and the marvellous entrance-hall into that enclosed building.