Michelangelo and Allography: Expanded Authorship in Renaissance Artwork

This lecture will argue how early modern architectural drawing could already be interpreted as a distinct form of non-verbal thinking: one that reveals the «allographic» (Goodman 1968) nature of the art of building and its dependence on a system of notation. Particularly, it will focus on the case of Michelangelo and his workmen by taking into account: the material characteristics of his corpus of drawings; the specificities of sculpted relief, as an intermediate genre between sculpture and architecture; and the dynamics of artistic collaboration on the first construction site directed by Buonarroti, i.e. the chantier of San Lorenzo in Florence. Through a process-oriented approach to the history of architecture, it will illuminate transhistorical modes of production determined by such factors as the organization of work, the strict relationship between financial strategies and measurable products, and the crucial factor of time management. Thus, Michelangelo’s exceptional case will help to reconsider an entire tradition of collective artworks, which demands a better definition of authorship: one that could emerge from a more exact description of the relationship between the artists and their crews of workers.

Dario Donetti holds an M.Arch. from the Università degli Studi di Firenze and a Ph.D. from the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa; currently, he teaches architectural history at the universities of Verona, Chicago, and Stanford. In the past, he has held positions and fellowships at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, the Italian Academy at Columbia University, the University of Chicago’s College. The primary goal of his research is to understand the interdependence between draftsmanship and architectural production, with a focus on issues of authorship and materiality. Among the results of his studies are the exhibition catalog Giuliano da Sangallo: Disegni degli Uffizi (Giunti: 2017) and the monograph Francesco da Sangallo e l’identità dell’architettura toscana (Officina Libraria: 2020). Donetti is also the editor of the volumes Architecture and Dystopia (Actar: 2019) and Building with Paper: The Materiality of Renaissance Architectural Drawings (Brepols: 2021, with Cara Rachele).