page_title: Michelozzo
section_title: Palazzo Medici
hierarchical_section_title: Michelozzo / Works / Palazzo Medici
caption_attribution_description: Courtyard of Palazzo Medici-Riccardi
context_page_description: Michelozzo di Bartolomeo Michelozzi was an Italian architect and sculptor. Considered one of the great pioneers of architecture during the Renaissance, Michelozzo was a favored Medici architect who was extensively employed by Cosimo de' Medici. He was a pupil of Lorenzo Ghiberti in his early years and later collaborated with Donatello.
  Known primarily for designing Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence, he is often overshadowed by his contemporaries Donatello in sculpture and Brunelleschi in architecture. "He remained for his biographers a shadowy, active, competent, second-rate figure, circling around the glowing glory of the two dominant masters."
context_section_description: When Cosimo began building the Palazzo Medici in 1444, he passed over Brunelleschi and gave his preference to Michelozzo. Like the exterior of the Palazzo Comunale in Montefiascone, that of the Palazzo Medici follows the tradition of the Tuscan late-medieval palazzo, but without the more eye-catching symbols of civic power, which would have been incompatible with Cosimo's role as primus inter pares and pater patriae. The palazzo's exterior is not articulated by Vitruvian orders, and its big arches of its ground floor are not aligned with the windows of the upper stories. Instead, Michelozzo focused on the contrast between surface textures, such as the contrast between "the natural rustication of the ground floor, the flat ashlared courses of the piano nobile and the smooth masonry of the upper storey." The exterior also differs from the palazzo in Montepulciano in its size, its more urbane character, and its massive classicizing cornice. "In its succession of dentils, egg-and-dart and consoles, Michelozzo directly followed the Temple of Serapis in Rome."
  Brunelleschi's influence on Michelozzo is evident in the palazzo's design, especially in the late-medieval bifora windows, the symmetry and the dominance of the entrance axis, and the combination of traditional and progressive elements. The arcades and entablature of the palazzo's courtyard also follows the model of the loggia of the Spedale degli Innocenti, which is symptomatically Brunelleschi's earliest and most un-Vitruvian building.
  One of Michelozzo's most well-known architectural projects, the palace led to the development of a new architectural type: the Florentine Renaissance palace. Among the many Michelozzo innovations on the facade, the most notable include: "the use of bugnato digradante (large unevenly-cut stones which grow lighter as they ascend on the upper stories), the classical columns and fluted capitals in the bifore windows, the great classical cornice crowning the building and the small ones dividing the stories, the massive rectangular proportions of the block of square, and the regularity of the disposition of the windows, which, however, are asymmetrical in regard to the doors."
caption: The courtyard of Palazzo Medici Riccardi.
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon DIGITAL IXUS 800 IS", "Image XResolution": "180", "Image YResolution": "180", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2008:05:02 15:54:08", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image Tag 0x1001": "1600", "Image Tag 0x1002": "1200", "Image ExifOffset": "270", "Image CustomRendered": "Normal", "Image ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "Image WhiteBalance": "Auto", "Image DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "Image SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "180", "Thumbnail YResolution": "180", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "2936", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5867", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/60", "EXIF FNumber": "14/5", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2008:05:02 15:54:08", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2008:05:02 15:54:08", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "5", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "189/32", "EXIF ApertureValue": "95/32", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "95/32", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "29/5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1200", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1600", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "1200000/169", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "64000/9", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera"}