ABSTRACT
We have seen that Michelangelo began the Medici Chapel on the model of Brunelleschi's sacristy. He probably developed the marble architecture along with the marble tombs once the wall tombs had been decided on. Michelangelo must have wanted a continuity of marble architecture on the ground floor in order to give a setting for the tombs - to acclimatize them, so to speak, within the Brunelleschian environment. An interest in continuity is the most notable feature of his later, Roman architecture. Michelangelo paid a visit to Rome in December 1523, immediately after the election of Cardinal Giulio de' Medici as Clement VII. The Medici collection of manuscripts, greatly enriched by Lorenzo il Magnifico, had hitherto been in the Palazzo Medici, the newly ecclesiastical Medici saw the need for installing the manuscripts in a more public but no less Medicean place. Michelangelo rejected a site on the church piazza because it would impede the view of the church.
