Michelangelo : architecture and the vision of anatomy

Michelangelo considered a mastery of the body and anatomy to be the essential "theory" articulating the practice of architecture. For him, the reality of the moving human figure embodied the supreme difficulty of life as animation. By his architectural appropriation of the figure, human artifice was understood to be circumscribed by the radical intelligibility of the processes of life. This study is an articulation of his vital understanding of the living body and artifice by the "vision" of anatomy. The outline of an artifice faithful to the radical life of things is first examined in the thought and practice of medicine in the Renaissance. Upon this understanding, the coherence of Michelangelo's unprecedented emphasis upon the living body for architecture may be articulated. It concludes with an elaboration of his "theory"; the vision of anatomy as a dynamic drawing of things as they appear