The Nose & The Mouth & The Eye & The Brain

While poking around on the Laurentian Library yesterday, I came across a 2014 paper on the history of how people tried to make sense of Michelangelo’s puzzling reality: the classical orders he violated, mathematical composition and proportion, and anthropomorphy. Which, given the Vitruvian principle that the ideal proportion is the human body, was sort of the same thing. Studies of architectural bases for the New Sacristy, c. 1524, 283 x 214 mm, red chalk, black chalk, pen, brown ink, Casa Buonarotti, Inv. 10Ar. via But I was surprised to see the argument lead off with this drawing from the Casa Buonarotti of column bases with a human face in them. Or so I was told. I stared at the base on the left in lowkey disbelief. Michelangelo was really out here hiding a stunned Beetle Bailey profile in his architecture, and this is how I find out about it? Should we tell everyone? Should we throw a party? Should we invite Jasper Johns? Profiles in vases in Shrinky Dink: Jasper Johns, Untitled,…