Medici Chapel - The Sagrestia Nuova

The Sagrestia Nuova

The Sagrestia Nuova was intended by Cardinal Giulio de' Medici and his cousin Pope Leo X as a mausoleum or mortuary chapel for members of the Medici family. It balances Brunelleschi's Sagrestia Vecchia, the "Old Sacristy" nestled between the left transept of San Lorenzo, with which it consciously competes, and shares its format of a cubical space surmounted by a dome, of gray pietra serena and whitewashed walls. It was the first essay in architecture (1521–24) of Michelangelo, who also designed its monuments dedicated to certain members of the Medici family, with sculptural figures of the four times of day that were destined to influence sculptural figures reclining on architraves for many generations to come. The Sagrestia Nuova was entered by a discreet entrance in a corner of San Lorenzo's right transept, now closed.

Though it was vaulted over by 1524, the ambitious projects of its sculpture and the intervention of events, such as the temporary exile of the Medici (1527), the death of Giulio, now Pope Clement VII and the permanent departure of Michelangelo for Rome in 1534, meant that Michelangelo never finished it. Though most of the statues had been carved by the time of Michelangelo's departure, they had not been put in place, being left in disarray across the chapel, and later installed by Niccolò Tribolo in 1545. When Michelangelo moved to Rome, the sacristy was unfinished, although the architecture and sculpture were almost ready. By order of Cosimo I, Giorgio Vasari and Bartolomeo Ammannati finished the work by 1555.

There were intended to be four Medici tombs, but those of Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother Giuliano (modestly buried beneath the altar at the entrance wall) were never begun. The result is that the two magnificent existing tombs are those of comparatively insignificant Medici: Lorenzo di Piero, Duke of Urbino and Giuliano di Lorenzo, Duke of Nemours. Their architectural components are similar; their sculptures offer contrast. On an unfinished wall, Michelangelo's Madonna and Child flanked by the Medici patron saints Cosmas and Damian, executed by Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli and Raffaello da Montelupo respectively, to Michelangelo's models, are set over their plain rectangular tomb. The concealed corridor with wall drawings of Michelangelo under the New Sacristy discovered in 1976.