vince’s ear

Along with Donatello, Alberti, and Masaccio, Filippo Brunelleschi was responsible for creating the Renaissance style in Florence in the 15th century. He is certainly the principle architect of the Renaissance and one of the most famous to come out of Florence. Little is known about the man’s early life except that he was originally trained as a goldsmith. Historians are uncertain why exactly this unlikely architect emerged from such a beginning. One story tells that he was beaten in a competition for the doors of the baptisery of the Florence Cathedral. His failure to produce a gilded bronze panel with sufficient technical skill could possibly have forced him to seek his true calling.

Filippo Brunelleschi’s first architectural commission came from the Foundling Hospital, which was part of the goldsmith guild he had belonged to. The building was made to be dignified and plain with no displays of marble or decorative inlays. It is the first building in Florence to reference classical antiquity. This style was most likely inspired from the architect’s earlier trips with his friend Donatello to ancient Rome to study the ruins.

Soon after this his work was in demand and received commissions across the board such as the dome for the Cathedral of Florence the Santa Maria del Fiore with a very large dome. The Santa Maria del Fiore posed interesting problems in that no dome of that size has been attempted with all the construction problems including scaffolding. So a commission was started to design the best dome and once again Brunelleschi faced off with his earlier rival Lorenzo Ghiberti. This time it was Brunelleschi who won. The planning and building of the dome would occupy most the remainder of Brunelleshi’s life. In the end he succeeded from a technical skill, which included inventions inspired by the republication of the Roman architect Vitruvius’ Ten Books on Architecture. Much of his success was also due to his attention to mathematical detail and knowledge of engineering.

Though architecture was his forte, Brunelleschi’s interests were varied. He not only invented practical architectural devices for buildings and construction, but other thing s as well such as a contrivance to display puppet show-like theatrical subjects in churches. He had a brief and unfortunate stint as a shipbuilder when he designed a huge ship which sank on its maiden voyage. He would be highly influential in other arts such as sculpture and painting. A polychrome wooden crucifix survives which is thought to have been completed with Donatello. Brunelleschi is supposed to have said to his friend, “Christ was most delicate in every part,” a motto in essence equating moral goodness with formal beauty which would be adopted as commonplace Renaissance theory. Painting benefited from Brunelleshi from two panels he painted which showed the first instance of placing objects in a pictorial field with a single vanishing point.