Filippo Brunelleschi

Filippo Brunelleschi - Duomo Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence

The requirements were that each competitor should model a relief, in bronze, of a single panel, representing the offering up of Isaac; and a year was allowed for its completion. The general conception of the treatment of the doors appears to have been assumed, the lines of Andrea Pisano in an earlier gate (1330—36) of the Baptistery being closely followed, and the Gothic shape of the panel resembling that in the pilaster of the Bigallo loggia opposite. Possibly Brunelleschi would have arrived at a nobler design for the gate had the competition been on a different basis, but in the test panel Ghiberti was adjudged successful, and was ultimately entrusted with the work.

Filippo Brunelleschi’s group was in many respects a finer composition, but was of less excellence as a bronze casting, and received the second place. Though so capable in sculpture, the decision in this competition seems to have led Brunelleschi to try another path in which he might perhaps attain the undisputed supremacy his ambitious and somewhat exclusive nature craved. The story has often been told how he set out for Rome about the year 1403 with an admiring friend, Donato di Niccolo di Betti Bardi, afterwards known to fame as Donatello, a lad then just sixteen years old, and how, supporting himself as a goldsmith, he gave the most ardent attention for about four years to the buildings of the Roman Empire, with the view of gaining a grasp of the principles of the classical styles; and he can scarcely have too much honor for his courage and his foresight in taking a course so original—indeed, unheard of at that period.

Returning to Florence he occupied his mind with the completion of the cathedral, a subject he had doubtless pondered while in Rome. For the cathedral, begun by Arnolfo del Cambio about one hundred and twelve years before, and continued by Giotto and Francesco Talenti, was still in a slow and desultory process of development. A council of architects had met in 1366 and fixed the shape of the choir and dome, but considerable indecision prevailed as to the best manner of covering the great octagonal opening and the three apses.

Filippo Brunelleschi - Section of The Duomo Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence

The solution of the problem presented the congenial opportunity to Brunelleschi, who by all the influence he could command endeavored to persuade the Council to carry out his ideas. It is said that nothing is denied to well-directed effort, and everything comes to him who waits, so in 1420, and only then, when forty-three years old, Brunelleschi was appointed to carry out the work, after another assembly of master-builders from different parts of Europe appears to have been held at the suggestion of Brunelleschi himself. At this historic meeting various wonderful schemes were propounded, as if it had been intended to "make a cupola for the whole terraqueous globe."

The greatest difficulty seemed to be entertained with regard to the scaffolding and centering that was considered indispensable by every one save Brunelleschi, and the suggestion was actually made that the dome might be formed over a huge mound of earth raised from the floor of the cathedral, into which coins were to be put at intervals, that its ultimate removal might be effected by those who would seek for the money it contained. It was Brunelleschi’s offer to construct the dome without centering that weighed most with the authorities in appointing him, but so little trust did they put in him that Ghiberti, his successful rival of the gates, who had no architectural experience, and Battista d’ Antonio, were assigned him as colleagues. This arrangement was ill adapted to Brunelleschi’s temperament, and did not last very long, Ghiberti retiring to work at his second pair of gates.

The cupola was not entirely constructed till 1434, the difficulties being enormous and so many delays and annoyances ensuing that the fanciful Florentines produced the conceit that the "heavens were jealous of their dome, which bade fair to rival the beauty of the blue ethereal vault itself." Domes had been constructed not so long before at Pisa, Siena, and at St. Mark’s, Venice, but none of them on such a grand scale, the diameter being one hundred and thirty-eight and a half feet, and the altitude of the dome itself one hundred and thirty-three feet, measured from the cornice of the drum to the eye of the dome.

The difficulties of so large a construction were much increased by the adoption of the drum on which the dome is raised, and through which it is lighted, while an important step is thus made in the progress of dome-design. There is a separation between the inner and outer shell of the dome, but they are concentric, or nearly so. As the altitude of the dome in itself is too great for good proportion internally or for decorative effects, the result might have been finer had the inner dome parted company from the outer with a lower centre, but that would have increased the thrust at the top of the drum, which it was Brunelleschi’s aim to reduce to a minimum; hence the acutely pointed form of both domes.

Though begun after 1436 under Brunelleschi’s superintendence the lantern was only completed in 1461, after his death, and the gallery, round the drum on the outside, only on one of the eight sides at a later date; for the lantern, however, he left a model with instructions that it should be formed of large masses of marble to prevent the cupola from opening, believing that its pointed form was rendered more stable by loading it heavily. The construction of the dome is Gothic in principle, as the work is done by the eight main ribs and by the sixteen lighter intermediate ribs between which the vaults are stretched.

The dome was the largest work of Brunelleschi, and, as the symbol of Florence, granted the eternal life to the artist who was Filippo Brunelleschi.