Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
FILIPPO BRUNELLESCHI
Many Renaissance men left their mark on Florence, but few did so with as much grace and glory as
Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446). An architect, mathematician, engineer and sculptor, Brunelleschi
trained as a master goldsmith and showed early promise as a sculptor - he was an entrant in the 1401
competition to design the doors of the baptistry in Florence (won by fellow goldsmith Lorenzo
Ghiberti) and shortly after travelled to Rome with Donatello, another goldsmith by training, to study
that city's ancient architecture and art. When he returned to Florence in 1419 he took up an architec-
tural commission from the silk merchant's guild to design a hospital for foundlings on Piazza della
Santissima Annunziata in San Marco. Known as the Ospedale degli Innocenti (Hospital of the Inno-
cents), his classically proportioned and detailed building featured a distinctive nine-arched loggia and
was a radical departure from the High Gothic style that many of his artistic contemporaries were still
embracing. Its design was sober, secular and sophisticated, epitomising the new humanist age.
In 1419, after completing his work on the foundling hospital, Brunelleschi moved on to a commis-
sion that was to occupy him for the next 42 years - the dome of Florence's
duomo
. His mathematical
brain and talent for devising innovative engineering solutions enabled him to do what many
Florentines had thought impossible: deliver the largest dome to be built in Italy since antiquity.
Brunelleschi's other works in Florence include the Basilica di San Lorenzo, the Basilica di Santo
Spirito and the Cappella de' Pazzi in the Basilica di Santa Croce. Vasari said of him: 'The world hav-
ing for so long been without artists of lofty soul or inspired talent, heaven ordained that it should re-
ceive from the hand of Filippo the greatest, the tallest, and the finest edifice of ancient and modern
times, demonstrating that Tuscan genius, although moribund, was not yet dead.' He is buried in the
duomo,
under the dome that was his finest achievement.
