It is impossible to wander through the churches and buildings of Florence without seeing Brunelleschi. Most famous for his ingenious construction of the cupola — the terracotta dome which dominates the Florentine skyline — Filippo Brunelleschi was an engineer and architect who pushed knowledge forward in the wave of advancement known as the Renaissance. From the Hospital of Innocents to the church across the river, Santo Spirito, Brunelleschi’s distinctive style is dotted across the city — an influence so pervasive it is difficult to distinguish his artistic vision from the aesthetic of Florence itself. More than just physical, Brunelleschi’s style reflects Florence intellectually — its political ambition, humanist ideals, and transition from a mediaeval city of guilds to a centre of financial and commercial power.
Brunelleschi’s architecture grew from a city looking back at the inspiration of the classical world. With their backdrop this idea of ancient, pagan empire, the Florentines expanded their horizons in every direction: a revival of sculpture produced Donatello’s effeminate bronze David, modelled from statues of Antinous, Emperor Hadrian’s lover; Botticelli’s mysterious scenes and earthy pigments depicting non-Christian characters with echoes of Ovidian myth. This shocking departure from the culturally dominant Church represents Florence’s desperation to reinvent itself, to repurpose ancient ideas to craft their contemporary image.
Brunelleschi himself travelled to Rome, to sketch the ancient ruins and observe the constructions of a civilisation that was now in the distant past, and the inspiration of the Classical world in Brunelleschi’s architecture is unmissable. Lining the loggia of the Hospital, or the interior of Santo Spirito, are always columns; the Corinthian capitols at their head underscore their Greek and Roman origin. When there are not columns, there are its cousin: pilasters, an engaged wall decoration that imitates a column with its capitol, shaft and base, while remaining attached to the wall — a distinctly Roman adornment that lines the outer rings of the Colloseum. The use of Roman architectural features in the construction of the hospital, a civic building, sends a clear message as to Florence’s ambitions, aligning their government and its charitable projects with the ancient imperial powers of Rome.
The smaller details of the Ospedale invite further examination — the curves of Brunelleschi’s porticoes leave round spaces for tondi, from the Italian rotondo, which are circular pieces of art found in Greek antiquity. And there was no shortage of artwork to fill them; the workshop of Della Robbia and Michelangelo produced many tondi, sculpted and painted, outlining the intertwining paths of Renaissance art and architecture as jointly inspired by Classic technique. As Brunelleschi’s designs for a civic building literally form themselves around the inclusion of artwork, shaped by the Florentine preoccupation with their own image — the work of civic charity, funded by the Silk Guild, becomes instead a representation of aesthetic innovation and prowess.
While anchored in the style of the past, the Renaissance era was one of dynamic growth and rediscovery. Latin had remained the language of education, but it was limited to its ecclesiastical domain; the shift to revisit secular models of rhetoric, poetry and philosophy was a dramatic one. Not as dramatic, however, as the restoration of Ancient Greek as part of a humanistic education, which opened up what was for Florentines a new world of philosophical ideas, and academia built up over centuries. Philosophers like Plato could now be read in their original words, instead of through mangled translations.
The cacophony of new voices shines through in Brunelleschi’s designs. Vitruvius, the Roman engineer, who was fascinated by proportion — his name now best preserved through Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, a sketch on exactly that theme — is exhibited in Brunelleschi’s precise layouts, his attention to balance. The geometric harmony present in all of Brunelleschi’s buildings aligned with Florentine focuses on order and authority, another component of their distinguishing their own political power from that of the church.
Another voice, the Platonic tradition of investigative science, encouraged a practical process, which Brunelleschi followed precisely in his endeavours to study the dome of the Roman Pantheon before constructing his own in Santa Maria del Fiore. In this wave of rediscovering the wisdom of the Classical world, Brunelleschi became versed in a geometry founded by Thales, Euclid, Pythagoras, Archimedes and many other Greek mathematicians and philosophers. It is impossible not to see this sharp awareness of angle, position and shape in Brunelleschi’s repeating vaults and arches. His use of these techniques were extremely innovative, and they serve as manifestations of the intellectual revolution around him. Florence’s artistic and architectural affection for the Ancient Greeks was a culturally shocking departure from Christianity, and demonstrated their search for their own, unique identity — one which Brunelleschi forged.
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