Filippo di Ser Brunellesco Lippi or Filippo Brunelleschi , born in 1377 with Florence and died in 1446 is a painter, a goldsmith, an architect of the school florentine.
Of the goldsmith to the architect
Born in 1377 in Florence, where his/her father is notary, he learns how to read, write and count, then he is placed in a workshop of goldsmithery. Admitted apprentice goldsmith with the Arte beyond seta (“guild of silk”) in 1398, it is interested a time in the clock industry.In 1400, it carries out statuettes of prophets, evangelists and of Augustin saint for the furnace bridge of San Jacopo in Pistoia. In 1402, with a relief on the sacrifice of Isaac, it gains, equal with Lorenzo Ghiberti, the contest for the second bronze door of the baptistry of Florence. But, not wishing to collaborate with Ghiberti, Brunelleschi will not give following its project. Although recognized Master-goldsmith in 1404, it will be interested more in the Sculpture, before turning resolutely to architecture.
In 1418, a notice of competitions is launched to equip the cathedral with Florence of a cupola; Brunelleschi presents a model, which does not convince from the start the jury; it proves the accuracy of it by building in San Jacopo Sopr' Arno a vault covered by a cupola built without clotheshanger, and it ends up obtaining the direction of the building site of Santa Maria del Fiore, again with Ghiberti, which it will arrive to évincer about 1426. Work of the cupola starts in 1420, whereas Brunelleschi was in addition seen entrusting by Arte beyond seta those of the hospital of the Innocent ones, a refuge for abandoned children, which will be inaugurated in 1445.
Taking as a starting point the cabins florentines, the architect produces on the long side of a place a gantry - into which it introduces the Corinthian order - which gives access to a unit including/understanding a cloister, a church and a dormitory. The bearing structures are development by the use of the will pietra serena , for the realization of monolithic columns which are detached with arcs and architraves on the white coating from the wall, process that Brunelleschi will réemploiera on several occasions. By building this gantry, the architect also thinks the place on which it opens the building, the Piazza della Santissima Annunziata: this one will be bordered by the gantry of the house of Servites of Marie, the Loggia dei Servi di Maria, who had with Antonio da Sangallo the Old man and Baccio d' Agnolo, while its third side will be marked by the arcades of the church Santa Annunziata, built by Michelozzo.
In 1421, Brunelleschi undertakes for the parish church of the Médicis, San Lorenzo, a vault peerage-book, which will be called Vieille Sacristy after construction by Michel-Angel, in 1521, of the New Sacristy. It is one of the works of Brunelleschi which will be the least faded by additions, and the first building of the Rebirth in central plan: a surmounted cube of a hemispherical cupola, whose voûtains rest on the pendentive ones. For the church San Lorenzo itself, of which he undertakes the rebuilding in 1425, he adopts a basilical plan with three naves. The central nave is covered with a wood ceiling with boxes and is equipped with high windows; the side aisles, arched, are lit by oculus.
Major element of its work, the cupola of the duomo of Florence, is always a monument of the architectural know-how, so much dimensions, the techniques and the quality of work is exceptional.
Sculptor and Italian Architect. Brunelleschi draws its creative strength with the ancient sources to rationalize the space of the modern city and sets up the bases of the perspective , thus opposing to the late Gothic a new system of representation of the world. Held for an innovator by his own contemporaries, Brunelleschi leaves an architectural work - realized essentially in Florence, during first half of Quattrocento, then supplemented by pupils like Michelozzo and Alberti - which makes of him an initiating brilliance of the Renaissance.
Return to the antique and innovations
The first biography of Brunelleschi, due to Antonio Manetti (1423-1497), mixes picturesque anecdotes and panegyric. Giorgio Vasari in its " Lives of the most excellent painters, sculptors and architects " ( Quickly the de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori E architettori ) (1542-1550) the process begins again: “This man was sent to us by the sky to renovate architecture mislaid since centuries. ” Brunelleschi would have gone to Rome between 1404 and 1406 with Donatello and it would be gone back there about 1417 (modern criticism also advances the date, dubious, of 1430): there, he would have studied the architecture of the ancient monuments, in order to draw some from the practical rules of construction.But Brunelleschi, far from being satisfied to copy the antique, rehabilitates of it the vocabulary at a building which it designs like an organic whole, governed by measurements and harmonic ratios. Its knowledge of ancient architecture could also be due to the direct contact with the Romance monuments Tuscan (with Florence even, San Miniato and the baptistry, of which it is inspired for the lantern by Santa Maria del Fiore).
Although recognized and honoured - it was buried in Santa Maria del Fiore, and was entitled to a monument with a commemorative epitaph -, Brunelleschi had to fight to impose its projects, in particular that of the cupola of the cathedral. Cosme of Médicis refused the plan of a new palate, considered to be too sumptuous. Santa Maria degli Angeli was given up, and Santo Spirito was notably modified: the vaults which were to show their rotundity outside were dissimulated by a wall enchasing them; one finally built three doors in frontage instead of four; moreover, Brunelleschi did not obtain to direct the church towards Arno, which would have created a new relation of the city with the river. Manetti charges number of the imperfections of the buildings of Brunelleschi to Francesco della Luna and Manetti Ciaccheri, which completed them after its death.
Filarete and Manetti allot to Brunelleschi the invention of the prospect, well before Alberti codifies of them the processes in its treaty Of painting (1435). For engineer Brunelleschi, the prospect constitutes an instrument of calculation and a rational means of reproduction of the buildings. It highlights the tension fields of architecture (colonnades) and the scansions of space (alternation of the vacuums and full). Towards 1415, it paints two small paintings representing in prospect the baptistry for Florence and the palate of the Seigniory. It would have also taken share, in Santa Maria Novella, the graphic construction of the architectural framework of the Trinity, mural of Masaccio. The influence of these lessons of prospect will be particularly sensitive in Masters of the school florentine such as Filippo Lippi and FRA Angelico.
The extraordinary capacity of invention of Brunelleschi appears perhaps more in its technical lucky finds that in its esthetic choices. The construction of the cupola of the cathedral requires to raise approximately seven tons of materials per day: it develops cranes and winches using endless screw, pulleys, gears and toothed wheels, as well as scaffolding ensuring the safety of the workmen. According to Manetti, its experiment in the field of the clock industry was very advantageous for him. Certain drawings of Léonard de Vinci take as a starting point its creations.
Brunelleschi proposes a new type of luminous church whose plan is governed by the golden section, in San Lorenzo and Santo Spirito; with the hospital of Innocent, it draws up a report/ratio particular to urban space by causing the creation of the public place. It reintroduces the central plan on the basis of of the square or circle to the Old Sacristy, the vault of Pazzi, and Santa Maria degli Angeli. Its use of the will pietra serena to underline the frame of its buildings will be often taken again, in particular by Michel-Angel.
Lastly, one allots to him the project of the one of the first urban palates of the Rebirth, the Palais Pitti. Its inventions mark the beginning of the architectural Rebirth inside a still medieval city: consul of Dieci di Balia (the council of the government), Brunelleschi takes part in the administrative life of Florence, city girded of walls, with compact urban fabric, and from where emergent the great Gothic architectures, of which the bell-tower of Giotto.
But if the cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore - “enough vast to be able to cover with its shade all the inhabitants of Tuscany”, according to Alberti - is more reappearing by its technical innovations that by its slightly pointed form which does not dissociate it clearly ogival style, it expresses a direction of new space and reorganizes the aspect of the city of Médicis symbolically to affirm of it supremacy vis-a-vis its rivals, Milan, Venice, Pisa, His, Lucques.
Biography
the Sacrifice of Abraham , so interesting by its audacities, the bold observation of nature, the innovation of the invention and especially by the energy of the thought, proves that it had been able to occupy in the statuary the place which it let take in Donatello. the Sacrifice of Abraham of Brunelleschi and that of Ghiberti put in presence, at the beginning of the 15th century, the two great doctrines which, during a whole century, will share the Italian art with Ghiberti, the serene beauty of the forms; with Brunelleschi and Donatello, dramas of the pensée."" … Brunelleschi, like later Michel-Angel in sculpture and Raphaël in painting, is placed at the borders of two ages. It marks the transition between the old era and the new era, and in his work one finds the legacy of last beside the ideas of the future. Brunelleschi, like Michel-Angel and Raphaël, before being an innovator, was the disciple of an old school. In these studies, where we endeavor to show how much the action of the Antique art was not very important on the Italian art during the 14th century and at the beginning of 15th, one includes/understands how much it is interesting to show that the cupola of the dome of Florence belongs of nothing to the influence antiquity, but very whole drift of the art of the Moyen-âge. Indeed, in this surprising work, that one could not admire too much, the role of Brunelleschi was limited especially to the material execution and the shapes of detail of the cupola. The design first does not belong to him. It is the work of the 14th century. When Brunelleschi appears, the plans of the cathedral are made since more than one century, the naves are covered, the large pillars intended to receive the cupola have their form and their thickness and the pendentive ones are already crowned by the octagonal drum. For Brunelleschi, it is not any more a question but of drawing up the cupola. Admittedly, the task was likely to make the glory of an architect; but finally, it should be noted that there was only one role of manufacturer to fill. Let us notice moreover that, in the form given to the cupola, Brunelleschi does not think of taking as a starting point the forms of Roman architecture, but that, quite to the contrary, in the share of invention which returns to him, it shows a faithful disciple of the Middle Ages. If it could raise the cupola without scaffolding, which appears to have been one of its principal merits, it is to have given to this cupola the shapes of the gothic arch. In any event, it appears difficult to make an unspecified share with the influence of Roman art, either in the design, or in the construction of this cupola. Therefore, if one can say with good reason that the architecture of the Rebirth goes back to Brunelleschi, one should not classify the cupola of Holy-Marie-of-Flowers among works of the Rebirth. The Renaissance dates only from posterior works of Brunelleschi to the cupola: the church of the St. Lawrence and the vault of Pazzi, started about 1430. Mr Paolo Fontana, in a remarkable article, It Brunelleschi E structured it classica , published in 1893 in Archivio storico dell' Arte pointed out that the reform of Brunelleschi less consists in reproducing the monuments of the pagan antiquity that the Christian monuments of the Middle Ages. Works of Brunelleschi derive directly from San Miniato, the Saint-Apostles and the Baptistry of Florence. Brunelleschi exerted on the Italian art a beneficial influence, because it renonça with the Gothic architecture that the Italian genius did not manage to assimilate and because it gave Italian architecture in its true way, in this way which it had given up at the 13th century, to follow, without much profit, the innovations of the people of Nord."
Marcel Reymond (The sculpture florentine at the 15th century: Brunelleschi - Gazette of the Art schools, Paris, January 1st, 1897, 3rd period, volume 17)
Its Works
- the dome and the lantern of the cathedral Santa Maria del Fiore with Florence (1420-1436).
- Hospital of Innocent the with Florence (1419-1424).
- the church of San Lorenzo in Florence (1419).
- the sacristy of San Lorenzo in Florence.
- the church Santa Croce in Florence (1430).
- the church Santo Spirito in Florence (1434).
- the Vault of Pazzi in Florence.
- the Rotonda dei Angeli in Florence (1434).
- fortifications of Vicopisano
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