Brunelleschi Fillipo
Brunelleschi Fillipo (1377-1446) is a distinguished Florentine architecture and engineering personality. As the earliest pioneer of Renaissance art in Italy, he first studied and used the ancient classic orders and he also managed to comprehend the importance of proportion in classic design. His will and his determination to master the Roman architectural principles of design and structure in order to mount in building, was one of the great advances in human knowledge and power for which the Renaissance is famous.
Moreover, Brunelleschi was in the versatility of his genius, an artist truly representative of his times. Trained as a goldsmith, he became a sculptor and entered the well known competition for the North Doors of the Florentine Baptistery. Defeated by Ghiberti in 1403, he abandon sculpture in disgust and set out for Rome, where he devoted the next 4 years to a constant study of ancient architecture. His teacher was the earliest student of classical building (Thus), a fact always reflected by a certain tentative quality in his own sculptures, all of which are located in Florence.
Brunelleschi’ s great dome for the Cathedral of Florence, an amazingly original construction (1420-1434), served to establish his engineering fame. He built it (without basic financial support) of two concentric masonry shells one within the other, each formed on a ribbed framework cross-braced for maximum strength. The dangerous thrusts generated by this lofty double dome he controlled not by exterior buttressing, as in earlier styles, but by powerful iron chains that constrict the base. The ingenious system of double masonry shells secured by chains, which he invented here, has since been used almost all over the world for building domes.
In respect to design, most of Brunelleschi’s works are essentially medieval despite his introduction of classical elements. Thus the columns, arches, and pilasters with entablatures that frames his arcades for the Hospital of the Innocents and the Second Cloister of the Church of Santa Croce, however, the first ecclesiastical building completed in the Renaissance, reveals his mature style, characterized by a Gothic plan; Byzantine construction in vaults and dome; and Roman columns, pilasters, and ornament. In the Old Sacristy of the Church of Saint Lorenzo (1420-1440) the scale is bolder, the style more assured, as they are also in the interior remodeling of the Church of San Lorenzo itself and in that of Santo Espirito (completed 1446).
These works prove that Brunelleschi had at last begun to grasp the secret of classic design, the attainment of monumental effect through carefully adjusted proportions. His final commission, the Pitti Palace, a huge structure begun in 1435 and left unfinished at his death, became the forerunner of a distinguished line of Renaissance palaces, specifically in its pioneer handling of rustication (a method of forming stonework with roughened surfaces and recessed joints) as an integral part of design.
