Brunelleschis Dome (12 page)

There may also have been another reason for the timber chain: a political rather than a structural one. It appears to have been, at least in part, an elaborate intrigue on the part of
capomaestro
Brunelleschi, a means of undermining the authority of Lorenzo Ghiberti by exposing his ignorance in matters of architecture and engineering. For, several years into the building of the cupola, the battle between the two
capomaestri
was about to explode.

T
HE RIVALRY BETWEEN
Filippo and Lorenzo had been simmering for several years. Although the two men had been appointed as equals, Filippo had swiftly eclipsed Lorenzo. After the ox-hoist was built and the first stone chain laid, he was referred to in the documents as the
inventor et ghubernator maior cupolae
, a title indicating how he had risen above his colleagues. Filippo’s mandate, according to the wardens, was to “provide, arrange, compose or cause to have arranged and composed, all and everything necessary and desirable for building, continuing and completing the dome.” Lorenzo, by contrast, was merely to “provide” toward this end. So it must have irritated Filippo to know that Lorenzo was not only enjoying the same salary — 3 florins per month — but likely to share the credit for Filippo’s ingenuity.

The wooden chain afforded Filippo the opportunity of discrediting his colleague. Models for this chain had been designed by Filippo as well as by the two other men, including Giovanni da Prato. A prize of 100 gold florins was at stake. In August 1423 Filippo’s design was selected by the wardens, yet another victory for the
capomaestro
, whose reputation was looming ever larger. But when the chestnut trees finally arrived in Florence, disaster seemed to strike: Filippo took to his bed, complaining of a pain in his side. He lingered there for several days, and when he was finally induced to return to the building site, he did so only with his head bandaged and his chest poulticed. This theatrical display managed to convince many people that Filippo was at death’s door. Others believed he was malingering, and soon rumors were bruited about Florence that his mysterious illness was actually a lack of nerve, an inability to follow through on his grandiose and impossible plan. The invalid made no response, merely shuffling back to his sick bed.

Responsibility for building the wooden chain — and for raising the dome — therefore fell to Lorenzo. This enormous obligation caused the goldsmith no small amount of disquiet, for Filippo, true to his nature, had not made his colleagues privy to the structure of the wooden chain, let alone the ultimate design of the dome. But it was Filippo’s model for the chain — one as confusing to the uninitiated as all of Filippo’s models — that Lorenzo suddenly found himself charged with reproducing.

Lorenzo may have been forced to take a backseat to Filippo as far as building the dome was concerned, but he had enjoyed success with his other projects. In 1422 he had finished casting a bronze statue of St. Matthew for the church of Orsanmichele. Commissioned by the Bankers Guild, the statue was even taller than his earlier statue of St. John the Baptist. Even more impressive, after more than twenty years of work he had finally completed the Baptistery doors, which were unveiled in April 1424. Sadly, Bartoluccio, his stepfather who also had worked on the doors, was not alive to see this achievement, having died two years earlier.

Lorenzo’s bronze doors were recognized immediately as a masterpiece. Originally commissioned to adorn the north side of San Giovanni, they were hung instead on the east portal, an indication of the esteem in which they were held, for the north portal, which faced the suburb of San Lorenzo, was of less importance than the one directly in front of the cathedral. There also had been a change in subject matter: Old Testament scenes were abandoned in favor of ones showing the life of Christ and the Evangelists. Altogether, a staggering 34,000 pounds of bronze were melted in Lorenzo’s foundry, and the laborious task of gilding and then assembling the doors had taken a full year in itself, occupying Lorenzo throughout 1423. This industry perhaps explains why he was rarely present at the building site of Santa Maria del Fiore, and why he was overshadowed by Filippo, who during 1423 had been supervising the building of the
castello
and the laying of the sandstone chain.
*
Lorenzo might also have had financial motivations for spending more time at his foundry than at the building site, because the Cloth Merchants were paying him the handsome sum of 200 florins per year, a salary that dwarfed the 3 florins per month he was earning for his work on the dome.

These preoccupations with other projects and his consequent absences from the building site did not stand Lorenzo in good stead as work ground to a halt, Filippo remained in bed, and the stonemasons and carpenters awaited their instructions. Filippo was requested to return to the site and offer his advice. But the condition of the
capomaestro
was deteriorating so swiftly that great alarm was aroused in the Opera. Finally, afraid of exposing his ignorance, Lorenzo bade the men resume, and under his direction they began laying the chestnut beams along one of the eight walls and fastening them together.

Interconnecting these logs was an important and complicated task. Lorenzo proceeded in this operation as best he could, basing his design on the wooden chain that embraces the dome of the Baptistery. But Filippo’s model called for a more complex design in which the logs would be clamped together with special plates made from oak. These had to be attached both above and below the junctions of the logs by iron bolts. The logs would then be wrapped in iron straps to prevent the bolts from splitting them.

As soon as three beams had been connected along one wall, Filippo made a miraculous recovery. He rose from his deathbed, spryly ascended into the cupola, inspected Lorenzo’s work, and then began a whispering campaign against Lorenzo, declaring his oak fastenings worthless and claiming that all three logs would have to be removed and replaced with a more effective construction — one that was ultimately executed under his own supervision. Thus, whatever its structural function, the wooden chain ultimately became a means for Filippo to expose Lorenzo’s incompetence to both the wardens and the people of Florence.

Filippo found himself rewarded for this intrigue a short time later: his salary was almost tripled, to 100 florins per year. Lorenzo’s remained at 36 florins until the summer of 1425, when his pay was suddenly suspended. It was resumed six months later, but in contrast to Filippo, whose wages had increased, Lorenzo remained on a salary of 3 florins per month. This meant that after 1426 his work on the dome would earn him barely a third of what Filippo was paid — an indication of just how much he had been surpassed by his rival in the eyes of his paymasters at the Opera, who were paying him, in effect, a part-time wage. Indeed, over the next few years Lorenzo would involve himself even less in the cupola project; instead he took on other, more profitable commissions, including yet another larger-than-life statue for Orsanmichele and, even more lucrative and time-consuming, a second set of bronze doors for the Baptistery of San Giovanni. Like the first set, this was to be a massive undertaking. The Cloth Merchants agreed to pay him 200 florins per year, as they had done with the first set of doors, and this generous salary may once again have prompted him to spend more time in his workshop than at Santa Maria del Fiore. Still, if Filippo thought he had subdued Lorenzo and his deputy, Giovanni da Prato, he was sorely mistaken.

If Filippo’s illness was indeed feigned, it was not the first time he had played an elaborate trick on an unwary party. He was well known in Florence for his talents in mimicry, chicanery, theatricality, and the creation of illusions. His most famous bit of trickery was a complex and ingenious hoax perpetrated against a master carpenter named Manetto di Jacopo. The story, known as “The Tale of the Fat Carpenter,” gained the status of legend in Florence and is related by Filippo’s biographer, Antonio Manetti.
¹
An example of a
beffa
, a cruel and humiliating trick, it is worthy of the pen of Boccaccio and anticipates the topsy-turvy dreamworld into which the characters are plunged in Shakespeare’s
Midsummer Night’s Dream
.

The hoax took place in Florence in about 1409, during one of Filippo’s returns from Rome. The victim was a carpenter named Manetto, known as Il Grasso,“the Fat Man.” Manetto specialized in carving ebony and owned a shop in the Piazza San Giovanni, not far from Filippo’s house. He was prosperous and good-natured, but one day had the misfortune of incurring Filippo’s ire after missing a social gathering. Never one to resist retaliation, Filippo resolved to exact his revenge for this perceived slight by persuading a wide cast of characters to convince Manetto that he had metamorphosed into someone else: a well-known Florentine named Matteo.

As Manetto closed his shop one evening, Filippo went to his house near the cathedral, picked the lock, slipped inside, and barred the door behind him. When Manetto arrived a few minutes later, he rattled the door and then, to his alarm, heard what sounded like his own voice (in fact, Filippo doing an impersonation) ordering him to go away. This impersonation was so convincing that he retreated in bewilderment into the Piazza San Giovanni. There he met Donatello, who inexplicably addressed him as Matteo, and shortly afterward a bailiff, who likewise hailed him as Matteo and then promptly arrested him for debt. He was taken to the Stinche prison, where his name was entered in the jail book as Matteo. Even his fellow prisoners — all of them party to Filippo’s prank — addressed him by this alien name.

The carpenter spent a sleepless night, fretting over events but solacing himself with the thought that he was merely a victim of mistaken identity. This comfort evaporated the next morning when two strangers — the brothers of the real Matteo — arrived at the prison and claimed him as their kin. They paid his debt and liberated him, though not before chastising him for his supposed gambling and profligate living. More bewildered now than ever, he was escorted to Matteo’s home on the other side of Florence, near Santa Felìcita, where his protests that he was not Matteo, but Manetto, appeared to fall on deaf ears. Over the course of an evening he almost became convinced that he had indeed metamorphosed into someone else. He was then put to sleep with a potion supplied by Filippo and carried, unconscious, back across the river to his own home. He was laid on his bed in a reversed position, with his head at the foot and his feet at the head.

Awakening many hours later, the poor carpenter was confused not merely by his position on the bed but also by the disarray of his house, for his tools had been completely rearranged. His perplexity grew with the arrival of Matteo’s brothers. These two men now treated him differently, greeting him as Manetto and relating the curious story of how the previous evening their brother Matteo conceived the fantastic notion that he was someone else. The story was soon confirmed by Matteo himself — the real one — who arrived at Manetto’s house to describe his puzzling dream of having been a carpenter. The disarray of the house was explained by the fact that in his dream Matteo noticed how his tools were out of order and in need of rearrangement. Faced with this evidence, Manetto became more convinced than ever that, for a while at least, he had exchanged identities with Matteo — in the same way that their names, so close in spelling, could be shuffled together and confused.

This practical joke confused art and life in the same manner as the perspective panel that Filippo would paint a few years later. Just as he showed the viewer of the painting a clever fabrication that tricked him into mistaking the artificial for the real, he fashioned a unique perspective for Manetto by reordering and controlling his perceptions. Like the viewer peering through the peephole, Manetto could not know whether what he experienced was the “real scene” or only a convincing but nonetheless distorted mirror image of that reality. Coincidentally, the perspective panel, which featured the Piazza San Giovanni, may even have included a representation of Manetto’s shop. By that time, however, the unfortunate carpenter had left Florence, humiliated and confused. After the trick was exposed, Manetto emigrated to Hungary, where he successfully plied his trade and — in what makes a happy ending to the story — amassed a considerable fortune.

I
N A.D.
148
THE
R
OMAN
hydraulic engineer Nonius Datus was sent to the town of Saldae in Algeria and instructed by its governor to build an aqueduct through the middle of a mountain. Nonius duly surveyed the mountain, executed plans and cross sections, calculated the axis of the tunnel, and then supervised two gangs of experienced tunnelers as they began their excavations, each at a different end. Thereupon he returned to Rome, satisfied that the operation was progressing smoothly. Four years later, however, he received an urgent summons to Saldae. Upon arriving he discovered the population of the parched town in a despondent mood: the two teams excavating the tunnel had each accidentally deviated to the right and therefore failed to meet in the middle. Nonius managed to rectify the situation, but had he arrived a little later, he observed, the mountain would have possessed two tunnels instead of one.

This anecdote is related in
On Aqueducts
, a work written by Sextus Julius Frontinus, the chief water engineer of Rome and onetime governor of Britain. Lost for many centuries, the treatise was discovered at Monte Cassino in the 1420s by the manuscript hunter Poggio Bracciolini. The tale of Nonius and his errant tunnelers must have been a source of chastening reflection for the builders of the cupola, who had been faced with a similar constructional problem — that is, how would it be possible for eight teams of masons, each working on one side of the dome, to raise their separate walls so that they would all converge at the top?