Brunelleschis Dome (20 page)

Filippo had been politically active in Florence throughout the course of his work on the dome, serving numerous times on the councils that passed and rejected legislation proposed by the Signoria.
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But he was rapidly falling out of favor with the Florentine ruling class. What was more, his wealthy patron Cosimo de’ Medici — the man whose family had commissioned him to rebuild the church of San Lorenzo in 1425 — was now in exile. Cosimo’s departure was a blow to the artists of Florence. After the death of his father, Giovanni, in 1429, he had become head of the powerful Medici bank. A learned man, Cosimo read Greek philosophy, collected ancient manuscripts and coins, befriended the humanist scholars and, following the example of the ancient Romans, rose early each morning to tend to his orchards and vineyards. His political career was a little less idyllic, however. He had been one of the members of the War Office who prosecuted the unsuccessful campaign against Lucca, and in the wake of this failure he was arrested on a trumped-up charge of plotting to overthrow the government. In September 1433 he was imprisoned in the tower of the Palazzo della Signoria and shortly afterward banished to Venice.

Like Cosimo, Filippo was in a weakened state following the disaster on the battlefield at Lucca. His reputation had been damaged, his most powerful patron was in exile, and his work on the dome — though proceeding successfully — had been slowed due to a shortage of both manpower and funds. It was at this moment, therefore, that his enemies chose to pounce. The man behind his imprisonment was Raynaldo Silvestri, one of the consuls of the Masons Guild. It is tempting to ask if Silvestri was acting for anyone else besides the guild consuls. What, for example, might have been the role of Lorenzo Ghiberti or Giovanni da Prato? Lorenzo was immune from arrest on a similar charge, for he had joined the Masons Guild eight years earlier after having worked in the profession for almost a decade while still a member of the Silk Guild, to which Filippo also belonged. A shrewd businessmen as well as a talented artist, Lorenzo had joined the Masons Guild in 1426 so that his workshop could expand and begin taking profitable commissions for marble tombstones, not just works in bronze. Late in life he would even become a pillar of his new guild, serving as a consul between 1449 and 1453.This affiliation suggests that in 1434 he must have known, and perhaps even befriended, the men in the Masons Guild who were behind Filippo’s arrest.

Furthermore, Lorenzo may well have had reasons for wishing to wreak some sort of vengeance on his fellow
capomaestro
, since recently both his workshop and his reputation had suffered a series of reversals in which he was bested by Filippo. Two years earlier, in the summer of 1432, he and Filippo had together constructed a model of the fourth stone chain. However, in an example typical of his obstinate belief that he, and he alone, knew how to build the dome, Filippo arrogantly discarded this model six months later and built one of his own, which was accepted by the Opera in place of the earlier one. Lorenzo must have felt, not for the first time, that Filippo was trying to sideline him. Then another of his models, that for the choir screen of the cathedral, was rejected by the wardens in favor of one by Filippo. The wardens had not been impressed with Lorenzo’s plan, which they found impractical because it failed to provide enough room for the singers and the officiating clergy. This was a prestigious commission, and Lorenzo’s public failure to secure it must have seemed a blow to his reputation.

By the summer of 1434 these setbacks, combined with Filippo’s numerous earlier triumphs at the building site, could have been festering in the mind of Lorenzo, who with every year was becoming more and more peripheral to the project of building the dome. Still, no evidence exists to suggest that the arrest was an intrigue on his part. It is more likely that it was instigated at the behest of the same people — the powerful Albizzi faction — who had engineered the exile of Cosimo de’ Medici.

All things considered, Filippo’s incarceration could have been much worse than it was. He was not held like a common criminal in Florence’s communal prison, the Stinche, nor in the artificial underground caves, the
burelle
, that served as Florence’s dungeons. The populations of these prisons consisted mainly of paupers unable to pay fines levied against them, as well as forgers, adulterers, thieves, and gamblers. It was to this former prison, which stood near the Piazza Santa Croce, that Manetto, the Fat Carpenter, had been brought as part of Filippo’s scheme against him. Also held in the Stinche were more serious criminals — heretics, sorcerers, witches, and murderers — for whom unpleasant fates awaited: decapitation, amputation, or burning at the stake. Executions took place outside the walls, in the Prato della Giustizia, “Field of Justice.” These were popular public spectacles — so popular, in fact, that criminals often had to be imported from other cities to satisfy the public’s demand for macabre drama.

Filippo enjoyed a somewhat happier time. He was confined inside the prison of the Mercanzia, which was located in the Piazza della Signoria, and soon after his imprisonment the wardens of the Opera came to his rescue. Furious at his treatment, they insisted that the Capitano del Popolo, Florence’s chief of police, arrest Raynaldo Silvestri. Filippo was released from prison a few days later, on August 31, having spent the better part of two weeks in confinement. On the following day a pro-Medici government was elected, Cosimo recalled from Venice, and Rinaldo Albizzi — leader of the rival faction — sent into exile. But if Filippo thought that his problems were over and he could now concentrate his efforts solely on the cupola, he was sadly mistaken. Less than two months later, in October, his adopted son, Buggiano, stole money and jewels from his house and fled to Naples.

Andrea Cavalcanti, or “Il Buggiano,” had lived with Filippo for fifteen years, ever since he was brought to Florence at the age of seven. Filippo probably first met the boy in the Tuscan village of Buggiano, near Pistoia, where Ser Brunellesco, his father, had owned a plot of land with vines and olive trees. In 1434 Buggiano was already making his mark in Florence as a sculptor. Filippo had employed him on a number of prestigious projects, including the cathedral, for which he sculpted a marble lavabo, the ritual handbasin in the south sacristy. Nearby in San Lorenzo he had worked on an even more prominent commission: the sarcophagus for Giovanni de’ Medici and his wife Piccarda, the parents of Cosimo de’ Medici.

Little is known of Buggiano’s early life, but his education and upbringing must have been similar to Filippo’s, and he became a master in the Silk Guild at twenty-one. It was natural for a son in Florence to apprentice in his father’s workshop. Lorenzo Ghiberti, who worked at the foundry of his stepfather Bartoluccio, would later be succeeded by his own two sons and then by his grandson Buonaccorso. Similarly, the
capomaestro
Battista d’Antonio was assisted in his work on the cupola by his son Antonio. In fact, Antonio would even be named as a
capomaestro
. What is odd about this latter arrangement — apart from the fact that yet another
capomaestro
was deemed necessary — is the fact that in 1430, the year of his appointment, Antonio di Battista was only eleven years old. At this tender age he was not even old enough to be apprenticed to a stonemason, let alone be put in charge of the century’s grandest building project. Strange as it may seem, such an arrangement was not unprecedented. Minors were sometimes named as heads of industrial firms in Florence even though they had no actual input to the running of the business. In 1402 Cosimo de’ Medici, then thirteen, was named head of the Medicis’ wool-manufacturing firm. Not surprisingly, the actual administration was left to an experienced manager. Similarly, the participation on the cupola project of Antonio di Battista, the boy-
capomaestro
, seems to have been minimal, and his position only nominal.

Buggiano’s position, whether at the cathedral or in San Lorenzo, was far from nominal. By executing commissions such as the sarcophagus for Giovanni de’ Medici, he freed Filippo to work on his designs and models for the cupola and also to seek out further work. Buggiano was, moreover, a very skilled sculptor: at times his work is indistinguishable from that of Filippo, and at other times he even surpasses his master.
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Filippo cannot have been an easy person to work for, given his volatile, demanding, and stubborn nature, and, for whatever reason, he seems to have treated the young man rather casually. He failed, for example, to pay him the substantial sum of 200 florins — two years’ worth of wages — for his work on the cathedral and in San Lorenzo. Buggiano therefore took the money and jewels as his remuneration and absconded to Naples, where he presumably planned to make his way in the world without the assistance of the
capomaestro
.

Filippo should not have experienced any difficulties meeting this payment, given the fact that in 1433, despite his losses over
Il Badalone
, he was still worth the considerable sum of 5,000 florins. But the
capomaestro
, a genius in so many other areas, was not as skilled as he might have been at handling his finances. This tendency was not unusual, since a carefree attitude toward money was typical of many of Florence’s great artists and sculptors. Filippo’s friend Masaccio would make loans without bothering to collect them, and Donatello was said to have left sitting on his worktable a basket of money from which his apprentices were free to help themselves. Filippo could be equally generous, giving much of his money to the poor, but his casual attitude to his finances was sometimes not so much charitable as negligent. In September 1418, for example, his political career had suffered a temporary setback when tax arrears rendered him ineligible for office. His timing in that case could hardly have been worse, given that the cupola competition had been announced only a month earlier.

Buggiano was twenty-two when he absconded to Naples with Filippo’s possessions. Although already a master carver, he was still deemed an adolescent by Florentine law. In fact, like all adolescents, he would not be emancipated from his father’s authority until the age of twenty-four, and some of these “adolescents” could even remain under the control of their fathers until they were twenty-eight. Little wonder that many of them chafed under this system: the fourteenth-century poet and storyteller Franco Sacchetti wrote that five out of six sons wanted their father to die prematurely so they could be set free.

The full details of this unflattering incident remain obscure because neither Vasari nor Manetti mentions it, just as they mention neither
Il Badalone
or the failed scheme to flood Lucca. Whatever the situation, Filippo was determined to have both Buggiano and his property returned. Unlike his friend Donatello, who had pursued one of his runaway apprentices to Ferrara, bent on murder, he proceeded along strictly legal lines, appealing to the highest authority: none other than Pope Eugenius IV. The young man’s theft and flight therefore turned into an international incident.

Pope Eugenius had arrived in Florence in June, after being driven from the Lateran Palace by a stone-throwing mob of Romans made miserable and desperate from incessant warfare against the duke of Milan, who was now harrying the papal states. Eugenius had made his escape down the Tiber in disguise, sailed from Ostia, then disembarked at Livorno after a perilous journey. Altogether he would spend several years in Florence, where he would take part in a number of historic ceremonies in Santa Maria del Fiore.

The papal abbreviator at this time was Leon Battista Alberti, who had accompanied Eugenius to Florence. In 1434 Alberti was writing
De Pictura
(On painting), the Italian version of which he would dedicate to Filippo two years later, with its praise of the amazing feat of “Pippo the architect” in raising the dome. As abbreviator, Alberti had the task of composing all of Eugenius’s letters and bulls in impeccable and elegant Latin. Normally these bulls concerned doctrinal and liturgical matters, but on the twenty-third of October Alberti found himself promulgating what must have seemed a rather irregular edict: a request that Queen Giovanna of Naples immediately send Buggiano back to Florence along with the money and jewels taken from Filippo’s house. A request from such a source could not be taken lightly, and the runaway sculptor was promptly returned to Florence and the custody of his master. The embarrassing episode was thereby brought to a conclusion. Buggiano went back to work in Filippo’s studio, dutifully executing further commissions for his master. No further such disputes appear to have arisen between the two men, and soon afterward Buggiano was named as Filippo’s heir.

R
ELIGIOUS FEASTS WERE
numerous in Florence, averaging almost one per week. The populace was accustomed to grand spectacles on these occasions: to the sight of priests and monks in rich habits of gold and silk bearing through the streets the standards of their orders and their most prized relics, all to the tolling of bells, the blaring of trumpets, the chanting of songs and the splashing of holy water. But in 1436 the Feast of the Annunciation, observed on the twenty-fifth of March, was the occasion for a celebration that was spectacular even by the standards of Florence.

On this day Pope Eugenius IV processed eastward to the center of the city from his residence in Santa Maria Novella. He was accompanied by seven cardinals, thirty-seven bishops, and nine members of the Florentine government, including Cosimo de’ Medici. The procession moved along a 1,000-foot-long wooden platform, six feet in height, that was bedecked with sweet-smelling flowers and herbs. This gangway had been designed by Filippo to carry the pope safely above the crowds teeming in the streets below, a method of crowd control evidently selected in place of a much — used alternative, that of throwing coins into the street in order to scatter the people and keep them from pressing too closely upon the Holy Father. As the entourage turned into the Via de’ Cerretani and creaked across the boardwalk in the direction of the thronging Piazza San Giovanni, the new cathedral rose suddenly into view. After 140 years of construction, the time had finally come to consecrate Santa Maria del Fiore.