Brunelleschis Dome (4 page)

This creation was placed in a kiln and baked until the clay hardened and the layer of wax, as it melted, oozed through small vent holes made for that purpose, usually at the base. A hollow was thereby left into which bronze, melted in a furnace, was poured. The final step in the process was to break away the shapeless husk of baked clay and expose the bronze figure, which could then be chiseled, engraved, polished, and, if necessary, gilded. So fraught with opportunities for mishap was the whole process that, in later years, Michelangelo would request a Mass to be said whenever he began pouring a bronze statue.

The trial pieces were completed and the judgment commenced in 1402, as Milanese troops displaying Giangaleazzo’s gruesome insignia camped outside the gates of Florence. The prestigious commission would almost certainly make the victor’s reputation. Of the original seven competitors, only two were considered worthy of the prize. Filippo Brunelleschi found himself pitted against another young, unknown goldsmith. And so began a lifelong professional rivalry.

Lorenzo Ghiberti was not the most auspicious contender for such a major commission as the Baptistery doors. Only twenty-four years old and with no major works to his credit, he was a member of neither the goldsmiths’ nor the sculptors’ guilds. Worse still, he was of dubious paternity. Officially the son of a dissolute man named Cione Buonaccorso, he was rumored to be the illegitimate child of a goldsmith, Bartoluccio Ghiberti, who was now his stepfather.
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He had apprenticed in Bartoluccio’s workshop, assisting in the manufacture of earrings, buttons, and various other staples of the goldsmith’s trade — hardly tasks on the scale of the Baptistery doors. When plague broke out in 1400, Lorenzo had left for the healthier climate of Rimini, on the Adriatic coast, where he had worked not as a goldsmith but as a painter of murals. He returned to Florence a year later, on the urging of Bartoluccio, who assured him that if he won the commission for the Baptistery doors, he need never make another earring.

The two finalists in the competition could not have approached their labors more differently. Lorenzo proved the more cunning tactician, canvasing widely for advice from other artists and sculptors, many of whom happened to be on the jury. Summoned into Bartoluccio’s workshop in Santa Croce, they were asked for their opinions of the wax model, which, no matter how carefully carved, Lorenzo was always willing to melt and reshape according to their criticisms. Advice was even solicited from perfect strangers, the dyers and wool combers of Santa Croce, who were beckoned into the shop as they passed on their way to work. He also made good use of Bartoluccio, who polished the finished work for him.

Filippo, on the other hand, worked in isolation. Secrecy and individual effort were to be two hallmarks of his working habits over the next forty years. Later, whether making architectural models or specialized inventions such as hoists and boats, he insisted on his own solitary authorship, never committing his ideas to paper, or if he did, only in cipher. He worked either alone or with one or two trusted disciples, always fearful that some unworthy soul would bungle his plans or attempt to steal the credit for them — a nightmare that was later to come true.

In the end, the judges as well as the people of Florence were divided between the merits of the two bronze reliefs — a division that persists among art historians to this day. Filippo’s panel is the more dramatic of the two, portraying both Abraham and the angel in histrionic and even violent poses above the contorting figure of Isaac. Lorenzo’s figures, on the other hand, appear more graceful and elegant, and his panel was also technically more accomplished inasmuch as it used less bronze and was cast in a single piece. Visitors to Florence can make up their own minds about their respective virtues because the two panels are now preserved in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello. What became of the unsuccessful five is not known. They may well have been melted down during one of Florence’s numerous wars — always a danger with bronze. The sixteenth-century Florentine antiquarian and collector Francisco Albertini recommended that goldsmiths who desired immortality should never cast their bronzes in a thickness greater than a knife’s edge, because that way they would not be melted down for the casting of cannons. It was all too easy to turn bronze into gunmetal; one had only to add more tin — double the amount used to make bronze — to the alloy. Many of Lorenzo’s later pieces appear to have met this fate.

Two conflicting accounts exist of how the thirty-four judges arrived at their final decision. One is courtesy of Lorenzo himself in his autobiography, the
Commentarii
; the other comes from Filippo’s first biographer, Antonio di Tuccio Manetti, who, though not born until 1423, claims to have known his subject personally. Neither author is especially disinterested. Lorenzo asserts, with no trace of modesty, that he won the victor’s palm “without a single dissenting voice,” whereas in his
Life of Brunelleschi
, written in the 1480s, Manetti relates a more complicated tale in which the judges, unable to decide between the two pieces, reached a compromise and awarded the commission jointly to both men, who were henceforth to work in collaboration. This is not implausible given the size of the project and the relative inexperience of the two young goldsmiths. But Filippo, in Manetti’s account, refused to work with Lorenzo, demanding that he alone be given charge of the work. This too sounds plausible considering that Filippo’s arrogant self-confidence, irascibility, and stubborn unwillingness to work with others is a theme that repeats itself throughout his life.

According to Manetti, Filippo withdrew from the competition when his demand for complete control was refused, leaving the project in the hands of his rival. From that moment, he renounced sculpture — he would never again work in bronze — and quit Florence for Rome. Here he lived intermittently for the next fifteen years, making clocks and setting gems to support himself while he studied the crumbling ruins of ancient Rome. Lorenzo meanwhile was to spend the next twenty-two years at work on the bronze doors, which ultimately weighed ten tons and are acknowledged to be among the great masterpieces of Florentine art.

And what of Giangaleazzo Visconti? As the Milanese armies besieged Florence in the summer of 1402, a holy hermit in the Tuscan countryside prophesied that the tyrant would die before the year was out. As it transpired, the prophecy was fulfilled with several months to spare. In the middle of August, in the sweltering Tuscan heat, just when Florence seemed within his grasp, Giangaleazzo fell ill with a fever, lingered for several weeks, then expired at the beginning of September, aged fifty-two. Shortly thereafter the siege was lifted. The Milanese troops disbanded, and the blockade was at an end. Florence had been spared, and the greatest century in the history of the Republic — what Voltaire calls one of the greatest eras in the history of the world — was ready to commence.

A
C
APITOLIUM, A
F
ORUM
, a Temple of Mars, an amphitheater, an aqueduct, an equestrian statue of Mars on the Ponte Vecchio, Roman baths, assorted walls and towers, to say nothing of the catacombs (
burelle
) that now served as a prison and, less officially, as hideouts for prostitutes — the citizens of Florence saw ancient Roman ruins wherever they looked in their city.

Or so they believed. The fact is that Florence was not especially rich in Roman remains. Many so-called Roman structures — the Baptistery, for example — actually dated from a much later and more modest era. Nevertheless these observations, however misguided, enjoyed a long and distinguished pedigree, for the historians of Florence were forever inventing spurious links between their city and ancient Rome. The
Chronica de origine civitatis
, an early history written in about 1200, claimed that the city was founded by Julius Caesar.A century later, in his
Convivio
, no less an authority than Dante called Florence “that beautiful and famous daughter of Rome.” The humanist philosopher Leonardo Bruni agreed with this proud lineage but identified the founder not as Julius Caesar — an imperialist tyrant uncomfortably reminiscent of Giangaleazzo Visconti — but rather as Lucius Cornelius Sulla, who established the city some twenty years before Caesar’s reign, during the height of the Roman Republic. This conviction was given support in 1403 when relics and documents supposedly proving the case were discovered in the church of Santissima Apostoli.

Thus when Filippo set off for Rome sometime after the end of the competition for the Baptistery doors, patriotic arguments about the Roman origins of the Florentine republic — arguments all the more strident during the years of the Visconti threat
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— would have been ringing in his ears. Yet in the early 1400s the Eternal City must have been, in most respects, a wretchedly uninspiring sight, a parent that the Florentines may well have wished to disown. A million people had dwelled in Rome during the height of the Empire, but now the city’s population was less than that of Florence. The Black Death of 1348 had reduced numbers to 20,000, from which, over the next fifty years, they rose only slightly. Rome had shrunk into a tiny area inside its ancient walls, retreating from the seven hills to huddle among a few streets on the bank of the Tiber across from St. Peter’s, whose walls were in danger of collapse. Foxes and beggars roamed the filthy streets. Livestock grazed in the Forum, now known as
il Campo Vaccino
, “the Field of Cows.” Other monuments had suffered even worse fates. The Temple of Jupiter was a dunghill, and both the Theater of Pompey and the Mausoleum of Augustus had become quarries from which the ancient masonry was scavenged, some of it for buildings as far away as Westminster Abbey. Many ancient statues lay in shards, half buried, while others had been burned in kilns to make quicklime or else fertilizer for the feeble crops. Still others were mangers for asses and oxen. The funerary monument of Agrippina the Elder, the mother of Caligula, had been turned into a measure for grain and salt.

Rome was a dangerous and unappealing place. There were earthquakes, fevers, and endless wars, the latest of which, the War of the Eight Saints, witnessed English mercenaries laying waste to the city. There was no trade or industry apart from the pilgrims who arrived from all over Europe, clutching copies of
Mirabilia urbis romae
(The wonders of Rome), which told them which relics to see during their stay. This guidebook directed them to such holy sights as the finger bone of St. Thomas in Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, the arm of St. Anne and the head of the Samaritan woman converted by Christ in San Paolo fuori le Mura, or the crib of the infant Savior in Santa Maria Maggiore. There was a hucksterish atmosphere to the city: pardoners sold indulgences from stalls in the street, and churches advertised confessions that were supposedly good for a remission of infernal torture for a grand total of 8,000 years.

The
Mirabilia urbis romae
did not direct the attention of the pilgrims to the Roman remains that surrounded them. To such pious Christians these ancient ruins were so much heathen idolatry. Worse, they were stained with the blood of Christian martyrs. The Baths of Diocletian, for example, were built with the forced labor of early Christians, many of whom had died during the construction. Antique images that had survived a millennium of earthquakes, erosion, and neglect were therefore deliberately trampled underfoot, spat on, or thrown to the ground and smashed to pieces.

Nevertheless, some of the old pagan glory of Rome persisted despite this new breed of Vandal. The high road from the south, the Via Appia, expertly paved with basalt blocks fitted together without mortar, was an architectural marvel in itself, cutting straight as an arrow through mountains, marshes, and valleys. Of still more interest were the 300,000 sepulchers that still lined the road for miles, the products of an ancient law that had prevented anyone except the vestal virgins and the emperors from being buried within the walls of Rome. Or one could see the broken arches of aqueducts such as the Acqua Claudia. At 43 miles long, and with arches 100 feet in height, this structure was a testament not only to the fresh drinking water enjoyed by the ancient Romans (in comparison with their descendants, who took their water from the tainted, foul-smelling Tiber) but also to their remarkable engineering skills. Some modern-day Romans were even ignorant of its purpose, believing it to have been used to import olive oil from Naples.

Filippo arrived in this squalid, crumbling city soon after the conclusion of the competition for the Baptistery doors. He would then remain in Rome, off and on, for roughly the next thirteen years, making occasional extended trips back to Florence. He originally came to Rome with another Florentine, the talented young sculptor Donatello, then an adolescent. It was an association that, despite some periods of turbulence, would endure for many years. The pair were well matched, given that Donatello was if anything even more hot-tempered than Filippo. A year or two earlier, at the age of fifteen, he had landed himself in trouble with magistrates in Pistoia for striking a German over the head with a large stick, and many years later he would travel to Ferrara intent upon murdering one of his runaway apprentices. His patrons likewise felt his wrath: if one of them refused to pay the full price for a statue, Donatello would demolish it in a fit of temper.

The two young men lived like vagabonds, paying little attention to what they ate, how they dressed, or where they slept. Together they began digging among the vast ruins, hiring porters to cart away the rubble and becoming known to locals as the “treasure hunters” because it was believed they were searching for gold coins and other treasures — an impression reinforced whenever they excavated earthenware pots filled with antique medals. Their activities may have attracted suspicion and even fear, not merely because they were suspected of practicing geomancy (the art of divining the future by interpreting the patterns made by handfuls of scattered earth), but because pagan fragments were considered bad luck. In the fourteenth century, for example, the Sienese had unearthed an ancient Roman statue and, after placing it on the fountain in their main piazza, suffered a military defeat at the hands of the Florentines. The statue was promptly removed from the piazza and, in order to curse their enemies, reburied in Florentine territory.