A Wanderer in Florence | Page 5

city to paint some Scriptural scenes, and,
visiting the artist while he worked, on a very hot day, remarked,
"Giotto, if I were you I should leave off painting for a while". "Yes,"
replied Giotto, "if I were you I should."
To Giotto happily we come again and again in this book. Enough at
present to say that upon his death in 1336 he was buried, like Arnolfo,
in the cathedral, where the tablet to his memory may be studied, and
was succeeded as architect, both of the church and the tower, by his
friend and assistant, Andrea Pisano, whose chief title to fame is his
Baptistery doors and the carving, which we are soon to examine, of the
scenes round the base of the campanile. He, too, died--in 1348--before
the tower was finished.
Francesco Talenti was next called in, again to superintend both
buildings, and not only to superintend but to extend the plans of the
cathedral. Arnolfo and Giotto had both worked upon a smaller scale;
Talenti determined the present floor dimensions. The revised façade
was the work of a committee of artists, among them Giotto's godson
and disciple, Taddeo Gaddi, then busy with the Ponte Vecchio, and
Andrea Orcagna, whose tabernacle we shall see at Or San Michele.
And so the work went on until the main structure was complete in the
thirteen-seventies.
Another longish interval then came, in which nothing of note in the
construction occurred, and the next interesting date is 1418, when a
competition for the design for the dome was announced, the work to be
given eventually to one Filippo Brunelleschi, then an ambitious and
nervously determined man, well known in Florence as an architect, of
forty-one. Brunelleschi, who, again according to Vasari, was small, and
therefore as different as may be from the figure which is seated on the
clergy house opposite the south door of the cathedral, watching his

handiwork, was born in 1377, the son of a well-to-do Florentine of
good family who wished to make him a notary. The boy, however,
wanted to be an artist, and was therefore placed with a goldsmith,
which was in those days the natural course. As a youth he attempted
everything, being of a pertinacious and inquiring mind, and he was also
a great debater and student of Dante; and, taking to sculpture, he was
one of those who, as we shall see in a later chapter, competed for the
commission for the Baptistery gates. It was indeed his failure in that
competition which decided him to concentrate on architecture. That he
was a fine sculptor his competitive design, now preserved in the
Bargello, and his Christ crucified in S. Maria Novella, prove; but in
leading him to architecture the stars undoubtedly did rightly.
It was in 1403 that the decision giving Ghiberti the Baptistery
commission was made, when Brunelleschi was twenty-six and
Donatello, destined to be his life-long friend, was seventeen; and when
Brunelleschi decided to go to Rome for the study of his new branch of
industry, architecture, Donatello went too. There they worked together,
copying and measuring everything of beauty, Brunelleschi having
always before his mind the problem of how to place a dome upon the
cathedral of his native city. But, having a shrewd knowledge of human
nature and immense patience, he did not hasten to urge upon the
authorities his claims as the heaven-born architect, but contented
himself with smaller works, and even assisted his rival Ghiberti with
his gates, joining at that task Donatello and Luca della Robbia, and
giving lessons in perspective to a youth who was to do more than any
man after Giotto to assure the great days of painting and become the
exemplar of the finest masters--Masaccio.
It was not until 1419 that Brunelleschi's persistence and belief in his
own powers satisfied the controllers of the cathedral works that he
might perhaps be as good as his word and was the right man to build
the dome; but at last he was able to begin. [1] For the story of his
difficulties, told minutely and probably with sufficient accuracy, one
must go to Vasari: it is well worth reading, and is a lurid commentary
on the suspicions and jealousies of the world. The building of the dome,
without scaffolding, occupied fourteen years, Brunelleschi's device

embracing two domes, one within the other, tied together with stone for
material support and strength. It is because of this inner dome that the
impression of its size, from within the cathedral, can disappoint.
Meanwhile, in spite of all the wear and tear of the work, the satisfying
of incredulous busy-bodies, and the removal of such an incubus as
Ghiberti, who because he was a superb modeller of bronze reliefs was
made for a while joint architect with a salary