AA - Politics of Brunelleschi's Architecture (Aureli)

Do You Remember Counterrevolution?
: The Politics of Filippo Brunelleschi's Syntactic

Architecture
Author(s): Pier Vittorio Aureli
Source: AA Files, No. 71 (2015), pp. 147-165
Published by: Architectural Association School of Architecture
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/43687078
Accessed: 17-05-2017 14:41 UTC
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms
Architectural Association School of Architecture is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve

and extend access to AA Files
This content downloaded from 192.30.202.8 on Wed, 17 May 2017 14:41:30 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Do You Remember
Counterrevolution?
The Politics of Filippo Brunelleschi's

Syntactic Architecture
Pier Vittorio Aureli
with drawings by Fabrizio Ballabio
i
To articulate what is past does not a revolt by proletarian textile workers not
Since its invention in the nineteenth cen-
mean to recognise 'how it really was' represented by the guilds, who took power
tury the now epic history of the Renaissance
It means to take control of a memory , and established a short-lived revolutionary
has symbolised a golden age for western art, government.8 Although this administration
as it flashes in a moment of danger.
with scholars from multiple fields more or was immediately suppressed, its succes-
Walter Benjamin,
less unanimous in considering it the start- sor - pressured by a groundswell of popu-
On The Concept of History, 1940
ing point of both the enduring intellectual lar opinion - promoted important political
tradition we call humanism and the ongo- and economic reforms by imposing a more
ing historical era we call modernity.1 Despite several challengesequal
over taxation system. In the long term, however, the traumatic
the last decades both to the idea of the Renaissance as a moment memory of the 1378 revolution and the fear of political instability
led to a realignment of civic beliefs, persuading the popolo (and
distinct from medieval civilisation and to an overly idealistic under-
standing of humanist culture, in popular imagination at least the
especially its artisans and merchants) to support an economic elite
myth of the Renaissance remains intact.2 in the transformation of Florence from a guild-led republic to a de
facto oligarchy. Of course, we know how the story goes - that the
The strength of this myth derives largely from its reducibility:
that the early Renaissance was focused on one particular Medici
city - family would eventually assume command of this oligar-
Florence - and expressed through the work of only a handful chy,
of rev-
but not until the 1430s, after an opposing faction led by Rinaldo
degli Albizzi had been discredited and exiled. The early decades of
olutionary artists - the architect Filippo Brunelleschi, the sculptor
Lorenzo Ghiberti, the painter Masaccio and the sculptor Donatello,
the fifteenth century are thus an ambivalent period in which the
middle class increasingly aligned itself with a wealthy elite, while
a fab four whose technical ingenuity, knowledge of ancient sources,
pictorial verisimilitude and realistic rendering of the human thebody
elite, in an attempt to win the support of the masses, embraced
was enshrined in their pivotal works: Brunelleschi's design thefor
republicanism of the popolo .
the Foundling Hospital, Ghiberti's Baptistery doors, Masaccio's Physically at the heart of this city, and central also to its subse-
quent
frescos at the Brancacci Chapel and Donatello's statue of St Mark in depiction, the work of Filippo Brunelleschi was born out
the Orsanmichele. of this ambivalence, to the extent that it is inscribed not so much
The still reverberating power of these works appears with to sus-
the material and representational tropes of a characteristically
tain all depictions of the early quattrocento as a period populated
modern intelligence, as with the spatial and figurative embodiment
by geniuses, even if there have also been occasional, less of adula-
the counterrevolution of the early 1400s. Brunelleschi's work is
tory histories, reading the 'controversies' of Renaissance art as the
therefore interesting because its radicalism, its invention of a new
locus of theological and cultural politics.3 In contrast, and spatial
but for and formal language, upsets the terms by which we usually
a few notable exceptions, what has been absent from this distinguish
histori- something 'revolutionary' from something 'conserva-
ography is a critique of fifteenth-century art and architecture as
tive'. Indeed, it is possible to argue that Brunelleschi's architecture
a specific ideology rooted in specific political and economicradicalised
condi- the spatial impetus that was already in nuce in four-
tions.4 Of course, in the past questions have been raised about the
teenth-century Florence, forcibly emerging out of the social unrest
elitist nature of Renaissance art and its complete subserviencethat
to its
threatened the city's civic order. 9
rich and autocratic patrons,5 but this critique is so obvious as toWe
be know from history that architecture is not just shelter but
harmless, since it misses the crucial point that any form of power,
the representation of an idea of order and the systems that institu-
no matter how authoritarian, has the potential to be overthrown.
tions impose so as to avoid disruption to this order. The more these
The point, therefore, is to understand Renaissance art andinstitutions
archi- are haunted by a fear of disorder, the stronger their
tecture less as an expression of privilege and more as a site ofdesire
con- for stability. The arch or first principle of architecture is in
flict in which aesthetic principles were rooted in the struggles - the
this sense both an anthem to the necessity for order, and an implicit
'blood and fire' - that gave form to our modern civilisation. acknowledgement of its opposite condition: instability and chaos.
And again, applying this to the context of Florence, we see that
More particularly, the greatness of Renaissance art and architec-
ture can be better appreciated (and perhaps understood) if the political milieu to which Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Masaccio and
we read
this epochal period not as revolution but as counterrevolution. As
Donatello belonged was induced by an acute fear of civic disorder
the philosopher Paolo Virno has explained, a counterrevolution is concomitant search for new forms of stability. In the quat-
and the
a 'revolution in reverse', enjoying the same cultural, social andtrocento
eco- these new forms were attempted with several means, from
ideological
nomic presuppositions that a revolution would typically engage, yet solutions (for example, the invocation of ancient Rome
one that looks at the establishment not of an emancipatory power,
as some kind of noble precedent) to technical strategies (such as the
but the consolidation of a conservative authority. The counterrevo-
reorganisation of civic space and the promotion of public works).
Following the historian Arnaldo Bruschi, we could define the
lution is thus a revolution that forges new mentalities, cultural hab-
its, tastes, customs and modes of production.6 In this specificcompound
case, nature of these solutions as 'syntactic architecture' - an
the repressed revolution was the political pro- architecture where every element is a syntagma ,
Map of Florence (based on an 1847 plan by
cess through which the guilds of fourteenth-Giuseppe Molini) showing Brunelleschi's
a constituent segment of a coherently ordered
century Florence countered and successfully
Foundling Hospital (1), Rotonda deli Angeli (2), whole.10 What distinguishes Brunelleschi, in
limited the access of wealthy families to thedome of Santa Maria del Fiore (3), particular, is that his work clearly displays the
basilica and Old Sacristy of San Lorenzo (4),
governance of the city.7 This process would be wider political connotations of this whole. And
Palazzo di Parte Guelfa (5),
accelerated and go even beyond guild politics
church of Santo Spirito (6) and Pazzi Chapel (7) so rather than cataloguing his influence merely
in 1378, with the famous Tumulto dei Ciompi , Fabrizio Ballabio through his formal innovations, or as the vague
148 AA FILES 71
/ / *
Plan of the Piazza della Santissima Annunziata
and elevation of the Foundling Hospital, 1419-45
(based on Eugenio Battisti's
analysis of the building as it was in 1427)
Fabrizio Ballabio
evocation of humanistic principles, it is possible instead to read his architect came into being, and the cultural and political circum
work as representative of an urban elite's spatial response to a coun- stances that defined the purpose of architecture as we know it fro
terrevolutionary conflict that saw Florence - the epicentre of one its inception as a profession.
of the most advanced capitalist economies - struggle with a seem-
ingly permanent condition of political instability. The result was an ii
architecture that was both radical and conservative, highly abstract, Between 1418 and 1423 Brunelleschi started three major works - the
almost on the verge of iconoclasm, while still evoking the reassur- Ospedale degli Innocenti (Foundling Hospital), the rebuilding of
ing myths of antiquity. And it is precisely this contradiction between the basilica of San Lorenzo and the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore.
spatial radicalism and conservative politics that constitutes the ide- Even though their construction would take many more years, and
ological core of the early quattrocento counterrevolution from which would not be complete before Brunelleschi's death in 1446, these
was born not only Brunelleschi's work but the entire tradition of structures, aggressively inserted into the city fabric, would radically
what today we still call architecture. change not only the image of Florence but also the way in which
Fuelling this atavism, of course, is the fact that Brunelleschi was architecture itself was made.
arguably the very first architect, Of these buildings the dome

in the sense of being a clearly of the cathedral had perhaps the
recognisable professional figure biggest impact, due to its scale
whose agency was independ- and unprecedented means of
ent from that of the builder. As construction. Yet the Foundling
his fifteenth-century biographer Hospital, even if less ambitious
Antonio di Tuccio Manetti tells in terms of its dimensions, is
us, Brunelleschi was born in 1377 arguably a more exemplary pro-
and initially trained as a gold- ject. Commissioned by the Arte
smith before turning towards della Seta , or silk merchant's
sculpture. It was only later, after guild, one of the most power-
a series of trips to Rome between ful in the city, the construc-
1402 and 1404, when he had the tion of the hospital was a direct
opportunity to see and meas- response to an urgent problem:
ure ancient monuments, that depopulation. Between 1300 and
he shifted focus again and 1400 the number of people liv-
became increasingly engaged ing in Florence fell from 90,000
with architecture. The immediate to 40,000, a major cause for con-
successes he achieved in this new cern for an industrial city, since it
role, designing a succession of dramatically raised labour costs.
public works in Florence, can to It therefore followed that the fast-
some extent be explained by his est way to reduce these costs was
family ties. The son of a notary, to increase an urban workforce,
Brunelleschi was politically close which the Florentine authorities
to the Florentine faction led by attempted to bolster by also pro-

Albizzi, and thus it would be viding a home to those children
no exaggeration to say that his abandoned by their parents. At
career as a designer was part of the time, orphanages were con-
a political project directly or indi- sidered institutions of shame,
rectly supported by this ruling and generally located away from
the city centre, in secluded spaces such as monasteries. It is symp-
party. After he succeeded in 'solving' the construction of the dome
tomatic of the political urgency of the Foundling Hospital that it
of Florence cathedral, one of architecture's earliest self-mythologis-
was conceived as a secular institution and housed within a monu-
ing narratives, his reputation received a further boost (so he was not
mental building facing what would become in the course of the fif-
only the first architect, but the first celebrity architect). Indeed, the
more his fame grew the more his authority as the singular authorteenth
of century one of the most important squares of Florence, the
Piazza dell'Annunziata.
works became irresistible, overruling the formerly collective ethos
of Florence's guild-led construction processes. The fact that Man-The open relationship between hospital and square is revealed
in the building's famous loggia, which for the first time captures
etti chose to document this life (the first ever architectural biogra-
Brunelleschi's syntactical architecture in the form of a public inter-
phy, another first) further demonstrates Brunelleschi's contribution
face. Made up of nine bays framed by columns supporting arches
to defining the architect's prominent role within the liberal arts (at
and spherical vaults, the loggia features a large entablature that
the expense, say, of the builder, stone-cutter or carpenter, whose
own roles would be diminished in terms of their cultural and thus runs along the top of the arches, the effect of which is to make them
political importance).11 To reopen a discus- appear not as individual entities but as part
Filippo Brunelleschi, loggia of
sion about Brunelleschi, then, is to reintroduce of a rhythmic sequence. This unity is further
the Foundling Hospital, Florence, 1419-45
an examination of how the mandate of the Alinari Archives, Florence reinforced by four fluted columns that work
AA FILES 71 151
as a kind of gigantic order bracketing the entire composition. allowed the architect to control the construction process by reduc-
Of course, as a typology, the loggia had been a common feature ing the builder's creativity to mere execution. Everything, in thi
of public buildings since the Middle Ages, but what is unprecedented way, was tied together as an interconnected composition, meaning
about Brunelleschi's design is its materiality and, especially, its pro- no part could be altered without seriously damaging the integrity
portions - the interval between columns is equal to their height, of the whole - a point made clear in Manetti's warning at the end of
which means the arch is half the width of the bay, and the height his detailed biographic section on the hospital: 'It has been learned
of the columns is equal to the distance between the top of columns from experience that in the long run nothing can be altered without
and the top of the entablature. In this way all the proportions of the lessening its beauty, increasing its cost and in large part weakening
loggia are reducible to the width of one bay, which, as a square can- the buildings and making them less functional.'
opy supported on four columns and vaulted with a spherical dome, This binding relationship of part to whole - a radical new model
becomes the unit that rules the whole system. of what is really engaging in a piece of architecture - also extends to
While working on the hospital, Brunelleschi had tested this the building's ornamentation, where every element was standard-
canopy model on a small chapel for the Barbadori family in the ised according to Brunelleschi's design. Today we only understand
Church of Santa Felicita - again a perfect syntactical element pre- the idea of standardisation within the context of industrial manu-
sented within the absoluteness of a single unit and as a clearly facture, but the logic of producing elements in series had already
defined disegno. This word, literally 'made of sign' {di-segno), which merged before Brunelleschi, notably in those processes of manual
would become a fundamental keyword in Renaissance art theory, labour which were strictly controlled by a preliminary scheme.
addresses a physical and metaphysical reduction of form to the con- Standardisation here implies that variances produced by different
trol of the contour line. Disegno in this sense implies abstraction, hands are subsumed into a singular and correct model introduced
since it reduces form to not just a silhouette but a concept. And at the beginning of the process as an archetype to be copied.14 In the
for this reason the word alludes to both a technique and an ideal case of the Foundling Hospital this is especially evident in the col-
of the arts in which the most important aspect of creation lies not umn capitals, which look all the same, something unprecedented
in the moment of execution but in its conception .12 As such, disegno at the time (even if the replacement of most of the originals in the
becomes the prerogative of the artist and the architect, as distinct nineteenth century means we cannot judge their uniformity now).
from the artisan, whose craft is only embedded in the act of making. In pre-modern buildings ornamentation was the real site of
In the Foundling Hospital the idea of disegno also emerges through a builder's pride. If you look at a Romanesque or Gothic church, for
the clear separation between structural elements and walls: the first example, you will notice a rich diversity of ornamental patterns, the
are made of grey stone [pietra serena) while the second are white- deliberate index of different workmen, each with his own sensibil-
washed. From a tectonic point of view this differentiation is as clear ity. In quattrocento Florence, such evident variation was extruded
as it is ambiguous, for the columns are in some cases decorative, into the collective ethos of the guild - an individual's contribution
not structural (as in the case of the fluted columns), and what often to any endeavour lay in his ability to control not the idea but the
appears as infill is in fact a loadbearing wall. execution. If there is something profoundly (counter) revolution-
Yet what is immutable is that columns and arches are made ary in Brunelleschi's architecture, it is that he deeply challenged
clearly visible as lines , again highlighting the nature of the
this
work
logic,
asbringing ornamentation under the control of the archi-
a composite of interconnected elements. Here, Brunelleschi's
tect, and thus making it the formal register of his idea. No longer
left to
choice of material is also revealing. Traditionally columns the stonecutter's initiative, the ornaments in Brunelleschi's
were
always crafted in the most precious marble, whereas hearchitecture
only used took their form from his reinterpretation of the classi-
cal architectural
soft grey stone [pietra serena ). This had the immediate benefit of eas- orders, not on the grounds of antiquarianism, but
ing their manufacture, since stone was more malleable andbecause
cheaper,
they established a very precise grammar by which elements
but the uniformity of this kind of stone (whose grey tonecould
is as be
mute
ordered in a highly controlled manner.15
as a Gerhard Richter 'grey' painting) also made architecture Perhaps
more predictably, such a radical restructuring of the con-
abstract and thus more susceptible to being experienced as struction
an opti- process was not greeted with any great enthusiasm.
cal rather than a tactile element. The same abstraction In fact, as
appears in recounted by Manetti, during Brunelleschi's periodic
absences
the 'infill' walls, whitened as if he wanted them to dematerialise, from the construction site the builders would quickly
and
deviate
thus seem to expand in any direction. And indeed the success from the original scheme and introduce their own solu-
of this
abstraction is revealed by the perfect correspondence between
tions to the
various problems - something that enraged the architect on
loggia and the rest of the building: the module exposed in his
the return.16
plan of What played itself out through battles like these was
not just a disagreement about the execution of certain predefined
the loggia becomes the measure that governs the entire complex.13
details,
From Manetti we know that Brunelleschi developed this mod-but a more fundamental conflict between the architect's
ule, and the hospital as a whole, not by working with models
mastery but
- underwritten by the city oligarchs - and the guilds' more
with the drawing of a plan annotated with exact measurements,
established rule over the building site. Brunelleschi's new model of
which his builders were then expected to faithfully follow.
architectural
Funda- authority therefore challenged both the way a builder
mental to this process, the architectural plan became both worked
a physi-
and more generally the way labour in the city was organised.
cal tool and an abstract emblem that not only distinguished
And it isthe
worth reiterating that he did this through the abstraction
of design (supported by measure and by standardisation), which
builder from the architect but helped enshrine the subordination
in the process disempowered the collective nature of building by
of one to the other. As the canopy module shows, for Brunelleschi
reducing
the plan was also a datum expressed in the architectural form itself.it to a singular set of ideas: the principles established
A strict modularity and synthetic relationship between
byelements
the architect.
152 AA FILES 71
The conflict between an architect and his builders became even
construction schedule, but it might be assumed that such an act
wasnew
more dramatic in the later building of the dome of Florence's also political, challenging Brunelleschi's supremacy over the
cathedral. Of course, much has been written about this incredible
construction site. Rather than coming to some kind of compro-
structure, a 4im-diameter dome larger than the Pantheon mise,
or anyBrunelleschi's response was to hire an alternative team of
other dome since antiquity.17 History books will tell you that workers
Bru- from Lombardy at a lower wage.19 And so the Florentine
nelleschi solved the problem of constructing the dome ofworkers
Santa were forced to end their strike and accept his conditions;
Maria del Fiore through rigorous geometry and technical genius,
when they were rehired it was as individuals, one by one, rather than
as collective members of a guild, and at a wage now determined
not only developing a revolutionary method of centring the dome,
but devising a scaffolding system supported on the pre-existing
by the architect.
structure that would rise as the dome itself grew and even design-
The second event, again instigated by Brunelleschi's nemesi , the
ing, and patenting, the machines needed to lift all of the material
guilds, became yet another opportunity for the Florentine archi-
required for its construction. More fundamentally, though, his
tect
suc-
to reinforce his leadership. In 1434, with the dome almost com-
cess could be attributed to his reorganisation of the building site,Brunelleschi was arrested following a complaint that he had
plete,
effected with the same preci- failed to pay his annual subscrip-
sion with which he conceived tion to the stonemason's and
the dome itself. Besides timeta- carpenter's guild, the body tra-
bling shifts so as to minimise the ditionally in control of all build-
number of times workers would ing construction. Brunelleschi's
have to climb up and down the defence, however, seemed water-
scaffolding, he implemented tight - he refused to pay because
rigorous safety checks. He even he was not a member; as we
oversaw meal-breaks, making know, Brunelleschi trained first
sure the workers' lunchtime wine as a goldsmith, and so was reg-
was suitably diluted, and the istered early on in the Arte della
food was hoisted up the scaffold- Seta , the silk merchants' guild,
ing rather than laid out on tables which also included goldsmiths
lower down. To reinforce this and bronze-workers. In practice,
regime Brunelleschi would on however, Brunelleschi remained
occasion not show up on site as independent of any legitimising
scheduled, sowing confusion as body, and so became de facto
his contractors would not know the first freelance architect in
how to proceed, and thereby modern history, beyond the

further asserting his position of corporate power of the guild.
absolute superiority.18 In the end, because he was
This perfect coordination clearly essential to the comple-
of building elements, where tion of the dome, the authorities
just one misplaced brick would had no other choice than to side
compromise the whole, and per- with Brunelleschi and release
fectly organised labour force is him after just a few days, estab-
reflected in the form itself - a reg- lishing in the process a legal
ulating rhythm of structural sup- precedent in favour of the inde-
ports and appropriately perfect pendence of the architect as an
symmetry. Even the materiality of 'autonomous' creator.20
In hindsight one can see Brunelleschi's conflicted relation-

the dome's outer profile reflects the abstraction of its construction
process, with white marble crests indicating the main tectonic
shiplines
with the guild system not as an isolated event but as the most
immediate
of the dome against the terracotta tiles of the cloves. And indeed, symptom of a crucial passage in which manual labour
from far away the dome does not look like a volume at all, but
was like
increasingly subordinated to intellectual labour.21 As the politi-
an immaculate silhouette. The centrepiece of Santa Maria cal del power
Fiore of the guild was downgraded, more prestige accrued t
is thus an image of unity and geometric perfection cast the across an
individual artist, emancipated from the collective organisation
of hard
entire city, and beyond, as a model of civic strength. It is not the guild. It is no coincidence, then, that the phenomenon of
to imagine the impact of the emergence of such an abstract, pure enters the discourse, with Renaissance theorists predicat-
celebrity
ingcity
form from the chaos of the early fifteenth-century Florentine their
- theories on the prominence of their subjects - advertised
a whole new ideology made physical in brick and stone. most explicitly in the title of Giorgio Vasari's famous 1550 book - The
Despite this immaculate systmatisation, and of course also
Lives of the Most Excellent Painters , Sculptors and Architects , which
largely because of it, work on the dome was interrupted by alongside
a num- Manetti's biography is one of the definitive sources of the
ber of conflicts, and two rather dramatic dis- Brunelleschi myth. And it was within this con-
Filippo Brunelleschi, dome of the Cathedral
putes in particular. The first saw all workers
of Santamaria del Fiore, Florence, text that artistic and artisanal practices became
1419-36
down tools in protest against the punishing Alinari Archives, Florence clearly distinguished: the first were guided
AA FILES 71 153
by reason and ideas, while the second were seen merely as toil, no longer considered just loadbearing but ornamental, serving to
as labour without quality. confer dignity to an otherwise bare construction. As we have seen,
As Brunelleschi's hospital and dome both demonstrate, this Brunelleschi was especially adept at this reversal, just as he was at
condition of the artist-architect as an autonomous being was also working in the more traditional manner, where a column structur-
not just a professional assignation, but was directly reflected in the ally supports an arch. Yet the complexities of his architecture only
form of the artwork itself. For painters and sculptors, professional really come to the fore when the orders are used as formal signs
autonomy thus coincided with the invention of a recognisable style, while the actual structure is in the form of a wall, and which framed
further advertising their singular authorship, regardless of the obvi- by the orders therefore merely looks like a 'passive' element. It is
ous fact that distinguished painters of the period were supported here that Brunelleschi's architecture runs the risk of revealing its
by a multitude of often unpaid assistants. For architects, profes- limits, thus undermining the visual power of a system in which
sional autonomy was not so much an issue of style as one of tech- each element informs the other. This is especially apparent in the
nical expertise, a quality that ensured their apparent superiority basilica of San Lorenzo and the adjacent sacristy, now known as the
over artisans, consistent with an age that celebrated reason as the Old Sacristy.
foundation of dignitas homint
At the core of this rationalism hi
for Brunelleschi and his many Brunelleschi's Old Sacristy is a

followers was an increasing alle- strange, hybrid building: apart
giance to the classical orders, from being the sacristy - a room
which not only introduced a form in which a priest keeps his vest-
of standardisation but also - and ments - annexed to the basilica,
especially - demanded that a it was a chapel for the Medici
high level of literacy be integrated family and their own private
into a building culture. From this mausoleum. Unlike the hospi-
point onwards Renaissance archi- tal and cathedral dome, it is also
tecture is defined by the strug- a building experienced almost
gles of its practitioners to absorb wholly through its interior, the
a classical architectural lexicon. only one executed entirely under
The main literary source of this Brunelleschi's control. Once
language was of course Vitru- inside, it is clear to the visitor

vius's De Architectura Libri Decern , that the goal of the architect was
which featured precise, if some- to construct a space in which
what convoluted, descriptions every element is held together
of each of the orders, although by an overriding spatial system -
architects also dug physically into a system made immediately vis-
their immediate environments, ible in the fabric of the archi-
uncovering as much archaeo- tecture. The chapel consists of

logical evidence as they could get a simple cubic volume topped by
their hands on, even if the sub- a dome. This volume is in turn
sequent reduction of these frag- divided into two parts: the lower
ments to a systematised grammar part is defined by a continuous
was harder to rationalise.22 More entablature running around the
generally, an emphasis on the entire inner perimeter of the vol-
orders develops into an obsession for Renaissance architecture ume,
pre- with fluted pilasters marking all the corners, while the upper
cisely because the new division of labour forces it to become apart
dis- is composed of four arches that support the dome. Because of
cipline whose mastery is not limited to construction but extends its
to form, the arches clearly reveal how the upper and lower parts are
the same height. Moreover, the spherical shape of the umbrella-
a cultural legacy expressed in the philologically correct use of anti-
like dome also shows that it is more or less the same height as the
quarian references. The problem of architecture is thus no longer
simply technical but syntactical, dictating that building can arches
only - thus half the cube, and so a mirror to the lower and upper
parts. If we further abstract this design, the space of the sacristy can
make sense if framed by the formal reason of the system of orders.
be represented as the stacking of three equal parts, all treated in dif-
This was not an easy problem to solve. In ancient structures the
orders were primarily used for temples, a typology completely different ways and yet all related to each other by a strict symmetrical
composition
ferent to those classical structures built in the quattrocento , such as of parts - a system made obvious, as it is at the hospi-
palaces and churches. The Renaissance architect had thereforetal,
to by the use of grey stone to materialise the principal lines of the
volume, while the rest is rendered in white plaster.23
endure a painstaking process of adaptation so as to fit a presumed
modular order into new buildings often lacking the proportional It is important to note that the whiteness of these walls was
form these orders required. One of the conse- not conceived simply as a backdrop for a sub-
Interior of the Old Sacristy,
sequent series of coloured frescos or some
quences of this adaptation, though, was thatbasilica-of San Lorenzo, Florence, 1421-40
classical elements, such as entablatures, were Alinari Archives, Florence other form of ornament. In Brunelleschi's
154 AA FILES 71
architecture walls always remain neutral, abstract surfaces whose and local inhabitants over the issue of land ownership, which
shape is subordinated to the edges marked by tectonic lines of grey extended to those properties immediately adjacent to the convent
stone. Yet in spite of the force with which these lines appear - nota- of San Lorenzo.24 The dispute became so bitter that even the pope
bly in the post-and-lintel system that defines the lower part of the became embroiled, excommunicating anyone who appeared to be
sacristy - they are not loadbearing but ornamental. Paradoxically, challenging the convent's property rights.25
what is loadbearing are precisely those elements coded as pas- Given this context, it is possible to argue that the rebuilding of
sive surfaces - the walls. This role reversal becomes fully visible in the basilica was not only an issue of prestige but also a pretext to put
one of the more puzzling parts of the sacristy: the lower third of in order a rather discordant part of the city, and one fast becoming
the space, marked by large walls framed by the Corinthian order, known as the Medici district. Integral to such a transformation was
where the entablature has to cover a great distance with no visual the topographic role that churches and public buildings played in
support except three small shelves. It seems clear that Brunelleschi the medieval city, where communal space and spatial order had to
installed these shelves to remedy the rather strange effect of having be literally carved out of the organic mass of private buildings. Large
an imposing entablature float on top of passive white walls. And yet churches and cathedrals were a significant point of reference in the
it is precisely here that the wall - seemingly non-structural, but in construction of this res publica because of their scale and the regu-
actuality the concrete reality of the architecture - takes its tectonic larity of their architecture. One can well imagine the fifteenth-cen-
revenge on the abstraction of the column and the entablature; that tury visitor's experience of stepping from the chaotic, constricted
is, on the disegno . Here we therefore see Brunelleschi trying to sub- city streets into such an open building, encountering a clear direc-
ordinate architecture to the logic of his diagrammatic system, but tionality of space, a regular rhythm of columns or pilasters framing
ultimately failing to completely reduce the mass of architecture to the main nave, and an imposing interior height, all of which created
such a system. a sort of vast indoor piazza that would have seemed overwhelming
This was also more than just a compositional problem. Rather, in relation to its outdoor equivalents. And herein lies the political
in seeing this detail as the tension between the architectural orders significance of Brunelleschi's intervention at San Lorenzo: in the
as the representation of tectonic legibility, and the realities of a load- tangled urban fabric of a conflicted city, the rebuilding of a major
bearing structure (which in fact often contradicts this representa- church according to a measurable plan devised by a singular, great
tion), there lies a more fundamental challenge to the credibility architect was a clear opportunity to establish spatial order by
of the orders as a language capable of speaking for a so-called true fusing vested interests with the creation of a new public domain.
architecture. What made this challenge especially threatening More fundamentally, it is also here that we see the full emergence
was that it questioned not only the architect but a whole political of the modern sin of using public space as a vessel for private inter-
class whose prestige was advertised by the particularly tectonic ests, whereby the rhetoric of 'common good' becomes instrumental
'look' of the orders. For within Renaissance culture the semantic in crystallising these private interests into a civic artefact. It is only
associations of the orders were meant not only to imitate nature,
by exposing the often convoluted processes that these private bod-
ies of
and thus the perfection of God, but also to invoke the authority had to follow to achieve this, that we can see how these public
the ancients as a way to legitimise modern political institutions.
monuments all bear the scars of their making.
The sacristy, as we know, was both a public building and a private
The starting point for Brunelleschi's specific intervention at San
Lorenzo was the transept's foundations and two chapels - includ-
mausoleum, something akin to the Pantheon, which Brunelleschi
ing the
directly references in the use of the dome and in the solution of sacristy - that Medici had already started to build.26 The
presence of private chapels in public churches had long been estab-
the continuous entablature. And yet it is precisely the entablature,
the single most important element, whose function is tolished coor-as a way for eminent families to advertise their status; more
dinate all the various parts of the composition, that appears immediately, it was how ecclesiastical communities would sub-
so fragile, afloat on top of the very same bare walls it is supposed to sidise the costs of its expensive buildings. Chapels were typically
visually dominate. quite distinct not only from the enveloping church but from other
Similar contradictions are evident on an even larger scale in chapels inside the same structure - the more powerful the family,
the adjacent interior of the basilica of San Lorenzo. In 1419, when the closer the chapel to the apse and the more elaborate its deco-
Giovanni de' Medici invited Brunelleschi to work on this commis- ration. Of course, the most powerful families of all had the means
to construct a small autonomous church annexed to the larger
sion, the idea was simply to enlarge the transept of the existing
church,
building. By lobbying other wealthy figures, however, Medici raised as in the case of the Medici's sacristy. But at San Lorenzo
the finances to build a brand new church, thus making San Brunelleschi
Lor- broke with all of these traditions. Here he was some-
how
enzo - the city's second most important religious structure after the able to impose on all parties the same standardised model of
cathedral - the family's palatine chapel. chapel, including a repeating decorative treatment. Even the paint-
ing above the altar was of the same square format and dimensions
Medici's initiative to first appropriate the sacristy as the family
mausoleum and then ask Brunelleschi to work on the basilica makes in each of the chapels.27 This sameness reflected a political consen-
clear how he used this second commission to legitimise his pres-
sus among the various parties, in spite of the fact that the rebuild-
tige, inscribing one of the most important public buildings ining
theof the transept was promoted by one very prominent family. San
Lorenzo thus reflects the way in which a Florentine elite was gain-
city with his family name. The audacity of this appropriation should
also be understood in terms of the location of the new church within ing control over the city, not only by imposing their authority, but
a very particular part of the city. Over the preceding centuries theby giving form to a collective civic consciousness, of which impor-
district of San Lorenzo had been one of the more embattled areas tant religious and public monuments such as this basilica were the
physical embodiment.
of Florence, site of a prolonged conflict between church authorities
AA FILES 71 155
Producing an architecture that mirrored this consensus, how- Here, as in the best of Brunelleschi's architecture, every element
ever, was no easy task, not least because Brunelleschi had to impose is strictly defined by the system that governs the whole volume.
a syntactical system on a space that was already conditioned by what Although clearly inspired by ancient basilicas, the interior seems in
had previously been built. According to Manetti, Brunelleschi's this sense to be the obvious successor to the hospital's loggia, and
response for the main body of the church was to continue the tran- again we see the interlocking of arches, columns and entablatures
sept solution: a single nave surrounded by chapels. But the prob- (all in Brunelleschi's signature grey stone) within a self-informing
lem then was that he was forced to add aisles, which immediately whole. This urge for a correspondence between all the parts seems
complicated the junction between nave and transept. Furthermore, to have led Brunelleschi to adopt the one feature that distinguishes
because the chapels along the transept were the same width as the this nave, marking a departure from the earlier loggia - the pulvino ,
aisles, these parallel, circulatory spaces began to look awkward: an unusual solution borrowed from Byzantine architecture where
when seen from the transept, the aisles appeared like deep chap- a stone block (which in Brunelleschi's interpretation becomes
els with no infill walls.28 There a fragment of an entablature) is
was also the problem of the tran- positioned between the top of the
sept elevation, with windows on capital and the base of the arch.
the upper part misaligning with When seen in sequence all the
the orders that define the lower pulvini work as a virtual entabla-
part, and which in turn create ture, keeping the eye away from
an uncontrolled clash between the distraction of the arches and
niches and arches on the corner. thus reinforcing the fugue of the
The result is a composite columns towards the altar. It is
architectural language that fails precisely here, therefore, that we

miserably. Manetti's loyal biogra- see at work the ultimate spatial
phy tried to circumvent these fail- paradigm that Brunelleschi's
ures by pointing out that many syntactic language seems to
features in the transept were not address: perspectivai space.
executed under Brunelleschi's
control. This, however, seems IV
to be an a posteriori justifica- Of course, in art and architec-

tion for a rather embarrassing tural history Brunelleschi is syn-
situation that revealed the archi- onymous with perspective. As
tect's uncertainty in applying the historian Eugenio Battisti
an a priori rational system to pointed out in his 1976 biographi-
a compromised set of existing cal study, just as Brunelleschi's
conditions. At the heart of the architecture could be said to have
problem was therefore the pas- initiated 'a way of building', his
sage from the abstraction of use of perspective initiated 'a way
a conceptual scheme to its mate- of seeing'.30 Already in the late-
rialisation as a physical entity, thirteenth century painters were
where the inexorable thickness familiar with the rudiments of
of walls dilutes the purity of a perspective which they applied

geometric solution. to their compositions, but what
Of course, these innate diffi- Brunelleschi did pioneer was a
culties were compounded further mathematically constructed, or
by the sheer amount of time it linear, perspective distinct from
would take a building of this scale earlier painterly models, in that
and status to be constructed - the distance between objects is
typically a generation or more, progress faltering in the face of wars,
calculable rather than arbitrary. This means that with a linear per-
various economic crises and battles between private patrons spectivaiand
drawing in hand, we can then reconstruct a plan of the
civic authorities. Even in its failures, then, Brunelleschi's samesyntac-
space, and vice versa Accordingly, perspective here is not sim-
tic architecture holds a kind of understandable attraction because ply subjective, nor even a representational device, but an objective
of the way it attempts to outmanoeuvre such temporal conditions method through which space can be measured.
with a model that is abstract and timeless, and where everything is
For architects, the introduction of linear perspective was impor-
defined at once and no discord is ever possible.29 tant both for the way they would practise and the way their disci-
pline would be conceived. In particular, linear perspective implied
But also, where it does succeed, the power of its effect is over-
whelming. In San Lorenzo these contrasts are especially magnified
the importance of orthogonal projections, and above all the plan,
because while the transept is awkward and as the basis for correct perspectivai representa-
Interior perspective
compromised, the interconnecting nave real-of th Pazzi Chapel, Florence, 1441-60 tion - the two-dimensional plan, in this sense,
ises a perfectly controlled conception of space. Fabrizio Ballabio is a more powerful register of perspective than
156 AA FILES 71
the three-dimensional rendering. And it is not by chance that Bru- the parallelism of facing sides, corners meeting at right angles and
nelleschi was the first-ever architect to give special importance to a uniformity of roof heights.
the plan. In many of his projects he even went so far as to only pro- In Florence the two sites where this approach to space was
vide plans, or rather horizontal orthogonal sections of his build- applied most consistently were the two most important squares
ings. Extruded into its physical context, the modular grid that in the city: the Piazza del Duomo and the Piazza della Signoria. It
defined Brunelleschi's architecture would then be projected in ele- is no accident that Brunelleschi made these the subject of a pub-
vation by columns, arches and vaults, in much the same way that lic demonstration of his perspectivai techniques. As recounted by
chequerboard tiles and colonnades give measure to the urban land- his biographer Manetti, Brunelleschi's experiment consisted of
scapes that appear in many early quattrocento paintings. The logic paintings depicting, with striking perspectivai effect, the city's two
of the plan in turn ensured an architect's authority over the build- key public buildings, the baptistery in front of the cathedral, and
ing process by reducing this process to the repetition of a prede- the Palazzo Pubblico, now known as the Palazzo Vecchio, located in
fined module. Plans also helped the Piazza della Signoria.32 These
those administering the con- paintings were never meant to
struction of major public build- hang on a wall, but were designed
ings to oversee costs and impose to be seen in the same place from
on the city the immutability of which the buildings had been
a verifiable set of dimensions. painted. To further exagger-
The imposition of a common, ate this synthesis, Brunelleschi
rational system of measurement made a hole in the paintings in
was no small detail in Florence, the exact position of their vanish-
a city historically so politically ing point, thus allowing a viewer
unstable that just about every standing behind the painting to
column, every brick, every lintel see it reflected in a mirror held
of its urban fabric bore the traces in front. Once the mirror was
of deeply engrained conflicts removed, the viewer was then

between eminent families, fac- able to appreciate the perfect
tions, public and private parties. correspondence between the
Yet the history of Florence painted version of the building
also offered a significant prec- and the building itself. What was
edent that would hugely assist crucial in this demonstration was
the evolution of perspective: the not how a painted image could

city survey. As the historian Mar- be made similar to an object
vin Trachtenberg has argued, in reality, but how this resem-
this kind of surveying was not a blance could be mathematically
sudden revolution but the con- deduced. In other words, the con-
tinuation of a practice that had vincing effect of the picture was
developed during the fourteenth obtained by precisely measuring
century, and found its most vis- the baptistery and surrounding
ible urban register in the piazza, buildings and then using these
a distinctly Florentine form of exact dimensions as the basis for
public space where the city exper- the perspective itself.

imented with precise dimen- But beyond the apparatus of
sions.31 In the trecento the city's the mirror, the painting and its
rulers had become increasingly vanishing point, Brunelleschi's
concerned that Florence's pub- successes with this experiment
lic monuments - which directly are also largely attributable to the
embodied the power of their governance - were getting lostspaces
withinin which he staged his demonstration - the two civic piaz-
the tangle of the urban fabric. What was required, theyzas, which as we know had already been regulated the previous
argued,
was a visual frame against which one would not only seecentury. What drew Brunelleschi to these spaces was not the clar-
but bet-
ter comprehend these monuments. The civic piazza became that
ity with which their town hall and baptistery stood out, but rather
the stat-
optical frame within which the city's churches, fountains and repeating order of their enveloping backdrop - a regularity that
ues would be intensified through the medium of space.Brunelleschi Accord- saw as crucial in making human sight more reliable.
ingly, existing squares were cleared of unnecessary clutter In doingwhile
so, he was touching on one of the most crucial theological
the construction of new piazzas was regularised so as to give space and philosophical problems of medieval culture: whether human
a measurable form. This form - abstract, since it responded sightto the be trusted as the basis for knowledge.
could
immutability of quantifiable data - generated According to the German historian Hans
Interior perspective of the Old Sacristy,
a similarly timeless set of architectural dictates
basilica of San Lorenzo, Florence, 1421-40 Belting, perspective originally emerged, not
that encompassed the alignment of facades, Fabrizio Ballabio in visual representation, but in the science of
AA FILES 71 157
optics, with the tenth-century Arab polymath Ibn al-Haytham (more acknowledged that perspective is a highly constructed way of see-
usually Latinised as Alhazen) being among its most important ing and has very little to do with eyesight. Perspective is thus a sys-
protagonists.33 Alhazen was the first to suggest that vision was the tem within which perception is no longer understood as the realm
refraction of light rays in the human eye. Anticipating Leon Battista of fleeting impressions but is, rather, the possibility of a fixed and
Alberti's famous representation of perspectivai vision, he went on to shareable knowledge of things. And it is through this extended his-
postulate that these rays formed a pyramid whose apex is the centre tory of ideas that we can view perspective not simply as a technique
of vision.34 Such a configuration produced two mutually dependent but as an epistemological framework in which the act of seeing the
types of vision: the aspectus - vision generated by all the rays - and world is reinvented on a scientific basis.
the intuitio , the central ray of the pyramid. While the aspectus gener- And yet for such a system to work it needs to reduce the experi-
ated images that fed a sort of vague sense of vision, the intuitio was ence of space to the abstraction of mathematical space. This is the
considered more focused and precise. Thus for Alhazen intuitio was ultimate paradox of perspective: on the one hand, it is the repre-
a form of vision capable of being both sensible and rational, since sentation of space as perceived by the human eye; on the other, it is
its workings could be reduced to mathematical verification. a construction that excludes on principle the accidents of seeing
In the Middle Ages this theory had a wide influence on western and reduces the gaze to the certitude of a repeatable formula. Per-
culture, in particular inspiring spective, in this sense, is not so
a multitude of philosophi perspec- much an innovation in terms of
tivi - scientists whose research representation, as a revolution in
was at the intersection of theol- the conception of space.
ogy, optics and mathematics. Fourteenth-century Florence
Among them was Domenico da was the epicentre of this revolu-
Chivasso, who in his important tion thanks to the fertile recep-
treatise, Quaestiones super per- tion accorded to perspective both
spectivam, elaborated on Alha- as a science and as the basis for a
zen's thinking, arguing that measurable conception of space.

the imaginary line projected by One of the most influential
the eye's gaze - what Alhazen theories of such an understand-

defined as the linea visualis - was ing of space was advanced by
the object of perspective as sci- the mathematician, philosopher
entific knowledge. Alhazen had and astrologer Biagio Pelacani,
affirmed that such a line was who had a profound influence
'made of nothing', since it was on Brunelleschi, not least for his
just an imaginary projection and assertion of the notion that what
not a tangible object - an asser- mattered most in the definition
tion that appeared to undermine of real objects in space was the

the rational status of perspec- possibility of quantifying the
tive, for, following Aristotle, sci- distance between them.38 Before
entific knowledge could only be Pelacani, and before the Renais-

based on the concrete properties sance, empty space was consid-
of real things. Chivasso resolved ered a vacuum, a lacuna which,
this problem by comparing precisely because of its intan-
the abstraction of the line gibility, could not be grasped.
of sight to the role played in But after Pelacani, empty space
mathematical science by points is no longer an incommensura-
and lines - elements that were clearly not real ble objects,
reality, but could
external to the world of physical objects, but an assess-
still be used by mathematicians to reach objective - ie, rationally the objects it contains. Such empty space
able space that measures
verifiable - results.35 is both real, because it allows viewers to locate their position
What this thesis implied was that the abstraction of pure geom- within it, but also abstract, because it is constructed according to
etry was no longer considered antithetical to the way the world was mathematical relationships.
physically experienced. Borrowing a famous concept advanced by At the same time it is important to recognise that in medieval
Marx, we could therefore say that in the Middle Ages perspectiveFlorence mathematical knowledge was not limited to theoretical
was theorised as a form of 'real abstraction'; that is, as a method-discourse but was part of a more general civic intelligence, thanks to
ology it offered something abstract, but its determinants were real,the importance of calculus within the highly developed mercantile
culture of the city. Six separate abbaco , or arithmetic schools, taught
affecting our perception of the material world by making it geomet-
rically verifiable.36 Erwin Panofsky's famous their apparently numerous students that math-
1927 text, Perspective as Symbolic Form , argued Interior of the basilica of San Lorenzo, ematical reasoning was not a diffuse skill but
Florence, 1419-80
that the goal of a perspectivai view is essen- a daily tool.39 As Michael Baxandall has pointed
Alinari Archives, Florence
tially to approximate the natural appearance of Opposite: Plan of the basilica of San Lorenzo out in his seminal book, Painting and Experience
objects and spaces.37 At the same time Panofsky Fabrizio Ballabio in Fifteenth-Century Italy , the typical Florentine
158 AA FILES 71
/';-=09 )(8* =-0/']

^fc=a|=^^
merchant was in addition highly adept at 'gauging' - calculating the if they were the side of a large room or corridor through a sequence
mass of any given object so as to quickly determine its economic of rooms. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as the whole
value. Gauging was also taught, and several textbooks from this city was progressively conquered by state bureaucracy, it increas-
time abstracted these common objects into more diagrammatic ingly took on the appearance of an endless interior in which eleva-
shapes and volumes.40 For a populace brought up to revere math- tions appeared more as a visual frame for public space than as the
ematical theorems, to study geometry, calculus and arithmetic, face of individual buildings.
and to regularly employ skills that determined the dimensions of Brunelleschi's syntactic architecture, where every line seems to
any given object, the abstract geometry of Brunelleschi's architec- emphasise its perspectivai image, is an anticipation of this city-as-
ture must therefore have been perfectly comprehensible and quite interior effect. For example, take the loggia he produced for the Found-
familiar. Rather than being revolutionary, his ideas, in this sense, ling Hospital. In the 1440s, 15 years or so after its completion, the same
were distinctly everyday. motif was applied to the front of an adjacent church, and later still,
But if we make rhetorical use of the lines of a perspectivai image from 1516, the entire hospital loggia was again mirrored, this time on
and radiate not outwards into a city and culture, but inwards, the opposite side of the piazza, so the whole square was framed by the
towards the architect who inscribed them, we can find a far more unchanging rhythm of Brunelleschi's columns and arches, regardless
radical set of assumptions. of the different functions of the
Principal among these is that buildings they fronted. We have

Brunelleschi's mastery of sci- no idea whether Brunelleschi ever
ence gave him the conceptual anticipated such a development,

and practical tools to claim but we do know that in proposing
the art of building as a project the loggia in the first place he was
- that is, something defined explicitly invoking the example of
in advance of its execution. What the self-informing Roman square
the architect therefore offers par excellence , the forum, where -
in practising his architecture is as Vitruvius explained - all of the
a plan and eventually an eleva- sides are defined by the repetition
tion, the means to provide perfect of colonnades and galleries. In
models to be copied and quantifi- this way Brunelleschi's loggia can
able data to help calculate time be understood as an urban model
and costs. When architecture in which abstraction is made spa-
was object, it was executed by tial beyond the singularity of the
builders directly on the material individual building, and as a con-
itself. But after its invention as sequence the entire city is invested
project, the physicality of archi- with uniformity.
tecture is suddenly reduced to Consistent with the paradoxes
the abstraction of lines, points that enshroud Brunelleschi's
and surfaces, whose immateri- work and ideas, the objectivity

ality nevertheless becomes real of this uniformity also seems to
because it finds a direct mirror in harbour a subjective experience
the construction process. of perspectivai space as a psycho-
As we have seen, Brunelleschi's logical condition. Indeed, as Lor-
grey stone structure and terra- ens Holm has noted in his study
cotta or white-walled infill per- on perspective, when reduced to
a of
fectly conveyed the simultaneously abstract yet material qualities diagram, Brunelleschi's perspective demonstration bears
this architecture - again, think of the view of the Duomo from theing
sur-similarity to the one that explains Jacques Lacan's theory
rounding hills, a rational shape rising out of an irrational city. But in
mirror-stage condition.41 Lacan famously used the case of an
many ways the power of this architecture is made even more manifest
looking at himself in a mirror (and thus acquiring selfhood) t
if we perceive its objects not as unbounded urban landscapes but how
as human ego is dependent upon external forces - wha
defined as 'the other'. The mirror, he suggested, projects a
constrained urban interiors. And indeed if we pursue this incongru-
ity and privilege the similarity between San Lorenzo's main naveof
andthe infant as an ideal I, towards which he perpetually
the hospital loggia, we can see that Brunelleschi's application of
throughout his life. Fuelling this projection is a visual field th
perspectivai space implied the internalisation of the city, because
not -just what we see individually, but the perception of a wor
as in a designed interior - he forces all of its elements to fit of
into
ourselves) that we share with others, who in turn comm
a coherent and thus controllable space. their experience to the viewer. As Holm convincingly argues, it
Today our familiarity with cities like Paris or Opposite: Plan of the church
control of this visual field that seems to be the
Barcelona or even New York means that we take of Santo Spirito, Florence, 1441-81 goal of Brunelleschi's use of perspective, mak-
Fabrizio Ballabio
for granted the way the facades in these cities ing not just a realistic representation of space,
Above: Filippo Brunelleschi, nave of the
frame their adjacent boulevards and avenues, church of Santo Spirito but the act of viewing that space stable - look-
forming one continuous perspectivai spaceasRaffaello Bencini / Alinari Archives, ing
Florence with one eye in one direction all at once.
AA FILES 71 161
And yet what is extraordinary about perspective is how its real- intertwining the stories of Christ and the Virgin.44 A painted series
ism, so convincing, is also profoundly unreal. As Holm reminds us, of vertical and horizontal lines enmesh the chapters of their lives
stability is a cultural construct (in which architecture plays a funda- within the architecture of the chapel - the grid not only making the
mental role), since human life is anything but stable - indeed, the chapel a coherent, almost totalising space, but also ensuring the
battles we have with love, loss and change are among the things that legibility of the story. The overall organisation of the chapel is fur-
define us as human.42 But it is also here, in this instability, that we ther echoed in the compositional logic of each episode, in which
can finally understand the historical and above all political drive painted architecture - in the form of buildings, domestic interiors
behind Brunelleschi's so-called invention of linear perspective. and urban landscapes - figures prominently, framing the narrative.
For in a city where social order was challenged constantly, almost During the fourteenth century, under Giotto's influence, there
daily, by the sudden eruption of one conflict after another, stabil- was a significant growth in the importance of architecture in paint-
ity was always the supreme goal, most especially for the oligarchs ing. As noted by Bruschi, Taddeo Gaddi's Presentation of the Virgin
in the first decades of the fifteenth century. Moreover, the sense of to the Temple (1328-38), painted at the Baroncelli Chapel in Santa
stability established by Brunelleschi's perspective seems to chime Croce, presents a composite background of innovative architectures
perfectly with the ideological consensus invoked by influential con- that seems to anticipate Brunelleschi's syntactic language.45 Made
temporary humanists like Leonardo Bruni and Poggio Bracciolini, for public audiences, these frescos show how, starting in the four-
who often referenced the teenth century, architecture
ancient Roman republic as a became an essential means
model of civic virtue. Not by for conveying visual order

chance, then, did Bracciolini and stability, although what
'rediscover' and promote Vit- is more striking from a con-
ruvius's De Architectura Libri temporary perspective is how
Decern , written at the end of so many of them were spon-
a century-long civil war, just sored by families involved
as Augustus was imposing in banking (then a rela-
a new unifying order on all tively diffuse activity among
the political, social and cul- Florence's non-aristocratic
tural apparatuses of Rome.43 elite). During periods of

The emphasis that Vitruvius political upheaval, the city's
gave to the orders as a coher- wealthy families therefore
ent architectural grammar appear to have sublimated
therefore formed one crucial their need for legitimacy
component of this unanim- and security in the image of
ity. Exactly the same ideo- architecture as a stable back-
logical drive plays itself out in ground, the orderly composi-

the quattrocento , in the after- tion of columns, arches and
math of civil struggles, when entablatures signalling their
a ruling Florentine elite was desire for an overtly respect-
both repressing the proletar- able civic space.46
ian classes while celebrating Brunelleschi was the first
its own civic responsibility. architect to give physical

form
Emerging in this context, Brunelleschi would then perform to this desire. Yet m the abstract qualities of his architecture,
pre-
he somehow
cisely the same role as Vitruvius, insisting on the systemic value of both supported and undermined the rhetoric of civic
the classical orders and on a consensus physically made real.
space by opening it up to the vertigo of infinite space - a tension that
reached its climax in what is arguably his masterpiece: the church
v of Santo Spirito. In contrast to the rebuilding of San Lorenzo, initi-
The interconnections of this architecture and this perspectiveated
are and largely funded by the Medicis, Santo Spirito is essentially a
therefore both abstract and narrative frameworks at the same time: public work, supported by a consortium of families, but under the
aegis of the city council. The consensus demanded of these sepa-
they organise space according to the abstraction of an infinite math-
ematical space, and yet they also make the world stable and rate
thus factions is reflected in the organisation of the architecture -
a space strictly based on one module and surrounded by equal
legible as a representation. In this representation every position
chapels. Moreover, not only are the chapels all the same - at least in
is defined by what is near and what is far, by what is at the centre
the original project - but their motif runs uninterrupted along the
and what is at the edge, by what comes first and what comes after.
Although Brunelleschi is depicted as having pioneered everything
entire perimeter of the church, with Brunelleschi proposing chapels
at both apse and entrance, something unprecedented in the entire
himself, Arnaldo Bruschi has highlighted one particular precedent
for this syntacticism and perspectivalism in the history of church building.
Giotto di Bondone, Scrovegni
Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, which was entirely Another remarkable aspect is the fact that
Chapel, Padua, 1305
frescoed by Giotto in the first years of the Cameraphoto Arte Venezia / in Santo Spirito there are no flat walls; rather
fourteenth century with a complex narrative Bridgeman Images everything is curved and seemingly soft, as if
162 AA FILES 71
someone had inflated the whole edifice with a pump. Particularly grammar of his architecture without compromise, unhindered
striking is the formal resonance between the concave form of the by existing structures or by builders reluctant to execute his pre-
chapels, the rounded vaults of the aisles, the curved arches and cise instructions.48 Here, too, he was finally acknowledged as com-
the annular column shafts. Everything seems reducible to the mander-in-chief of the building site, which was especially gratifying
perfection of the circle, with this figure obsessively repeated in all as this was a public work, supported not by a single, wealthy backer
of its possible variations. Thus Santo Spirito appears almost quasi- but by the civic government.
baroque, which makes it appropriate that it was greatly admired As with the earlier Foundling Hospital scheme, at Santo Spirito
by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the great baroque artist-architect of Brunelleschi initially provided only a plan of the building. Just like
seventeenth-century Rome.47 a perspective drawing, where everything is first set out on grid, the
Yet it would be a mistake to reduce the formal daring of Santo plan showed that the architecture of the church was determined by
Spirito to artful intuition, for each of its elements are governed by a modular system clearly manifested in its grid of columns. But it
a rigorous systemic logic - in this instance (and paradoxically for a also revealed how the convex internal form of the chapels would be
circle-dominated architecture) by that quintessential Brunelleschi exposed on the building's exterior - part of a long architectural tra-
motif, the square canopy, whose module gives form to the entire dition of making inner workings visible on outer surfaces. In this
space. So in plan the width of the main nave is two modules, while respect, Brunelleschi may have been influenced by earlier prece-
the depth of the repeating dents, such as the cathedrals
chapels is half a module. Such of Orvieto or Prato, where
a simple and precise pat- the repetition of a motif both
tern is especially legible in inside and out was designed
elevation, thanks to the care- to symbolise the power of the
fully controlled sequence of church, expanding its inter-
columns and arches, which nal, liturgical remit over the
again are all the same. The space of the whole city. In
only exception are four gigan- Santo Spirito Brunelleschi
tic piers that support the deploys the same tactic, even
dome and the entablature if his evangelicalism was
that runs above the arches. visual and geometric rather
Despite their size, the piers' than theological - what he
visual strength is dwarfed was radiating out across an
by the run of columns which entire city was the symbolic
gives the impression that power, not of Christianity, but
the whole interior is made up of perspective. Indeed, Bru-
of the endless repetition of nelleschi's initial intention
a single element. for the project was to orient

In the original Bru- the church entrance towards
nelleschi plan the aisles were the Arno, and thus make
all the same, running along his new monument visible
the main nave, with choir directly from the riverbank. In

and transept then effacing a this way, Santo Spirito would
difference - fundamental in have become the stepping-
a church interior - between entrance and altar, or main nave and
stone for the urban reorganisation of the whole of the city's Oltra
transept. This meant that in looking across the interior from the following the geometrical order of the church itself.49
district,
Brunelleschi had proposed something similar with the bas
main nave one would have the impression that the run of columns
was never-ending. This perception was in turn augmented ica
byofone
San Lorenzo, advising Cosimo de' Medici - then at the p
of the most iconoclastic features of Brunelleschi's architecture: the
of his power - to build his family palazzo immediately in fron
column in axis, which not only countered the viewpoint towards the church, their entrances on axis with each other.50 The ad
was rejected, for even a megalomaniac like Medici could see
the altar with a free-standing element (instead of offering a more
traditional termination point in the form of a perimeter chapel),such a scheme would pose too great a challenge to the autho
but also denied the possibility of a main entrance in the middle.
ity of the church. Yet the proposal still reveals the extent to wh
And because nave and transept are treated in the same way,Brunelleschi
the imagined his new syntactic architecture as exten
beyond the individual building to become a potentially ubiqui
church looks like a seamless hypostyle interior - a kind of hyper-
order that would circumscribe the city in its entirety. The signif
perspectival space exalted by the repetition of self-same elements,
but also undermined by the optical vertigo induced by this forest
cance of Santo Spirito lies in its partial realisation of such a visio
of columns. which allows us a glimpse of the all-encompassing abstract sp
Manetti writes that Brunelleschi was par- to which Brunelleschi seemed to aspire. In this
Taddeo Gaddi, detail, Presentation of
ticularly pleased with his design for Santo respect, the church remains unique. Never
the Virgin to the Temple , Baroncelli Chapel,
Spirito, even if he did not live to see its comple- Santa Croce, Florence, 1328-38 again would the architecture of a public monu-
tion. Only here was he able to employ the full Alinari / Bridgeman Images ment go so far towards constructing the same
AA FILES 71 163
kind of totalising, absorbent space. Perhaps Paxton's Crystal Palace reduced to bare volumes, edges to pure lines, a perfect kind of port-
came the closest, but in the end the stuffing of the building with an able token or timepiece for a set of ideas he imagined as timeless.
overabundance of objects diminished the power of its own system- Ironically, however, it was precisely the force with which Bru-
ised enclosure. Santo Spirito, in contrast, remained empty, and as nelleschi pushed the all-encompassing logic of this architecture
a result the strength of its architecture was undiminished, even if that prevented its further development. Historical accounts of the
it also induced a spatial vertigo that threatened to collapse the very Renaissance tell us that Brunelleschi's influence waned because
authority it set out to radiate. he was too close to the Albizzi faction, and when the rival Medici
More expansively still, at Santo Spirito the spirit of counter- assumed the leadership of the Firenze Signoria his support struc
revolution also reached its apotheosis. For it was here - even more ture diminished. A more intriguing reading would suggest tha
than at the sacristy, basilica of San Lorenzo or cathedral dome - ultimately Brunelleschi's project was defeated by its own disruptive
that the abstract perfection of its architecture erased an image of radicalism - that in the end he disoriented rather than reinforced
the city mired in conflict. And yet it is precisely the intensity of this a new order by overreaching the boundaries of what could be con-
abstraction that reveals, per via negativa , an instability that the cer- sidered abstract space.
tainties of this mathematical space sought to tame. A parallel might One can see this already in the building many consider to be
be drawn with the way Marx conceived of the machine as a techni- Brunelleschi's masterpiece, the Pazzi Chapel (even if its attribution
cal and social apparatus that 'runs wherever strikes occur' - to use to Brunelleschi has been contested53). Here, the decision to add two
Antonio Negri's phrase.51 In other words, the development of capi- half modules to the crossing results in a rather awkward intersec-
tal, with its simultaneously abstract and concrete ways of working, tion between the arches and the dome, where, as Marvin Trachten-
cannot be separated from the conflict it consistently attempts to berg has argued, it is difficult to understand where one plane begins
defuse. Abstraction, therefore, should not be understood as some and the other ends. Moreover, instead of augmenting the geometric
kind of will imposed from above, but as a social force determined character of the chapel, the overly rich decoration seems to make
by cooperation and the sharing of skills, as a living labour. And the surface more important than the space. This would become
machines are never invented in vacuo. They are not the product of a defining characteristic of later Renaissance architecture, with very
solitary geniuses, as the rhetoric of the Renaissance would have us few architects (including Bramante, the most Brunelleschian of all
believe. Rather, they are always born out of social situations that Renaissance architects) able to counteract the trend. And indeed,
instruct their power to dominate not by force but by reason. As the already with Alberti - Brunelleschi's obvious successor - there
Italian Operaist philosopher Mario Tronti would put it, 'first strug- is much more of an emphasis on surfaces, now able to accept
gle and then development'.52 transgressions and contaminations from other architectural
In this sense, Brunelleschi's syntactic architecture could be seen languages, while the orders, even though rigorous, become reduced
as simply another kind of machine - a reading that is not entirely to a secondary ornamental element.
symbolic but also supported by biography, for we should remem- Despite all that he did and all that he represented, the buildings
ber that Brunelleschi's background was as a goldsmith and more that Brunelleschi produced are thus merely a glimpse of a moment:
particularly a clockmaker, not to mention the fact that he designed the manifestation of a first counterrevolutionary wave in which
and manufactured machines in order to facilitate the construction architecture was born as a clearly recognisable profession and as
of the dome. As Bruschi suggests, the architecture he pioneered
a form of real abstraction. That this glimpse ultimately became just
as threatening as the very thing it was attempting to counter should
could therefore be imagined as made of cogs and gears, coordinated
within a larger machine and designed so as to transmit forces and
not undermine its significance, for as the modern project initiated
by Brunelleschi continued, the power of his architecture would
avoid any form of slippage. The singularity of this image is further
be diluted by endless formal games played by a celebrated cast of
reinforced by the fact - confirmed by his biographers Manetti and
practitioners who have since given an explicitly aesthetic form
Vasari - that distinct from the plans Brunelleschi made available
to his builders, he would construct rudimentary models thattocon-that long and latent counterrevolutionary movement that is the
veyed the most salient features of a project. Here architecture was of capital.
history
i. The cornerstone of the Renaissance Rudolf Wittkower's seminal study Alexander Nagel in Controversies in 6. Paolo Virno, 'Do You Remember
myth was laid by Jakob Burckhardt^ of Leon Battista Alberti, Francesco Renaissance Art (New Haven, : Yale Counterrevolution?' in Paolo Virno and
extremely influential The Civilisation di Giorgio and Andrea Palladio. University Press, 2011). Yet this book Michael Hardt (eds), Radical Thought in
of Renaissance in Italy , in which the See Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural focuses only on the sixteenth century. Italy: A Potential Politics (Minneapolis,
Swiss patrician developed further Principles in the Age of Humanism What is missing is work of the same MN: University of Minnesota Press,
Leon Battista Alberti's and Giorgio (London: Warburg Institute, 1949); calibre on the early quattrocento. 1996), pp 241-60. In this essay, which
Vasari's idea of rinascita as the rebirth and Henry Milion, 'Rudolf Wittkower's 4. Here I mean to suggest not a specific responded to a group of former
of the arts after the 'dark age' of Architectural Principles in the Age critique to a specific episode, but Autonomia Operaia militants' text,
medieval civilisation. Burckhardt of Humanism: Its Influence in the more of a general critique similar to 'Do You Remember Revolution', Virno
linked this idea with the bourgeois Development and Interpretation that offered by Manfredo Tafuri's early explained the historical victory of the
ideology of man as the centre of the of Modern Architecture', Journal historiographie work. See in particular Right in Italy in the elections of March
universe. As he wrote, To the discovery of the Society of Architectural Historians , Manfredo Tafuri, Architecture 1994 as the culmination of a 'counter-
of the outward world the Renaissance September 1972, pp 83-91. and Utopia: Design and Capitalist revolutionary' movement that started
added a still greater achievement: 2. For one of the more radical critiques Development (Cambridge, ma: mit after the long 'revolution' that took
by first discovering and bringing to of the idealisation of humanistic Press, 1976). place in Italy in the 1960s and 1970s.
light the full whole nature of man.' culture see Manfredo Tafuri, 5. A well-known example of just such a Against the traditional assumption
See Jakob Burckhardt, The Civilisation Interpreting the Renaissance: Princes, critique was put forward by John Ruskin, that counterrevolution is simply
of Renaissance in Italy (Penguin: Cities, Architects (New Haven, : Yale a contemporary of Burckhardt. See the restoration of an ancien rgime ,
London, 1950), p 84. A 'humanistic' University Press, 2006). Richard Titlebaum, 'John Ruskin and Virno argued that what happened
interpretation of Renaissance 3. A very interesting and fresh approach the Italian Renaissance', English Studies in Italy in the 1980s was a period of
architecture was put forward by to the Renaissance has been taken by in Africa, vol 19, no 21, 1976, pp 1-7. great innovation but in a politically
164 AA FILES 71
conservative direction. What Virno 20. Ibid.
entablature running along the upper 32. Antonio di Tuccio Manetti, op cit , p 19.
presents in this reading is one of the part of the nave interior, visually 21. This phenomenon has been examined33. On the contribution of Alhazen to the
most useful conceptions of political linking all the elements that defined by Alfred Sohn-Rethel in his influential development of perspective as science
conflict in which processes of social this space. My reading of Brunelleschi book, Intellectual and Manual Labour see Hans Belting, Florence and Baghdad:
and cultural innovation, on the one is deeply indebted to Arnaldo Bruschi's (London: Macmillan Press, 1978). Renaissance Art and Arab Science
hand, and counterrevolutionary interpretation of the Florentine 22. On the tortuous history of architectural (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University
politics, on the other, are not mutually architect's work. See Arnaldo Bruschi, orders see Erik Forssman, Doricsch, Press, 2011).
exclusive. Even the history of art and Filippo Brunelleschi (Milan: Electa, Jonisch , Korinthisch: Studien ber den 34. Mark Smith (ed), Theory of Visual
architecture from the last 50 years can 2006), pp 53-176. Gebrauch der Sulennordnungen in der Perception (First Three Books ofAlhacen's
be read from the same vantage point, 11. See Antonio di Tuccio Manetti, The Life Architektur des 16-18 Jahrhunderts De Aspectibus), Volume One: Introduction
with its leaning towards contemporary of Brunelleschi, translated by Catherine (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksei, 1961). and Latin Text (New York, ny: American
politics. Such a theory also helps us Engass (Philadelphia, pa: Pennsylvania 23. Brunelleschi seems to want the visitor Philosophical Society, 2001), p 67.
avoid the two traditional responses, State University Press, 1970). to be sure that every surface is under 35. Filippo Camerota, La prospettiva del
of either celebration and acceptance, 12. See Sergio Rossi, Dalle Boteghe alle control and thus reducible to the rinascimento: Arte, architettura e scienza
or dismissive criticism. There is no accademie: Realt sociale e teorie principle of symmetry; this is (Milan: Electa, 2006), pp 20-21.
doubt that in simple terms of artistiche a Firenze dal xiv al xvi secolo especially visible in the pendentives 36. Karl Marx discussed the issue of
architectural production the last half (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1980). which link the arches to the dome. abstraction most notably in his
century has been a radically innovative 13. There has been a lot of discussion As in the arches of the hospital, here introduction to the Grundrisse. See Karl
period that has deeply challenged the among historians comparing Brunelleschi inserted four circles Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the
architectural profession. Yet this Brunelleschi's original scheme to whose diameter touches both the Critique of Political Economy (London:
radicalism has been put at the service what was built. We know that at the arches and the dome. In this way the Penguin Classics, 1993), pp 81-114.
of a politically very conservative order. time of his death, the building, with triangular-spherical form of the 37. Erwin Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic
The current crisis of architecture lies the exception of the loggia, had been pendentives is reduced to the certainty Form , translated by Christopher
exactly in the contradiction between constructed only as far as its of the circle whose diameter chains S Wood (New York, ny: Zone Books,
the radical erosion of architecture
foundations. Rather than resembling together the main features of the 1997), P 31.
as a traditional practice, and the way a monastery, with a clear emphasis sacristy's upper part: the arches and 38. See Graziella Federici Vescovini,
the 'tradition' of architecture is often on the adjacent church, the hospital the dome. Moreover, the circle echoes 'Le questioni di 'perspectiva' di Biagio
used to cover up a completely is rationally organised around its not only the square plan of the space, Pelacani da Parma', Rinascimento ,
fragmented situation. And it is also courtyard. While the loggia defines the but also a number of elements that XII, 1961, pp 163-243.
precisely at this point - a crisis in public square, the courtyard defines define the architecture of the sacristy: 39. For a detailed overview of mathemati-
a certain idea of 'progressive' the hospital's internal organisation. the dome and all the openings oriented cal education in Florence between
architecture - that a reconsideration On two sides of the courtyard are two towards the outside, which are either the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries
of Renaissance architecture as a site large halls, one for the church, the oculi or rounded windows. It is not see Robert Black, Education and Society
of conflict may be useful. other serving as a dormitory for the by chance that Brunelleschi used in Florentine Tuscany, 1250-1500
7. The class conflicts that shaped politics innocenti. In plan there is no difference the circle to seal his syntactic systems. (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp 226-40.
in fourteenth-century Florence have between these two halls and from the The circle is the most tangible sign 40. Michael Baxandall, Painting and
been set out in John M Najemy, outside the church is not visible from of perfection, completeness and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy
A History of Florence, 1200-1575 the piazza since the entire complex control. For this reason Brunelleschi (Oxford: Oxford Paperback, 1988),
(London: Wiley, 2008). Yet we have is fronted by the even rhythm of the was annoyed when Donatello was pp 29-39.
to be careful not to idealise the political loggia. The internal courtyard allows given the commission to insert 41. Lorens Holm, Brunelleschi, Lacan,
role of the Florentine guilds as agents immediate access to the administrative bas-reliefs into the pendentive circles, Le Corbusier{ London: Routledge, 2010),
of progressive politics. As noted by offices. The plan is arranged by turning the latter into frames of pp x-xiv.
Najemy, the guilds, especially those Brunelleschi with unprecedented pictures and thus introducing 42. Ibid, pxin.
considered Arti maggiori (those that rationality. The hospital is not an a figurative element whose visual 43. See Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture,
included the most important ad-hoc aggregation of different spaces impact had nothing to do with the edited by Ingrid D Rowland and
professions), were reluctant if not around a courtyard, as would have geometric rigour of the interior. Thomas Noble Howe (Cambridge:
openly hostile in recognising the rights been customary in such buildings, 24. On the conflict surrounding the old Cambridge University Press, 1999);
of salaried workers and emerging but a machine whose main goal is to church of San Lorenzo see William see also the fundamental interpreta-
professionals. This condition led to guarantee efficient circulation. Here M Bowsky, La chiesa di San Lorenzo tion of Vitruvius' theory proposed
a contradictory political process in we see how modularity and a syntactic a Firenze nel Medioevo: Scorci archivistici by Indra Kagis McEwen in her book
which guilds were simultaneously relationship between all the (Florence: Edizioni della Meridiana, Vitruvius: Writing The Body of
progressive, in defending the republic architectural elements is a matter 1999). Architecture (Cambridge, ma: mit
from the interests of wealthy families, not simply of beauty but of spatial 25. Ibid, p 24. Press, 2003).
and conservative, in repressing efficiency, and thus governance 26. For a detailed historical survey of the 44. Arnaldo Bruschi, op cit, pp 59-61; see
attempts by the proletarian population of space. For a precise survey of rebuilding of San Lorenzo see Eugenio also Francesco Benelli, The Architecture
to be politically represented. Brunelleschi's original project Battisti, op cit , pp 174-95. in Giotto's Paintings (Cambridge:
8. See Ernesto Screpanti, L'angelo della for the hospital see Eugenio Battisti, 27. Ibid, p 186. Cambridge University Press, 2011).
liberazione nel Tumulto dei Ciompi Filippo Brunelleschi (Milan: Electa, 28. If the chapel opened towards the 45. Ibid, pp 62-63.
(Florence: Protagon Editori, 2008). 2002), pp 46-48, and Arnaldo Bruschi, transept the lateral wall would have to 46. For an interesting reading of the
9. I am very much indebted to Amir op cit , pp 69-76. interrupt the rhythm of chapels on the relationship between Giotto's frescoes
Djalali's reading of Renaissance 14. See Mario Carpo, The Alphabet and nave (as indeed happens in the realised and money-lender patronage see Julian
architecture in relationship to political the Algorhythm (Cambridge, ma: mit version), and if it opened towards Gardner, Giotto and his Publics: Three
conflicts which he put forward in his Press, 2011). the nave it would have done the same Paradigms of Patronage (Cambridge,
PhD dissertation defended at tu Delft 15. See Arnaldo Bruschi, op cit. p 67. towards the transept. In the final ma: Harvard University Press, 2011),
and titled 'Common Space: Politics 16. See Antonio di Tuccio Manetti, op cit , solution with the aisles, the crossing PP 49-79.
and the Production of Architectural P25. - the most important part of any 47. As quoted in Eugenio Battisti, op cit,
Knowledge'. A chapter of the thesis 17. There is an impressive amount of church, especially because the altar P196.
has been published as 'Prehistories literature on the building of Santa was supposed to be located here 48. Antonio di Tuccio Manetti, op cit, p 50.
of Common Space: Conflict and Maria del Fiore 's dome. Apart from - looks rather messy. The situation 49. Eugenio Battisti, op cit, p 197.
Abstraction in Renaissance Architec- the detailed reconstruction by Eugenio was further complicated by the chapels 50. Antonio di Tuccio Manetti, op cit , p 31.
ture', in Pier Vittorio Aureli (ed), Battisti in his book on Brunelleschi, on the short sides of the transept, 51. Antonio Negri, 'Notes on the Abstract
The City as a Project (Berlin: Ruby an accessible but fairly accurate report whose position was already determined Strike', E-Flux Journal 56th Venice
Press, 2014). of the entire story of Brunelleschi's by the sacristy and the chapel already Biennale , http://supercommunity.
10. The possibility of a syntactical work on the dome can be found built for Medici. e-flux.com/texts/
architecture is rooted in the long in Ross King, Brunelleschi's Dome: 29. See Marvin Trachtenberg, Building in notes-on-the-abstract-strike .
tradition of Romanesque and Gothic How Renaissance Genius Reinvented
Time: From Giotto to Alberti to Moderi} 52. This is the main conception
architecture. Arnaldo Bruschi has Architecture (London: Bloomsbury, Oblivion (New Haven, CT: Yale of capitalist development
shown how the interior of Romanesque 2013). University Press, 2010). proposed by Operaist thought.
churches such as the Florentine
18. See Maria Paola Zanoboni, Scioperi 30. Eugenio Battisti, op cit , p 102. See Mario Tronti, Operai e Capitale
Basilica of San Miniato al Monte e rivolte nel medioevo. Le citt italiane 31. Marvin Trachtenberg, Dominion of the (Turin: Einaudi, 1966).
(which Brunelleschi must have known ed europee nei secoli xin-xv (Milan: Eye: Urbanism, Art and Power in Early 53. See Marvin Trachtenberg, 'Why the
very well) was organised by non-struc- Jouvence, 2015). Modern Florence (Cambridge: Pazzi Chapel is not by Brunelleschi',
tural motifs such as a continuous flat 19. Antonio di Tuccio Manetti, op cit. Cambridge University Press, 1997). Casabella, June 1996, pp 58-77.

AA - Politics of Brunelleschi&#39;s Architecture (Aureli)

Загружено:

Сведения о документе

Авторское право

Доступные форматы

Поделиться этим документом

Поделиться или встроить документ

Параметры публикации

Этот документ был вам полезен?

Это неприемлемый материал?

Авторское право:

Доступные форматы

AA - Politics of Brunelleschi&#39;s Architecture (Aureli)

Загружено:

Авторское право:

Доступные форматы

Do You Remember Counterrevolution?

: The Politics of Filippo Brunelleschi's Syntactic

Architectural Association School of Architecture is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve

The Politics of Filippo Brunelleschi's

Pier Vittorio Aureli

with drawings by Fabrizio Ballabio

arguably the very first architect, Of these buildings the dome

to the Florentine faction led by attempted to bolster by also pro-

how to proceed, and thereby modern history, beyond the

compromise the whole, and per- with Brunelleschi and release

In hindsight one can see Brunelleschi's conflicted relation-

for Brunelleschi and his many Brunelleschi's Old Sacristy is a

language was of course Vitru- inside, it is clear to the visitor

uncovering as much archaeo- tecture. The chapel consists of

architectural language that fails precisely here, therefore, that we

to be an a posteriori justifica- Of course, in art and architec-

of walls dilutes the purity of a perspective which they applied

of deeply engrained conflicts removed, the viewer was then

the evolution of perspective: the not how a painted image could

public space where the city exper- the perspective itself.

zen's thinking, arguing that measurable conception of space.

the eye's gaze - what Alhazen theories of such an understand-

not a tangible object - an asser- mattered most in the definition

tion that appeared to undermine of real objects in space was the

entific knowledge could only be Pelacani, and before the Renais-

Principal among these is that buildings they fronted. We have

ence gave him the conceptual anticipated such a development,

and surfaces, whose immateri- work and ideas, the objectivity

model of civic virtue. Not by for conveying visual order

tural apparatuses of Rome.43 elite). During periods of

logical drive plays itself out in ground, the orderly composi-

its own civic responsibility. architect to give physical

a single element. for the project was to orient

the main nave, with choir directly from the riverbank. In

Вам также может понравиться

AA - Politics of Brunelleschi's Architecture (Aureli)

AA - Politics of Brunelleschi's Architecture (Aureli)