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Exhibitions on architecture representa unique challenge. The subject—

the buildings—cannot be physicallymoved. But this past winter, the Nation-al Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.did the next best thing, by assemblingscale models made by Italian Renais-sance architects to illustrate their pro-jects, and displaying these together withengravings, medals, and paintings relat-ed to three of the greatest building pro-jects ever undertaken: the Cathedral ofFlorence (S. Maria del Fiore), the Cathe-dral of Pavia, and the Basilica of St.Peter’s in Rome.

The ancient Greeks used architectur-al scale models, called paradeigmata—from which we derive our word “para-digm.” Although models were used forreligious buildings from the Carolingianera onward (A.D. 800), in the FifteenthCentury a new function developed forthem, that of instruments for reflectionand experimentation.

Although thousands of such models

were originally made in theperiod from the 1420’s to1600—either as part of thedesign process, to convince a patron, orto assist engineers and workers in carry-ing out the architect’s intentions—onlythirty survive. The Washington show, ascaled-down version of one held inVenice in 1994, displayed fourteen of themodels, including the largest (Antonioda Sangallo’s walk-in model of St.Peter’s Basilica in Rome) and the mostexquisitely finished (the model begun in1488 for the Cathedral of Pavia). Thosetwo models, displayed in the barrel-vaulted corridor of the National Galleryadjoining the Italian Renaissance artgalleries, rewarded hours of avid atten-tion for tens of thousands of visitors thiswinter, who showed their hunger forbeauty despite the prevailing wildernessof shopping-mall architecture that marsthe American landscape.

The show also included, amongnumerous models related to parts of

Florence Cathedral, the only ones thattake us back to the technological break-through that can rightly be said to havelaunched the Renaissance—FilippoBrunelleschi’s dome (1420-36).

Brunelleschi’s genius marked thefirst time in modern history that a singleguiding mind shaped a building projectand even an entire city—Florence,which remained forever imprinted withhis great dome and the other churchprojects designed to complement it. Theshow brought out clearly how the ideasof Brunelleschi himself and his admirer,the architect and art theorist Leon Bat-tista Alberti, worked to shape entirenew cities as the framework of a newand less-imperfect society, based on thenotion of man imitating the CreatorGod in whose image each human indi-vidual is made.

Brunelleschi was present in the show

Renaissance Models Reflect ‘A New Era for Mankind’

Top: Wooden model, Pavia Cathedral.Bottom: Wooden model, Project for St.Peter’s, apse detail. Left: Visitors inspectmodel of Pavia Cathedral.

EIRNS/Stuart Lewis

Musei Civici del Castello Visconteo, Pavia

Fabbrica di San Pietro, Vatican

EX H IBIT SClick here for Full Issue of Fidelio Volume 4, Number 1, Spring 1995

© 1995 Schiller Institute, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission strictly prohibited.

through the only two extant modelsbelieved made under his direction, oneshowing the structure of the dome itself,and a second for the marble lantern, forwhich Brunelleschi won a separate com-petition in 1432, and which he consid-ered crucial to the static equilibrium ofthe dome.

Also displayed was a parchmentfrom the Florence State Archive whichcaptures a unique moment in westernhistory. Around 1426, just a few yearsafter Brunelleschi was awarded the firstmonopoly patent in history for an inven-tion, and while he was in the midst ofdirecting construction work on thedome, a rival architect, Giovanni diGherardo Gherardi, tried to prove thatthe Brunelleschian project was unsound.

The parchment is a bitter andprovocative polemic against Brunel-leschi. (Brunelleschi answered in kind,taking advantage of the fact that Flo-rentine republican “libertas” turned pri-vate conflicts to the advantage of the

common good.) Gherardi simply didnot grasp that Brunelleschi was con-structing the two shells of his double-shelled dome with different curves,using a single center of curvature, con-trary to medieval practice.

Hung on the wall next to Florentinedome models was a picture from c.1420-30, which offers a scriptural resonanceto the debate in Florence during the1420’s, when the outcome ofBrunelleschi’s proposal to erect thedome was uncertain, and when hisachievement was seen exclusively as aproblem in engineering—the lifting andmoving of weights. The painting, ananonymous panel in the Johnson Collec-tion of the Philadelphia Museum of Art,depicts the “Christ Healing a PossessedBoy,” and “Judas Recovering the BloodMoney,” in a cutaway view of a church.In the Gospel verses recounting the dis-ciples’ failure to heal the possessed boy,Jesus said, “If your faith were the size ofa mustard seed you could say to this

mountain, ‘Movefrom here to there’and it would move;nothing would beimpossible for you.”

Although thepainted church interi-or where the twoscenes take place bearslittle relation to theactual structure, overthe roof rises a domewhich is clearly a visu-alization of howBrunelleschi’s domewould appear whencompleted. Accordingto the exhibition cata-log, “the painter musthave been guided, aswere the men at workon the dome, byBrunelleschi’s largebrick model whichstood next to thecathedral itself.”

A New Era forMankind

The start of the Euro-pean Renaissance ismarked by the Coun-cil of Ferrara/Florence

(1439-1441), which reunified the variouseastern Christian churches with theCatholic Church in Rome, healing doc-trinal rifts going back four centuriesand more. Out of that union, and theimpassioned debates that prepared it,came not only modern science as exem-plified in the voyages of discovery, theinvention of printed books, and theoverthrow of Aristotle’s geocentric cos-mology, but also the basis of modernstatecraft, through the founding of thenation-state, which fosters and defendsindividuals’ creative discoveries as thebasis for progress.

The Washington show was set up inthe West Building right next to the pic-ture galleries celebrating the floweringof the Renaissance in painting in theFifteenth Century. This setting helpedto heighten the Socratic dialogueevoked in Italian art by the phenome-non of “architecture within painting,”“painting within sculpture,” and “sculp-ture within painting,” The models arereally gloriously crafted sculptures.They also contain sculpture, as in thecase of the model for Pavia Cathedral.In the adjoining galleries, the visitor’ssense of “architecture within painting”was heightened by the proximity of themodels. In many of the Gallery’s Fif-teenth Century pictures, saints performtheir miracles in settings that call upchurch interiors of a bygone Byzantinepast, or the very latest in the Renais-sance style based on a radical revival ofthe classical architectural orders handeddown from Greece and Rome.

One painter, the “Master of the Bar-berini Panels,” generally now identified

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Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Master of the Barberini, “Presentation of the Virgin,” fifteenthcentury.

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as Fra Carnevale, was so enchantedwith architecture that his religious sub-jects are dwarfed by the triumphal arch-es, the vaults, domes, arcades, and sculp-tured friezes all depicted in the typicalgrey Florentine stone called pietra sere-na. Besides his “Annunciation,” whichbelongs to the National Gallery, theshow brought together Fra Carnevale’s“Birth of the Virgin” and “Presentationof the Virgin,” from the New York andBoston museums respectively.

St. Peter’s Basilica

In the wake of the Council of Florence,the first Pope to take up permanent resi-dence in Rome was Nicholas V (1447-55), and he resolved to build a splendidcity with Florence as the model. St.Peter’s, the center of western Christen-dom, was to be rebuilt as an even moremagnificent version of S. Maria delFiore. The vicissitudes of any greatmonument can be as complex as theconstruction of a nation-state, and thehistory of St. Peter’s serves as ametaphor for the evolution of the Vati-can as a political/religious institution.The problems of translating an aestheticborn in the rough-and-tumble Floren-

tine republic, into the Roman context—the papacy was an absolute monarchy,bound both to ancient Roman traditionsand the exigencies of the holy sites—caused numerous interruptions, andradical changes in design.

It took more than a century for thenew basilica over the tomb of the Princeof the Apostles to be completed. In theearly Sixteenth Century, the project wasrevived by Julius II—the Pope who

joined, but then with-drew from the Leagueof Cambrai which wasorganized to crush thegreatest threat to theRenaissance, oli-garchist Venice. Juliusentrusted a greatarchitect, Donato Bra-mante, with thedesign. Bramante wasclose to both Leonar-do da Vinci andRaphael. Raphael

immortalized the unfinished crossing ofBramante’s first St. Peter’s in his“School of Athens” fresco, and whenBramante died in 1514 he became thechief architect of St. Peter’s until he too,died in 1520.

Under Pope Paul III, Antonio daSangallo, another Florentine who was askilled builder, but not a painter like hispredecessors, made sweeping changes in

the design, embodied in thewooden model for St. Peter’swhich is some 23 feet longand 15 feet high, and tookseven years to build. Sangal-lo’s stunning model, recentlyrestored, was in many waysthe dramatic highpoint of theshow. Yet it was artisticallyput into the shade byMichelangelo’s intervention,in the 1550’s, commemoratedin the part of the exhibitinstalled around the muse-um’s garden court [SEE insideback cover].

With its double-shellstructure and its ribbed sup-porting skeleton, the domemodel for St. Peter’s, despiteseveral stages of alterationsafter Michelangelo’s death,clearly showed the sculptor’s

intention to return to the paradigm ofBrunelleschi. In the turbulent climate ofthe Catholic Counter-Reformation—when he died in 1564, with the domewell under way, the Council of Trentwas drawing to a close—Michelangeloreaffirmed the central role of individualgenius in the image of God, which hadbeen so boldly asserted by his Florentineantecessor Brunelleschi 150 years before.

—Nora Hamerman

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Below: The Dome of Florence Cathedral, designed and constructed byFilippo Brunelleschi, was a technological breakthrough that helpedlaunch the Renaissance. Insets: wooden models by Brunelleschi of theLantern (top) and Dome and Apse Sections (bottom). Left: acontemporary painting shows Brunelleschi’s Dome in the top, leftbackground.

EIRNS/Andrew Spannaus

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