Argan - The Architecture of Brunelleschi and the Origins of Perspective.pdf

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The Architecture of Brunelleschi and the Origins of Perspective Theory in the Fifteenth

CenturyAuthor(s): Giulio Carlo Argan and Nesca A. RobbSource: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 9 (1946), pp. 96-121Published by: The Warburg InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/750311 .

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THE ARCHITECTURE OF BRUNELLESCHI AND THEORIGINS OF PERSPECTIVE THEORY INTHE FIFTEENTH CENTURYBy Giulio Carlo Argan

IThe invention of perspective and the discovery of antiquity: these twoevents have for long been held to mark the beginnings of the Renaissance.Modern criticism has sharply limited the importance of both events, andabove all of the second: so profound a transformationof the artistic consciencecould not clearly have been caused by external circumstances. It is not somuch needful to decide how far the artists of the early Quattrocento hadpenetrated into the objective understanding of space (if indeed one can speakof such an objective understanding) or into the knowledge of the documentsrelating to antique art, as it is to discover the internal necessity that urgedthem to seek that knowledge. In fact the same inward impulse is common toboth activities: the search for a more exact knowledge of space and that fora more exact knowledge of antique art are inseparable, until such time atleast as the study of antique art assumes, as it does in the full maturity ofhumanistic culture, an independent existence as the science of antiquity.It is well known that the new ideal of beauty was defined, classically, asa harmony of parts, in other words by means of the idea of proportion, which,according to Vitruvius, is the same thing as the Greek &voxoyl ; and it waswith this same word that Euclid described geometrical congruity, which isthe fundamental principle of perspective. If perspective is the process bywhich we arrive at proportion, that is to say, at beauty or the perfection ofart, it is also the process by which we reach the antique which is art parexcellencer perfect beauty.The classical tradition had been neither lost nor extinguished throughoutthe whole of the Middle Ages; on the contrary,, it had been diffused andpopularized. To set oneself the task of rediscovering the ancients, meantsetting oneself to determine the concrete historical value of the achievementsof ancient art, as distinguished from its mediaeval corruptionsand populariza-tions. The activity by which we recognize value is judgment, and judgmentis an act of the total consciousness. Enthusiasm for, or faith in antiquity,impulses which had had, during the Middle Ages their moments of genuineexaltation, are henceforth insufficient: the formulation of judgment, since itimplies a definition of the value of consciousness, implies also a definition ofthe value of reality, because such a judgment is a judgment of being-andnot-being, of reality and non-reality.What was sought for in ancient art was therefore not a transcendentalvalue, but, in opposition to mediaeval transcendentalism, an immanent value,a conception of the world. The touchstone by which we recognize values isreality: not a limitless and continuous reality which can be grasped only inthe particular, and in which man himself is absorbed, but nature as a realityconceived by man and distinct from him as the object from the subject.96

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THE ARCHITECTURE OF BRUNELLESCHI 97Nature is the form of reality, in so far as it reveals and makes it tangible inits full complexity: the laws of form are also the laws of nature, and themental process by which we arrive at the conception of nature is the sameas that which leads to the conception of form, that is to say of art.1 TheRenaissance begins, so far as the figurative arts are concerned, when toartistic activity is added the idea of art as a consciousness of its own act: it isthen that the mediaeval ars mechanica ecomes ars liberalis. "Ancient art-writes D. Frey2-appears to the Western mind as nature, with a heightenedsignificance whereby the natural becomes the expression of a profound truthand of perfection. Thus in the West every tendency to naturalistic or rational-istic development is always referable to a classical source."The formulation of a common law for nature and for artistic form lies inperspective: which may in general terms, be defined as the method or mentalprocedure for the determination of value. In the writers of the Quattrocento-excepting naturally in Cennini and Ghiberti-we see clearly the belief thatperspective is not simply a rule of optics which may alsobe applied to artisticexpression, but a procedure peculiar to art, which in art has its single andlogical end. Perspective is art itself in its totality: no relation is possible be-tween the artist and the world except through the medium of perspective,just as no relation is possible between the human spirit and reality-short offalling back upon the mediaeval antithesis of conceptualism and nominalism-unless we assume the conception of nature. Hence proceeds that identityof perspective-painting and science, clearly affirmed by the theorists of theQuattrocento.

The starting point of the controversy between modernists and tradition-alists at the beginning of the Quattrocento seems to me to be notably indicatedin a passage, probably not devoid of polemical intentions, in the PitturaofAlberti: "no man denies that of such things as we cannot see there is nonethat appertaineth unto the painter: the painter studieth to depict only thatwhich is seen."On the other hand, according to Cennini, a typical representative of thetraditionalist school, the painter's task is "to discover things unseen, that arehid beneath the shadow of things natural." The exact interpretation of thepassage, which has been variously explained,3 is to be found in Chapterlxxxvii of the same "Libro dell'Arte," where it is suggested to the painterthat: "if thou wouldst learn to paint mountains in a worthy manner, so thatthey be like nature, take great stones which be rough and not cleansed anddraw them as they are, adding light and shade as it shall seem fit to thee."Since the result to be aimed at is a symbol of the mountain, the object(the stone) has no value in itself, apart from its external configuration,

1 For the nature-form relation in Renais-sance thought see E. Cassirer, Individuo eCosmo,tr. Federici, Florence, La Nuova Italiaed., p. 251.2 D. Frey, L'Architettura della Rinascenza,Rome, 1924, p. 7.

3 E. Panofsky in Idea (Teubner ed., Berlin,1924), P. 23 and note 94 has given a Neo-Platonic interpretation of this passage ofCennini; it is, however, a question ofmediaeval Neo-Platonism in the Plotiniantradition.



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98 GIULIO CARLO ARGANanalogous to that of the mountain. The analogy is purely external, morpho-logical; but the difference, which consists in the situation of the mountainin space, is of no interest to the painter because the formal motive of hispicture is not spatial, and indeed takes no account of space. He will linkthat image with others in obedience to a rhythmic or narrative coherence butprincipally in obedience to a "manner" acquired through long discipleshipwith his masters, that is, with tradition. From the perception of the materialdatum (the stone) the artistic process is still a long one: and since its end is ininfinity or in abstraction, of what significance can the distance between theneighbouring stone and the far-off mountain be when compared with that?When, on the other hand, Alberti affirmsthat the visible is the domain of thepainter, he does not refer to the mechanical perception of the eye and thelimited notions that derive from it, but to a full, total, sensory experience.The eye may be considered as a mechanical and impersonal instrument, arecording mechanism: instead the senses are already considered as a gradeof intelligence. Alberti, though he denies that the mental domain of thepainter can extend beyond the limits of the domain of the senses, yet affirmsthat the artistic processdoes not begin, as it does for Cennini, with the data ofvisible things, only to end in an abstraction, but takes place wholly within thesphere of sensory experience as a process of understanding and investigation:that very experience will not be complete and fully defined until after suchreflection.Cennini restricted the painter's contact with reality as far as he could, soas to leave the widest possible margin for tradition. Alberti, by makingthe limits of reality coincide exactly with those of the sensorypowers, refusesany value to tradition considered as a complex of ideas learned withoutreference to direct experience. It is true that Cennini also demands a contactwith reality (the stone which is copied as a symbol of the mountain) : but thatis only because tradition is transmitted through moments of reality, whichare the lives of men. For Alberti, life is an ultimate value: it neither receivesnor transmits a universal inheritance, but rather, in its very consciousnessofits own finite nature, that is, in the completeness of its experience of the world,it arrives at a point where it has the value of universality.

We have already pointed out that with the assumption of the idea ofnature as the limit or definition of reality, the value of consciousness or ofpersonality was contemporaneously in process of definition. Certainly manalso is, and feels himself to be, nature; but he feels himself to be so in so faras he has already detached himself from unlimited reality, and the limitswithin which he recognizes himself are marked by what he can grasp andunderstand of reality, that is by nature. Nature and the Ego, born of thesame act, are governed by the same law; man identifies himself no longerwith the creation, but with the Creator.The man of the Renaissance, in this Platonic determination of his to knowhimself in nature, necessarily focussed his first and most ardent interest uponhis own native sensory capacity, upon his own naturalness. It has been justlyremarked that the opposition which the thought of the Renaissance lays down



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THE ARCHITECTURE OF BRUNELLESCHI 99as a first definition of personality is not that between man and nature, butthat between man (vir) and fate (fortuna); nature is "an organism not hostileto man but akin to him, and dowered with intelligence, an open field whereinhe may extend his personality."1 From the opposition of virtus and fortuna,which derives from the Scholastic view of man's struggle for good against theconstant assaults of evil, the moral quality of personality emerged; GiovanniPisano, Giotto, Dante, Petrarch, were, during the Trecento, the great repre-sentatives of this dramatic conception of life as a struggle for redemption.Nature, conceived as full and lucid sensory experience, presupposes this moralconception of personality; it is a reality already grasped and comprehended,and so clear and transparent that the human person, that supreme exampleand image of the perfection of the divine creation, can see itself reflected thereas in a mirror. But this inspired, and indeed profoundly classic moment,in which man becomes aware of his own naturalness, is not the end. Lifeis not that moment, it is the series of such moments. If we start by affirmingthe moral quality of personality; if, that is, we consider it in relation to anend, there immediately arises the problem of the relation of life, in all itsactivities, to its initial naturalness and to its final aim. And here we havealready the problem of history as a consciousness of its own "activity."2 Infact if the final aim is complete self-knowledge, the whole life of the spirit willconsist in retracing its natural life, hitherto empiric, to an ideal ancestry oran ideal genesis. Burdach's interpretation of the Renaissance as a regenera-tion or rebirth in the antique (in a Christian, that is in an ethical sense)3 isthus given its full force: the process of this palingenesis is history, throughwhich we are enabled to rediscover our true nature, and so to rise from anempiric to a systematic conception of the world. Thus the opposition of theidentity of nature and history to the mediaeval identification of reality withtradition, finds an historical justification, before it finds a theoretical one; inthe monuments of ancient art the artists of the Quattrocento seek to discovertheir own Latin nature in its most essential characteristics. Even that firstdescription of humanity as virtus in opposition to fortuna then assumes aprecise historical significance; the very one that Petrarch gives it when heproclaims that Roman virtz&will take up arms against the furore of the"barbarian" invaders. It is the rational light of history that dispels thedarkness of hostile fate. This idea of Latin virtus is undoubtedly active inCennini, when he points out that Giotto "changed art from Greek into Latin,and made it modern": the term "Latin" cannot certainly correspond to anyconcrete figurative experiment, but only to the moral order of values. Tooriental mysticism in fact Giotto opposes a religious sentiment that fulfilsitself in drama, that is to say in action, and that can be measured in theactivities of practical life.Of Brunelleschi, Manetti says that "he restored that fashion in buildingswhich is called Roman or antique" "for before him these were all German

1 G. Nicco, introduction to the criticaledition of the De ProspectivaPingendi of Pierodella Francesca," Sansoni, Florence, I942,p. I7.2 For the conception of life as activity, from

which it follows that "only in his history canman give proof of his freedom and creativepower" see E. Cassirer, op. citb, p. 73-3 K. Burdach, Riforma, Rinascimento,Umane-simo, tr. Cantimori, Sansoni, Florence, 1933-



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100 GIULIO CARLO ARGANand were called modern." In Manetti the Germans (Gothic Art) have takenthe place of the Greeks, of whom indeed, as Worringer has acutely pointedout, they were the natural heirs. For Cennini the word modern has a positivesense, for Manetti it has a negative one: for Cennini modern means actual,for Manetti non-actual, since the corsivo has become the antique. Modernhas become the equivalent of the merely chronological; in the antique thevalue of history is already implicit. That this is by no means an objectiveinquiry is, however, revealed by the fact that Manetti is in nowise concernedto determine whether Brunelleschi had rediscovered or invented the con-structional laws of the ancients, laws being taken to mean both their technicalexpedients and their "musical proportions," that is to say symmetry andperspective; "those who might have taught him these things had been deadfor hundreds of years: and they are not to be found in writing, or if they befound they may not well be understood; but his own industry and subtletydid either rediscover them or else were themselves the discoverers." It issignificant that the same thought is to be found also in Alberti: "If this artwas ever described in writing we are those who have dug it up from under-ground, and if it was never so described, we have drawn it from heaven."To rediscover or to invent, to find the law of ancient art or of nature, areone and the same thing; the same process by which we establish the concep-tion of nature leads us on to establish the conception of beauty, or of artisticperfection, and to recognize it as historically manifest in Roman art. Grantedthat the investigation of nature and the investigation of history are inseparable,the problem, which has tormented modern idealist critics, of the relationbetween pictorial and scientific perspective, or more simply between art andscience, at the beginning of the Renaissance, loses its importance. It hasalready been remarked that perspective is not a constant law, but a momentin the history of the idea of space: whence it follows that the problem of sight,in passing from optics to geometry, passes from the objective to the subjectivesphere.1 It is certain, in any case, that the conception of the homogenousquality of space is first set forth in the figurative arts, and then, consequently,in the physical and mathematical sciences.2To our modern consciousness it seems obvious that, if the opposite hadoccurred, art would have lost all creative power in the mechanical processesof application and deduction. In judging thus it assumes as an absoluteprinciple a characteristic peculiar to Renaissance art, and fails to see itshistorical significance: before the Renaissance the value of art lay not increation, but in repetition, in continuing the tradition by remaining withinit, instead of breaking out of it in order to renew it. The value of creativitywhich the aesthetic theory of the Renaissance recognizes in artistic achieve-ment, derives from the idea that nature is ordered and therefore created bythe artist. The novelty or originality of a work of art is such only in so faras the work of art emerges from tradition, and in emerging from it, contradictsit; and since tradition is no longer a dogma, but an object of criticism, therecan be neither invention nor creation except through the medium of a critical

1 G. Nicco, op. cit., p. 29.2For the systematic exposition of theproblem of central perspective as an abstrac-tion of reality, E. Panofsky's essay "DiePerspective als symbolische Form" (Vortrdgeder Bibl. Warburg,IV, 1924-25) is essential.



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THE ARCHITECTURE OF BRUNELLESCHI rorapproach to tradition. The ordering or creation of nature is therefore notan act of authority but an act of reason. The power of invention or of creationcomes to the artist not from the grace of God, but from the integrity of hisown consciousness, from the lucidity of his historical vision.

Cennini can take pleasure in making clear his own descent from Giotto byway of an uninterrupted tradition that passes through Agnolo and TaddeoGaddi; for the artists of the Quattrocento, beginning at Masaccio, Giotto isthe great, isolated protagonist of the Trecento: the tradition that originatedin his art merely altered and obscured its value, a value which criticism aloneshould determine. Even for Giotto art was mechanical, a craftsman's labour;but the judgment of posterity recognizes in that "fare" an ideal aim, whichit denies to that of imitators and followers, from the very fact that they aresuch. To this "making" or "producing" the art of the Renaissance opposesnot abstract speculation but "genius," "invention" ;' the artist in the processof invention is conscious of the novelty of what he is doing, and so inventionis a "making" accompanied by judgment or the attribution of value.There thus arises the idea of the artist-hero, a coryphaeusor protagonistof history; but he is this in so far as he is conscious of the value of his ownactivity, that is, in so far as he is himself an historian. His work breaks thecontinuity of tradition to justify itself in history, just as it emerges from theconfusion of matter to justify itself in nature. The mental process which, inthe same act, eliminates matter and chronicle (or tradition) by judging themas values, is, as we have said, perspective. This process is clearly describedby Alberti. Remember Ghiberti's dictum: "nothing can be seen except bylight." Though it is here considered as a physical phenomenon, this light isstill a divine emanation or irradiation, a first cause which is reflected in allthings and reveals them. Alberti on the contrary wishes to clarify the ideaof things:"we call that a thing which occupies a place." Clearly if anythingin nature exists in space, space also is nature; in fact it is the principle ofnature since the place which things occupy is necessarily antecedent to thethings. This may seem to imply a serious objection to the necessity, whichAlberti categorically affirms, of limiting the domain of art to the visible. Wemust deduce from it that the experience of the senses is not primary, butsecondary. Reason is therefore the basis of life, even of the life of the senses.In fact: "large, small, long, short, high, low, wide, narrow, light, dark,luminous, shadowy and all qualities of that kind-which because they may ormay not be added unto things, the philosophers are wont to call accidents-are such that all knowledge of them is made by comparison." It is thereforeby reasoning that the accidents are distinguished from the substance of things.But this substance is not, as has been assumed, their plastic form, theirvolume: volume is perceived through the medium of light and shade, heightand width, and these qualities, too, have been placed among the accidents.

1In Albertian terminology the faculty thatsimultaneously investigates and invents, or inother words sums up and synthetizes themoments of speculation and of action is"ingegno." For the distinction between

"ingegno" and mathematical rationality, andfor the necessity of artistic creation as anexpression of the first, see Lionello Venturi,Storia della critica d'arte, Italian ed., Florence,1945, P. 128.



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102 GIULIO CARLO ARGANMoreover it is clear that in making his catalogue of accidents, Alberti intendedto exhaust all the possible forms of the visible. Strictly speaking, if a thinghad been stripped of all its accidents, nothing would remain of it except thevoid in space left by its disappearance.'

But Alberti knows that if painting is concerned only with the visible, it isimpossible to separate the thing from its accidents: indeed the thing itself isan accident until it is known "by comparison": it would be illimitably wideand illimitably long, and illimitably deep if we did not establish the relationbetween width, length, and depth; all dazzling light or impenetrable darknessif we did not establish the relation between light and shade. We may saytherefore that the idea or substance of a thing is merely a position in space,but that position is determined precisely by the fact that it gives a situationproportionately (percomparatione)o all the accidents, that is to say, becauseit re-absorbs and eliminates the matter of which the thing is composed intoa system of proportional relations.This is indeed the function of "design." The graphic outline is originallylinked with the colouristic matter as a boundary between zones of colour: inthe Trecentesque tradition it was purely a rhythmic pattern or a narrative inrhyme and that rhythmic cadence was still dependent on the relation of theline to an already formulated colouristic modulation. For Alberti the outlineis the edge of the surface, that is the boundary between fullness and void; norcan we say that it belongs more to the fullness than to the void (or more tothe thing than to space) because its function is precisely that of mediating, orof acting as a link and solder between one and the other. As has been seen,in fact, emptiness cannot be thought of apart from fullness, nor can space beconceived of separately from the things that occupy it. (When Masolino orPaolo Uccello wish to represent the void independently of the full, theyreduce perspective to the Trecentesque idea of infinite spatiality.) The neednow becomes clear for a recourse to Euclidean geometry or to the Platonicdescription of geometrical forms as perfect forms or ideas-archetypes fromwhich all.sensible forms are derived: geometrical forms are pure spatial sitesor pure metrical relations which in their own finitude express the whole ofspace. It is not by chance that Alberti defines design in the same words asthose which his master, FrancescoFilelfo, used in defining the idea as describedby Plato: a representation "ab omni materia separata."The conception of design, as the common root of all the arts, that is, as thedesignation of the absolute value of form, is therefore very closely related tothe conception of perspective: perspective is actually the method of design,in so far as it is absolute representation. It is superfluous to point out thatrepresentation and invention may be equivalent terms: because there can be1 On the impossibility of imagining spaceas empty, or as an "enclosing medium thatencloses nothing" see Cassirer, op. cit., p. 285.Alberti's conception of cognitione per com-paratione, the basis of the theory of propor-tion, is certainly related to the idea expressedby Cusanus (De Docta Ignorantia Io. I):"Comparativa est omnis inquisitio, medioproportionis utens." On the great importance

of the thought of Cusanus, who was in Italyin the early decades of the I5th cent. andwho certainly knew Alberti, see, besidesCassirer's fundamental work, G. Nicco, ob.cit. To G. Nicco, too, we owe a notable essayon the development of perspective theory intreatises from Euclid to Piero della Fran-cesca, Le Arti, V, 1942, no. 2, p. 59-



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THE ARCHITECTURE OF BRUNELLESCHI 10o3no representation, but only mechanical imitation, if the image does not whollyreplace the object and become a substitute for it as a value or authenticreality, just as nature, as a representation of reality, becomes the one authenticreality for the thought of the Renaissance.

IIIf we admit that the artistic process has a basis of historical thought, theorigin of the fundamental ideas of Renaissance Art-perspective and design-must be sought in the work of an artist-hero: only through such a mediumcould these ideas have any positive effect on the subsequent course of artisticdevelopment. The "trattati d'arte" themselves, though ostensibly concernedwith a theoretical definition of the idea of art, are in reality the first attemptsat a history of art as a history of the artists, because their criterion is no other

than a generalization from those works of art in which they perceive anabsolute value. The formulation of the principle of perspective, or the inven-tion of perspective, are ascribed by general consent to Brunelleschi: the firstperson of that artistic trinity which is completed by Donatello and Masaccio.On this point Manetti is uncompromising: "in those times he brought tolight and himself put into practice that which painters to-day call perspectivebecause it is a part of the science that consists in placing those diminutionsand enlargements that appear to men's eyes from afar or close at hand, bothskilfully and fittingly ... and from him originated the rule which is the mean-ing of all that has been done from that time to this."It is interesting to note the distinction that Manetti makes between theoriginating intuition of Brunelleschi and the codification or application of itwhich the "dipintori" have successively ("oggi")drawn from it. The distinc-tion is not purely chronological. For the painters, perspective is the law formaking "houses and plains and mountains and landscapes of every kind, andin every place, with figuresand other things of such a size as befits the distancefrom which they are observed." Had Brunelleschielaborated this rule as a lawof vision, Manetti would not have so accurately distinguished the Brunel-leschian principle from the interpretation which has later been given to itby other painters, who have applied it to a consideration of the externalworld that has clearly no connection with architecture. It is thus impos-sible to distinguish Brunelleschi's researches on perspective from his artisticactivity, that is to say, from his architecture: it is from this, as Manetti pointsout, that the painters deduce their law of vision. This means that, sincearchitecture is free of any necessity to "imitate" reality, the formal disciplineof architecture must precede and condition the painter's contact with reality;he will indeed study reality, because the painter's realm is the visible world,but he will do so through the formal patterns of architecture. This is, wethink, the historical origin of the principle that architecture is the basis ormother of all the arts: a principle easily reducible to the other (of design asthe common root of all the arts), which will be clearly formulated in theCinquecento. Architecture, indeed, as an art free from any necessity ofimitating reality, is design itself: representation separate from "ogni materia."



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104 GIULIO CARLO ARGANIt is now necessary to see how this law "which is the meaning of all that hasbeen done from that time to this" was developed in the architecture ofBrunelleschi.

Manetti, a mathematician, says of perspective: "not without reason, justnow did I call it science," for science is making "according to law." The Lifeof Manetti is of later date than the Pitturaof Alberti and is largely indebtedto it; and one of the most important innovations, in Alberti's treatise, wasperhaps that idea of "knowledge by comparison" which emerges in opposi-tion to the Scholastic conception of knowledge as scireper causas. Since thePittura of Alberti consists of reflections on the great Masters of the earlyQuattrocento, and particularly on Brunelleschi, it is to the latter that we mayattribute, not perhaps the formulation, but the first understanding of thatprinciple which for causes, understood as external moving forces, substituteslaws, understood as immanent causes which are produced by the reciprocalco-relation of phenomena. In the architecture of Brunelleschi, therefore,must be sought the first understanding of design as an act of knowledge orcognitione er comparatione,hat is, the first laying down of that theory of pro-portion, which in its turn becomes the basic criterion for the understandingof ancient art.That Brunelleschi had undertaken some inquiry into the laws of visionmay well be inferred from what Manetti tells us of the two panels on whichBrunelleschi had depicted the Baptistery and the Palazzo della Signoria. Yetthe very objects depicted, buildings and not landscapes, suggest that thesestudies were not connected with the formulation of a general theory, but withthe concrete, particular figurative and architectonic interests of the artist.Of the first of these two panels we know that the spectator had to lookat it reflected in a mirror, through an opening cut in the wood, at a distanceproportionate to that at which the painter had placed himself while at work:moreover, instead of a painted sky there was a background of burnished silverwhich reflected the real sky with its clouds moving before the wind. Thesecond panel, on the other hand, being too large to permit the use of thisdevice, was cut out along the line of the rooftops, and one loooked at itagainst a background of sky.Manetti's description is enough to show that the genesis of several ideason which Alberti was later to build up his perspective theory can be tracedback to Brunelleschi. By means of the device of the hole in the middle of thepicture, the spectator was constrained to look at the painting, reflected in themirror, from the same point of view as that in which the painter had placedhimself. The straight line which connects the painter's eye with the centre ofthe thing depicted is already what Alberti will define as a centric ay: that isthe axis of the visual pyramid whose apex coincides with vanishing point.So far we are still within the domain of vision, though it is even now mostimportant to observe that for Brunelleschi it is essential that vision shouldhave a single and constant point of view: hence the immobility and im-partiality of the artist face to face with truth. But the painting must belooked at in a mirror; and this is not merely an artifice for making thespectator's point of view coincide with that of the painter. Alberti, who wascertainly familiar with Brunelleschi's essays in perspective, in fact advises the



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THE ARCHITECTURE OF BRUNELLESCHI 105painter to make use of the mirror as a means of checking the artistic qualitiesof his painting. When he speaks of obtaining an effect of relief by the propor-tionate use of light and shade, Alberti advises: "and you will find in themirror a good judge; for, as I know how things that are well painted mayhave great beauty in the mirror, so it is marvellous to see how every fault inpainting shows itself more ugly in the mirror. So let the mirror correct thethings which you have taken from nature." It is well known that the mirrorreverses the image: if the image is unsymmetrical the mirror will make thisdefect more apparent, because it removes it from a position to which the eyehas grown accustomed: if, on the contrary, the image is perfectly symmetrical,reversalwill not be able to modify it. In other terms: if the painter has clearlydetermined and constantly maintained his point of view, the centric ray ofthe direct vision and that of the reflected vision will coincide, while otherwisethey will diverge. The question, it will be seen, is one of symmetry andproportion.

Another important point: Brunelleschi does not paint the sky. In the firstpanel he reflects it in a mirror-likesurface, in the second he cuts out the woodso that the real sky can insert itself into the picture. His interest therefore islimited to things which as Alberti will say, occupy "a place": the sky doesnot occupy "a place" and cannot be reduced to measure or known "percomparatione." Since it cannot be represented, but only imitated, the artistforbears to paint it. The strict logic of the argument is unexceptionable: butit is the argument of an architect and not of a painter. If Filippo had wishedto lay down a general law of vision, and one that would therefore be equallyvalid for the vision of landscape, he could not have failed to take the sky intoaccount. He does not take it into account because his reasoning is relatedonly to architecture, which is a finite space, that, by its own finitude or pro-portion, gives definition also to the spatial atmosphere in which it is immersed;and he forbears to paint the sky because buildings stand out against the realsky and not against a painted background. It remains to be seen what valueBrunelleschi attributed to these exercises in perspective. It is clear that theyhad a demonstrative or, as we should say now, a polemical aim. Suchpolemics could only have been directed against the art of the late Trecentotradition, for one thing because these pictorial essays belong to the first phaseof the Master's activity, between the last years of the fourteenth and the firstof the succeeding century. To those painters who were intent only ondecoration, Brunelleschi wished to demonstrate painting as an instrument ofknowledge. One might even ask oneself whether, in that atmosphere ofnaturalistic propaganda, the happy invention of the silvery backgroundwhich reflects the light of the physical heavens, may not perhaps imply asatirical and almost irreligious allusion to those shining backgrounds of finegold in which the devout painters of the tradition sought to mirror the mysticlight of God.

The technical "miracle" of the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore (P1. 7a)has distracted critics not a little from the significance which that long andstrenuous constructive labour holds in the art of Brunelleschi. Since it is



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106 GIULIOCARLOARGANknown that Filippo had originally planned to make the dome in the form ofa hemisphere, and that only on second thoughts did he decide to carry out thescheme laid down in Arnolfo's model, the problem of the dome would seemto be reduced to a mere question of technique: the method of vaulting itwithout scaffolding.Was it really technically impossible to realize Arnolfo's plan by the usualmeans? One may easily believe that, in those first decades of the Quattro-cento, no artist would have dared to build vaulting on so vast a scale; it isindeed highly probable that throughout the Trecento, when decoration tookprecedence of construction, there may have been a falling-off in constructiveskill. But it is impossible to believe that Arnolfo can have planned, and hissuccessorsraised as far as the drum, a building which the technical resourcesof the time did not permit them to roof over.What is more, Brunelleschi never even thought of using the traditionaltechnique. From the outset he had in mind the idea of building the domewithout scaffolding; he might give up the form he had first envisaged, buthe would not give up his method of construction. Only a mistaken estimateof Brunelleschi's "classicism" has induced the belief that the spherical vaultrepresented a formal ideal, later sacrificed to contingent needs. When weremember that the method of vaulting the dome without scaffolding hadbeen deduced from the Roman circular domes, the terms of the question arereversed: the most reasonable hypothesis is that Filippo had thought first ofa semi-circular vault because it was from such models that he had evolvedhis system, and that he returned later to Arnolfo's plan when he had becomepersuaded that the system might equally well be applied to domes with ribsand pointed arches. This method, which the conclusive researches of Sam-paolesil have shown to be of Roman origin, consists in walling the dome withcourses of bricks disposed in a herring-bone pattern. Brunelleschi's formalideal did not end in the pattern of the pointed arch or of the single span: itwas the ideal of a form capable of sustaining itself throughout the process ofits own growth, of producing the force that sustains it, of disposing itself inspace by virtue of its own interior structural coherence and vitality, by itsnatural proportionality, like that of "bones and members."The herring-bone method of construction is applied in Santa Maria delFiore, on a much larger scale than it is in any of the ancient models, that isto say, to the measurements of the drum already constructed. The problemset by Brunelleschi consisted therefore in reducing a gothic dimensiono pro-portionthrough the principle of self-support, that is of the autonomy of theform in space. Thus the double vault of the dome finds a justification notonly practical but figurative (in the actual words of Filippo "so that it mayappear more enlarged and splendid"): the artist feels the need for establish-ing an exact relation between the form of the dome and the various propertiesof space that are summed up in it. In the interior the curvature of the surfacesof the octagon, sums up and co-ordinates the various spatial trends of the

1 P. Sampaolesi, La Cupola di Santa Mariadel Fiore ; il progetto, la costruzione, Istituto diArcheologia e Storia dell'Arte, Rome, 1941.On sundry Brunelleschian problems, but

particularly on the dome, see the studies con-tained in Atti del o10 Congresso Nazionale diStoria dell'Architettura, held at Florence in1936 and published by Sansoni in 1938.



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a-Brunelleschi, Dome of Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence (pp. x05 ff.) b-Lantern



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a-Brunelleschi, Pazzi Chapel, Florence (p. Io9)

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THE ARCHITECTURE OF BRUNELLESCHI 107naves and the presbytery, as into a common horizon; on the exterior the ribsmark the limit or the juncture between the masses of the building and thecircumambient space. If the effect of the dome is spatial, the process whichleads to the definition of space is a constructive process. But this constructivelabour differs from the mediaeval mechanica ecause its acts are no longerrepeated by tradition, but determined by reason: the coherence of these actsmust there be referred to a rational principle. Manetti says that in RomeBrunelleschi "saw the ancients' methods of building and their symmetry; andit seemed to him that he saw there very clearly a certain order, as of bonesand members." It is not a question of the generic anthropomorphism thatrecurs, following on the traces of Vitruvius, in the treatise writers of theRenaissance: it is a question of rational discrimination between the elementsthat bear and the elements that are borne, and of their distribution accordingto order, that is according to symmetry and proportion.In Romanesque architecture as in Gothic, the artistic ideal to be realized,though by different figurative methods, is the effect of unlimited space. Inthe first, weight prevails over strain, and the effect of space depends uponmass; in the second, strain prevails over weight and the effect depends onlinear tension. In either case the motive force is an energy that develops, andtends to develop towards the infinite, but which finds a check and a deter-mination in matter. And matter is already form, because if matter has alreadya spiritual quality of its own as a divine creation, we cannot conceive of anyform that transcends it. Form, force, matter make up an indivisible unity:force is not only relative to the hardness and the elasticity of matter, but alsoto the thickness, the extension, the flexion, the outline, the section of theelement in which it is expressed. One may arrive at length at the sublimationof matter to such a point that a mass which physically presseson the groundcan express an ascent; none the less, form remains a quality of matter, how-beit a supernatural one, a revelation of its inner spirituality. A Gothiccathedral tends in fact to be a compendium of all knowledge, that is of allreality; and this not only, as Mile has observed, in its decorative details butin its deepest structural intentions. Since reality is the infinite in terms ofindividual things, it is expressed in architecture by individual forces: Gothicarchitecture is in fact the architecture of the individualization of forces.Even the historical interest that attracts Brunelleschi to a study of theantique would have no justification if he had not sought in antique art for astandard of comparison in the criticism of tradition, that is for a means offreeing himself from a tradition that was still alive: history is always a criticismand an overcoming of tradition. Moreover, the very fact that the needwas felt for a spatial definition which should include and resolve the wholeproblem of reality, necessarily presupposes the experience of Romanesqueand Gothic spatiality as the expression of infinite reality; this was the matterwhich had to be reduced into measure.Brunelleschi's mental process in regardto tradition is already that which Marsilio Ficino will define in Platonic terms:"in corpore animus a singulis ad species, a specibus transit ad rationes"; orsince we are dealing with architecture, from individual forces to classes andfrom classes to systems. To group several forces together into a class it isnecessary to define their quantity and quality; thus it happens that we are



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Io8 GIULIOCARLOARGANno longer dealing with forces in action or in development, such as strain andstress, but with those that are developed or in equilibrium, such as weightwhich has its exactly correspondingresistance. One might say, paraphrasingAlberti, that our "knowledge" of forces is reached by "comparison," that isby their reciprocal limitings and oppositions or by their reciprocal "propor-tioning" of each other. Only when the dramatic conflict of forces has beenexhausted, only, that is, when a catharsis has been achieved, will architecturecease to be a fragment of reality, and become a representation of reality. Andsince experience-which here means the experience of Gothic architecture,in which the force of an element is in proportion to its "momento" or to itsextension and duration-taught that the strength of a force is relative to aspace, to constant forces there must therefore correspond constant intervals.This constancy of the relation between force and interval is the quality ofthe single span arch as opposed to the pointed one. To compare the singlespan with the pointed arch it was not necessary to go back to Vitruvius andto ancient monuments: Tuscan Romanesque architecture was enough. Yetthe arcades of the Loggia degli Innocenti with their very wide and extendedspan, are undoubtedly much more akin to the arches of the Loggia dellaSignoria and even to the ogival arches of S. Maria Novella and S. Maria delFiore than to those of the church of the SS. Apostoli or of Roman monu-ments. In the latter, indeed, the function of support is translated into anequilibrium between the massesof fullness and of emptiness; in the formertheline has a value of its own as a supreme formal declaration of spatial infinity.This is the value to which Brunelleschi would give a clear definition, measur-ing the depth of the void by the actual outline of the arch. He reflects that inthe single span arch, all points of the semicircle are equi-distant in relation tovanishing point, that is in relation to the apex of a half cone having its basewithin the semicircle itself: therefore the width of the curve is relative to thedepth of the extension of the arch instead of to the weight which it sustains.The arch is thereforealways an "intercisione,""primopiano," in a perspectiveprogression which has its term at vanishing point; the curve of the arch, asa projection of depth on a plane surface, has thus the value of a horizon.For Brunelleschi too, as for Donatello and Masaccio, Romanitass in thefirst instance "toscanita :" the definition of his own historical character beginswith that of his own natural character. If, in determining the spatial valueof the arch he relies on Tuscan Gothic architecture, in determining thespatial value of the plane he relies on the more remote practice of TuscanRomanesque architecture. It would be interesting to know whether theopinions expressed by Manetti in his excursusn the decadence of architecturein the Middle Ages are entirely his own, or whether they go back, in part atleast, to Brunelleschi: it is anyhow significant, that in certain FlorentineRomanesque buildings he should see some reflection of classic splendour, andshould attribute them, by an errorfull of meaning, to the Carolingian period,that is to the time of the most intense classical revival of the Middle Ages.Brunelleschi's architecturepreservesmore than one reminiscence of the marbleinlays that adorned the walls of Florentine Romanesque churches, for examplein the pure "scrittura"of space on the flat surface by means of grey pilastersand arcades on a white background. One might even venture to interpret the



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THE ARCHITECTURE OF BRUNELLESCHI og09fagade of the Pazzi Chapel (P1.8a) as a development of the spatial theme of theRomanesque inlays. One might point out that the artist had arrived throughthe exercise of a subtle dialectic, at that absolute representationof space in theflat, by identifying linear and chromatic values; and that in this mutual identi-fication, the linear element is purged of the material quality of the outline justas the chromatic element is purged of the material quality of the surface.The bean-pattern frieze, the grooved pilasters are far from being a simplereproduction of the antique: they are an alternation, almost a vibration, oflight and shade (P1.8b). Precisely because this plane generates light from thefrequency of its relations of light and shade, it may be distinguished from thesurface, which is always a defence in relation to an external source of light,and becomes identified with the totality of space. And perhaps this is the"intellectual" source of that light which in Piero della Francesca is no longerphysical but spatial. The Florentine Romanesque inlays were undoubtedlya sign of a return to the fountain-head of the Byzantine tradition, perhapseven of an obstinate Tuscan resistance to the renewing tide of Lombardarchitecture. By means of these inlays an attempt was made to resolve theeffect of space which Lombard architecture enclosed within the complexarticulation of its masses, into chromatic terms on a flat surface.I Geometricalforms, while eliminating any modulation in colouristic relations within thedesign, employed colours in absolute terms of contrast on the surface: nospatial hypothesis is possible beyond a strict equation of the opposing termsof surface and depth. A most subtle and intimately Platonic processof thoughtwarns the artist that if he thinks of space as possessing infinite depth, he willfind it quite impossible to distinguish it from the surface: therefore theinfinity of space cannot be a sensory perception or an "effect," but a concep-tual representation or a "cause," such as are for instance the figures ofgeometry. In this mediaeval Tuscan Platonism there are already to be foundthe premises of the transcendental logic of a great German Platonist of thefifteenth century, Cusanus.For Brunelleschi the plane is the place on which there occurs the projec-tion or definition of depth, not as an effect, but as pure value or geometricform. Therefore the place is a pure mental abstraction, the precondition forthe representationof space. Alberti will translate this intuition ofBrunelleschi'sinto a formula: the surface is still matter, and as it were the outer skin ofthings, although it is the extreme limit of matter, its suture with space; insteadthe plane is a geometric entity, the "intersection" of the visual pyramid. Infact the plane in Brunelleschi's architecture is an "intersection" and not asurface; it is the place on to which the various spatial distances are projected,and on which the infinite dimensions of space are reduced to the three dimen-sions of perspective space. Since on the plane these distances cannot be valuedas effects (for they would be chaotically superimposed one upon another) butonly as measurements, the plane is the condition of their "cognitione ercomparatione"hat is to say of their proportionality.

1For a fuller analysis of the formal valuesof Romanesque and Gothic architecture inTuscany I refer the reader to my twovolumes, L'Architettura Protocristiana, Prero-

manicae Romanica, Florence, Nemi, 1936, andL'Architettura taliana del Duecento e del Trecento,Florence, Nemi, 1937-8



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I o GIULIO CARLO ARGANOn the faqade of the Pazzi Chapel, for instance, every separate portion ofthe plane has its point of reference in a corresponding value of depth in theportico or the interior, and is a projection of this: hence the lack of an effectivearticulation of the parts which are elements of limitation and not elementsof force, and the composition of the plane in squares and recesses (Pl. 9a)."All surfacesof a body that are simultaneouslyvisible," Alberti explains, "willform a pyramid composed of as many lesser facets as there are surfaces inthe thing seen." It is the principle of the homogeneity of space. But theprinciple of the homogeneity of space destroys that of the homogeneity ofmatter: for in order to think of space as homogenous, that is, as uninterruptedby the presence of bodies, it is necessary to think of those bodies as composedof space, that is as broken up into a successionof planes. Given this distinctionbetween the plane, as a complete representation of space, and the surface, itis hard to accept the ingenious thesis of L. H. Heydenreich1 who makes asharp distinction between the firstand second phases of Brunelleschi'sactivity,between the moment of the Wandbautennd that of the Pfeilerkonstruktionen,or between the period when the wall is only a raumbegrenzendechale andthat in which it arrives at a raumbildendeunktion. The cause of this suddenstylistic evolution is said to be the journey to Rome, which Heydenreichpostpones to the years between 1432 and 1434; but the later researches ofSampaolesi fix the date conclusively at a time previous to the beginning ofwork on the dome. In fact there is a complete coherence between the worksof the first and second periods: the problem of Brunelleschi'sartistic develop-ment does not so much consist in determining the date of thejourney to Rome,as in forming a precise estimate of his relations with Donatello and Masaccio,which were undoubtedly close and reciprocal.According to Heydenreich's theory Brunelleschi's artistic development canbe codified into the artist's progressive abandonment of building to a longi-tudinal plan, for building to a central plan, which is the classic scheme parexcellence, he most rigorous and systematic application of the Vitruviantheory of the module. In reality, if one starts from the spatial premises ofBrunelleschi the two plans cannot be so sharply differentiated: on the con-trary, they complete each other by turns. And here again we find, as funda-mental, the practice of Gothic architecture, which so often unites the twoplans or imposes one upon the other. The dome of S. Maria del Fiore is itselfconceived as a co-ordination or synthesis of the longitudinal depths of thenaves and the stellate spaces of the octagon.Both the Sacristy of S. Lorenzo and the Pazzi Chapel are typical examplesof the synthesis between a longitudinal plan and a central plan. In the PazziChapel (P1. 9b), for instance, the simple tracing of an entablature and anarcade on the plane carries the depth of the squared apse on to the longitudinalwalls: in the same way the depth of the windows opening to the front is graphi-cally repeated between the sunk pilasters. Every plane has therefore the same"content" of space. This solution is perfectly logical, because strictly speakinga figure in plane geometry is no less representative of space than a figure insolid geometry: indeed the hemispherical dome has the same function of1L. H. Heydenreich, "Spatwerke Brunel-leschis," Jahrbuchder Preussischen unstsamm-lungen, 1931.



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a-Brunelleschi, Portico of Pazzi Chapel, Florence(p. IIo)

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a-Brunelleschi, San Lorenzo, Florence (p. 112)

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THE ARCHITECTURE OF BRUNELLESCHI IIIsumming up and concluding the contrasts between actual depth and depthgraphically represented. Architecture, therefore, is not an abstract andsymbolic representationof naturalistic space; on the contrary it is the materialquality of the mural construction which is transformed into space by therationality of the constructive process. In other terms, it is the space implicitin the construction as an "effect," which is transformed into space-the"cause" of architecture. Space, as pure representation, has therefore acathartic value as regards the realistic, dramatic, struggle between force andmatter, that is as regards the mechanicsf the construction.But the problem remains substantially unchanged when one passes fromthese centralized longitudinal constructions to a genuine centralized con-struction, the unfinished Rotonda degli Angeli.' The plan provided for anoctagonal building, with pilasters and radial chapels. The end walls of thechapels were flat, the side walls hollowed out into niches. If Brunelleschi hadimagined the building as the co-ordination of lesser concaves to the majorconcaves of the central space and of the dome, he would logically havedeveloped the end walls of the chapels into niches too. Since these end walls

Plan and Section of S. Maria degli Angeli, Florence (From Marchini's reconstruction).are flat, vanishing point will always fall on the plane, whatever the point ofview: the extreme limit of space will always be a plane and not an atmo-spheric hollow. Hence one may deduce that the Rotonda degli Angeli is acentralized construction developed or adjusted according to a longitudinalvision; the very perspective curvature of the lateral niches of the chapelstends to resolve itself into a single vanishing point, to bring it into focus orcentre it on the end plane. This is perhaps the culmination of the systematic1For a reconstruction of the original plansee G. Marchini, "Un disegno di Giuliano diSangallo riproducente l'alzato della Rotonda

degli Angeli," Atti del Io CongressoAazionaledi Storia dell'Architettura, lorence, Sansoni,1938, p. 147-



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112 GIULIO CARLO ARGANsearch for a synthesisof the two spatial formulae f tradition. Brunelleschiknowsthat spaceis not an effect,but a causeor law alikeof the central andof the longitudinalscheme: that is to say, he strivesto deduce a single lawfrom the two differentspatialeffectsor the two essentialdata of the tradi-tional phenomenologyof space.'It is indeedworthyof note thattheplanof the lanternof thedome(P1.7b),one of the Master's last works, repeats almost exactly the plan of theRotonda degli Angeli.2 When one considers hat the lanternis a structureopenedand imposed n its completenessupon an intersectionof planeswitha commonsource,one may easilyconclude that the problemof the Rotondais not one of co-ordinatedgravitationround a central axis, but one of thedisintegration f massinto a complexof intersectingplanes:not the problemof the massthat containsspace,but that of spacewhich penetratesand dis-solves the mass. Such, in fact, is the functionof the lantern n relationto thedome: the buttresses f the lantern,whichcorrespondo the ribs of the dome,suggestthe rotationof the massin infinitespace: and in that possibilityofrotation s made clear the singleend to which all the spatialelementsof thebuilding, n theirproportional elations,may be reduced. As the dome pro-portionsthe mass of the building,so the lantern"proportions"he massofthe dome to the infinity of space. The high and narrow windowsof thelantern accentuate the evidenceof this pure intersectionof planes, and to-gether with the niches hollowed out in the buttresses,and those of thecolonnadeplaced at the base of the drum, balance,by theirconcavity,thedilatationof the dome: so thatthrough hisbelatedrevision t emergesndeed"enlarged" o the utmostlimits of space.A relationsimilar o that betweenthe PazziChapeland the RotondadegliAngelimayalso be pointedout betweenthe twogreatbasilicalconstructions:San Lorenzowith the simple plan of the Latincrossand SantoSpiritowherethe colonnadesare also developed along the wallsof the transeptand of thepresbytery.In San Lorenzo(P1.Ioa,b) the ratioof the archof thesidechapels

1 On this point it is important to note thecontrast drawn by Panofsky ("Die Perspek-tive als symbolische Form") between thescenography of Vitruvius as a winkelperspek-tivische Konstruktion, and central perspectivewhich assumes the scene to be depicted on aplane instead of on a concave surface. Sceno-graphy finds its typical expression in thecentralized plan (omnium linearum ad circinicentrum responsus). Therefore classical artwas eine reineKdrperkunst nd thought of spaceas "aggregato" (cf. Cassirer, op. cit., p. 285).The distinction between scenography andperspective corresponds to the distinctionbetween perspectiva communis and perspectivaartificialis, drawn in 1505 by Jean Pdlerin andimmediately seized upon by Diirer (see J. vonSchlosser, Die Kunstliteratur,Schroll, Vienna,1924, p. 227). This distinction is not main-tained by the Italian theorists who regardbeauty as immanent in nature; in the

northern theorists, on the contrary, beauty,as a pure abstraction, transcends nature.Hence it is legitimate to seek for the previoushistory of central perspective in Gothic Artwith its tendency to the infinite prolongationof its lines (see besides Panofsky, op. cit., G. I.Kern, "Die Entwicklung der zentral-per-spektivischen Konstruktion in der Euro-piischen Malerei von der Spdtantike bis zurMitte des XV Jahrhunderts," Forschungenu.Fortschritte, 1937): it is a search which must,however, resolve itself into demonstratingthat the artists of the early I5th century,especially Brunelleschi, must have had a fullunderstanding of Gothic art.2Heydenreich treats at length of theRotonda degli Angeli, the lantern, and theexedra of the dome in his highly importantessay on the later work of Brunelleschi inJahrbuch der Preussischen Kunstsammlungen,1931.



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THE ARCHITECTURE OF BRUNELLESCHI I13to the arch of the naves is as 3 to 5; therefore the two arches have a commonvanishing point and are two succeeding sections of the same visual pyramid.Thus the depth of the chapels is transmitted and resolved through the brickvaulting of the extension into the arches of the central nave. The three walls ofthe small chapels are framed by strongly modelled cornices: thus the walls fallinto the background in three directions, and the value of depth which cannotbe developed within such small dimensions is condensed into the modellingof the cornices. In fact, if one imagines a depth divided into equal spaces, itis clear that, as we increase our distance, the spaces between member andmember become, when seen in perspective, thicker and closer: by makingthe modelling of the members more complex, that is, by implicating theintervals or distances with the quality of the plastic objects, one will obtain,in the actual form of the disposal of the members the representation of un-plumbable depth. And how easy it is to see, and how easy it would be toillustrate with precise examples, the same process at work in the low reliefof Donatello.The succession of spaces which is projected into the arcades of the centralaisle is thus a typical perspective successionfrom the horizon (the end walls ofthe chapels) to the foreground (the arch of the nave). In Santo Spirito (P1. II)the ratio between the arch of the chapels and that of the nave is of i to i :and the chapels are reduced to the concavity of niches. So the lateral spacesare not graduated perspectively, but directly inserted and articulated intothe arches of the nave. Every column of the nave, to which there correspondsa half-column in the side aisle, thus stands out in its plastic form, from theconcavity of two contiguous niches. Not the parallel planes of the centreaisle, but the plastic succession of arches and columns sums up the space ofthe side aisles and of the chapels. In fact, if the artist in San Lorenzo hasgiven distinct sourcesof light to the centre aisle and the side aisles, if, that is,he conceived them as distinct and co-ordinated spatial entities, in SantoSpirito, the side aisles have no source of light in themselves, because theirspaces constitute a single plastic organism with the colonnades of the centreaisle. If in San Lorenzo the axis of the centre aisle was simply an axis ofsymmetry for the proportional distribution of spatial intervals, in SantoSpirito it is the ground plan of the "centralized" vision. Space is no longergraphically described in geometrical forms, but realized in the proportions-metrical, chiaroscural and luminous-of plastic form.So the column itself acquires value as a member; it is no longer the cesuraplaced between successive spatial intervals, but-as Alberti would say-athing that occupies "a place." In its proportions, or in the plastic quality ofits form it resolves all the "accidents" of stress: its value in architecture hence-forth is that of a protagonist of space, as is that of the human form in paintingand sculpture. The relation between the emergence of the columns and theconcavity of the niches in Santo Spirito is in fact, plastically and luministically,a typically Masacciesque relation.Niches are thus the spatial Leitmotifof the later works of Brunelleschi.But it is not a question of chiaroscural or atmospheric values, of a mass ofvoid in opposition to a mass of fullness. In Santo Spirito a window breaksthe continuity of the chiaroscuro of the curved surface: the niches in the but-



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114 GIULIO CARLO ARGANtresses of the lantern and those in the Rotonda are also open so as to avoida pictorial effect of atmosphere. If, in fact, the spatial interval between twomembers is plastically expressed in the actual modelling of the members thespace enclosed between those two cannot be indefinite: the curve of the nichegives a sense of indefinite space, of something beyond the horizon, of the sky.In this sense it is a development of the conception of the plane as a representa-tion of space, that is as a synthesis of depth and surface.It is clear that a complete representation of space cannot admit a dis-tinction between the space internal and the space external to the building:hence that reciprocal integration of internal and external which we havealready noted in the Pazzi Chapel, which was provided for in the originalplan of Santo Spirito, which is fully realized in the open architecture of thelantern and which is, above all, the central problem in the long constructivemeditations on the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore. The building is nowconceived as a pure structure which inserts itself into empiric spatiality andproportions it, or reduces it to perspective space: like early exercises in paint-ing, the building is an instrument of knowledge, the instrument that createsperspective. In more general terms, the building is the instrument which,through the rationality of its process of construction, transforms a confusedand unlimited reality into clear and ordered nature. By this same processthe mediaeval mechanica, hich had reached its loftiest expression in the freeplay of forces in infinite spatiality, becomes ars liberalis.At this point there arises the problem, the analysis of which is precludedby the limits of this study, of the value of modelling in the architectonicmembers of Brunelleschi: that is of the value of design as an expression ofperspective space, and in general as a spatial calligraphy or language. If theframework is in substance, no other than a "spatial object" or a boundary (anedge, as Alberti will say dproposof contour in painting) of the surface, whichgradually incorporates with itself and realizes in plastic terms all the variousspatial positions of that surface,we can affirm that Brunelleschi'ssearch for the"bones and members" is the true historical basis of Quattrocento design: thatis of the line (think of Andrea del Castagno and Pollaiulo) which, in the out-line of a body-and of a body in motion, that is with its forces at their utmosttension-implies the whole of space. That is why Brunelleschi'sarchitecture,confronting the problem of the figurative tradition in all its aspects, is at oncearchitecture, painting and sculpture: that is to say, it resolves the mechanicaof the particular technical traditions into a unitary conception of art. Fromthis moment art, which considers itself as a cognitive activity, can no longertolerate a classification of its forms according to the quality of manual labourinvolved in them or according to their traditional range of expressiveness.The discussionswhich follow in the treatisesof the Renaissance on the qualitiespeculiar to the various arts will tend not so much to classify them, as to relatethem in order of merit to a common ideal of art. This also explains whyBrunelleschi's references to the art of the Gothic tradition become morefrequent in the last period of his activity, in other words with the increase ofhis figurative experience; the case of Santo Spirito is typical, since it iscertainly the most "classical" of Brunelleschi's constructional ideas and is yet,at the same time, the most significant fruit of the artist's meditations on the



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11

a-Brunelleschi, San Spirito, Florence (p. II3)

b-Interior of San Spirito (detail) (p. I I3) c-Interior of San Spirito (detail) (p. I13)This content downloaded from 143.107.252.119 on Thu, 22 Aug 2013 07:06:28 AM



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a-Ghiberti, Sacrifice of Abraham, Bargello,Florence (p. II6)b-Brunelleschi, Sacrifice of Abraham, Bargello,Florence (p. I15)

c-Donatello, David, Bargello,Florence (p. I19)d-Donatello, Herod's Feast, S. Giovanni, Siena (p. 117)



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THE ARCHITECTURE OF BRUNELLESCHI I15most recent tradition of Tuscan architecture: the Cathedral of Orvieto, andas Salmi has pointed out, the Cathedral of Siena.' Like every process ofhistorical understanding, or, which is the same, of critical reflection, the ideaof perspective, the more it is clarified and developed in the mind of theartist, the more it enlarges that mind to take in new experience.The infinite world of reality which the art and thought of the MiddleAges had discovered and illumined by the light of grace,-that whole worldin which the Trecento had beheld the course of man's struggle for spiritualsalvation, could only have been eliminated by the substitution of an aridconceptual system; from whence would have emerged not a Renaissance buta darker Middle Age.It is in the Trecento that line, which in the Byzantine tradition hadbeen pure arabesque or a boundary between zones of colour, frees itself totake on an intense descriptive value and to become the outline of thingsanimated by an eternal rhythm of movement, the very rhythm of theirpassing and vanishing in the continuity of time. In architecture, line des-cribes the flow of forces, as in painting and sculpture it describes the flowof feelings. It is this line which, through the spatial abstraction of Brunelleschi,becomes design in the art of the Renaissance. The line is a quality of thething; it belongs to and characterizes it. Design is a quality of space, as thesupreme synthesis or cause of things. That is why Alberti points out that lineshould not separate (or we shall fall back into the world of individual things)but shouldjoin or give proportion. Design is the framework, the articulation,the structure of space. The process that leads from reality or spatial infinityto perspective, and from perspective to design, is precisely that which Marsilioproclaims as proper to the animus n corporeand the artist is in fact animus ncorporen the highest sense): a progress from individual things to species andfrom species to rationes. Design, which Alberti identifies with the Platonicidea, is in fact the supreme ratio.2

IIISince man too is, by his origins, a portion of reality, the rational processof space is not applicable to external reality alone; it is the very process ofconsciousnessand is therefore valid for the reality in which human life consists,

for the world of passion and sentiment. We propose to point out briefly theethical impulse behind this process of knowledge.Manetti, speaking of the relief submitted by Brunelleschi in the competi-tion for the Baptistery doors (P1. I2b), observes that everyone was amazed bythe force and freedom of the "attitudes": "the attitude of Abraham, the atti-tude of the finger beneath his chin, his readiness," and that of the angel "theway in which he takes his hand" etc. In this relief "there is no member that isnot instinct with spirit." He goes on to praise Filippo for having finished his1M. Salmi, "Note sulla chiesa di S.Spirito," Atti del Io Congressodi Storia dell'Ar-chitettura, Florence, 1938, p. 159.2For the development of design as an

"Idea" cf. Panofsky, Idea and LionelloVenturi, Storia della Critica d'Arte, Florence,1945, PP. 128 ff.



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i16 GIULIO CARLO ARGANstory in a short time "because he was strong in the exercise of his art" whileGhiberti "did many times destroy and remake his, both as a whole and inparts" and completed his work "in a great while."Here are two opposite methods and two opposite results. Ghiberti pro-ceeds slowly, perfecting the details, Filippo executes swiftly and confidently:in the former, ideation and execution are inseparable and develop side byside, each furthering the other, in the latter, they are distinct and successivemoments. Lorenzo is the man of tradition, and the source of his inspiration isin his own labour as a craftsman: Filippo is the modern man of will who firstplans and decides and then executes. The result appears in the vital force ofthe "attitudes," the energy of the actions, the intensity ("spirito") of everypart: Abraham has decided on the sacrifice and undertakes it without hesita-tion, but the will of the angel is in conflict with his will. In Ghiberti's relief(P1. 12a), on the contrary, Abraham's action is hesitant; it does not express adecision, but only a wavering intention: he seems to be delaying in order toawait the arrival of the angel who is still far off in heaven. The time of thedrama is ill-defined because the space is ill-defined. The rock and the bodyof Isaac are inclined in opposite directions: the oblique spur of rock separatesthe group of the sacrifice from that of the servants with the ass. These twodistinct zones correspond to different times: the anecdote of the servantspostpones the imminence of the drama. In Brunelleschi's relief the line issingle because the space is single. From the two stooping servants at thebottom, the composition rises into a pyramid whose apex coincides with themost dramatic moment, the hand of the angel which grasps the arm ofAbraham. The movement, too, is single: the tension of Abraham's body hasits release in the figure of the servant drinking, and the contortion of Isaac'sbody is the culminating point of the rhythm of angles that begins in the figureof the servant who is extracting a thorn from his foot. A single concatenatedmovement, like a swift play of light, simultaneously expresses both move-ments: Abraham about to strike and the angel stopping him. The group ofservantswith the ass is no longer anecdotal; from that foregroundthe dramaticrepresentation develops, with lightning force, up to the final gesture.If the problem of the definition of space is inseparable from that of theartistic development of the Master, we must conclude, given the date of thisrelief, that the first postulates of perspective are laid down in it. One of theseis the reduction of narrative to drama, of temporal succession to the unity ofplace, of the evocation to the representation of an action.The relief astounded its contemporaries by what we should nowadays callits violent realism. In point of fact the novelty of the work lies in its stronglymarked archaic accent. The conventional rhythms of line and of delicatechiaroscuro are broken so as to give place to a hard cutting of planes to formmasses of alternating light and shade. This modelling and the force and con-catenation of the movements are clear indications: Filippo, passing over theTrecentesque tradition, had sought his dramatic sources in Giovanni Pisano:the angel's gesture itself, to quote only the dramatic climax of the scene, hasits precedent in the Last Judgment of the Pisano pulpit. But in GiovanniPisano the rhythm had been swift, increasing, in continual tension: here themoments of the story are distinguished and individualized, but are seen



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THE ARCHITECTURE OF BRUNELLESCHI 117simultaneously in their final resolution. The principle of "intersection", if weare not mistaken, was applied to time before it was applied to space, unlessindeed the new idea of space is a consequence of that sudden arrestation oftime.

The sculpture of Donatello is undoubtedly the record of a new mode ofconceiving the dramatic quality of life. In Rome, Filippo, and Donatellotogether sought out and measured the relics of Roman Art, but Donatello,says his biographer, "never opened his eyes to architecture." Nor did Filippotrouble to initiate him into it, as though "he saw that Donato had no aptitudetherein." Vasari, in his turn, records that Filippo blamed his friend forrepresenting the crucified Christ in the form of a peasant. Filippo, who hadbeen thought too much of a realist by the judges in the competition,found that Donatello sometimes carried realism to excess. Donatello's worldis in fact the world of feeling and of drama, the world of pure action: in hissculpture a popular Tuscan ethos s exalted to the level of the classical epos.The passage of Manetti warns us, if such a warning is necessary, thatDonatello, who was of anything but a speculative temperament, did not startfrom theoretic premises: yet he is undoubtedly the first artist to construct afigured representation perspectively. Oertell believes that he can place thefirst determination of vanishing point in the relief of St. George and theDragon, dated about 1416. We instead, are concerned to show that in thisrelief the receding planes of the cave and the portico, by contracting space,cause the flattened masses of the horse and its rider to stand out with aneffect of plastic emergence. Perspective has therefore a value of contrast, asopposed to that which it holds, for example, in the painting of Masolino, whereit serves as guide to the rhythmic alignment of the figures. It proportions bothspace and figures, contrasting the figure with space, or, since the figure is inthe foreground, contrasting surface and depth.A more precise construction with central perspective may be found in therelief of Herod's Feast, which can be dated between 1425 and 1427 (P1. I d).Vanishing point is clearly distinguished in the middle of the central arcade,and coincides with the elbow of the viol-player; the architraves, the pilasters,the flight of steps ascending on the right, the ends of the beams set into thepilasters all concur exactly at that point and determine an absolute unity ofspace. Nor has this architecture a generic function as a spatial site: it is acomplex, yet broken structure, that enters into the life of the action, dis-tinguishes its episodes, and even, by its air of antique ruin, plays its part inthe pathos of the scene. In this, on the other hand, it is certainly possible todistinguish various stages of the narrative (the dance, the presentation of thesevered head, the different emotional reactions of the spectators); but theaction, in that single and co-active space, is itself single and its variousnarrative phases, occurring in the same time and in the same space, becomea clash of passions in action. The clash of passions is expressed by the sharpdivergences of the figures which leave an empty space in the centre. Thefigures move along intersecting paths; they do not rest on predeterminedplanes, but by their movement create opposing planes, which means that theyI R. Oertel, "Die Friihwerke des Masac-cio," Marburgerahrbuchar Kunstwissenschaft,I933-

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