Filippo Brunellschi
Brunelleschi’s training began with apprenticing
as a goldsmith and sculptor. During this
time, a major influence in his life was a merchant and medical doctor, Paolo
Toscanelli, who was a man of mathematics.
This man taught Brunelleschi a lot about math, including geometry, which
he became very interested in.
Brunelleschi decided to enter a
competition to build the bronze doors of the Florentine baptistery, while
teaching. His competitor was Lorenzo
Ghiberti, a very good sculptor. After
losing the competition, Brunelleschi decided to get out of Florence for a
while, and went to Rome. This trip to
Rome that he had, really taught him the meaning of Architecture, and seems to
have given him a better understanding of his own personal interests. Returning to Florence, with a new talent in
hand, Brunelleschi signed up for a competition to be a consultant on the dome
of the cathedral. This time, his idea
and design won, and Brunelleschi was chosen to design the dome.
This dome is amazing to the eye,
especially with an understanding of how difficult, and how much time went into
it. The pointed dome is a double shelled dome, consisting of a rib that is the
main bone structure of the dome. The
bricks inside are laid in herring bone style, where they are not all stacked
one on top of the other, but in fact they some are vertical, and some are
horizontal. This helps to distribute
weight more evenly. Brunelleschi, since
he studied the architecture of the ancient Romans, he understood the way things
needed to be constructed to last. He was
a magnificent architect, and was probably the only person at the time that
could come up with a way to build such a massive dome that would last as long
as it has.
Dome of the Duomo
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Vasari on Masaccio
From the beginning of his painting
career, Masaccio always tried to convey the most lifelike figures in his
works. Vasari mentions that he tried “following
as closely as possible” to the way that Donatello and Brunelleschi worked. Although the job of painting was much
different, he tried to make his painting animated and real. Masaccio’s paintings were now different than
anybody had ever seen, more humanistic and natural than even Giotto. One of the reasons being, is, Masaccio
studied, and practiced perspective. In
one of the temperas he created, Masaccio tried something not many had before;
he shows a view from below. Vasari
states that because not many had tried this before he received “no little
praise.” These experiments with
perspective showed the talent, and the genius behind the art that is done by
Masaccio, and many later artists.
One of his most amazing works is the
scene of St. Peter asking Christ how to pay the taxes, and is told to get them
out of the fish’s belly. The natural and
realistic details of this painting include Saint Peter “especially lifelike,
for his head is flushed from bending over.”
This detail is very evolutionary in the way of painting, because in
paintings, the detail of how the human body reacts to things has been scarce if
not absent completely. This is the
concept of art as genius, because it is no longer just paintings with pretty
colors and how the way people look in imagination, but how humans look
anatomically. Masaccio definitely
understood the way that the human body looks, and Vasari understood the level
of talent that Masaccio had.
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Masaccio
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