What Family Financed the Renaissance and Established the Former Glory of Rome
Born in Florence in 1377, Brunelleschi, like his peers Ghiberti and Donatello, was apprenticed to a goldsmith, Benincasa Lotti. They worked among the slums of the Santa Croce quarter. It was there that young Brunelleschi learned the skills of mounting, engraving and embossing. He besides studied the science of movement, using wheels, gears, cogs and weights.
In 1401, the young craftsman entered a competition to design new bronze doors for the city's baptistry. Already paranoid, Brunelleschi hid his piece of work away, and watched as his rival, Ghiberti, the lesser technician, wooed the judges and won the commission. Legend has information technology that Brunelleschi stormed out of the contest when he was refused complete control, and quit the metropolis of Florence altogether.
Brunelleschi spent the adjacent ten-years living rough in Rome with his expert friend, the sculptor Donatello, studying the ruins of the great urban center. He was especially interested in Roman technology and the use of stock-still proportion and Roman vaults. The construction of the Pantheon - peculiarly the dome - fascinated him. Brunelleschi dedicated himself to understanding how it stayed up, which included pouring Roman physical over a massive timber frame.
When Brunelleschi returned to Florence, a new prize was on offer, the magnificent Cathedral desperately needed a dome. Whilst no 1 had ever made a cocky-supporting dome before, Brunelleschi was confident that he could solve the problem. But beginning he had to showcase his talents.
In 1419, the Silk Merchants Guild - which included the Medici - commissioned the construction of a state orphanage. Brunelleschi worked hard to win the tender. He had already worked for the Medici, redesigning their parish church, San Lorenzo, along classical lines. At present, with these new buildings, a revolution began. Soon enormous Roman capitals and pillars, awe-inspiring windows and carved stones appeared, making this the offset fourth dimension true pillars were used for structural support since Ancient Roman times.
Brunelleschi was not satisfied. He hungered for the greatest prize of all, the Cathedral. The regime demanded a demonstration. The temperamental architect displayed his strategy by standing an egg upright, breaking its bottom. The Cathedral authorities were unsure merely had lilliputian choice but to trust him. To succeed, Brunelleschi needed to rewrite the rules of Western architecture and there was no guarantee of success.
Brunelleschi knew that in that location was not enough timber in Tuscany to build a scaffold within the Cathedral, and the recipe for concrete had been lost since the fall of Rome. Brunelleschi instead came up with an ingenious and completely original theory. His plans showed an inner hemispherical dome within Florence cathedral's octagonal drum. A 2nd, ovoid brick dome was to be placed on top, and nine sandstone rings would then hold the structure together, like a butt. To raise the bricks and sandstone beams several hundred feet in the air, Brunelleschi invented a fast and efficient hoist with the world's first contrary gear, assuasive an ox to enhance or lower a load at the flick of a switch.
Brunelleschi had no formal training. The ideas he brought to edifice sites were completely new. Every day, he ensured workers remained sober by providing their lunch and watering down the wine. A safety net prevented workers from falling to their deaths, a chiming clock regulated their working hours and Brunelleschi had a canteen half way up the dome. His methods seemed to work. Only iii deaths were recorded during a sixteen-year construction period.
As the magnificent dome neared completion, Brunelleschi indulged in other interests. In 1434, he held a public display, sketching the outline of the nearby baptistery. Using a novel technique, involving reflective material and pinholes, Brunelleschi produced an verbal isometric simulation of the octagonal building. Brunelleschi had reproduced a three-dimensional object in two dimensions. He had invented perspective.
With the dome consummate, Cosimo de'Medici invited the Pope himself to consecrate the finished Cathedral on Easter Sunday, 1436. The dome towered majestically over the city of Florence, a triumph for the Florentine people and the city'south about powerful family.
Weighing 37,000 tons and using more than iv,000,000 bricks, Brunelleschi'due south dome was the greatest architectural feat in the Western globe.
One human being alone had realized his ambition. When Brunelleschi died in 1446, he was buried beneath his towering achievement, where he remains to this solar day. He was the showtime engineer of the Renaisssance.
Source: https://www.pbs.org/empires/medici/renaissance/brunelleschi.html
0 Response to "What Family Financed the Renaissance and Established the Former Glory of Rome"
Enregistrer un commentaire