The Architecture of Brunelleschi and the Origins of Theory in the Fifteenth Century Author(s): Giulio Carlo Argan and Nesca A. Robb Source: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 9 (1946), pp. 96-121 Published by: The Warburg Institute Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/750311 Accessed: 22/01/2010 23:03

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http://www.jstor.org THE ARCHITECTURE OF BRUNELLESCHI AND THE ORIGINS OF PERSPECTIVE THEORY IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY By Giulio Carlo Argan

r | ahe invention of perspectiveand the discovery of antiquity: these two 1 eventshave for long been held to markthe beginningsof the . Modern criticism has sharply limited the importance of both events, and above all of the second: so profounda transformationof the artisticconscience could not clearly have been caused by external circumstances. It is not so much needful to decide how far the artists of the early Quattrocentohad penetratedinto the objectiveunderstanding of space (if indeed one can speak of such an objectiveunderstanding) or into the knowledgeof the documents relating to antique art, as it is to discover the internal necessitythat urged them to seek that knowledge. In fact the same inwardimpulse is common to both activities: the search for a more exact knowledgeof space and that for a more exact knowledge of antique art are inseparable,until such time at least as the study of antique art assumes,as it does in the full maturity of humanisticculture, an independentexistence as the science of antiquity. It is well known that the new ideal of beauty was defined, classically,as a harmonyof parts,in other wordsby meansof the idea of proportion,which, according to Vitruvius, is the same thing as the Greek 9axovLoc;and it was with this same word that Euclid describedgeometrical congruity, which is the fundamentalprinciple of perspective. If perspectiveis the process by which we arrive at proportion,that is to say, at beauty or the perfectionof art, it is also the process by which we reach the antique which is art par excellence or perfect beauty. The classicaltradition had been neither lost nor extinguishedthroughout the whole of the Middle Ages; on the contrary, it had been diffused and popularized. To set oneself the task of rediscoveringthe ancients, meant setting oneselfto determinethe concretehistorical value of the achievements of ancientart, as distinguishedfrom its mediaevalcorruptions and populariza- tions. The activity by which we recognizevalue is judgment, and judgment is an act of the total consciousness. Enthusiasmfor, or faith in antiquity, impulseswhich had had, during the Middle Ages their moments of genuine exaltation,are henceforthinsufficient: the formulationof judgment, since it implies a definitionof the value of consciousness,implies also a definitionof the value of reality, because such a judgment is a judgment of being and not-being, of reality and non-reality. What was sought for in ancient art was thereforenot a transcendental value, but, in oppositionto mediaevaltranscendentalism, an immanentvalue, a conceptionof the world. The touchstoneby which we recognizevalues is reality: not a limitless and continuousreality which can be graspedonly in the particular,and in which man himselfis absorbed,but nature as a reality conceived by man and distinct from him as the object from the subject. 96 THE ARCHITECTURE OF BRUNFT.T.FjSCHI 97 Nature is the form of reality, in so far as it reveals and makes it tangible in its full complexity: the laws of form are also the laws of nature, and the mental processby which we arrive at the conception of nature is the same as that which leads to the conception of form, that is to say of art.l The Renaissance begins, so far as the figurative arts are concerned, when to artisticactivity is added the idea of art as a consciousnessof its own act: it is then that the mediaeval ars mechanicabecomes ars liberalis. "Ancient art- writes D. Frey2-appears to the Btesternmind as nature, with a heightened significancewhereby the natural becomes the expressionof a profoundtruth and of perfection. Thus in the Westevery tendencyto naturalisticor rational- istic developmentis always referableto a classicalsource." The formulationof a common law for nature and for artistic form lies in perspective:which may in general terms,be definedas the method or mental procedurefor the determinationof value. In the writersof the exceptingnaturally in Cennini and Ghiberti we see clearly the belief that perspectiveis not simply a rule of optics which may alsobe applied to artistic expression,but a procedurepeculiar to art, which in art has its single and logical end. Perspectiveis art itself in its totality: no relation is possiblebe- tween the artist and the world except through the medium of perspective, just as no relation is possiblebetween the human spirit and reality short of falling back upon the mediaevalantithesis of conceptualismand nominalism unless we assume the conceptionof nature. Hence proceedsthat identity of perspective-paintingand science, clearly aErmed by the theoristsof the Quattrocento.

The starting point of the controversybetween modernistsand tradition- alistsat the beginningofthe Quattrocentoseems to me to be notablyindicated in a passage, probably not devoid of polemical intentions, in the Pitturaof Alberti: "no man denies that of such things as we cannot see there is none that appertainethunto the painter: the painter studieth to depict only that which is seen." On the other hand, accordingto Cennini, a typical representativeof the traditionalistschool, the painter'stask is "to discoverthings unseen, that are hid beneath the shadow of things natural." The exact interpretationof the passage, which has been variously explained,3 is to be found in Chapter lxxxvii of the same "Libro dell'Arte," where it is suggested to the painter that: "if thou wouldst learn to paint mountainsin a worthy manner, so that they be like nature, take great stones which be rough and not cleansed and draw 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-formrelation in Renais- 3 E. Panofskyin Idea(Teubner ed., , sance thought see E. Cassirer, Individuoe I924), p. 23 and note 94 has given a Neo- Cosmo,tr. Federici,, La Nuova Italia Platonic interpretation of this passage of ed., p. 25I. Cennini; it is, however, a question of 2 D. Frey, L'Architetturadella Rinascenza,mediaeval Neo-Platonism in the Plotinian , I924, p. 7. tradition. 98 GIULIO CARLO ARGAN analogousto that of the mountain. The analogy is purely external,morpho- logical; but the difference,which consistsin the situation of the mountain in space, is of no interest to the painter because the formal motive of his picture is not spatial, and indeed takes no account of space. He will link that image with othersin obedienceto a rhythmicor narrativecoherence but principallyin obedience to a "manner"acquired through long discipleship with his masters,that is, with tradition. From the perceptionof the material datum (the stone) the artisticprocess is still a long one: and since its end is in infinity or in abstraction,of what significancecan the distance between the neighbouringstone and the far-offmountain be when comparedwitll that? When, on the other hand, Alberti affirmsthat the visible is the domain of the painter, he does not refer to the mechanicalperception of the eye and the limited notions that derive from it, but to a full, total, sensory experience. The eye may be consideredas a mechanicaland impersonalinstrument, a recordingmechanism: instead the senses are already consideredas a grade of intelligence. Alberti, though he denies that the mental domain of the painter can extend beyond the limits of the domain of the senses,yet affirms that the artisticprocess does not begin, as it does for Cennini,with the data of visible things,only to end in an abstraction,but takesplace wholly within the sphereof sensoryexperience as a processof understandingand investigation: that very experiencewill not be complete and fully defined until after such reflection. Cenninirestricted the painter'scontact with reality as far as he could, so as to leave the widest possible margin for tradition. Alberti, by making the limits of reality coincide exactly with those of the sensorypowers, refuses any value to tradition considered as a complex of ideas learned without referenceto direct experience. It is true that Cenninialso demandsa contact with reality (the stone which is copied as a symbolof the mountain): but that is only because tradition is transmittedthrough moments of reality, which are the lives of men. For Alberti, life is an ultimate value: it neither receives nor transmitsa universalinheritance, but rather, in its very consciousnessof its own finite nature,that is, in the completenessof its experienceofthe world, it arrivesat a point where it has the value of universality.

We have already pointed out that with the assumptionof the idea of nature as the limit or definition of reality, the value of consciousnessor of personalitywas contemporaneouslyin processof definition. Certainlyman also is, and feels himselfto be, nature; but he feels himselfto be so in so far as he has already detached himself from unlimited reality, and the limits within which he recognizeshimself are marked by what he can grasp and understandof reality, that is by nature. Nature and the Ego, born of the same act, are governed by the same law; man identifies himself no longer with the creation, but with the Creator. The man of the Renaissance,in this Platonicdetermination of his to know himselfin nature, necessarilyfocussed his first and most ardentinterest upon his own native sensorycapacity, upon his own naturalness. It has been justly remarkedthat the oppositionwhich the thoughtof the Renaissancelays down THE ARCHITECTURE OF BRUNF.T.T.F.SCHI 99 as a first definition of personalityis not that between man and nature, but that between man (vir) and fate (fortuna); nature is "an organismnot hostile to man but akin to him, and doweredwith intelligence,an open field wherein he may extend his personality.''1 From the oppositionof virtus and fortuna, which derivesfrom the Scholasticview of man's strugglefor good againstthe constant assaultsof evil, the moral quality of personalityemerged; Giovanni Pisano, Giotto, Dante, Petrarch,were, during the Trecento, the great repre- sentatives of this dramatic conception of life as a struggle for redemption. Nature, conceivedas full and lucid sensoryexperience, presupposes this moral conceptiorlof personality;it is a reality already graspedand comprehended, and so clear and transparentthat the human person, that supremeexample and image ofthe perfectionofthe divine creation,can see itselfreflectedthere as in a mirror. But this inspired, and indeed profoundlyclassic moment, in which man becomes aware of his own naturalness,is not the end. Life is not that moment, it is the seriesof such moments. If we start by affirming the moral quality of personality;if, that is, we considerit in relation to an end, there immediately arises the problem of the relation of life, in all its activities, to its initial naturalnessand to its final aim. And here we have already the problem of history as a consciousnessof its own "activity.'>2In fact if the final aim is completeself-knowledge, the whole life of the spiritwill consist in retracingits natural life, hitherto empiric, to an ideal ancestryor an ideal genesis. Burdach'sinterpretation of the Renaissanceas a regenera- tion or rebirth in the antique (in a Christian,that is in an ethical sense)3is thus given its full force: the process of this palingenesisis history, through which we are enabled to rediscoverour true nature, and so to rise from an empiric to a systematicconception of the world. Thus the oppositionof the identity of nature and history to the mediaeval identificationof reality with tradition, finds an historicaljustification, before it finds a theoreticalone; in the monumentsof ancient art the artistsof the Quattrocentoseek to discover their own Latin nature in its most essential characteristics. Even that first description of humanity as virtusin opposition to fortunathen assumes a precise historical significance; the very one that Petrarchgives it when he proclaims that Roman virtSwill take up arms agaiIlst the furoreof the "barbarian"invaders. It is the rational light of history that dispels the darknessof hostile fate. This idea of Latin virtusis undoubtedly active in Cennini,when he points out that Giotto "changedart from Greekinto Latin, and made it modern": the term "Latin" cannot certainlycorrespond to any concrete figurativeexperiment, but only to the moral order of values. To oriental mysticism in fact Giotto opposes a religious sentiment that fulfils itself in drama, that is to say in action, and that can be measuredin the activities of practical life. Of Brunelleschi,Manetti says that "he restoredthat fashionin buildings which is called Roman or antique" "for before him these were all German 1 G. Nicco, introduction to the critical which it followsthat "only in his historycan edition of the De ProspectivaPingendi of Piero man give proof of his freedomand creative della Francesca," Sansoni, Florence, I942, power"see E. Cassirer,op. cit., p. 73. p. I7. 3 K. Burdach,Riforma, Rinascimento, Umane- 2 For the conceptionof life as activity,from simo,tr. Cantimori,Sansoni, Florence, I933. IOO GIULIO CARLO ARGAN and were called modern." In Manetti the Germans() have taken the place of the Greeks,of whom indeed, as Worringerhas acutely pointed out, they were the naturalheirs. For Cenninithe word modernhas a positive sense, for Manetti it has a negative one: for Cennini modern means actual, for Manetti non-actual, since the corsivo has become the antique. Modern has become the equivalent of the merely chronological;in the antique the value of history is already implicit. That this is by no means an objective inquiryis, however,revealed by the fact that Manetti is in nowise concerned to determine whether Brunelleschihad rediscoveredor invented the con- structionallaws of the ancients,laws being taken to mean both their technical expedients and their "musical proportions,"that is to say symmetry and perspective;"those who might have taught him these things had been dead for hundredsof years: and they are not to be found in writing, or if they be found they may not well be understood;but his own industry and subtlety did either rediscoverthem or else were themselvesthe discoverers." It is significantthat the same thought is to be found also in Alberti: "If this art was ever describedin 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 rediscoveror to invent, to find the law of ancient art or of nature, are one and the same thing; the same processby which we establishthe concep- tion of nature leads us on to establishthe conceptionof beauty, or of artistic perfection,and to recognizeit as historicallymanifest in Roman art. Granted that the investigationof natureand the investigationof historyare inseparable, the problem, which has tormented modern idealist critics, of the relatiors between pictorialand scientificperspective, or more simply between art and science, at the beginning of the Renaissance,loses its importance. It has already been remarkedthat perspectiveis not a constantlaw, but a moment in the historyof the idea of space: whence it followsthat the problemof sight, in passingfrom optics to geometry,passes from the objectiveto the subjective sphere.l It is certain, in any case, that the conception of the homogenous quality of space is firstset forth in the figurativearts, and then, consequently, in the physicaland mathematicalsciersces.2 To our modern consciousnessit seems obvious that, if the opposite had occurred,art would have lost all creative power in the mechanicalprocesses of application and deduction. In judging thus it assumes as an absolute principle a characteristicpeculiar to , and fails to see its historical significance: before the Renaissance the value of art lay not in creation, but in repetition, irs continuing the tradition by remainingwithirs it, instead of breakingout of it in order to renew it. The value of creativity which the zesthetictheory of the Renaissancerecognizes in artistic achieve- ment, derives from the idea that nature is ordered and thereforecreated by the artist. The novelty or originalityof a work of art is such only in so far as the workof art emergesfrom tradition, and in emergingfrom it, contradicts it; and since traditionis no longer a dogma, but an object of criticism,there can be neitherinvention nor creationexcept throughthe mediumof a critical G. Nicco,op. cit., p. 29. tion of reality, E. Panofsky'sessay "Die 2 For the systematicexposition of the Perspectiveals symbolischeForm" (Vortrage problemof centralperspective as an abstrac- derBibl. Warburg, IV, I924-25) iS essential. THE ARCHITECTURE OF BRUNELLESCHI IOI approach to tradition. The ordering or creation of nature is thereforenot an act of authoritybut an act of reason. The power of inventionor of creation comes to the artist not from the grace of God, but from the integrity of his own consciousness,from the lucidity of his historicalvision. Cenninican take pleasurein makingclear his own descentfrom Giotto by way of arsuninterrupted traditiors that passes through Agnolo and Taddeo Gaddi; for the artistsof the Quattrocento,beginning at , Giotto is the great, isolated protagonistof the Trecento: the tradition that originated in his art merelyaltered and obscuredits value, a value which criticismalone should determine. Even for Giotto art was mechanical,a craftsman'slabour; but the judgment of posterity recognizesin that 'Cfare" an ideal aim, which it denies to that of imitatorsand followers,from the very fact that they are such. To this "making"or "producing"the art of the Renaissanceopposes not abstractspeculation but "genius,""invention";1 the artist in the process of invention is consciousof the novelty of what he is doing, and so invention is a "making"accompanied by judgment or the attributionof value. There thus arises the idea of the artist-hero,a coryphaeusor protagonist of history; but he is this in so far as he is consciousof the value of his own activity, that is, in so far as he is himself an historian. His work breaksthe continuity of tradition to justify itself in history,just as it emerges from the confusionof matter to justify itself in nature. The mental processwhich, in the same act, eliminatesmatter and chronicle (or tradition)by judging them as values, is, as we have said, perspective. This processis clearly described by Alberti. Remember Ghiberti'sdictum: "nothing can be seen except by light." Though it is here consideredas a physicalphenomenon, this light is still a divine emanation or irradiation,a first cause which is reflectedin all things and reveals them. Alberti on the contrarywishes to clarify the idea of things:"we call that a thing which occupiesa place." Glearlyif anything in nature exists in space, space also is nature; in fact it is the principle of nature since the place which things occupy is necessarilyantecedent to the things. This may seem to imply a serious objection to the necessity,which Alberti categoricallyaffirms, of limiting the domain of art to the visible. We must deduce from it that the experience of the senses is not primary, but secondary. Reason is thereforethe basis of life, even of the life of the senses. In fact: "large, small3 long, short, high, low, wide, narrow, light, dark, luminous,shadowy and all qualitiesof that kind-which becausethey may or may not be added unto things, the philosophersare wont to call accidents- are such that all knowledgeof them is made by comparison." It is therefore by reasoningthat the accidentsare distinguishedfrom the substanceof things. But this substance is not, as has been assumed, their plastic form, their volume: volume is perceivedthrough the medium of light and shade, height and width, and these qualities, too, have been placed among the accidents.

1 In Albertianterminology the facultythat "ingegno"and mathematicalrationality, and simultaneouslyinvestigates and invents,or in for the necessity of artistic creation as an other words sums up and synthetizes the expressionof the first, see Lionello Venturi, moments of speculation and of action is Storiadella critica d'arte, Italian ed., Florence, "ingegno." For the distinction between I945,p. I28. GIULIO GARLO ARGAN MoreoverI02 it is clear that in makinghis catalogueof accidents,Alberti intended to exhaust all the possibleforms of the visible. Strictly speaking,if a thing had been strippedof all its accidents,nothing would remain of it except the void in space left by its disappearance.1 But Alberti knows that if painting is concernedonly with the visible, it is impossibleto separatethe thing from its accidents: indeed the thing itself is an accident until it is known "by comparison":it would be illimitablywide and illimitablylong, and illimitablydeep if we did not establishthe relation betweenwidth, length, and depth; all dazzlinglight or impenetrabledarkness if we did not establish the relation between light and shade. We may say thereforethat the idea or substanceof a thing is merely a position in space, but that position is determinedprecisely by the fact that it gives a situation proportionately(ter comparatione) to all the accidents, that is to say, because it re-absorbsand eliminatesthe matter of which the thing is composedinto a system of proportionalrelations. This is indeed the functionof "design." The graphic outline is originally linked with the colouristicmatter as a boundarybetween zones of colour: in the Trecentesquetradition it was purely a rhythmicpattern or a narrativein rhyme and that rhythmiccadence was still dependenton the relation of the line to an alreadyformulated colouristic modulation. For Alberti the outline is the edge of the surface,that is the boundarybetween fullness and void; nor can we say that it belongs more to the fullnessthan to the void (or more to the thing than to space) becauseits functionis preciselythat of mediating,or of acting as a link and solder between one and the other. As has been seen, in fact, emptinesscannot be thought of apart from fullness,nor can space be conceived of separatelyfrom the things that occupy it. (When Masolinoor wish to represent the void independently of the full, they reduce perspectiveto the Trecentesqueidea of infinite spatiality.) The need now becomes clear for a recourseto Euclideangeometry or to the Platonic descriptionof geometricalforms as perfect forms or ideas archetypesfrom which all sensibleforms are derived: geometricalforms are pure spatial sites or pure metrical relations which in their own finitude expressthe whole of space. It is not by chance that Alberti defines design in the same words as thosewhich his master,Francesco Filelfo, used in definingthe idea as described by Plato: a representation"ab omni materiaseparata." The conceptionof design, as the commonroot of all the arts, that is, as the designationof the absolutevalue of form, is thereforevery closely related to the conception of perspective:perspective is actually the method of design, in so far as it is absolute representation. It is superfluousto point out that representationand invention may be equivalentterms: becausethere can be 1 On the impossibilityof imaginingspace of the thought of Cusanus,who was in as erepty, or as an "enclosingmedium that in the early decades of the Isth cent. and enclosesnothing" see Cassirer,op. cit., p. 285. who certainly knew Alberti, see, besides Alberti's conception of cognitioneper com- Cassirer'sfundamental work, G. Nicco, op. paratione,the basis of the theory of propor- cit. To G. Nicco, too, we owe a notableessay tion, is certainlyrelated to the idea expressed on the developmentof perspectivetheory in by Cusanus (De Docta Ignorantia I ° . I ): treatises from Euclid to Piero della Fran- "Comparativaest omnis inquisitio, medio cesca, Le Arti, V, I942, no. 2, p. 59. proportionisutens." On the greatimportance THE ARCHITECTUREOF BRUNELLESCHI I03 no representation,but only mechanicalimitation, if the image does not wholly replace the object and become a substitute for it as a value or authentic reality,just as nature,as a representationof reality, becomesthe one authentic reality for the thought of the Renaissance.

II If we admit that the artisticprocess has a basis of historicalthought, the origin of the fundamentalideas of RenaissanceArt-perspective and design- must be sought in the work of an artist-hero:only through such a medium could these ideas have any positive effect on the subsequentcourse of artistic development. The "trattatid'arte" themselves,though ostensiblyconcerned with a theoreticaldefinition of the idea of art, are in reality the first attempts at a historyof art as a historyof the artists,because their criterionis no other than a generalizationfrom those works of art in which they perceive an absolutevalue. The formulationof the principleof perspective,or the inven- tion of perspective,are ascribedby general consent to Brunelleschi:the first personof that artistictrinity which is completedby and Masaccio. On this point Manetti is uncompromising:"in those times he brought to light and himselfput into practicethat which paintersto- call perspective because it is a part of the science that consistsin placing those diminutions and enlargementsthat appear to men's eyes from afar or close at hand, both skilfullyand fittingly . . . and from him originatedthe rule which is the mean- ing of all that has been done from that time to this." It is interestingto note the distinction that Manetti makes between the originatingintuition of Brunelleschiand the codificationor applicationof it which the "dipintori"have successively("oggi")drawn from it. The distinc- tion is not purely chronological. For the painters,perspective is the law for making "housesand plains and mountainsand landscapesof every kind, and in every place, with figuresand other thingsof such a size as befitsthe distance fromwhich they are observed." Had Brunelleschielaborated this rule as a law of vision, Manetti would not have so accurately distinguishedthe Brunel- leschian principle from the interpretationwhich has later been given to it by other painters, who have applied it to a considerationof the external world that has clearly no connection with architecture. It is thus impos- sible to distinguishBrunelleschi's researches on perspectivefrom his artistic activity, that is to say, from his architecture:it is from this, as Manetti points out, that the painters deduce their law of vision. This means that, since architectureis free of any necessityto "imitate"reality, the formaldiscipline of architecturemust precedeand conditionthe painter'scontact with reality; he will indeed study reality, because the painter'srealm is the visible world, but he will do so through the formal patterns of architecture. This is, we think, the historical origin of the principle that architectureis the basis or mother of all the arts: a principle easily reducibleto the other (of design as the common root of all the arts), which will be clearly formulatedin the . Architecture, indeed, as an art free from any necessity of imitatingreality, is designitself: representationseparate from "ogni materia." Io4 GIULIO CARLO ARGAN It is now necessaryto see how this law "whichis the meaning of all that has been done from that time to this" was developed in the architectureof Brunelleschi. Manetti, a mathematician,says of perspective:"not without reason,just now did I call it science,"for scienceis making "accordingto law." The Life of Manetti is of later date than the Pitturaof Alberti and is largely indebted to it; and one of the most importantinnovations, in Alberti's treatise, was perhaps that idea of "knowledgeby comparison"which emergesin opposi- tion to the Scholasticconception of knowledgeas scireper causas. Since the Pitturaof Alberti consists of reflectionson the great Masters of the early Quattrocento,and particularlyon Brunelleschi,it is to the latter that we may attribute, not perhaps the formulation,but the first understandingof that principlewhich for causes, understoodas externalmoving forces,substitutes laws, understoodas immanent causes which are producedby the reciprocal co-relation of phenomena. In the architectureof Brunelleschi,therefore, must be sought the first understandingof design as an act of knowledgeor cognitioneper comparatione,that is, the first laying down of that theoryof pro- portion, which in its turn becomes the basic criterionfor the understanding of ancient art. That Brunelleschihad undertakensome inquiry into the laws of vision may well be inferredfrom what Manetti tells us of the two panels on which Brunelleschihad depicted the Baptisteryand the Palazzodella Signoria. Yet the very objects depicted, buildings and not landscapes,suggest that these studieswere not connectedwith the formulationof a generaltheory, but with the concrete,particular figurative and architectonicinterests of the artist. Of the first of these two panels we know that the spectatorhad to look at it reflectedin a mirror,through an opening cut in the wood, at a distance proportionateto that at which the painterhad placed himselfwhile at work: moreover,instead of a paintedsky there was a backgroundof burnishedsilver which reflected the real sky with its clouds moving before the wind. The second panel, on the other hand, being too large to permit the use of this device, was cut out along the line of the rooftops, and one loooked at it against a backgroundof sky. Manetti'sdescription is enough to show that the genesis of several ideas on which Alberti was later to build up his perspectivetheory can be traced back to Brunelleschi. By means of the device of the hole in the middle of the picture, the spectatorwas constrainedto look at the painting, reflectedin the mirror,from the same point of view as that in which the painter had placed himself. The straightline which connectsthe painter'seye with the centre of the thing depicted is already what Alberti will define as a centricray: that is the axis of the visual pyramidwhose apex coincideswith vanishingpoint. So far we are still within the domain of vision, though it is even now most important to observe that for Brunelleschiit is essential that vision should have 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 be looked at in a mirror; and this is not merely an artifice for making the spectator'spoint of view coincide with that of the painter. Alberti, who was certainlyfamiliar with Brunelleschi'sessays in perspective,in fact advisesthe THE ARCHITECTURE OF BRUNELLESCHI Io5 painter to make use of the mirroras a means of checkingthe artisticqualities of his painting. When he speaksof obtainingan effect of by the propor- tionate use of light and shade, Alberti advises: "and you will find in the mirror a good judge; for, as I know how things that are well painted may have great beauty in the mirror,so it is marvellousto see how every fault in painting shows itself more ugly in the mirror. So let the mirrorcorrect the things which you have taken from nature." It is well known that the mirror reversesthe image: if the image is unsymmetricalthe mirrorwill make this defect more apparent,because it removesit from a position to which the eye has grownaccustomed: if, on the contrary,the image is perfectlysymmetrical, reversalwill not be able to modifyit. In other terms: if the painterhas clearly determinedand constantly maintainedhis point of view, the centric ray of the direct vision and that of the reflectedvision will coincide,while otherwise they will diverge. The question, it will be seen, is one of symmetry and proportion. Anotherimportant point: Brunelleschidoes not paint the sky. In the first panel he reflectsit in a mirror-likesurface, in the secondhe cuts out the wood so that the real sky can insert itself into the picture. His interesttherefore is limited to things which as Alberti will say, occupy "a place": the sky does not occupy "a place" and cannot be reduced to measure or known "per comparatione." Since it cannot be represented,but only imitated, the artist forbearsto paint it. The strict logic of the argumentis unexceptionable:but it is the argumentof an architectand not of a painter. If Filippo had wished to lay down a general law of vision, and one that would thereforebe equally valid for the vision of landscape,he could not have failed to take the sky into account. He does not take it into account because his reasoningis related only to architecture,which is a finite space, that, by its own finitude or pro- portion,gives definitionalso to the spatialatmosphere in which it is immersed; and he forbearsto paint the sky because buildingsstand out against the real sky and not against a painted background. It remainsto be seen what value Brunelleschiattributed to these exercisesin perspective. It is clear that they had a demonstrativeor, as we should say now, a polemical aim. Such polemics could only have been directed against the art of the late Trecento tradition,for one thing becausethese pictorialessays belong to the firstphase of the Master'sactivity, between the last years of the fourteenthand the first of the succeeding century. To those painters who were intent only on decoration,Brunelleschi wished to demonstratepainting as an instrumentof knowledge. One might even ask oneself whether, in that atmosphere of naturalistic propaganda, the happy invention of the silvery background which reflects the light of the physical heavens, may not perhaps imply a satirical and almost irreligiousallusion to those shining backgroundsof fine gold in which the devout paintersof the traditionsought to mirrorthe mystic light of God.

The technical "miracle"of the of Santa Maria del Fiore (P1. 7a) has distractedcritics not a little from the significancewhich that long and strenuousconstructive labour holds in the art of Brunelleschi. Since it is GIULIOCARLO ARGAN 106 in the form of planned to make the dome knownthat Filippo had originally did he decide to carryout the that only on secondthoughts would seem ahemisphere, and the problemof the dome laid down in Arnolfo'smodel, method of vaulting it scheme question of technique: the toreduced be to a mere scaffiolding. Arnolfo'splan by tlle usual without impossibleto realize Quattro- Wasit really technically those first decades of the may easily believe that, in a scale; it is means?One to build vaulting on so vast no artist would have dared when decorationtook cento, that throughoutthe Trecento, indeedhighly probable been a falling-offin constructive construction,there may have and his precedenceof that Arnolfo can have planned, But it is impossibleto believe the technicalresources skill. as the drum, a buildingwhich successorsraised as far over. did not permit them to roof the traditional ofthe time never even thought of using What is more, Brunelleschi the idea of building the dome the outset he had in mind but technique.From up the form he had first envisaged, scaffolding;he might give a mistakenestimate without method of construction. Only hewould not give up his belief that the sphericalvault "classicism"has induced the When we ofBrunelleschi's sacrificedto contingent needs. a formal ideal, later without scaffoldinghad represented method of vaulting the dome are rememberthat the , the terms of the question from the Roman circular had thought first of beendeduced hypothesisis that Filippo reversed:the most reasonable models that he had evolved because it was from such had become asemi-circular vault to Arnolfo'splan when he and that he returnedlater to domes with ribs hissystem, might equally well be applied persuadedthat the system conclusiveresearches of Sam- This method, which the dome with andpointed arches. origin, consistsin walling the have shown to be of Roman Brunelleschi'sformal paolesil in a herring-bonepattern. span: it coursesof bricks disposed pointed arch or of the single not end in the pattern of the the processof idealdid of sustainingitself throughout in wasthe ideal of a form capable sustainsit, of disposingitself of producingthe force that vitality, by its itsown growth, structuralcoherence and by virtue of its own interior space that of "bones and mernbers." del naturalproportionality, like is applied in Santa Maria method of construction models, that is The herring-bone than it is in any of the ancient on a much larger scale constructed. The problem Fiore, of the drum already to pro- tosay, to the measurements reducing a gothic dimension consistedtherefore in autonomy of the setby Brunelleschi self-support,that is of the through the principle of finds a justificationnot j1ortion double vault of the dome may formin space. Thus the of Filippo "so that it figurative(in the actual words establish- onlypractical but the artist feels the need for enlargedand splendid"): variousproperties appearmore formof the dome and the exact relationbetween the curvatureof the surfaces ingan up in it. In the interiorthe of the ofspace that are summed the various spatial trends sums up and co-ordinates con- of the octagon, on the dome, see the studies SantaMaria particularly di La Cupoladi Atti del I° Congresso;Nazionale 1 p. Sampaolesi, Istituto di tained in at Florence in del Fiore; il progetto,la costruzione, Storia dell'Architettura,held e Storia dell'Arte,Rome, I94I. publishedby Sansoniin I938. Archeologia problems, but I936 and On sundry Brunelleschian a Brunelleschi,Dome of Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence(pp. I05 ffs.) b Lanternof Dome (p. I I 2) 8

a Brunelleschi, ,Florence (p. I09)

b Brunelleschi,Detail of FaKade of , Florence (p. I og) THE ARCHITECTURE OF BRUNELLESCHI Io7 naves and the presbytery,as into a commonhorizon; on the exteriorthe ribs mark the limit or the juncture between the massesof the building and the circumambientspace. If the effect of the dome is spatial, the processwhich leads to the definitionof space is a constructiveprocess. But this constructive labour differs from the mediaeval mechanicabecause its acts are no longer repeatedby tradition,but determinedby reason: the coherencec?f these acts must there be referredto a rational principle. Manetti says that in Rome Brunelleschi"saw the ancients'methods of building and their symmetry;and it seemed to him that he saw there very clearly a certain order, as of bones and members." It is not a question of the generic anthropomorphismthat recurs, following on the traces of Vitruvius, in the treatise writers of the Renaissance:it is a questionof rationaldiscrimination between the elements that bear and the elementsthat are borne, and of their distributionaccording to order, that is accordingto symmetryand proportion. In Romanesquearchitecture as in Gothic, the artisticideal to be realized, though by differentfigurative methods, is the effect of unlimited space. In the first, weight prevails over strain, and the effect of space depends upon mass; in the second, strain prevails over weight and the effect depends on linear tension. In either case the motive forceis an energythat develops,and tends to develop towards the infinite, but which finds a check and a deter- minationin matter. And matteris alreadyform, because if matterhas already a spiritualquality of its own as a divine creation,we cannot conceive of any form that transcendsit. Form, force, matter make up an indivisibleunity: force is not only relative to the hardnessand the elasticityof matter, but also to the thickness, the extension, the flexion, the outline, the section of the element in which it is expressed. One may arriveat length at the sublimation of matter to such a point that a mass which physicallypresses on the ground can expressan ascent; none the less, form remainsa quality of matter, how- beit a supernaturalone, a revelation of its inner spirituality. A Gothic cathedral tends in fact to be a compendiumof all knowledge,that is of all reality; and this not only, as Male has observed,in its decorativedetails but in its deepest structuralintentions. Since reality is the infinite in terms of individual things, it is expressedin architectureby individual forces: Gothic architectureis in fact the architectureof the individualizationof forces. Even the historical interest that attracts Brunelleschito a study of the antique would have no justificationif he had not sought in antique art for a standard of comparisonin the criticismof tradition, that is for a means of freeinghimselffrom a traditionthat was still alive: historyis alwaysa criticism and an overcoming of tradition. Moreover, the very fact that the need was felt for a spatial definitionwhich should include and resolve the whole problem of reality, necessarilypresupposes the experience of Romanesque and Gothic spatiality as the expressionof infinite reality; this was the matter which had to be reducedinto measure.Brunelleschi's mental processin regard to traditionis alreadythat which MarsilioFicino will definein Platonicterms: "in corporeanimus a singulis ad species, a specibustransit ad rationes"; or since we are dealing with architecture,from individual forces to classes and from classes to systems. To group several forces together into a class it is necessaryto define their quantity and quality; thus it happens that we are Io8 GIULIO CARLO ARGAN no longer dealing with forcesin action or in development,such as strain and stress, but with those that are developed or in equilibrium,such as weight which has its exactly correspondingresistance. One might say, paraphrasing Alberti, that our "knowledge"of forcesis reached by "comparison,"that is by their reciprocallimitings and oppositionsor by their reciprocal"propor- tioning" of each other. Only when the dramaticconflict of forceshas been exhausted,only, that is, when a catharsishas been achieved,will architecture cease to be a fragmentof reality, and becomea representationof reality. And since experience which here means the experienceof Gothic architecture, in which the force of an element is in proportionto its "momento"or to its extension and duration taught that the strength of a force is relative to a space, to constant forces there must thereforecorrespond constant intervals. This constancy of the relation between force and interval is the quality of the single span arch as opposed to the pointed one. To compare the single span with the pointed arch it was not necessaryto go back to Vitruviusand to ancient monuments:Tuscan Romanesquearchitecture was enough. Yet the arcadesof the Loggia degli Innocentiwith their very wide and extended span, are undoubtedly much more akin to the arches of the Loggia della Signoriaand even to the ogival archesof S. Maria Novella and S. Maria del Fiore than to those of the church of the SS. Apostoli or of Roman monu- ments. In the latter, indeed, the function of support is translatedinto an equilibriumbetween the massesof fullnessand of emptiness;in the formerthe line has a value of its own as a supremeformal declaration of spatial infinity. This is the value to which Brunelleschiwould give a clear definition,measur- ing the depth of the void by the actual outline of the arch. He reflectsthat in the single span arch, all points of the semicircleare equi-distantin relationto vanishingpoint, that is in relation to the apex of a half cone having its base within the semicircleitself: thereforethe width of the curve is relative to the depth of the extensionof the arch instead of to the weight which it sustains. The archis thereforealways an "intercisione,""primo piano," in a perspective progressionwhich has its term at vanishingpoint; the curve of the arch, as a projectionof depth on a plane surface,has thus the value of a horizon. For Brunelleschitoo, as for Donatello and Masaccio,Romanitas is in the firstinstance "toscanita :" the definitionof his own historicalcharacter begins with that of his own natural character. If, in determiningthe spatial value of the arch he relies on Tuscan Gothic architecture,in determining the spatial value of the plane he relies on the more remote practice of Tuscan Romanesque architecture. It would be interesting to know whether the opinionsexpressed by Manetti in his excursuson the decadenceof architecture in the Middle Ages are entirelyhis own, or whetherthey go back, in part at least, to Brunelleschi:it is anyhow significant, that in certain Florentine Romanesquebuildings he should see some reflectionof classicsplendour, and shouldattribute them, by an errorfull of meaning,to the Carolingianperiod, that is to the time of the most intense classicalrevival of the Middle Ages. Brunelleschi'sarchitecture preserves more than one reminiscenceof the marble inlaysthat adornedthe walls of FlorentineRomanesque churches, for example in the pure "scrittura"of space on the flat surfaceby means of grey pilasters and arcadeson a white background. One might even ventureto interpretthe THE ARCHITECTURE OF BRUNELLESCHI IO9 faSadeof the Pazzi Chapel (P1.8a) as a developmentof the spatialtheme of the Romanesqueinlays. One might point out that the artisthad arrivedthrough the exerciseof a subtle dialectic,at that absoluterepresentation of space in the flat, by identifyinglinear and chromaticvalues; and that in this mutualidenti- fication, the linear elementis purgedof the materialquality of the outlinejust as the chromatic element is purged of the material quality of the surface. INhebean-pattern frieze, the grooved pilasters are far from being a simple reproductionof the antique: they are an alternation,almost a vibration, of ligllt and shade (P1.8b). Preciselybecause this plane generateslight from the frequencyof its relationsof light and shade, it may be distinguishedfrom the surface,which is always a defence in relation to an external source of light, ancl becomes identified with the totality of space. And perhaps this is the "intellectual"source of that light which in Piero della Francescais no longer physical but spatial. The FlorentineRomanesque inlays were undoubtedly a sign of a return to the -headof the Byzantine tradition, perhaps even of an obstinate Tuscan resistance to the renewing tide of Lombard architecture. By means of these inlays an attempt was made to resolve the effect of space which Lombard architectureenclosed within the complex articulationof its masses,into chromaticterms on a flat surface.l Geometrical forms, while eliminating any modulation in colouristicrelations within the design, employed colours in absolute terms of contrast on the surface: no spatial hypothesisis possible beyond a strict equation of the opposing terms of surfaceand depth. A mostsubtle and intimatelyPlatonic process ofthought warns the artist that if he thinksof space as possessinginfinite depth, he will find it quite impossible to distinguish it from the surface: therefore the infinity of space cannot be a sensorzrperception or an "effect,"but a concep- tual representationor a "cause," such as are for instance the figures of geometry. In this mediaevalTuscan Platonismthere are alreadyto be found the premisesof the transcendentallogic of a great German Platonist of the fifteenth century, Cusanus. For Brunelleschithe plane is the place on which there occurs the projec- tion or definitionof depth, not as an effect, but as pure value or geometric form. Thereforethe place is a pure mental abstraction,the preconditionfor the representationof space. Albertiwill translatethis intuitionof Brunelleschi's into a formula: the surface is still matter, and as it were the outer skin of things, althoughit is the extremelimit of matter,its suturewith space; instead the plane is a geometricentity, the "intersection"of the visual pyramid. In fact the plane in Brunelleschi'sarchitecture is an "intersection"and not a surface;it is the place on to which the variousspatial distancesare projected, and on which the infinitedimensions of space are reducedto the three dimen- sionsof perspectivespace. Since on the plane these distancescannot be valued as effects (for they would be chaoticallysuperimposed one upon another) but only as measllrements,the plane is the condition of their "cognitione per comparationeX' that is to say of their proportionality. 1 For a fuller analysisof the formalvalues manicae Romanica,Florence, Nemi, I936, and of Romanesque and Gothic architecturein L'Architetturaitaliana del Duecentoe del frecento, I refer the reader to my two Florence, Nemi, I937. volumes, L'ArchitetturaProtocristiana, Prero- I IO GIULIO GARLO ARGAN On the fagadeof the Pazzi Chapel,for instance,every separateportion of the plane has its point of referencein a correspondingvalue of depth in the porticoor the interior,and is a projectionof this: hence the lack of an effective articulationof the parts which are elements of limitation and not elements of force, and the compositionof the plane in squaresand recesses(P1. ga) "All surfacesof a body that are simultaneouslyvisible," Alberti explains, "wili form a pyramid composedof as many lesser facets as there are surfacesin the thing seen." It is the principle of the homogeneityof space. But the principle of the homogeneityof space destroys that of the homogeneityof matter: for in orderto think of space as homogenous,that is, as uninterrupted by the presenceof bodies, it is necessaryto think of those bodies as composed of space, that is as brokenup into a successionof planes. Given this distinction between the plane, as a complete representationof space, and the surface,it is hard to accept the ingenious thesis of L. H. Heydenreichl who makes a sharpdistinction between the firstand secondphases of Brunelleschi'sactivity, between the moment of the Wandbautenand that of the Pfeilerkomvtraktionen, or between the period when the wall is only a raumbegrenzendeSchale and that irl which it arrivesat a raumbildendeFunktion. The cause of this sudden stylistic evolution is said to be the journey to Rome, which Heydenreich postponesto the years between I432 and I434; but the later researchesof Sampaolesifix the date conclusivelyat a time previous to the beginning of work on the dome. In fact there is a complete coherencebetween the works of the first and secondperiods: the problemof Brunelleschi'sartistic develop- ment does not so much consistin determiningthe date ofthe journey to Rome, as in forminga preciseestimate of his relationswith Donatello and Masaccio, which were undoubtedlyclose and reciprocal. Accordingto Heydenreich'stheory Brunelleschi's artistic development can be codified into the artist'sprogressive abandonment of building to a longi- tudinal plan, for building to a central plan, which is the classic schemepar excellence, the most rigorous and systematic application of the Vitruvian theory of the module. In reality, if one starts from the spatial premisesof Brunelleschithe 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 two plans or imposesone upon the other. The dome of S. Mariadel Fiore is itself conceived as a co-ordinationor synthesisof the longitudinal depths of the naves and the stellate spacesof the octagon. Both the Sacristyof S. Lorenzoand the Pazzi Chapelare typical examples of the synthesisbetween a longitudinalplan and a central plan. In the Pazzi Chapel (P1. gb), for instance, the simple tracing of an entablatureand an arcadeon the plane carriesthe depth of the squaredapse on to the longitudinal walls: in the sameway the depth of the windowsopening to the frontis graphi- cally repeatedbetween the sunkpilasters. Every plane has thereforethe same "content"of space. This solutionis perfectlylogical, becausestrictly speaking a figure in plane geometryis no less representativeof space than a figure in solid geometry: indeed the hemisphericaldome has the same function of 1 L. H. Heydenreich,"Spatwerke Brunel- lungen,I93I. leschis," Jahrbuchder Preussischen Kunstsamm- 9

a Brunelleschi, Portico of Pazzi Chapel, Florence (p. I I O)

b Brunelleschi,Interior of Pazzi Chapel,Florence (p. I I O) o

a Brunelleschi5San Lorenzo,Florence (p. I I 2)

b Interiorof San Lorenzo(detail) (p. I I 2 ) l

THE ARCHITECTURE OF BRUNELLESCHI I I I summing up and concluding the contrastsbetween actual depth and depth graphically represented. Architecture, therefore, is not an abstract and symbolicrepresentation of naturalisticspace; on the contraryit is the material quality of the mural constructionwhich is transformedinto space by the rationalityof the constructiveprocess. In other terms, it is the space implicit in the construction as an "effect," which is transformedinto space-the "cause" of architecture. Space, as pure representation,has therefore a catharticvalue as regardsthe realistic,dramatic, struggle between force and matter, that is as regardsthe mechanicsof the construction. But the problem remains substantiallyunchanged when one passes from these centralized longitudinal constructionsto a genuine centralized con- struction, the unfinishedRotonda degli Angeli.l The plan provided for an octagonal building, with pilastersand radial . The end walls of the chapelswere flat, the side walls hollowedout into niches. If Brunelleschihad imagined the building as the co-ordinationof lesser concaves to the major concaves of the central space and of the dome, he would logically have developed the end walls of the chapels into niches too. Since these end walls

W - Eam v 4,fg5a.

Plan and Section of S. Maria degli Angeli, Florence (From Marchini'sreconstruction). are flat, vanisilingpoint will always fall on the plane, whatever the point of view: the extreme limit of space wlll always be a plane and not an atmo- spheric hollow. Hence one may deduce that the Rotonda degli Angeli is a centralized constructiondeveloped or adjusted according to a longitudinal vision; the very perspectivecurvature of the lateral niches of the chapels tends to resolve itself into a single vanishing point, to bring it into focus or centre it on the end plane. This is perhapsthe culminationof the sarstematic

1 For a reconstructionof the original plan degli Angeli," Atti dsl I° CongressoAXzionale see G. Marchini,"Un disegnodi Giulianodi di Storiadell'Architettura, Florence, Sansoni, Sangalloriproducente l'alzato della Rotonda I938, p. I47. I I2 GIULIO CARLO ARGAN search for a synthesisof the two spatial formult of tradition. Brunelleschi knows that space is not an effect, but a cause or law alike of the central and of the longitudinalscheme: that is to say, he strives to deduce a single law from the two differentspatial effects or the two essentialdata of the tradi- tional phenomenologyof space.l It is indeedworthy of note that the plan of the lanternof the dome (Pl. 7b), one of the Master's last works, repeats almost exactly the plan of the Rotonda degli Angeli.2 When one considersthat the lantern is a structure opened and imposed in its completenessupon an intersectionof planes with a commonsource, one may easily conclude that the problemof the Rotonda is not one of co-ordinatedgravitation round a central axis, but one of the disintegrationof mass into a complex of intersectingplanes: not the problem of the mass that containsspace, but that of space which penetratesand dis- solves the mass. Such, in fact, is the functionof the lanternin relation to the dome: the buttressesof the lantern,which correspondto the ribs of the dome, suggest the rotation of the mass in infinite space: and in that possibilityof rotation is made clear the single end to which all the spatial elementsof the building, in their proportionalrelations, may be reduced. As the dome pro- portions the mass of the building, so the lantern "proportions"the mass of the dome to the infinity of space. The high and narrow windows of the lantern accentuate the evidence of this pure intersectionof planes, and to- gether with the niches hollowed out in the buttresses, and those of the colonnade placed at the base of the drum, balance, by their concavity, the dilatation of the dome: so that throughthis belatedrevision it emergesindeed "enlarged"to the utmost limits of space. A relationsimilar to that betweenthe Pazzi Chapeland the Rotondadegli Angeli may also be pointed out betweenthe two great basilicalconstructions: San Lorenzowith the simple plan of the Latin crossand Santo Spiritowhere the colonnadesare also developed along the walls of the transeptand of the presbytery.In San Lorenzo(P1. I oa,b) the ratio of the arch of the side chapels 1 On this point it is importantto note the northerntheorists, on the contrary,beauty, contrastdrawn by Panofsky("Die Perspek- as a pure abstraction, transcends nature. tive als symbolische Form") between the Hence it is legitimateto seek for the previous scenographyof Vitruvius as a winkelperspek-history of central perspectivein Gothic Art tivischeSonstraktion, and central perspective with its tendencyto the infiniteprolongation which assumesthe scene to be depictedon a of its lines (see besidesPanofsky, op. cit., G. I. plane insteadof on a concavesurface. Sceno- Kern, "Die F,ntwicklungder zentral-per- graphy finds its typical expression in the spektivischen Konstruktion in der Euro- centralizedplan (omniumlinearum ad circini paischenMalerei von der Spatantikebis zur centrum responsus). Thereforeclassical art Mitte des XV Jahrhunderts,"Forschungen u. was eine reineKorperkunst and thoughtof space Fortschritte,I937): it is a searchwhich must, as "aggregato"(cf. Cassirer,op. cit., p. 285). however, resolve itself into demonstrating The distinction between scenography and that the artists of the early Isth century, perspective correspondsto the distinction especiallyBrunelleschi, must have had a full between perstectiva communisand perspectiva understandingof Gothic art. artificialis,drawn in I505 by Jean Pelerinand 2 Heydenreich treats at length of the immediatelyseized upon by Durer(see J. von Rotonda degli Angeli, the lantern, and the Schlosser,Die Kunstliteratur)Schroll, Vienna, exedra of the dome in his highly important I924, p. 227). This distinctionis not main- essay on the later work of Brunelleschiin tained by the Italian theorists who regard 3ahrbuch der PreussischenKunstsammlungen, beauty as immanent in nature; in the I93I - THE ARCHITECTURE OF BRUNELLESCHI I I3 to the arch of the naves is as 3 to 5; thereforethe two archeshave a common vanishingpoint and are two succeedingsections of the same visual pyramid. Thus the depth of the chapels is transmittedand resolvedthrough the brick vaultingof the extensioninto the archesof the centralnave. The threewalls of the small chapelsare framedby stronglymodelled cornices: thus the walls fall into the backgroundin three directions,and the value of depth which cannot be developed within such small dimensionsis condensedinto the modelling of the cornices. In fact, if one imaginesa depth divided into equal spaces, it is clear that, as we increase our distance, the spaces between member and member become, when seen in perspective,thicker and closer: by making the modelling of the members more complex, that is, by implicating the intervalsor distanceswith the quality of the plastic objects, one will obtain, in the actual form of the disposal of the membersthe representationof un- plumbable depth. And how easy it is to see, and how easy it would be to illustrate with precise examples, the same process at work in the low relief of Donatello. The successionof spaceswhich is projectedinto the arcadesof the central aisle is thus a typical perspectivesuccession from the horizon (the end walls of the chapels)to the foreground(the arch of the nave). In Santo Spirito(P1. I I ) 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 concavityof niches. So the lateral spaces are not graduated perspectively,but directly inserted and articulated into the archesof the nave. Every columnof the nave, to which there corresponds a half-columnin the side aisle, thus stands out in its plastic form, from the concavity of tsvo contiguous niches. Not the parallel planes of the centre aisle, but the plastic successionof arches and columns sums up the space of the side aisles and of the chapels. In fact, if the artist in San Lorenzo has given 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 Santo Spirito, the side aisles have no source of light in themselves,because their spaces constitutea single plastic organismwith the colonnadesof the centre aisle. If in San Lorenzo the axis of the centre aisle was simply an axis of symmetry for the proportional distribution of spatial intervals, in Santo Spirito it is the ground plan of the "centralized"vision. Space is no longer graphicallydescribed in geometricalforms, but realized in the proportions- metrical, chiaroscuraland luminous-of plastic form. So the column itself acquiresvalue as a member; it is no longer the cesura placed between successive spatial intervals, but as Alberti would say a thing that occupies "a place." In its proportions,or in the plastic quality of its formit resolvesall the "accidents"of stress:its value in architecturehence- forth is that of a protagonistof space, as is that of the human formin painting and . The relation between the emergenceof the columns and the concavityofthe nichesin Santo Spiritois in fact, plasticallyand luministically, a typically Masacciesquerelation. Niches are thus the spatial Leitmotifof the later works of Brunelleschi. But it is not a question of chiaroscuralor atmosphericvalues, of a mass of void in oppositionto a mass of fullness. In Santo Spirito a window breaks the continuityof the chiaroscuroof the curved surface:the niches in the but- I I4 GIULIO CARLO ARGAN tressesof the lantern and those in the Rotonda are also open so as to avoid a pictorialeffect of atmosphere. If, in fact, the spatial interval between two membersis plasticallyexpressed in the actual modelling of the membersthe space enclosedbetween those two cannot be indefinite:the curve of the niche gives a sense of indefinitespace, of somethingbeyond the horizon,of the sky. In this senseit is a developmentof the conceptionof the plane as a representa- tion of space, that is as a synthesisof depth and surface. It is clear that a complete representationof 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 have already noted in the Pazzi Chapel, which was provided for in the original plan of Santo Spirito, which is fully realized in the open architectureof the lantern and which is, above all, the central problemin the long constructive meditationson the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore. The building is now conceived as a pure structurewhich insertsitself into empiric spatiality and proportionsit, or reducesit to perspectivespace: like early exercisesin paint- ing, the building is an instrumentof knowledge,the instrumentthat creates perspective. In more general terms, the building is the instrumentwhich, through the rationalityof its processof construction,transforms a confused and unlimited reality into clear and ordered nature. By this same process the mediaevalmechanica, which had reached its loftiest expressionin the free play of forcesin infinite spatiality,becomes ars liberalis. At this point there arisesthe problem, the analysisof which is precluded by the limits of this study, of the value of modelling in the architectonic membersof Brunelleschi:that is of the value of design as an expressionof perspectivespace, and in general as a spatial calligraphyor language. If the frameworkis in substance,no other than a "spatialobject" or a boundary(an edge, as Alberti will say a proposof contourin painting) of the surface,which graduallyincorporates with itself and realizesin plastic terms all the various spatialpositions of that surface,we can aErm that Brunelleschi'ssearch for the "bonesand members"is the true historicalbasis of Quattrocentodesign: that is of the line (think of Andrea del Castagnoand Pollaiulo) which, in the out- line of a body and of a body in motion, that is with its forcesat their utmost tension impliesthe whole of space. That is why Brunelleschi'sarchitecture, confrontingthe problemof the figurativetradition in all its aspects,is at once architecture,painting and sculpture: that is to say, it resolvesthe mechanica of the particulartechnical traditionsinto a unitary conceptionof art. From this moment art, which considersitself as a cognitive activity, can no longer tolerate a classificationof its formsaccording to the quality of manual labour involved in them or according to their traditionalrange of expressiveness. The discussionswhich followin the treatisesofthe Renaissanceon the qualities peculiarto the variousarts will tend not so much to classifythem, as to relate them in order of merit to a common ideal of art. This also explains why Brunelleschi'sreferences to the art of the Gothic tradition become more frequentin the last period of his activity, in other wordswith the increaseof his figurative experience; the case of Santo Spirito is typical, since it is certainlythe most "classical"of Brunelleschi'sconstructional ideas and is yet, at the same time, the most significantfruit of the artist'smeditatiorls on the ll

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

b Interiorof San Spirito (detail) (p. I I 3) c Interiorof San Spirito (detail) (p. I I3) a Ghiberti, Sacrifice of , b Brunelleschi,Sacrifice of Abraham,Bargello, Florence(p. II6) Florence(p. II5)

c-Donatello, , Bargello, d Donatello, Herod's Feast, S. Giovanni, (p. II7) Florence (p. I I9) THE ARCHITECTURE OF BRUNFsT4TaFjSCHI I I 5 most recent traditionof Tuscan architecture:the Cathedralof Orvieto, and as Salmi has pointed out, the Cathedral of Siena.l Like every process of historicalunderstanding, or, which is the same, of critical reflection,the idea of perspective, the more it is clarified and developed in the mind of the artist, the more it enlargesthat mind to take in new experience. The infinite world of reality which the art and thought of the Middle Ages had discoveredand illumined by the light of grace, that whole world in which the Trecento had beheld the course of man's struggle for spiritual salvation, could only have been eliminated by the substitutionof an arid conceptualsystem; from whence would have emergednot a Renaissancebut a darker Middle Age. It is in the Trecento that line, which in the Byzantine tradition had been pure arabesqueor a boundary between zones of colour, frees itself to take on an intense descriptivevalue and to become the outline of things animated by an eternal rhythm of movement, the very rhythm of their pcLssingand vanishing in the continuity of time. In architecture,line des- cribes the flow of forces, as in painting and sculptureit describesthe flow offeelings. It is this line which, throughthe spatialabstraction of Brunelleschi, becomes design in the art of the Renaissance. The line is a quality of the thing; it belongs to and characterizesit. Design is a quality of space, as the supremesynthesis or cause of things. That is why Alberti points out that line should not separate (or we shall fall back into the world of individualthings) but shouldjoin or give proportion. Design is the framework,the articulation, the structureof space. The processthat leads from reality or spatial infinity to perspective,and fromperspective to design,is preciselythat which Marsilio proclaimsas proper to the animus in corpore (and the artist is in fact animus in corpore in the highest sense): a progressfrom individual things to species and from species to rationes. Design, which Alberti identifies with the Platonic idea, is in fact the supremeratio.2

III Since man too is, by his origins, a portion of reality, the rational process of space is not applicable to external reality alone; it is the very processof consciousnessand is thereforevalid for the realityin which humanlife consists, for the world of passionand sentiment. We proposeto point out briefly the ethical impulse behind this processof knowledge. Manetti, speakingof the relief submittedby Brunelleschiin the competi- tion for the Baptisterydoors (P1. I2b), observesthat everyonewas amazed by the force and freedomof the "attitudes":"the attitude of Abraham,the atti- tude of the finger beneath his chin, his readiness,"and that of the angel "the way in which he takeshis hand" etc. In this relief"thereis no memberthat is not instinct with spirit." He goes on to praise Filippo for having finishedhis 1M. Salmi, "Note sulla chiesa di S. "Idea" cf. Panofsky,Idea and Lionello Spirito,"Atti del I° Congressodi Storia dell'Ar- Venturi, Storia della Critica d'Arte, Florence, chitettura,Florence, I938, p. I59. I945, pp. I28 i. 2For the developmentof design as an II6 GIULIO CARLO ARGAN story in a short time "becausehe was strongin the exerciseof his art" while Ghiberti "did many times destroy and remake his, both as a whole and in parts" and completedhis work "in a great while." Here are two opposite methods and two opposite results. Ghiberti pro- ceeds slowly, perfectingthe details, Filippo executesswiftly and confidently: in the former, ideation and execution are inseparableand develop side by side, each furtheringthe other, in the latter, they are distinct and successive moments. Lorenzo is the man of tradition,and the sourceof his inspirationis in his own labouras a craftsman:Filippo is the modernman of will who first plans and decides and then executes. The result appearsin the vital force of the "attitudes,"the energy of the actions, the intensity ("spirito")of every part: Abrahamhas decidedon the sacrificeand undertakesit without hesita- tion, but the will of the angel is in conflict with his will. In Ghiberti'srelief (P1. I2a), on the contrary,Abraham's action is hesitant; it does not expressa decision, but only a waveringintention: he seems to be delaying in order to await the arrivalof the angel who is still far off in heaven. The time of the drama is ill-definedbecause the space is ill-defined. The rock and the body of Isaac are inclined in oppositedirections: the oblique spur of rock separates the group of the sacrificefrom that of the servantswith the ass. These two distinct zones correspondto different times: the anecdote of the servants postponesthe imminence of the drama. In Brunelleschi'srelief the line is single because the space is single. From the two stooping servants at the bottom, the compositionrises into a pyramidwhose apex coincideswith the most dramatic moment, the hand of the angel which grasps the arm of Abraham. The movement,too, is single: the tensionof Abraham'sbody has its release in the figure of the servantdrinking, and the contortionof Isaac's body is the culminatingpoint of the rhythmof anglesthat beginsin the figure of the servantwho is extractinga thorn fromhis foot. A single concatenated movement, like a swift play of light, simultaneouslyexpresses both move- ments: Abrahamabout to strike and the angel stopping him. The group of servantswith the assis no longeranecdotal; from that foregroundthe dramatic representationdevelops, with lightning force, up to the-final gesture. If the problem of the definition of space is inseparablefrom that of the artistic developmentof the Master,we must conclude, given the date of this relief, that the firstpostulates of perspectiveare laid down in it. One of these is the reductionof narrativeto drama, of temporalsuccession to the unity of place, of the evocation to the representationof an action. The relief astoundedits contemporariesby what we should nowadayscall its violent realism. In point of fact the novelty of the work lies in its strongly marked archaic accent. The conventionalrhythms of line and of delicate chiaroscuroare brokenso as to give place to a hard cutting of planesto form massesof alternatinglight and shade. This modellingand the force and con- catenationof the movementsare clear indications: Filippo, passingover the Trecentesquetradition, had sought his dramaticsources in GiovanniPisano: the angel's gestureitself, to quote only the dramaticclimax of the scene, has its precedent in the Last Judgment of the Pisano pulpit. But in Giovanni Pisano the rhythm had been swift, increasing,in continual tension: here the moments of the story are distinguishedand individualized, but are seen THE ARCHITEGTURE OF BRUNELLESCHI I I7 simultaneouslyin their final resolution. The principleof "intersection",if we are not mistaken,was applied to time before it was applied to space, unless indeed the new idea of space is a consequenceof that sudden arrestationof time. The sculptureof Donatello is undoubtedlythe record of a new mode of conceiving the dramatic quality of life. In Rome, Filippo, and Donatello together sought out and measuredthe relics of Roman Art, but Donatello, says his biographer,;'never opened his eyes to architecture."Nor did Filippo troubleto initiate him into it, as though "he saw that Donato had no aptitude therein." Vasari, in his turn, records that Filippo blamed his friend for representingthe crucifiedChrist in the form of a peasant. Filippo, who had been thought too much of a realist by the judges in the competition, found that Donatello sometimescarried realism to excess. Donatello'sworld is in fact the world of feeling and of drama, the world of pure action: in his sculpturea popular Tuscan ethosis exalted to the level of the classicalepos. The passage of Manetti warns us, if such a warning is necessary, that Donatello, who was of anythingbut a speculativetemperament, did not start from theoreticpremises: yet he is undoubtedlythe first artist to constructa figured representationperspectively. Oertell believes that he can place the first determinationof vanishing point in the relief of St. George and the Dragon, dated about I4I6. We instead, are concernedto show that in this relief the receding planes of the cave and the portico, by contractingspace, cause the flattened masses of the horse and its rider to stand out with an effect of plastic emergence. Perspectivehas thereforea value of contrast,as opposedto that which it holds, for example,in the paintingof Masolino,where it servesas guide to the rhythmicalignment ofthe figures. It proportionsboth space and figures,contrasting the figure with space, or, since the figure is in the foreground,contrasting surface and depth. A more preciseconstruction with central perspectivemay be found in the relief of Herod'sFeast, which can be dated between I425 and I427 (Pl. I 2d). Vanishing point is clearly distinguishedin the middle of the central arcade, and coincideswith the elbow of the viol-player;the architraves,the pilasters, the flight of steps ascendingon the right, the ends of the beams set into the pilastersall concur exactly at that point and determinean absolute unity of space. Nor has this architecturea generic function as a spatial site: it is a complex, yet broken structure, that enters into the life of the action, dis- tinguishesits episodes,and even, by its air of antique ruin, plays its part in the pathos of the scene. In this, on the other hand, it is certainlypossible to distinguishvarious stages of the narrative(the dance, the presentationof the severed head, the different emotional reactions of the spectators); but the action, in that single and co-active space, is itself single and its various narrativephases, occurringin the same time and in the same space, become a clash of passionsin action. The clash of passionsis expressedby the sharp divergencesof the figures whicll leave an empty space in the centre. The figures move along intersecting paths; they do not rest on predetermined planes, but by their movementcreate opposingplanes, which meansthat they 1 R. Oertel, "Die Fruhwerke des Masac- I933* cio," Marburgerjrahrbuch fur Kunstzeissenschaft, II8 GIULIO CAltLO ARGAN define space in its three dimensions. Gothic rhythm dissolvedthe figure into the limitlessspace of the background;here Salome'slegs indicate a rotatory movementin a directionopposite to that of the movementof the arms and bust, and the soldier presentingthe chargeris constructedon two planes at right angles to each otherwhich makea sharpangle on the perpendicularthat falls from the shouldersto the knee. The architecturewhich is developed towardsthe centre in extended frontalplanes, grows thick with columnsand pilasters at the sides, which means that it multiplies spatial suggestionsin relationto the mass of the figuresthat crowd to left and right. Spacedoes not containthese things,it is the things which by their proportionalequilibrium or, in this case, the figuresby the individual characterof their movements, which define space. Light itself in this enclosedspace, circumscribedwithin the limits of an action, can no longerbreak in froman externalsource; it, too, is a quality of things which is broken up into spatial planes; and in the oppositionof those planes it too is dissolvedinto contrastingzones of light and shade. It is no longer light that produceslight and shade, for it is pro- duced by the intensity of that contrast, that is, it is inherent in the plastic fact, or in form. At this point we may legitimatelyask whether this conception of space as somethingwhich is not reproducedby the work of art but as something which the work of art itself disposes and realizes, had been reached by Donatello independentlyor through the medium of Brunelleschi. In the formercase the similarityofthe resultsobtained would be almostinexplicable; in the latter the analogybetween the resultsmight suggestthe hypothesisthat Brunelleschihad at some time formulateda generaltheory of vision and that Donatello had subordinatedhis own artisticactivity to this theoreticdisciple- ship. Since perspectiveis not simply a theory, but is the essence of the archi- tecture of Brunelleschi,the Brunelleschi-Donatellorelationship, which cer- tainly exists, is a figurativerelationship. In Herod's Feast the massesof the figurescluster along the sides of the centralspace, just as in Santo Spiritothe spaces of the side aisles and chapels are resolvedinto the void of the centre aisle; the whole scene is envisagedas a successionof parallel "intersections" which are projectedon to-the foreground;space, as a comprehensivevoid, annuls itself by implicatingitself with the modellingof the figures,just as it does by implicatingitself with the modellingof the membersin the architec- ture of Filippo. It is perhaps the first figured work in which perspectiveis assumednot as a law, but as a value in the representation;and the hypothesis that this representsthe point of contact between Brunelleschi'sarchitecture and the now imminent painting of Masaccio is not unreasonable. What is the special pathos, the special dramatic exigency that sees in perspective representationthe condition needful for its realization? What is the motive behind this translationof the phases of the narrativefrom time to space, in such a way that the importanceand the functionof each figure in the action is determinedby its spatial situation, or rather by the greater or less vigour of its movementsas creatorsof space? It has already been pointed out that this dramaticnecessity corresponds to a moral conceptionwhich distinguishes decisionfrom relative activity, and the immediateand completefulfilment of THE ARCHITEGTURE OF BRUNELLESCHI I I9 the one recognizesalso the rationaland moral validity of the other. To make a fully mature decision means making clear to oneself the causes that lead one to act: it means thereforejustifying one's action historically.In action, all causes remote and immediate, direct and indirect, are simultaneously broughtinto play in a mutual compensationor equilibriumwhich is already proportionin nuce:in action, emotionalcauses are already,in fact, realizedor resolvedjust as, in Brunelleschi'sarchitecture, all the forcesare alwaysrealized or in equilibriumand never incompleteor in tension. Therefore,the action, as an effect which exhaustsall causes,is alwayscathartic: it is representation par excellence.This explains why the sculpture of Donatello develops in a continuouscrescendo of dramatic intensity: the more intense the dramatic action, the more full and complete wil] be the catharsisand the loftierwill be the degree of universalityor of classicalityattained. It explains, too, why this dramatic quality can be realized equally in the pure movement of the figuresalmost without spatial elements (example the reliefs on the pulpit of San Lorenzo) or in pure perspectiveabstraction almost free from figure movements(example-the tondiof the life of St. John in the sacristy of San Lorenzo). This moral conceptionis the basis of the typically Quattrocento idea of the hero as the protagonistof a drama, or a being in whom great physical pre-eminence,that is a fullnessof sensoryvitality, correspondsto a clear consciousnessand a steadfast will: this is that animusin corpore,the knowledgeof which is the firststage of the supremeknowledge which is that of the animusseparatus. It will not then seem strangeto seek in the most typical, the almost sym- bolical, delineationof the heroic ideal of the Quattrocento-the "David" of Donatello (P1. I2C) a complete transposition,and almost a transubstantia- tion, of perspectivespace into the human form: the ideal origin of the natural- istic anthropomorphismof the Renaissance.In fact, in this , the delicate modellingdoes not cut acrossthe movementin the anatomyof the figure,but resolvesit into a linked balance of spatial allusion, of depth and emergence, which are all subsequentlyresolved on the plane of intersection. This is determinedby the shaft of light, which descendingfrom the brim of the hat, falls at a tangent to the figure, waveringover the smoothsurfaces and barely touching the chief points of emergence,to terminateat the base in the brief, intense, pictorial episode of Goliath'shead. This complete identificationof space and light explainswhy the alreadynoted crescendoof dramaor intensity of action is also, in Donatello'ssculptures, a crescendoof pictorial intensity, of vivid contrasts between light and dark. In the pure plasticity of the "David" there is already the promise of the plastic dissolution of the "Magdalene"in the . Perspectiveis thereforethe law upon which the compositionof a historia is based. The theory of the historiaoccupies a large part of the second book of the Pitturaof Alberti: and the critics have too readily neglected this part, thinking it void of any positive figurativecontent. Thus they have come to refer Alberti's analysis of formal material to natural vision, when in reality this is concerned with the supreme aim of the artist: the compositionof a historia.Alberti explicitly declares that the historiais composed of bodies, the bodies of membersand the membersof surfaces:figurative morphology I20 GIULIO CARLO ARGAN and syntax, which he has previouslyexplained, exist for the attainment of this literary aim. Beauty, it is trlle, is created by the compositionof the surfaces,but beauty or perfectionaccording to the ancient models, is not yet the historia.Although Alberti cites several examples of ancient historaeone gets the impressionthat he considersthe historiaas a supersedingof beauty in a moral sense, that is not as something pertaining to the memory of antiquity, but as a fact of the "modern"consciousness. To the practice of ancient art he adds the living practiceof the art of Donatello and Masaccio. What are the ideal conditionsof the "historia"? The standardswhich Alberti lays down in this matter correspondexactly to the theory of painting as intersection:intersection is the necessarycondition of the literary dignity of the historia.It is true that Alberti, though he proclaimsthat he wishes to write as a painter, is a man of letters; it is also true that the painting and sculptureof the Quattrocentoare not, in a strictsense, literary or humanistic; it is none the less importantthat criticismshould feel the need of considering these formal questionson a plane of literary and humanisticdignity. The form does not attain this dignity by the quality of its "content," but by its own formal quality or by the way in which it resolvesthat content. In order that such a figuredwork may attain the value of a historiait is of the first importance,Alberti explains, that every figure should be indi- vidualized both in its physical conformationand in the attributesthat are proper to it. The result of such individualizationis variety, though variety should not be allowed to distract one from the central theme to be repre- sented. The numberof figuresmust be limited so that the historiadoes not degenerateinto confusion:therefore the painter must distributethe full and the void in due proportion. This is the very condition of plastic form as the supremevalue of proportion. The figuresmust have concordantmovements, that is the action must take place at a single moment of time and space; the same movementsmust not be repeated by differentfigures, since every one has its special function. When he comes to movementsAlberti does not forget that the painter can representonly what can be seen; the movements of the soul can thereforebe expressedonly through the actions and move- ments of the body, and the painterwill only considermovements "which are made by changing place." It is thereforetrue of movements,considered as movementsof the soul, just as it is true of things, that they exist in so far as they occupy "a place." These movementsmust next be developed in all directions; that is there can be no historiaunless the action builds up the whole of space. Alberti further requires that in every historiaone figure should introduceor commenton the action, or, in other words,should inter- pose between the spectator and the action a mental distance (which is the pre-condition of a catharsis) correspondingto the optical distance which perspectiverequires between the eye and the object, so that the latter may not invade the field of vision but insteadmay be proportionedby and resolved into space. The historia,therefore, is the typical and perfect product of ingegno: at once the culminatingpoint and the moraljustification of artisticcreation. The historia,indeed, is an "invention"or a "fiction"; but only in the sense that it transposesthe realistic chronicleof facts into the sphere of universal THE ARCHITECTURE OF BRUNELLESCHI I2I ideas, and is thus a cathartic representation. The equivalenceof "fiction" and "invention,"while it does away with any suggestionof mimesis in the first term, and with any suggestionof the arbitraryin the second, clarifies the value of the term historia,which is not merely the record or expositionof an action, but the raisingof it to an eternal,or, preciselyan historicalsignifi- cance. It is impossibleto overlookthe analogy of this idea of the historiawith the idea of ancient drama,which the cultureof the Renaissancehad inherited from Aristotle'sPoetics. Tragedy is an action that acquires a universal value either by reason of the nobility and moral elevation of the contending persons,or because of the magnitudeof the action brought about by a com- bination of the slowly marshalledforces of destiny; hidden purposesof the gods that are realized and take shape in the passionsand actionsof men. For this reason dramatic action takes on an exemplary moral value, not in a pedagogical or moralistic,but in a profoundlysolemn sense. The historiais always exemplaryor, more generally,allegorical (one may recallAlberti's description ofthe "Calumnyof Apelles"on which Botticelliwas to draw) by reasonof its profoundnaturalistic content. All reality flows into the action, filling it and findingin it the act that manifestsand reveals,that is, "creates,"reality though only perhapsthrough the mute and solemnsugges- tions of a few essentialmovements. Nature itself, in its loftiestmanifestation, speaksand acts in dramaticaction. In order thereforethat the historiamay have its full value and that human actions should be strippedof all that is of merely occasionalor anecdotalsignificance, they must be referredto the very origin of things, to the beginningsof space, to the cosmic genesisof light and shade. Only in this worldwhich he createsand ordersby his own act can man be fully himself. The problemof space as a dimensionof action, or as the supremedemon- stration of man's dominion over reality, is the problem (which still awaitsa critical solution) of the painting of Masaccio.