Stepping out of Brunelleschi's Shadow

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STEPPING OUT OF BRUNELLESCHI’S SHADOW. THE CONSECRATION OF SANTA MARIA DEL FIORE AS INTERNATIONAL STATECRAFT IN MEDICEAN FLORENCE Roger J. Crum In his De pictura of 1435 (translated by the author into Italian as Della pittura in 1436) Leon Battista Alberti praised Brunelleschi’s dome of Florence cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore [Fig. 1], as ‘such a large structure’ that it rose ‘above the skies, ample to cover with its shadow all the Tuscan people’.1 Alberti was writing metaphorically, but he might as easily have written literally in prediction of the shadowing effect that Brunelleschi’s dome, dedicated on 30 August 1436, would eventually cast over the Florentine cultural and historical landscape of the next several centuries.2 So ever-present has Brunelleschi’s structure been in the historical perspective of scholars – not to mention in the more popular conception of Florence – that its stately coming into being in the Quattrocento has almost fully overshadowed in memory and sense of importance another significant moment in the history of the cathedral and city of Florence that immediately preceded the dome’s dedication in 1436: the consecration of Santa Maria del Fiore itself on 25 March of that same year.3 The cathedral was consecrated by Pope Eugenius IV (r. 1431–1447), and the ceremony witnessed the unification in purpose of high eccle- siastical, foreign, and Florentine dignitaries. The event brought to a close a history that had begun 140 years earlier when the first stones of the church were laid in 1296; in 1436, the actual date of the consecration was particularly auspicious, for not only is 25 March the feast of the Annunciation, but in the Renaissance that day was also the start of the Florentine calendar year. Christological narrative and 1 See Hyman I. (ed.), Brunelleschi in Perspective (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: 1974), 27. 2 For Brunelleschi’s dome, see Saalman H., Filippo Brunelleschi: The Cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore (London: 1980); Fanelli G. – Fanelli M., Brunelleschi’s Cupola: Past and Present of an Architectural Masterpiece (Florence: 2004); and King R., Brunelleschi’s Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture (New York: 2000). 3 For the consecration of the cathedral, see notes 5–7 below. 60 roger j. crum Fig. 1. View on Brunelleschi’s Dome of Florence Cathedral from the Via dello Studio (photo: author). .

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