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Filippo Brunelleschi was an architect, who was one of the founding fathers of the Italian Renaissance. His designs for churches, chapels, palaces, and fortifications pioneered trends that later spread throughout Renaissance Europe. Brunelleschi also made decisive contributions to the nascent science prospective.
Brunelleschi was born in Florence in 1377, and was initially trained as a craftsman in gold and silver. Some of his early sculptures in precious metals were made for the Cathedral of Pistoia. In the famous competition held in 1401 for designing the bronze doors of the Baptistry of Florence, Brunelleschi and Lorenzo Ghiberti were jointly offered the commission. The doors were ultimately executed by Ghiberti, but Brunelleschi's trial panel may still be seen in the Bargello Museum in Florence.
Brunelleschi's interest then turned primarily to architecture. In 1418 he intervened in the debate on how to close the opening, 132 feet in diameter, over the crossing of the Gothic Cathedral of Florence. He divised an ingenious method of erecting a ribbed brick dome, which was to be accomplished without use of fixed centering. This dome, consisting of two separate 8-sided cloister vaults, one insed the other, has a shpae dtermined entirely by structural needs, an early case of architectual functionalism.
Dating from about the same period in Brunelleschi's career are his remodelings of the Church of San Lorenzo to serve as the Medici family chapel and of the foundling hospital called the Ospedale degli Innocenti. San Lorenzo shows the emergence of Brunelleschi's geometrical approach to planning; single unit of design, the modular square, has been imposed on all major parts of the plan and elevation, with the result that the interior is elegant and austere, creating an effect of tranquil repose. The main facade of the Ospedale has an elegant arcaded loggia that is a model example of of what was to become a characteristic Renaisance architectural theme.
Recent research has revealed the extent of Brunelleschi's nonarchitectural work: experimenting with a system of improve the volume of the Duomo organs, designing shallow-draft boats for use on the Arno, designing an aqueduct in Assisi. As cathedral capomaestro he was employed also as a military engineer, and between 1423 and 1432 built, for example, fortifications in Pisa and other cities, and a dam to divert the Arno to flood the enemy city of Lucca. Other records chronicle his inventions for stage machinery for the sacre rappresentazioni perfomed in the churches.
In Brunelleschi's later years he was shifted from a delicate, linear style that treats a building as an aggregate of juxtaposed planes to a more massive, almost sculptural manner, in an active interplay of solids and voids. The later style is seen in the unfinished Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, in which the interior is formed by pwerful niches opening from a central octagon, and in the Basiclica of Santo Spirito. The auster simplicity of these late works are a culmination rather that a reversal of Brunelleschi's earlier achievements.
