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architecture that was both radical and conservative, highly abstract, Between 1418 and 1423 Brunelleschi started three major works - the
almost on the verge of iconoclasm, while still evoking the reassur- Ospedale degli Innocenti (Foundling Hospital), the rebuilding of
ing myths of antiquity. And it is precisely this contradiction between the basilica of San Lorenzo and the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore.
spatial radicalism and conservative politics that constitutes the ide- Even though their construction would take many more years, and
ological core of the early quattrocento counterrevolution from which would not be complete before Brunelleschi's death in 1446, these
was born not only Brunelleschi's work but the entire tradition of structures, aggressively inserted into the city fabric, would radically
what today we still call architecture. change not only the image of Florence but also the way in which
Fuelling this atavism, of course, is the fact that Brunelleschi was architecture itself was made.
some extent be explained by his est way to reduce these costs was
family ties. The son of a notary, to increase an urban workforce,
Brunelleschi was politically close which the Florentine authorities
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sented within the absoluteness of a single unit and as a clearly facture, but the logic of producing elements in series had already
defined disegno. This word, literally 'made of sign' {di-segno), which merged before Brunelleschi, notably in those processes of manual
would become a fundamental keyword in Renaissance art theory, labour which were strictly controlled by a preliminary scheme.
addresses a physical and metaphysical reduction of form to the con- Standardisation here implies that variances produced by different
trol of the contour line. Disegno in this sense implies abstraction, hands are subsumed into a singular and correct model introduced
since it reduces form to not just a silhouette but a concept. And at the beginning of the process as an archetype to be copied.14 In the
for this reason the word alludes to both a technique and an ideal case of the Foundling Hospital this is especially evident in the col-
of the arts in which the most important aspect of creation lies not umn capitals, which look all the same, something unprecedented
in the moment of execution but in its conception .12 As such, disegno at the time (even if the replacement of most of the originals in the
becomes the prerogative of the artist and the architect, as distinct nineteenth century means we cannot judge their uniformity now).
from the artisan, whose craft is only embedded in the act of making. In pre-modern buildings ornamentation was the real site of
In the Foundling Hospital the idea of disegno also emerges through a builder's pride. If you look at a Romanesque or Gothic church, for
the clear separation between structural elements and walls: the first example, you will notice a rich diversity of ornamental patterns, the
are made of grey stone [pietra serena) while the second are white- deliberate index of different workmen, each with his own sensibil-
washed. From a tectonic point of view this differentiation is as clear ity. In quattrocento Florence, such evident variation was extruded
as it is ambiguous, for the columns are in some cases decorative, into the collective ethos of the guild - an individual's contribution
not structural (as in the case of the fluted columns), and what often to any endeavour lay in his ability to control not the idea but the
appears as infill is in fact a loadbearing wall. execution. If there is something profoundly (counter) revolution-
Yet what is immutable is that columns and arches are made ary in Brunelleschi's architecture, it is that he deeply challenged
clearly visible as lines , again highlighting the nature of the
this
work
logic,
asbringing ornamentation under the control of the archi-
a composite of interconnected elements. Here, Brunelleschi's
tect, and thus making it the formal register of his idea. No longer
left to
choice of material is also revealing. Traditionally columns the stonecutter's initiative, the ornaments in Brunelleschi's
were
always crafted in the most precious marble, whereas hearchitecture
only used took their form from his reinterpretation of the classi-
cal architectural
soft grey stone [pietra serena ). This had the immediate benefit of eas- orders, not on the grounds of antiquarianism, but
ing their manufacture, since stone was more malleable andbecause
cheaper,
they established a very precise grammar by which elements
but the uniformity of this kind of stone (whose grey tonecould
is as be
mute
ordered in a highly controlled manner.15
as a Gerhard Richter 'grey' painting) also made architecture Perhaps
more predictably, such a radical restructuring of the con-
abstract and thus more susceptible to being experienced as struction
an opti- process was not greeted with any great enthusiasm.
cal rather than a tactile element. The same abstraction In fact, as
appears in recounted by Manetti, during Brunelleschi's periodic
absences
the 'infill' walls, whitened as if he wanted them to dematerialise, from the construction site the builders would quickly
and
deviate
thus seem to expand in any direction. And indeed the success from the original scheme and introduce their own solu-
of this
abstraction is revealed by the perfect correspondence between
tions to the
various problems - something that enraged the architect on
loggia and the rest of the building: the module exposed in his
the return.16
plan of What played itself out through battles like these was
not just a disagreement about the execution of certain predefined
the loggia becomes the measure that governs the entire complex.13
details,
From Manetti we know that Brunelleschi developed this mod-but a more fundamental conflict between the architect's
ule, and the hospital as a whole, not by working with models
mastery but
- underwritten by the city oligarchs - and the guilds' more
with the drawing of a plan annotated with exact measurements,
established rule over the building site. Brunelleschi's new model of
which his builders were then expected to faithfully follow.
architectural
Funda- authority therefore challenged both the way a builder
mental to this process, the architectural plan became both worked
a physi-
and more generally the way labour in the city was organised.
cal tool and an abstract emblem that not only distinguished
And it isthe
worth reiterating that he did this through the abstraction
of design (supported by measure and by standardisation), which
builder from the architect but helped enshrine the subordination
in the process disempowered the collective nature of building by
of one to the other. As the canopy module shows, for Brunelleschi
reducing
the plan was also a datum expressed in the architectural form itself.it to a singular set of ideas: the principles established
A strict modularity and synthetic relationship between
byelements
the architect.
152 AA FILES 71
fectly organised labour force is him after just a few days, estab-
reflected in the form itself - a reg- lishing in the process a legal
ulating rhythm of structural sup- precedent in favour of the inde-
ports and appropriately perfect pendence of the architect as an
symmetry. Even the materiality of 'autonomous' creator.20
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sequent reduction of these frag- divided into two parts: the lower
ments to a systematised grammar part is defined by a continuous
was harder to rationalise.22 More entablature running around the
generally, an emphasis on the entire inner perimeter of the vol-
orders develops into an obsession for Renaissance architecture ume,
pre- with fluted pilasters marking all the corners, while the upper
cisely because the new division of labour forces it to become apart
dis- is composed of four arches that support the dome. Because of
cipline whose mastery is not limited to construction but extends its
to form, the arches clearly reveal how the upper and lower parts are
the same height. Moreover, the spherical shape of the umbrella-
a cultural legacy expressed in the philologically correct use of anti-
like dome also shows that it is more or less the same height as the
quarian references. The problem of architecture is thus no longer
simply technical but syntactical, dictating that building can arches
only - thus half the cube, and so a mirror to the lower and upper
parts. If we further abstract this design, the space of the sacristy can
make sense if framed by the formal reason of the system of orders.
be represented as the stacking of three equal parts, all treated in dif-
This was not an easy problem to solve. In ancient structures the
orders were primarily used for temples, a typology completely dif- ferent ways and yet all related to each other by a strict symmetrical
composition
ferent to those classical structures built in the quattrocento , such as of parts - a system made obvious, as it is at the hospi-
palaces and churches. The Renaissance architect had thereforetal,
to by the use of grey stone to materialise the principal lines of the
volume, while the rest is rendered in white plaster.23
endure a painstaking process of adaptation so as to fit a presumed
modular order into new buildings often lacking the proportional It is important to note that the whiteness of these walls was
form these orders required. One of the conse- not conceived simply as a backdrop for a sub-
Interior of the Old Sacristy,
sequent series of coloured frescos or some
quences of this adaptation, though, was thatbasilica-of San Lorenzo, Florence, 1421-40
classical elements, such as entablatures, were © Alinari Archives, Florence other form of ornament. In Brunelleschi's
154 AA FILES 71
how
enzo - the city's second most important religious structure after the able to impose on all parties the same standardised model of
cathedral - the family's palatine chapel. chapel, including a repeating decorative treatment. Even the paint-
ing above the altar was of the same square format and dimensions
Medici's initiative to first appropriate the sacristy as the family
mausoleum and then ask Brunelleschi to work on the basilica makes in each of the chapels.27 This sameness reflected a political consen-
clear how he used this second commission to legitimise his pres-
sus among the various parties, in spite of the fact that the rebuild-
tige, inscribing one of the most important public buildings ining
theof the transept was promoted by one very prominent family. San
Lorenzo thus reflects the way in which a Florentine elite was gain-
city with his family name. The audacity of this appropriation should
also be understood in terms of the location of the new church within ing control over the city, not only by imposing their authority, but
a very particular part of the city. Over the preceding centuries theby giving form to a collective civic consciousness, of which impor-
district of San Lorenzo had been one of the more embattled areas tant religious and public monuments such as this basilica were the
physical embodiment.
of Florence, site of a prolonged conflict between church authorities
AA FILES 71 155
problem was therefore the pas- initiated 'a way of building', his
sage from the abstraction of use of perspective initiated 'a way
a conceptual scheme to its mate- of seeing'.30 Already in the late-
rialisation as a physical entity, thirteenth century painters were
where the inexorable thickness familiar with the rudiments of
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the intuitio , the central ray of the pyramid. While the aspectus gener- And yet for such a system to work it needs to reduce the experi-
ated images that fed a sort of vague sense of vision, the intuitio was ence of space to the abstraction of mathematical space. This is the
considered more focused and precise. Thus for Alhazen intuitio was ultimate paradox of perspective: on the one hand, it is the repre-
a form of vision capable of being both sensible and rational, since sentation of space as perceived by the human eye; on the other, it is
its workings could be reduced to mathematical verification. a construction that excludes on principle the accidents of seeing
In the Middle Ages this theory had a wide influence on western and reduces the gaze to the certitude of a repeatable formula. Per-
culture, in particular inspiring spective, in this sense, is not so
a multitude of philosophi perspec- much an innovation in terms of
tivi - scientists whose research representation, as a revolution in
was at the intersection of theol- the conception of space.
ogy, optics and mathematics. Fourteenth-century Florence
Among them was Domenico da was the epicentre of this revolu-
Chivasso, who in his important tion thanks to the fertile recep-
treatise, Quaestiones super per- tion accorded to perspective both
spectivam, elaborated on Alha- as a science and as the basis for a
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nelleschi plan the aisles were the Arno, and thus make
all the same, running along his new monument visible
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authority it set out to radiate. he was too close to the Albizzi faction, and when the rival Medici
More expansively still, at Santo Spirito the spirit of counter- assumed the leadership of the Firenze Signoria his support struc
revolution also reached its apotheosis. For it was here - even more ture diminished. A more intriguing reading would suggest tha
than at the sacristy, basilica of San Lorenzo or cathedral dome - ultimately Brunelleschi's project was defeated by its own disruptive
that the abstract perfection of its architecture erased an image of radicalism - that in the end he disoriented rather than reinforced
the city mired in conflict. And yet it is precisely the intensity of this a new order by overreaching the boundaries of what could be con-
abstraction that reveals, per via negativa , an instability that the cer- sidered abstract space.
tainties of this mathematical space sought to tame. A parallel might One can see this already in the building many consider to be
be drawn with the way Marx conceived of the machine as a techni- Brunelleschi's masterpiece, the Pazzi Chapel (even if its attribution
cal and social apparatus that 'runs wherever strikes occur' - to use to Brunelleschi has been contested53). Here, the decision to add two
Antonio Negri's phrase.51 In other words, the development of capi- half modules to the crossing results in a rather awkward intersec-
tal, with its simultaneously abstract and concrete ways of working, tion between the arches and the dome, where, as Marvin Trachten-
cannot be separated from the conflict it consistently attempts to berg has argued, it is difficult to understand where one plane begins
defuse. Abstraction, therefore, should not be understood as some and the other ends. Moreover, instead of augmenting the geometric
kind of will imposed from above, but as a social force determined character of the chapel, the overly rich decoration seems to make
by cooperation and the sharing of skills, as a living labour. And the surface more important than the space. This would become
machines are never invented in vacuo. They are not the product of a defining characteristic of later Renaissance architecture, with very
solitary geniuses, as the rhetoric of the Renaissance would have us few architects (including Bramante, the most Brunelleschian of all
believe. Rather, they are always born out of social situations that Renaissance architects) able to counteract the trend. And indeed,
instruct their power to dominate not by force but by reason. As the already with Alberti - Brunelleschi's obvious successor - there
Italian Operaist philosopher Mario Tronti would put it, 'first strug- is much more of an emphasis on surfaces, now able to accept
gle and then development'.52 transgressions and contaminations from other architectural
In this sense, Brunelleschi's syntactic architecture could be seen languages, while the orders, even though rigorous, become reduced
as simply another kind of machine - a reading that is not entirely to a secondary ornamental element.
symbolic but also supported by biography, for we should remem- Despite all that he did and all that he represented, the buildings
ber that Brunelleschi's background was as a goldsmith and more that Brunelleschi produced are thus merely a glimpse of a moment:
particularly a clockmaker, not to mention the fact that he designed the manifestation of a first counterrevolutionary wave in which
and manufactured machines in order to facilitate the construction architecture was born as a clearly recognisable profession and as
of the dome. As Bruschi suggests, the architecture he pioneered
a form of real abstraction. That this glimpse ultimately became just
as threatening as the very thing it was attempting to counter should
could therefore be imagined as made of cogs and gears, coordinated
within a larger machine and designed so as to transmit forces and
not undermine its significance, for as the modern project initiated
by Brunelleschi continued, the power of his architecture would
avoid any form of slippage. The singularity of this image is further
be diluted by endless formal games played by a celebrated cast of
reinforced by the fact - confirmed by his biographers Manetti and
practitioners who have since given an explicitly aesthetic form
Vasari - that distinct from the plans Brunelleschi made available
to his builders, he would construct rudimentary models thattocon-that long and latent counterrevolutionary movement that is the
veyed the most salient features of a project. Here architecture was of capital.
history
i. The cornerstone of the Renaissance Rudolf Wittkower's seminal study Alexander Nagel in Controversies in 6. Paolo Virno, 'Do You Remember
myth was laid by Jakob Burckhardt^ of Leon Battista Alberti, Francesco Renaissance Art (New Haven, ст: Yale Counterrevolution?' in Paolo Virno and
extremely influential The Civilisation di Giorgio and Andrea Palladio. University Press, 2011). Yet this book Michael Hardt (eds), Radical Thought in
of Renaissance in Italy , in which the See Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural focuses only on the sixteenth century. Italy: A Potential Politics (Minneapolis,
Swiss patrician developed further Principles in the Age of Humanism What is missing is work of the same MN: University of Minnesota Press,
Leon Battista Alberti's and Giorgio (London: Warburg Institute, 1949); calibre on the early quattrocento. 1996), pp 241-60. In this essay, which
Vasari's idea of rinascita as the rebirth and Henry Milion, 'Rudolf Wittkower's 4. Here I mean to suggest not a specific responded to a group of former
of the arts after the 'dark age' of Architectural Principles in the Age critique to a specific episode, but Autonomia Operaia militants' text,
medieval civilisation. Burckhardt of Humanism: Its Influence in the more of a general critique similar to 'Do You Remember Revolution', Virno
linked this idea with the bourgeois Development and Interpretation that offered by Manfredo Tafuri's early explained the historical victory of the
ideology of man as the centre of the of Modern Architecture', Journal historiographie work. See in particular Right in Italy in the elections of March
universe. As he wrote, To the discovery of the Society of Architectural Historians , Manfredo Tafuri, Architecture 1994 as the culmination of a 'counter-
of the outward world the Renaissance September 1972, pp 83-91. and Utopia: Design and Capitalist revolutionary' movement that started
added a still greater achievement: 2. For one of the more radical critiques Development (Cambridge, ma: mit after the long 'revolution' that took
by first discovering and bringing to of the idealisation of humanistic Press, 1976). place in Italy in the 1960s and 1970s.
light the full whole nature of man.' culture see Manfredo Tafuri, 5. A well-known example of just such a Against the traditional assumption
See Jakob Burckhardt, The Civilisation Interpreting the Renaissance: Princes, critique was put forward by John Ruskin, that counterrevolution is simply
of Renaissance in Italy (Penguin: Cities, Architects (New Haven, ст: Yale a contemporary of Burckhardt. See the restoration of an ancien régime ,
London, 1950), p 84. A 'humanistic' University Press, 2006). Richard Titlebaum, 'John Ruskin and Virno argued that what happened
interpretation of Renaissance 3. A very interesting and fresh approach the Italian Renaissance', English Studies in Italy in the 1980s was a period of
architecture was put forward by to the Renaissance has been taken by in Africa, vol 19, no 21, 1976, pp 1-7. great innovation but in a politically
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