Brunelleschis Dome (8 page)

The first of these commissions was the Ridolfi Chapel in San Jacopo sopr’Arno, south of the river, and the Barbadori Chapel nearby in Santa Felìcita. Then came the sacristy in San Lorenzo, commissioned by the wealthy banker Giovanni de’ Medici, who hoped to be entombed inside Filippo’s creation. Finally there was the Ospedale degli Innocenti, “Hospital of the Innocents,” a home for abandoned infants sponsored by the Silk Merchants, the guild responsible for the welfare of the Commune’s foundlings and orphans. It was also in 1419 that Filippo adopted, and then apprenticed, a seven-year-old orphan named Andrea Cavalcanti, later known as Il Buggiano, after his home village in Tuscany. This was to be a productive if occasionally turbulent association.

It was no coincidence that three of the four commissions awarded to Filippo in 1419 included cupolas. Particularly significant were the Barbadori Chapel and the Ridolfi Chapel. Both of these were commissioned by members of the Wool Guild, therefore by men closely involved with the cupola project at Santa Maria del Fiore.
²
These two chapels represented tests for Filippo, serving as trial runs for the novel scheme of vaulting without centering. Unfortunately, nothing now remains of either dome. The interior of San Jacopo was rebuilt in 1709, and in 1589 the dome of the Barbadori Chapel was demolished by Vasari (ironically, Filippo’s ardent champion) when the long corridor was built to link the Pitti Palace to the Uffizi. It is therefore impossible to know whether the techniques Filippo used were those he later employed on the cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore. What we do know is that both domes were raised without wooden centering, although ironically the one for the Ridolfi Chapel was actually smaller than Filippo’s brick model.

Toward the end of 1419 the Wool Guild consuls made a concerted effort to resolve the problem of the dome by appointing four men to a special ad hoc committee known as the Uffitiales Cupule. These Four Officials of the Cupola moved swiftly. On April 16, 1420, they assembled the thirteen wardens and twenty-four wool consuls in the headquarters of the guild, the Palazzo dell’Arte della Lana, several streets south of the cathedral, in order to appoint a new
capomaestro
to replace Giovanni d’Ambrogio. Their choice was a thirty-eight-year-old master mason named Battista d’Antonio who had served as
vice-capomaestro
under Giovanni. Battista had worked on the cathedral site since 1398, first as an apprentice stonemason, then as a master. Eight other master masons were then appointed to serve under Battista, each being placed in charge of one of the eight sides of the octagonal dome.

So omnipresent would Battista d’Antonio become at Santa Maria del Fiore over the next thirty years, and so neglected has his role been, that he has been called the “hunchback of the Duomo.”
³
Despite his title as
capomaestro
, however, he was actually more a foreman or overseer than an architect or designer in the mold of previous
capomaestri
such as Giotto or Andrea Pisano. These two men were first and foremost artists, the one having trained as a painter, the other as a goldsmith. Battista, on the other hand, was a mason and, like most masons, worked in traditional ways and according to long-established rules and precedents, imitating previous designs rather than inventing new ones. He would become the on-site supervisor whose task it was to translate any models and plans settled upon by the Opera del Duomo into bricks-and-mortar reality by coordinating the efforts of the eight master masons and their crews, as well as the unskilled laborers on the ground. All building projects of the Middle Ages featured just such an individual, who was essential to their success. It was his task to describe the architect’s plans to workmen unable to comprehend the complex architectural drawings.
*

Since Battista d’Antonio, for all his practical experience, had no formal training or theoretical preparation in building design, it was necessary to appoint someone else who would serve, in effect, as the architect in chief rather than merely the leader of the works staff. So it was that on the same day that Battista was appointed, the Four Officials, the wardens, and the Wool Guild consuls took the extraordinary step of appointing two more
capomaestri
. Filippo’s delight in finally being allowed to oversee the project he had been dreaming of for so long must have been tempered by the fact that Lorenzo Ghiberti was appointed as his fellow
capomaestro
. Henceforth the two rivals would be forced to work in close collaboration with each other on the project, sharing a rather meagre salary of 6 florins per month.

This plan surely tempted fate, given Filippo’s response to the result of the Baptistery door competition two decades earlier. But Filippo had invested too much time and ingenuity in the project to decline the offer in a fit of pique. This time he accepted his position and then carefully bided his time, aware that he alone, and not Lorenzo, a man with no architectural experience, knew how the dome would be built.

A fourth architect was also appointed, a sixty-year-old humanist philosopher named Giovanni da Prato, who was made deputy to Lorenzo Ghiberti. Giovanni was, among various other accomplishments, the lecturer on Dante at the University of Florence. No sooner did he become involved in the project than he began nourishing a lusty hatred for Filippo. The root of this hatred was a vision of the dome that differed quite drastically from Filippo’s. In 1420 Giovanni da Prato was already agitating for a change in the cupola’s design because he believed that it would result in a church that was
oscura e tenebrosa,
“murky and gloomy,” due to the lack of windows. But his proposed plan that twenty-four windows be incorporated into the base of the dome (a structurally dubious scheme) received little attention from the Opera del Duomo: he was paid 3 florins for his advice, which was then completely ignored. Over the years this rejection would fester in Giovanni’s breast and finally lead him to launch several remarkably vitriolic attacks on Filippo.

Three months after these appointments were made, the wardens and the Four Officials of the Cupola made an even more momentous decision: they met to approve a written specification outlining the structural details of Filippo’s 1418 model, which they now adopted as the one showing the best method of vaulting. This document is a twelve-point memorandum that describes the dimensions of the two shells, the systems of ribs and chains, the building materials to be used, and so forth. It also mentions the intention to vault without centering, stating that both shells are to be built
sanza alcuna armadura,
“without scaffold-supported centering,” though how exactly this was to be achieved the document fails to state.

Although the author of this memorandum is not known for certain, it seems safe to assume it is Filippo’s brainchild.
⁴
Still, Filippo was not named as the winner of the competition: the Opera did not see fit to award the prize of 200 florins to him or to anyone else. This must have rankled Filippo, given that his brick model was to become the new touchstone for the dome: it was put on display in the open air of the Piazza del Duomo, near the campanile. Like the model of Neri di Fioravanti, which still stood inside the cathedral, it was to become a shrine of sorts and would occupy this spot for the next dozen years, with a fence erected around it to foil vandals. The Opera’s failure to grant Filippo a prize seems slightly unethical given that the original proclamation had guaranteed 200 florins to anyone whose model was used to raise the dome. But Filippo seems to have accepted the Opera’s decision not to award him the 200 florins. After all, he was finally to get the chance to vault the dome using his revolutionary techniques.

T
HE MORNING OF
August 7, 1420, began with a small celebration held 140 feet in the air. The stone cutters, masons, and other laborers on the building site climbed to the top of the tambour of Santa Maria del Fiore, high above the city, and ate a breakfast of bread, melons, and Trebbiano wine paid for by the Opera del Duomo. This small feast marked a historic occasion. After more than fifty years of planning and delay, construction of the great dome of the cathedral was ready to begin.

For the previous few months the building site had been a hive of activity. One hundred fir trees, each 21 feet long, had been ordered for the scaffolds and platforms, and the first of almost a thousand cartloads of stone had been delivered. Peering over the edge of the tambour, the workmen could have seen spread below them in the Piazza del Duomo scores of these sandstone beams, as well as hundreds of thousands of bricks stacked high.

Life on the building site would not be an easy or an enviable one. The pay was low, the hours long, the work dangerous, and the employment sporadic due to bad weather. Most workers in the building trade came from poor families, the
popolo minuto
, “little people.” The unskilled laborers — men who carried the lime or bricks — were known as
uomini senza nome e famiglia
,“men without name or family.”Altogether as many as 300 men worked on the dome, including those in the quarries.
¹
Their week was a long one, running from Monday to Saturday, often from dawn to dusk, which in the summer could mean a fourteen-hour day. Payment came every Saturday, when the foreman, Battista d’Antonio, issued the men chits, or
scritte
, which were redeemed from the pay clerk of the Opera. If fortunate, they might be dismissed an hour or two early, giving them time to buy their food in the stalls of the nearby Mercato Vecchio, which, like everything else, was closed on Sundays. All work was forbidden on the Sabbath and during religious feasts, though an exception was made for the men whose job it was to water the masonry on feast days in order to keep it moist and therefore workable. The spreading of manure over the walls — a common method used in the Middle Ages for keeping the masonry moist and protecting it from the elements — does not appear to have been employed at the cathedral. One reason for this might have been that, for reasons of hygiene, it was illegal to import manure into the city.

Religious feasts offered the masons what must have been a welcome relief from their work. On these days they would march in procession through streets swept clear of prostitutes and moneylenders or else make pilgrimages in search of the indulgences sold in stalls along the Via San Gallo. Their most important festival was the eighth of November, the feast of their patron saints, the Quattro Coronati: four Christian sculptors martyred by the emperor Diocletian for refusing to carve a statue of the pagan god Aesculapius. On this day the men would hear a mass together, then take food and drink — the latter sometimes to excess, for the guild’s statutes state that some of the men conducted themselves on this solemn occasion
come se fussino alla taverna
, “as if they were in a tavern.”

Taking the Sabbath and these religious feasts into account, a full-time laborer could expect approximately 270 days of work on the dome each year, though in fact because of the weather he would probably work a good deal less, perhaps as few as 200. When it was too cold, wet, or windy for anyone to work on the summit, the names of all the masons would be put into a leather pouch, and Battista d’Antonio would draw those of five men, who were set to work in the shelter, plastering or bricklaying, while the rest of the workers were sent home without pay. Longer layoffs were also a possibility.

These were the uncertain conditions, then, in which the masons would set off for the cathedral each working day. Church bells rang in every district of the city to rouse them from their beds and summon them to their labors. They carried their own tools, which the Opera expected them to supply themselves: chisels, T squares, hammers, trowels, and mallets, all of which could be repaired or sharpened by a blacksmith who operated a forge on the site. Upon arriving at the cathedral, the men had their names inscribed on a gesso board, rather like punching a clock in a factory, while the working hours were recorded by a sand hourglass. Filippo appears to have been a strict master. Later he would institute an even more precise form of discipline on the building site of Santo Spirito, where an
oriuolo di mezz’oro
, a half-hour clock, regulated the working day by chiming every thirty minutes. The conception of time was changing in the fifteenth century. Throughout the Middle Ages it had been associated with the liturgical hours. The Latin word
hora
, “hour,” was in fact synonymous with prayer. Each of these hours had been divided into four parts of ten minutes’ duration, while each minute was divided into forty “moments.” By 1400, however, it had become the custom to divide the hour into sixty minutes, and each minute into sixty seconds. The pace of life was increasing.
²

Besides their tools, the men also carried their food with them in leather pouches. The noon meal, the
comesto
, was taken at eleven o’clock, when the church bells sounded a second time. We know that the
comesto
was normally eaten aloft because in 1426, in order to foil idlers, the Opera decreed that no mason could descend from the dome during the day. This must have meant that even on the hottest summer days the workers did not enjoy their
dolce far niente
, “sweet idleness,” the afternoon siesta when all labors would usually cease because of the scorching temperatures. It was also in 1426 that, on Filippo’s orders, a cookshop was installed between the two shells of the cupola in order to serve a noon meal to the workers. The dangers of an open fire on the dome were possibly mitigated by the fact that the masons also served as Florence’s firemen. This responsibility fell to them because they owned the tools used to combat fires in the only way that was practical: tearing down walls to create firebreaks.

To slake their thirst on sweltering summer days the workers drank wine, which they carried in flasks along with their tools and lunches. Strange and inadvisable as a draft of wine might seem under these circumstances, whether diluted or not, wine was a healthier drink than water, which carried bacteria and therefore disease. And the Florentines placed great faith in the wholesome properties of wine. Drunk in moderation, it was said to improve the blood, hasten digestion, calm the intellect, enliven the spirit, and expel wind. It might also have given a fillip of courage to men clinging to an inward-curving vault several hundred feet above the ground.