And as Filippo was free from all household cares, he gave himself up so exclusively to his studies, that he took no time either to eat or sleep; his every thought was of Architecture, which was then extinct: I mean the good old manner, and not the Gothic and barbarous one, which was much practised at that period. Filippo had two very great purposes in his mind, the one being to restore to light the good manner in architecture, which, if he could effect, he believed that he should leave a no less illustrious memorial of himself than Cimabue and Giotto had done; the other was to discover a method for constructing the Cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, the difficulties of which were so great, that after the death of Arnolfo Lapi, no one had ever been found of sufficient courage to attempt the vaulting of that Cupola without an enormous expense of scaffolding.[1] He did not impart this purpose, either to Donato or to any living soul, but he never rested while in Rome until he had well pondered on all the difficulties involved in the vaulting of the Ritonda in that city (the Pantheon), and had maturely considered the means by which it might be effected.[2] He also well examined and made careful drawings of all the vaults and arches of antiquity: to these he devoted perpetual study, and if by chance the artists found fragments of capitals, columns, cornices, or basements of buildings buried in the earth, they set labourers to work and caused them to be dug out, until the foundation was laid open to their view. Reports of this being spread about Rome, the artists were called “treasureseekers”, and this name they frequently heard as they passed, negligently clothed, along the streets, the people believing them to be men who studied geomancy, for the discovery of treasures; the cause of which was that they had one day found an ancient vase of earth, full of coins. The money of Filippo
- ↑ Arnolfo had proposed to raise the Cupola immediately above the first cornice, as Vasari concludes—see ante, life of Arnolfo—from the model of the church in the chapel of the Spaniards, where the Cupola is besides extremely small. Arnolfo was followed by Giotto, in 1331. To Giotto succeeded Taddeo Gaddi; after whom, first Andrea Orgagna, and next Lorenzo di Filippo, were architects of the cathedral. Brunellesco succeeded Lorenzo di Filippo, -whom Richa erroneously calls Filippo di Lorenzo. —Schorn.
- ↑ Thence the assertion of many that the Cupola of the Rotunda served Brunellesco as his model, at least in a general manner, for that by which he afterwards immortalized himself.—Masselli.
