44 Facts About Filippo Brunelleschi

Filippo Brunelleschi is considered to be a founding father of Renaissance architecture.

Filippo Brunelleschi is recognized as the first modern engineer, planner, and sole construction supervisor.

In 1421, Brunelleschi became the first person to receive a patent in the Western world.

Filippo Brunelleschi is most famous for designing the dome of the Florence Cathedral, and for the mathematical technique of linear perspective in art which governed pictorial depictions of space until the late 19th century and influenced the rise of modern science.

Filippo Brunelleschi's accomplishments include other architectural works, sculpture, mathematics, engineering, and ship design.

Filippo Brunelleschi's mother was Giuliana Spini; he had two brothers.

The young Filippo Brunelleschi was given a literary and mathematical education to enable him to follow the father's career.

Filippo Brunelleschi's earliest surviving sculptures are two small bronze statues of evangelists and saints made for the altar of the Crucifix Chapel Pistoia Cathedral.

Filippo Brunelleschi paused this project in 1400, when he was chosen to simultaneously serve two representative councils of the Florentine government for about four months.

Filippo Brunelleschi refused to forfeit total control of the project, preferring it to be awarded to Ghiberti.

However, some historians dispute that he visited Rome then, given the number of projects Filippo Brunelleschi had in Florence at the time, the poverty and lack of security in Rome during that period, and the lack of evidence of the visit.

Filippo Brunelleschi was the official architect until 1427, but he was rarely on site after 1423.

The major portion completed by Filippo Brunelleschi was an arcade or loggia with nine arches, supported on each side by pilasters, which gave the appearance of columns, and opening to the interior by a small door.

Thereafter Filippo Brunelleschi was awarded additional commissions, like the Ridolfi Chapel in the church of San Jacopo sopr'Arno, and the Barbadori Chapel in Santa Felicita.

In both projects Filippo Brunelleschi devised elements already used in the Ospedale degli Innocenti, and which would be used in the Pazzi Chapel and the Sagrestia Vecchia.

Filippo Brunelleschi was using these relatively small projects to pilot ideas which he would later employ in his most famous work, the dome of the Cathedral of Florence.

Filippo Brunelleschi undertook the major project of the Basilica of San Lorenzo soon after he had begun the Foundling Hospital.

Filippo Brunelleschi designed the central nave, with the two collateral naves on either side lined by small chapels, and the old sacristy.

Filippo Brunelleschi used white walls in the Old Sacristy, which later became a common element of Renaissance architecture.

Santa Maria degli Angeli was an unfinished project by Filippo Brunelleschi which introduced a revolutionary concept in Renaissance architecture.

The plans and model of Filippo Brunelleschi's church disappeared, and it is known only from an illustration in the Codex Rustichi from 1450, and from drawings of other architects.

Filippo Brunelleschi used more than four million bricks in the construction of the octagonal dome.

Notably, Filippo Brunelleschi left behind no building plans or diagrams detailing the dome's structure; scholars surmise that he constructed the dome as though it were hemispherical, which would have allowed the dome to support itself.

Filippo Brunelleschi constructed two domes, one within the other, a practice that would later be followed by all the successive major domes, including those of Les Invalides in Paris and the United States Capitol in Washington.

Filippo Brunelleschi invented a new hoisting machine for raising the masonry needed for the dome, a task no doubt inspired by republication of Vitruvius' De architectura, which describes Roman machines used in the first century AD to build large structures such as the Pantheon and the Baths of Diocletian, structures still standing, which he would have seen for himself.

The strength of the dome was improved by the wooden and sandstone chains invented by Filippo Brunelleschi, which acted like tensioning rings around the base of the dome and reduced the need for flying buttresses, so popular in Gothic architecture.

Filippo Brunelleschi kept his workers up in the building during their breaks and brought food and diluted wine, similar to that given to pregnant women at the time, up to them.

Filippo Brunelleschi felt the trip up and down the hundreds of stairs would exhaust them and reduce their productivity.

Filippo Brunelleschi won the competition and designed the structure and built the base for the lantern, but he did not live long enough to see its final installation atop the dome.

In 1438 Filippo Brunelleschi designed his last contribution to the cathedral; four hemispherical exedra, or small half-domes, based on a Roman model, set against the drum at the base of the main dome.

Besides his accomplishments in architecture, Filippo Brunelleschi is credited as the first person to describe a precise system of linear perspective.

Filippo Brunelleschi systematically studied how and why objects, buildings, and landscapes changed and lines appeared to change shape when seen from a distance or from different angles.

Filippo Brunelleschi produced drawings in perspective of the Baptistry in Florence, Place San Giovanni and other Florence landmarks.

Filippo Brunelleschi mathematically calculated a scale for the objects in the drawing to make them appear more accurately, thus discovering a system to represent three dimensional objects on a two-dimensional surface.

The most important treatise on painting of the Renaissance, Della Pittura libri tre by Alberti, with a description of Filippo Brunelleschi's experiment, was published in 1436 and was dedicated to Filippo Brunelleschi.

Filippo Brunelleschi's interests extended to mathematics and engineering and the study of ancient monuments.

Filippo Brunelleschi designed hydraulic machinery and elaborate clockworks, none of which survive.

Filippo Brunelleschi designed machinery for use in churches during theatrical religious performances that re-enacted Biblical miracle stories.

Filippo Brunelleschi designed fortifications used by Florence in its military confrontations with Pisa and Siena.

Filippo Brunelleschi's works involved sometimes urban planning; he strategically positioned several of his buildings in relation to the nearby squares and streets to increase their visibility.

Filippo Brunelleschi did not have children of his own, but in 1415, he adopted Andrea di Lazzaro Cavalcanti, who took the name Il Buggiano, after his birthplace.

Filippo Brunelleschi was a member of the guild of silk merchants, which included jewelers and goldsmiths, but not of the guild of stone and wood masters, which included architects.

Filippo Brunelleschi was quickly released, and the stone and wood masters were charged with false imprisonment.

Filippo Brunelleschi is portrayed by Alessandro Preziosi in the 2016 television series Medici: Masters of Florence.