Brunelleschi, Filippo

Brunelleschi, Filippo (1377–1446). Florentine architect and sculptor. Brunelleschi was one of the most famous of all architects—a Florentine hero on account of the celebrated dome (1420–36) he built for the city's cathedral—and one of the group of artists, including Alberti, Donatello, and Masaccio, who created the Renaissance style. He trained as a goldsmith and was one of the artists defeated by another great goldsmith/sculptor, Lorenzo Ghiberti, in the competition (1401–2) for the new doors for the Florence Baptistery; their competition panels are in the Bargello. The disappointment of losing is said to have caused Brunelleschi to give up sculpture and turn to architecture, but he seems to have taken up architecture fairly gradually and one important sculptural work of later date is attributed to him—a painted wooden Crucifix in S. Maria Novella (c.1412). Although he was not a painter, Brunelleschi was a pioneer of perspective: in about 1413 he is said to have produced two demonstration pictures (representing buildings in Florence), in which he used a single vanishing point to represent pictorial depth in a completely consistent way.