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Updated: June 24, 2025
I speak of Donatello elsewhere in this book, but you will find one of his best works among much curious, interesting litter from the Duomo in the Opera del Duomo, the Cathedral Museum in the old Falconieri Palace just behind the apse of the Cathedral. A bust of Cosimo Primo stands over the entrance, and within you find a beautiful head of Brunellesco by Buggiano.
In 1397, as it is said, they determined to rebuild the place on a bigger scale, and to this end appointed Brunellesco their architect. The church was begun in 1433, and was burned down in 1471, during the Easter celebrations, which were particularly splendid in that year owing to the visit of Galeazzo Maria Sforza.
To-day on Monte della Verruca there is nothing remaining of the Rocca, and the monastery is a heap of stones; but in Vico Pisano the fortifications and towers of Brunellesco still stand, battered though they be, gaunt and bitter towers, their battlements broken, the walls that the engines of old time have battered, hung now with ivy, over which, all silver in the wind, the ancient olive leans.
His life was full of wanderings; beside the journey to Rome with Brunellesco he went to Siena to make the tomb in the Duomo there of Bishop Pecci of Grosseto, and in 1433, when Cosimo de' Medici went into exile, he was again in Rome, and even in Naples.
And he portrayed therein an infinite number of citizens in mantles and hoods, who are following the procession, among whom he painted Filippo di Ser Brunellesco in wooden shoes, Donatello, Masolino da Panicale, who had been his master, Antonio Brancacci, who caused him to paint the chapel, Niccolò da Uzzano, Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici, and Bartolommeo Valori, who are all also portrayed by the hand of the same man in the house of Simon Corsi, a gentleman of Florence.
Filippo Brunellesco, however, had got no farther, it seems, than the Sagrestia Vecchia when he died, while Antonio Manetti, who succeeded him as architect, changed somewhat his design. The church was consecrated at last in 1461, some three years before the death of Cosimo, who lies before the high altar.
"Among other works," says Vasari, "Donato received an order for a crucifix in wood, for the church of Santa Croce at Florence, on which he bestowed extraordinary labor. When the work was completed, believing himself to have produced an admirable thing, he showed it to Filippo di Ser Brunellesco, his most intimate friend, desiring to have his opinion of it.
Of this choir Filippo di Ser Brunellesco had left the model in that simple framework of wood which previously served as the choir in the church, intending in time to have it executed in marble, in the same form, but more ornate.
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