Chains of Influence: Sneak Peek

In the late 1300s, much of northern Italy was controlled by a Milan-based ruler, Gian Gagliazzo Visconti, many seeing him as a new form of Caesar. His troops were on the march and headed towards Florence. It was about to be surrounded. Florence was preparing for a siege, but unexpectedly Visconti died of the plague, ending the impending takeover. The citizens of Florence felt it was a divine miracle, but it also produced a unique feeling of independence and a strong sense of pride in their city. This renewed patriotism among the Florentines sparked interest in city beautification as well as the desire to complete unfinished works of art that sat dormant. As a result, Florence became the hub or breeding ground of innovation, renewal, and a quest for magnificence. It was the birthplace of the Renaissance. In 1401, as part of this renewal, a local guild responsible for maintaining and decorating the Baptistry of San Giovanni decided to hold a competition to create a beautiful set of decorative bronze doors for the north entrance. Artists from all over submitted entries, and in the end, sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti, only 23 at the time, won the bid. In second place was Filippo Brunelleschi, a man who would play a key role in the development of Renaissance ideals. The bronze doors would take Ghiberti over 20 years to complete. Assisting him for the first few years was an apprentice who was one of his most promising students, a young man named Donatello. He would eventually become one of the most famous sculptors in Italian history. Donatello became close friends with Brunelleschi, and although he was 10 years younger, they shared an interest in goldsmithing, sculpture, and Roman art. After leaving his apprenticeship, Donatello joined his older friend on a trip to Rome in order to study Roman antiquities, an experience that would greatly impact both artists' work. Brunelleschi is said to have been so enthralled with Roman architecture that he intensely studied their construction and took exact measurements of their structures. It was during this time that he rediscovered the concept of linear perspective, a scientific method of providing depth of space in art. This concept had disappeared with the fall of the Roman Empire and involved establishing a single vanishing point along the horizon line in a scene, where parallel lines of a plane converge to imply depth. There was a form of perspective in art leading up to the early 1400s.