Building and Writing S. Lorenzo in Florence: Architect, Biographer, Patron, and Prior

Abstract

Who built S. Lorenzo in Florence? Was it the first Renaissance church, or merely a classical veneer on a medieval brick structure? Was Filippo Brunelleschi its founding architect, or did he share the credit with Matteo Dolfini, the church prior? Were the founding patrons the Medici, or rather the prior and the church community? Is the chapter on S. Lorenzo in the vita of Brunelleschi by Antonio Manetti by and large an accurate historical source, or is it a politically motivated narrative that has befuddled art historians from Vasari to the present? Read on.

Notes

1. For the primary sources, see Piero Ginori Conti, La Basilica di S. Lorenzo di Firenze e la famiglia Ginori (Florence: Fondazione Ginori Conti, 1940), who incorporates Pier Nolasco Cianfogni, Memorie istoriche dell’Ambrosiana R. Basilica di San Lorenzo di Firenze (Florence: Domenico Ciardetti, 1804) and Domenico Moreni, Continuazione delle memorie istoriche dell’Ambrosiana imperiale Basilica di S. Lorenzo di Firenze (Florence, 1816). See also Isabelle Hyman, Fifteenth-Century Florentine Studies: The Palazzo Medici and a Ledger for the Church of San Lorenzo (New York: Garland, 1977); Caroline Elam, “The Site and Early Building History of Michelangelo's New Sacristy,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 23, nos. 1–2 (1979): 155–86; and idem, “Cosimo de’ Medici and San Lorenzo,” in Cosimo il Vecchio de’ Medici, 1389–1464, ed. Francis Ames-Lewis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 157–80. For Manetti, see Howard Saalman's critical, bilingual edition: Antonio Manetti, The Life of Brunelleschi by Antonio di Tuccio Manetti, ed. Saalman, trans. Catherine Enggass (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1970). On the building history, the most reliable studies include Walter Paatz and Elizabeth Paatz, Die Kirchen von Florenz (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1940–54), vol. 2, 474–50, with a synopsis of treatment of issues before about 1940; Volker Herzner, “Zur Baugeschichte von San Lorenzo in Florenz,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 37 (1974): 89–115; Howard Saalman, “Capital Studies,” Art Bulletin 40, no. 1 (1958): 113–37, at 123–27; idem, Filippo Brunelleschi: The Buildings (London: Zwemmer, 1993), 107–209; Elam, “Cosimo de’ Medici”; Piero Roselli and Orietta Superchi, L’edificazione della Basilica di San Lorenzo (Florence: CLUSF, 1980); Hyman, Florentine Studies; Jack Wasserman, “Montem sancti Laurentii: Problems in the Construction of the Church of San Lorenzo in Florence,” in San Lorenzo: A Florentine Church, ed. Robert W. Gaston and Louis A. Waldman (Florence: Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Villa I Tatti, forthcoming). For a critical synopsis of the literature (to 1994) and corpus of early documentation, see Riccardo Pacciani, “Testimonianze per l’edificazione della Basilica di San Lorenzo a Firenze, 1421–1442,” Prospettive 75–76 (1994): 85–99.

2. Marvin Trachtenberg, Building-in-Time from Giotto to Alberti and Modern Oblivion (London: Yale University Press, 2010).

3. Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, trans. and ed. Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, and Robert Tavernor (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988), bk. VI, 2. This is repeated eight times in the book; see Trachtenberg, Building-in-Time, 71.

4. Trachtenberg, Building-in-Time. For a condensed version of the theory, see Marvin Trachtenberg, “Ayn Rand, Alberti, and the Authorial Figure of the Architect,” California Italian Studies 2, no. 1 (2011), at https://www.academia.edu/7387813/_Ayn_Rand_Alberti_and_the_Authorial_Figure_of_the_Architect.

5. S. Spirito was planned before the new nave of S. Lorenzo was decided (1434 versus post-1464). For the implications of multidecade construction of most of Brunelleschi's works, see Eugenio Luporini, Brunelleschi, forma e ragione (Milan: Edizione di Comunità, 1964).

6. Manetti, Life, lines 1280–88.

7. Although the presence of S. Lorenzo in the Bigallo fresco was noted by Paatz and Paatz (Die Kirchen, vol. 2, 465) and provides important information regarding the form, site, and especially the relatively large scale of the church (a disputed question), it is frequently overlooked even in well-researched publications (for example, Saalman, The Buildings; Elam, “Cosimo de’ Medici”; and Matthew Cohen, Beyond Beauty: Reexamining Architectural Proportion through the Basilicas of San Lorenzo and Santo Spirito in Florence [Venice: Marsilio, 2014]).

8. On the “hill” and its role in the planning of S. Lorenzo, see Wasserman, “Montem sancti Laurentii.”

9. On these churches, see Walter Horn, “Romanesque Churches in Florence,” Art Bulletin 25, no. 1 (1943): 112–31; Paatz and Paatz, Die Kirchen; and Franklin Toker, On Holy Ground: Liturgy, Architecture and Urbanism in the Cathedral and the Streets of Medieval Florence (Turnhout: Harvey Miller, 2009).

10. Expressed in the form of the motivation for an indulgence, to be granted to contributors toward the “enlargement and improvement [ampliare et in melius reformare]” of the church (Cianfogni, Memorie istoriche, 175). Compare Pietro Ruschi, “San Lorenzo prima del Brunelleschi: Studi storici et archaeologici,” in San Lorenzo 393–1993, ed. Gabrielle Morolli and Ruschi (Florence: Casa di Risparmio, 1993), 38.

11. See Herzner, “Zur Baugeschichte,” 105.

12. Ibid., and text below.

13. According to Giovanni Dominici (d. 1420), the Dominican teacher of Antoninus, it is better to repair an old church than found a new one, “Se vuogli spendere quantità di denari, più ti consiglio rifarci una chiesa guasta e abbandonata … che fabrica di nuova”; F. W. Kent, Lorenzo de’ Medici and the Art of Magnificence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 163.

14. Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984); and Robert W. Gaston, “Sacred Place and Liturgical Space: Florence's Renaissance Churches,” in Renaissance Florence: A Social History, ed. John T. Paoletti and Roger J. Crum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 331–52.

15. Richard Goldthwaite, Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy, 1300–1600 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995). For northern Europe, see Anne-Marie Sankovitch, “Intercession, Commemoration, and Display: The Parish Church as Archive in Late Medieval Paris,” in Demeures d’éternité: Églises et chapelles funéraires aux XVe et XVIe siècles, ed. Jean Guillaume (Paris: Picard, 2005), 247–67.

16. Marvin Trachtenberg, “The Old Sacristy as Model in Early Renaissance Church Architecture,” in L’église dans l’architecture de la Renaissance, ed. Jean Guillaume (Paris: Picard, 1996), 9–39. Saalman (The Buildings, 107) provides an insightful picture of this development, distinguishing between limited space available for church expansion in the densely built old core and progressively greater opportunities toward the periphery of the city. S. Lorenzo lies in the intermediate zone (the former area within the twelfth-century walls, where enlargement was possible yet difficult), and thus Saalman observes that its considerable expansion was noteworthy—“a tour de force of determination and political muscle on the part of the district.”

17. In churches without transepts—including old S. Lorenzo—private family memorial spaces were restricted to the nave and the space flanking the choir, where wall altars could be erected. A characteristic extant Florentine example would be single-aisled S. Ambrogio.

18. For plans and histories of most Florentine examples, see Paatz and Paatz, Die Kirchen, s.v.

19. See Saalman, The Buildings, 205–7, on S. Trinita as precedent; the author's reconstruction of an “alternative” scheme from the executed S. Lorenzo transept is unconvincing.

20. Trachtenberg, “Old Sacristy as Model”; Elam, “Cosimo de’ Medici”; Gaston, “Sacred Place”; and Jonathan Katz Nelson, “Memorial Chapels in Churches: The Privatization and Transformation of Sacred Spaces,” in Paoletti and Crum, Renaissance Florence, 353–75.

21. Elam, “Cosimo de’ Medici,” 161.

22. Herzner, “Zur Baugeschichte,” 95–96.

23. Paatz and Paatz, Die Kirchen, vol. 2, 473. On the chaplaincies, see Elam, “Cosimo de’ Medici,” 161–63.

24. Elam (“Cosimo de’ Medici,” 161) documents this inadequate condition, explicitly posing the question of whether it drove the expansion project: “Was it hunger for ‘private space’ of the kind postulated by Richard Goldthwaite that was behind the reconstruction of the church after 1418?” Although she does not provide a direct answer, her evidence would seem to favor the thesis, especially the forthcoming adoption of the transept chapels and participation of leading families in the project as operai (lay members of the building committee); four of the participating families were those already with private altars in the old church (a category that excluded the Medici), which evidently were insufficient to their socioliturgical aspirations; the other old altars belonged to unimportant patrons (ibid., 162).

25. Ibid., pl. 6.

26. “The broad transept, the large main chapel, and the smaller transept chapels, all these were nothing new”; Saalman, The Buildings, 113. Compare, for example, Eugenio Battisti, Filippo Brunelleschi, the Complete Work (New York: Rizzoli, 1981), 188. Saalman continues to misrepresent the plan as well as Manetti when he adds, “The church was to be, in Manetti's phrase, ‘as Santa Croce and Santa Maria Novella are.’ In fact, Manetti is referring not to the transept but to the three aisles of the nave, similar in disposition to the trecento churches cited.

27. Cohen, Beyond Beauty, 113; Cohen seeks to identify a putative order behind this impression. Some of the older literature briefly notes the specificity of the plan and its relation to the trecento; see especially Cornel von Fabriczy, Filippo Brunelleschi: Sein Leben in seine Werke (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1892); Hans Folnesics, Brunelleschi: Ein Beitrag zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der Frührenaissance-Architektur (Vienna: Schroll, 1915), 31–34; and Paatz and Paatz, Die Kirchen, vol. 2, 474. Paatz and Paatz observe a certain systematization of trecento spatial organization, and Folnesics recognizes a greater regularity in the plan.

28. Saalman's suggestion (The Buildings, 205–6) that Brunelleschi preferred total uniformity of chapels and opposed any differential (such as the “exceptional” chapels) is ungrounded and counterfactual.

29. Herzner, “Zur Baugeschichte,” 105–6.

30. See Trachtenberg, “Old Sacristy as Model,” on these terms and distinctions.

31. Although often debated, the absence of the nave chapels from the Brunelleschi project as well as the 1440s campaign of Michelozzo (Brunelleschi's primary follower in Florentine Renaissance architecture) is demonstrated by Herzner (“Zur Baugeschichte,” 99–102) on the basis of numerous documentary and architectural observations, which securely date the beginning of the chapel project to 1457 (that the windows of the eastern two transept chapels are obscured by the nave chapels is a telling detail). Those who argue to the contrary have not engaged Herzner's argument. Manetti's claim that Brunelleschi was disappointed by the elimination of the side chapels from his “preferred” plan may simply be the biographer lending support to the Medici-sponsored 1457 side-chapel project, by way of deference to the master. The 1434 side-chapel project published by Jeffrey Ruda and Howard Saalman, as noted by the latter, was probably another architect's proposal. See Ruda, “A Building Program for San Lorenzo in Florence,” and Saalman, “San Lorenzo: The 1434 Chapel Project,” both in Burlington Magazine 120 (1978): 358–61 and 361–64.

32. Without lessening the conceptual advance of S. Lorenzo, one observes earlier a certain regularization of position and proportioning of the chapels of the transept terminals (for example, those at S. Pier Maggiore and S. Maria del Carmine). S. Trinita is notable in having a near-complete chapel program from the beginning, lacking only transept terminal chapels. Its last side-aisle chapels open both to nave and transept, foreshadowing the complexity of Brunelleschi's corner solution at S. Lorenzo. Nevertheless, none of the S. Trinita various-sized chapels is square, and the “superlative” burial space of the sacristy is of a different format and scale altogether.

33. Ludwig H. Heydenreich, “Spätwerke Brunelleschis,” Jahrbuch der preussischen Kunstsammlungen 52 (1931): 1–28.

34. The plan of S. Spirito, as is well known, constitutes a perfect grid. On the more complex generation of the plan of the Innocenti complex, see Saalman, The Buildings, 70–75.

35. See Heinrich Klotz, Die Frühwerke Brunelleschis und die mittelalterliche Tradition (Berlin: Mann, 1979); and Marvin Trachtenberg, “Brunelleschi, ‘Giotto’ and Rome,” in Renaissance Studies in Honor of Craig Hugh Smyth, vol. 2, ed. Andrea Morrogh and Fiorella Superbi Giofreddi (Florence: Giunti-Barbera, 1985), 675–97.

36. Erwin Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1960).

37. For 1384, see n. 10 above; 1416: election of operai to supervise the acquisition of properties for the “enlargement” of the church, Cianfogni, Memorie istoriche, 182; 1417: petition granted, city to do everything to promote, among other things, the “enlargement [augmentatione]” of the church, Saalman, The Buildings, 109 n. 13; and Cianfogni, Memorie istoriche, 226. The idea that the rebuilding was due to a fire was thoroughly refuted by Fabriczy, Filippo Brunelleschi; compare Paatz and Paatz, Die Kirchen, vol. 2, 521.

38. Ginori Conti, La Basilica di S. Lorenzo, 234–36. No architect is named, although there appears to have been a design on which dimensions were recorded. The key passage reads that the prior, canons, and chapter of S. Lorenzo want “dictam S Laurentii Ecclesiam, civium auxilio, ampliare, et pulcherrimis edifiis reformare, et iam constructionis opus designarunt. Et quia ecclesie huiusmodi corpus cum cappellis, sacristia, et aliis opportunis et posteriori parte extendi per longitudenem debet brachiis sexagita quinque, et per latitudidinem centumdecem in ordine Cappellarum.”

39. The often-cited document (as in the previous note) is actually the granting of the petition in December, which references the petition of April, itself lost.

40. Since the land for the choir and side chapels was not cleared until 1422–24, this ceremony appears to have been largely symbolic, as is closely argued by Herzner, “Zur Baugeschichte,” 106–8 (also treating the false references of a 1419 founding; compare Pacciani, “Testimonianze per l’edificazione”). See below.

41. See Herzner's cogent analysis (“Zur Baugeschichte”), which incorporates Hyman's evidence (Florentine Studies, passim). Sufficient coordinates exist to secure the integrity of the project from the 1420s to the 1440s. These include the position of the Old Sacristy and adjacent Medici Chapel; the 1420s choir construction of eight braccia, recorded in the 1440s; the specified extension of the bay system of the old church; and related evidence. See text below.

42. According to Cohen (Beyond Beauty, 187), the church extension as built fits the 110-braccia specification almost exactly, including the wall thickness of the sacristy, “within about 0.7% (or an excess of about 45 cm).”

43. Cohen (ibid., 191–92) describes the difficulty in fitting an alternative to the executed plan within the 110-by-65-braccia perimeter. Fabriczy (Filippo Brunelleschi, 154–58) conjured an initial, Dolfini plan with eight chapels flanking the choir instead of four, the idea being that Brunelleschi would simply have redistributed four of the same eight chapels to the other sides of the transept (plan reconstructed by Folnesics, Brunelleschi, pl. 11). Besides having a two-braccia deviation from the 1418 limits, Fabriczy's scheme has no place for the sacristy specified in 1418. Moreover, it forgoes the sociologically stratified distinctions of standard, exceptional, and superlative chapels of trecento Florentine practice evidently demanded by the S. Lorenzo community, which Brunelleschi rationalized, including the sacristy space.

44. Saalman, The Buildings, 109, summarizes this view. “It appears that as of April 1418 . . . the plan of the expanded church had already been drawn up, corresponding in all essentials to the plan of the subsequently executed church.” Similarly, Elam (“Cosimo de’ Medici,” 168) finds “no evidence that the transept was radically changed as a result of Cosimo's takeover.” This question has been much debated, however. The most penetrating account of all factors and possibilities is provided by Herzner, “Zur Baugeschichte.” Although argued from another viewpoint, in the most recent study of the question, Cohen concurs (regarding the durability of the 1418 plan, Beyond Beauty, 185–88).

45. Herzner, “Zur Baugeschichte.”

46. Additional primary evidence of the project as an expansion rather than a replacement of the old basilica was published subsequent to Herzner, “Zur Baugeschichte.” In a provision of the Signoria of 1434, a project to enlarge the piazza of S. Lorenzo is justified by the fact that currently the church “is being increased and enlarged on all sides of its structure, functional space, and its formal appearance” (trans. Saalman, The Buildings, 153). Long thought lost, this document was discovered and studied by Isabelle Hyman (“Notes and Speculations on S. Lorenzo, Palazzo Medici and an Urban Project by Brunelleschi,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 34 [1975]: 98–120). It was published in full in 1980 by Roselli and Superchi (for the passage in question, L’edificazione della Basilica, 50–51, doc. 2). This statement regarding the expansion of the church has not received comment. That the intention literally to enlarge the old basilica “on all sides” (except the facade) was current in 1434 is suggested by the nave chapel project of that year; on the project, see Ruda, “A Building Program”; and Saalman, “San Lorenzo.”

47. Herzner (“Zur Baugeschichte,” 106–8) also clarifies the controversies surrounding the authorship of the 1418 project and the founding of 1421, which he finds to have been Brunelleschi all the way through. In a three-part exchange of positions in 2009 with Jens Niebaum (who explicitly argues the counterposition of Matthew Cohen), Herzner convincingly defends his interpretation, in my judgment, particularly regarding his thesis of the project as an expansion rather than a replacement church, the commensurate scale of the old church with the enlargement, and the failure of his critics to address the central archaeological evidence of the “Baunähte” (masonry seams) on the facade, among other key issues that outweigh Niebaum's criteria. Nothing materially affecting the present study emerged from this debate. See Volker Herzner, “‘How Much Brunelleschi?’: Matthew Cohen und sein Phantom-Architekt von San Lorenzo in Florenz,” Kunstgeschichte: Open Peer Reviewed Journal, 2010–11, urn:nbn:de:0009-23-25313; Jens Niebaum, “Phantom oder Architekt? Zur Diskussion zwischen Matthew Cohen und Volker Herzner um Matteo Dolfini und San Lorenzo in Florenz,” Kunstgeschichte: Open Peer Reviewed Journal, 2009, urn:nbn:de:0009-23-20471; and Volker Herzner, “Ein Phantom ist ein Phantom ist ein Phantom—Antwort auf Jens Niebaums Versuch, in der Diskussion um die Baugeschichte von San Lorenzo die Position Matthew Cohens hinsichtlich des Phantoms Dolfini als Architekten zu untermauern,” Kunstgeschichte: Open Peer Reviewed Journal, 2009, urn:nbn:de:0009-23-20691.

48. For example, Battisti, Filippo Brunelleschi, 188. The extreme position is represented by Cohen (Beyond Beauty, esp. chap. 4), who posits a totally ex novo project with a different alignment, scale, and bay module from the old basilica.

49. Trachtenberg, Building-in-Time, especially chapter 7, on Brunelleschi.

50. Compare Herzner's insightful analysis, “Zur Baugeschichte,” 104–6.

51. Saalman's argument (The Buildings, 194–98) involves a range of archaeological, textual, and historical evidence. An important detail of his analysis indicates that after the campanile was torn down in the 1480s, it was converted into a bipurpose portal-chapel of the Ginori family, with a tomb underneath, all of which involved considerable demolition and construction work (including a “hole” in the piazza going underneath the church, a reference evidently misinterpreted by Cohen, Beyond Beauty, 179ff.). Crucial to Saalman's argument regarding the site of the tower is the physical evidence in the underchurch of the seventh bay of the right aisle, where a massive wall is found (Fig. 14C here). Saalman's thesis that it is one side of the base of the tower has been recently substantiated by Jack Wasserman (“Montem sancti Laurentii”), who (accompanied by Pietro Ruschi) discovered two previously unnoticed wall spurs projecting inward (southward) from the ends of the Saalman wall, which would be the remains of two more walls of the tower (Fig. 14C, corner arrows). Moreover, he was able to measure their thickness, 1.4 m (4 ft. 7⅛ in.), giving us the total length of the Saalman wall and thereby also the dimensions of the tower plan (6.2 m square, or 20 ft. 4⅛ in. square), which is in accord with its otherwise postulated size; certainly its resulting massive dimensions—walls 1.4 m (4 ft. 7⅛ in.) in thickness, an inner void only 3.4 m square (11 ft. 1⅞ in. square)—indicate a tower. That it did not block work on the nave is documented by Hyman (Florentine Studies, 360) in a payment of 1449 for two arches in the north colonnade in its vicinity (“per maistero di due archi ciàn[n]o fatti, che van[n]o sopra le colon[n]e grande dallato di verso il campanile”).Cohen's critique of Saalman, which unfortunately predates Wasserman's final discovery, is in any case unpersuasive and appears to overlook much of Saalman's argument. Cohen's objection to the arched opening in the Saalman wall as structurally unsound is countered by the innumerable arched openings at all levels of Florentine towers (from Giotto's campanile on down), and in many varieties of form, while the thickness of the S. Lorenzo tower corresponds roughly to the old Foraboschi tower that serves as base of the gigantic shaft of the Palazzo Vecchio (3 ft. 11¼ in., or 1.2 m). The roughness of the S. Lorenzo arch masony resembles that of the massive foundation arches supporting the Duomo facade, 72 braccia in height; see Marvin Trachtenberg, review of Der Dom zu Florenz, by G. Kreytenberg, Art Bulletin 61, no. 1 (1979): 112–31, at 126–27, figs. 16–18. Although not an argument one way or another, even without the Saalman-Wasserman evidence, most scholars accept the seventh-bay thesis (see Wasserman, “Montem sancti Laurentii,” for a list of positions).

52. In the 1418 petition, the 65-braccia dimension plainly designated the amplitude of the space that would be occupied by the expansion—that is, the (two) added bays, transept, and choir—which began neither with the end of the apse, to be demolished, nor the campanile, but from the transverse line of the straight segments of the rear wall of the old church at the end of the side aisles. It is at this line that the (two) new bays of the nave were to begin. Cohen's reconstruction, which undersizes and misaligns the old church, measures the critical 65 braccia to the (mispositioned) tower, which also leaves an unexplained gap (Cohen, Beyond Beauty, 167, figs. 4, 5, gap between A¹ and A²).

53. First observed only in 1962 by Piero Sanpaolesi, Brunelleschi (Milan: Edizioni per il Club del Libro, 1962), 73ff., who misread their implications, the two seams were first plausibly explained by Herzner (“Zur Baugeschichte,” 89–92). The seams correspond to the division between the three-aisled nave and the side chapels. The left seam runs unbroken from bottom to top of the facade. The one on the right instead stops halfway up; above, the lateral and central facade masonry are continuous. The implications of the seams are many, especially allied with other evidence. They exclude a simultaneity of planning and execution of the side and central parts of the main facade (up to a certain height). With respect to the interior, they indicate that the side chapels and the new nave were the result of different projects (in that order). Contrary to one's expectations but following the evidence, the side chapels were built not onto the new church but onto the old one, first on the left side and then on the right until a point halfway (up on the right), when the replacement of the old nave was begun between the new chapel rows. Documents indicate that the left side chapels date from about 1457 onward, and the right ones to the late 1460s or 1470s, which would be the date of the replacement of the old nave (and facade). With respect to the problem under discussion here, as just noted, they yield the position and width of the facade of the old church, hence, the position and width of the old nave including its side walls. Reinforcing Herzner's reading, as he observes, are the foundations of the old facade uncovered by Michelangelo when preparing the substructure of his facade project. The seams, which establish three of the four building lines of the old church (facade and side walls), thus are among the most important evidence for the history of the basilica, and any building history categorically needs to take them into account, especially an alternative proposal regarding the issue at hand, the size and position of the old church. The recent study of the basilica by Cohen does not take this evidence into account (Beyond Beauty, 178), although it would invalidate his reconstruction of the axis, position, and size of the old church.

54. That the width of the main aisle of old S. Lorenzo—and the overall scale of its cross section—was the same as the new one appears to be confirmed also by the Codex Rustici view (Fig. 4). In it, the main aisle appears to match the width of the depicted cupola, which is clearly that of the Old Sacristy, whose diameter is identical to that of the new choir, crossing, and new nave. Similarly, the completed transept chapel (Luca di Marco family) of the new church seen immediately to the right of the tower matches the height of the old side aisle, just as the height of the lightly indicated new transept (barely visible but definite) matches the clerestory and center-aisle height of the old church. The monumental scale of the eleventh-century basilica is also indicated by contrast with the diminutive size of the several chapels and other outbuildings to the right and left of the church in the Rustici view. Component for component, the scale of the Rustici S. Lorenzo thus appears to match the scale of the new church seen in the photograph in similar perspective (Fig. 15). As noted, the old basilica looms equally large in the Bigallo view (Fig. 3), especially with respect to other monumental churches, including S. Maria Novella (to the left, with its transept rose window) and S. Croce (at the right edge, seen incomplete). In fact, old S. Lorenzo matches the scale of S. Reparata (in the center, behind the new Duomo facade; compare roof-triangle dimensions), as the present analysis proposes (S. Reparata had a main-aisle width of about 20 braccia, as proposed here for old S. Lorenzo). Compare Herzner, “Zur Baugeschichte,” 105.

55. The altar was transferred into the new choir (Herzner, “Zur Baugeschichte,” 95–96). On these spatioliturgical changes, see also Janis Clearfield, “The Tomb of Cosimo de’ Medici in San Lorenzo,” Rutgers Art Review 2 (1981): 13–30. Wasserman (“Montem sancti Laurentii”) cites the expansion of S. Marco and Ss. Annunziata as contemporary cases of axial extension. The axis of a church was central to its identity, embedded in its history and site, and cases of displacement or realignment are rare (such as Siena's failed Duomo Nuovo, which broke the axis); see Marvin Trachtenberg, Dominion of the Eye: Urbanism, Art and Power in Early Modern Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 239–41.

56. See Herzner's explanation of this process, “Zur Baugeschichte,” 92–99. Moreover, the campaign to add nave chapels to the old church had already begun in 1457 on the south flank, in conjunction with the rebuilding of the cloisters by Cosimo (ibid., 99–102; and Elam, “Cosimo de’ Medici,” 174). Such chapels would not have been built freestanding, so to speak, but extruded outward through opened-up side-aisle walls of the old church (a common technique for adding chapels, as noted, however unruly and difficult it might seem). Thus, as Herzner documents, some chapels were in use years before the nave itself was rebuilt, which would have been unlikely had the chapels been built a distance from the old church, as proposed (in effect) by Cohen, Beyond Beauty; and Niebaum, “Phantom oder Architekt?”

57. Cohen (Beyond Beauty, fig. 4.5) does not address this difficulty with respect to the severe misalignment of the axes of the old and new church inherent in his reconstruction of the former as a very small basilica off to the north side, its axis roughly in the center of the right aisle of the new church.

58. The arcade proportions of S. Lorenzo approximate those, for example, of SS. Apostoli, as is graphically illustrated by Battisti (Filippo Brunelleschi, figs. 188, 189). Cohen's survey of the arcade (Beyond Beauty, figs. 2.2, 2.3, 2.42) yields a chain of proportions (1 [5] 9 13 17) that, as the author explains (ibid., 88–97), corresponds to the “root hexagonal” series of Boethian number theory, fundamental to medieval mathematics, which would sustain my reading that the basic proportions of Brunelleschi's project replicate the eleventh-century basilica—medieval building, medieval proportions. It would also explain the proportional differences that Cohen identifies between S. Lorenzo and Brunelleschi's other works, where the architect produced his own dimensional relations ex novo (ibid., 97–99). However, in order instead to date the S. Lorenzo proportional format to the quattrocento (but not necessarily as Brunelleschian), Cohen historically situates finer aspects of the S. Lorenzo arcade proportions in texts not available until the early quattrocento (such as Theon of Smyrna; ibid., 100–104). Cohen notes that this thesis is undermined by his own measurements, to the degree that in S. Lorenzo, “The present column shaft and entablature block heights . . . lack any apparent logical basis whatsoever”—whereas the comparable proportions of Brunelleschi's other basilica, S. Spirito, is realized with “absolute statistical precision” (ibid., 105). Cohen's solution to his dilemma is to attribute the proportional discrepancy at S. Lorenzo to an “error” of the “masons,” a conjecture grounded in Manetti's narrative of “errors” in Brunelleschi's plan supposedly produced by workmen in the architect's absence.

59. Given that the facade of the church was not moved in the rebuilding, the sequence of operations in the nave can only have been as follows. Let us imagine that A represents the dimensions of the old nave bay unit, in particular, its intercolumniation; that B signifies the 1418–60 extension bay unit; and that C indicates the post-1465 replacement nave bay span. As it played out historically, B duplicated A, and then in a reverse movement, C duplicated B, thereby also duplicating A (that is, itself in its earlier state), so that the entire nave bay system came out even and uniform, and as we find it today. That B duplicated A did not imply that the builders of 1418/21 already planned step C, but simply that they desired unity (or retrosynthesis) between the old nave (A) and its extension (B). And similarly with respect to the sequencing of the side chapels and old and new naves. This procedure is deftly encapsulated by Herzner (“Zur Baugeschichte,” 104): “Since Old San Lorenzo established the parameters for the lengthened addition, the latter in turn was dispositive for the remainder of the new church.” Florentine masons were capable of all manner of such virtuoso operations, for example, the transformation of the Palazzo Vecchio cortile by Michelozzo, which involved a radical revision of the wall design and a complete substitution of all the columns.

60. See Herzner, “Zur Baugeschichte,” 105.

61. The tendency to interpret the plan as static ex novo quadrature continues, recently in Cohen, Beyond Beauty, chap. 3. The caption of fig. 3.1, reads, “floor plan with overlay showing conceptual modularity implied by eight approximate squares.” But, as the author acknowledges, only the crossing and choir are actually square, whereas six of the “approximate squares” are two-bay rectangles. Given Cohen's theory of an ex novo plan, one would expect the project to have the traits of that design modality, consistency in particular, which it lacks, and in respect to not simply the “bay” module but also other idiosyncrasies. His reading raises the question as to why an ex novo plan, developed free of any required linkup or integration with older fabric, on ample terrain provided by the city in 1418 would “lack dimensional modularity” (and regularity) and instead employ two irreconcilable modules for the main space, one square and the other not.

62. Herzner (“Zur Baugeschichte,” 105) gives 12.18 m (39 ft. 11½ in.), or 20.75 braccia at .586 m per braccia. Cohen (Beyond Beauty, fig. 2.42) measures plinth to plinth of the crossing piers at about 19 braccia, which would make the interaxial dimension about the same. Florentine planners were known to measure both between support centers and surfaces in the same building (in the Duomo planning of 1357, for example), and in any case, the Florentine braccia was not an exact unit historically. The question here is not the absolute value of the unit but the self-evident extraction of the module from the old church and its uniform application throughout the building.

63. Herzner (“Zur Baugeschichte,” 105) gives 6.58 m (21 ft. 7 in.) as the interaxial nave bay dimension, which would be 11.228 braccia at .586 m per braccia. Cohen's measurement of the same interaxial interval is 11⅔ braccia (Beyond Beauty, fig. 2.42).

64. 20 + 20 + 12 + 12 + 12 + 12 + 12 + 9 = 109.

65. Trachtenberg, Building-in-Time, 160–64.

66. Jack Wasserman (personal communication, 2014) has pointed out to me that the footprint of the old church was 24 by 47 m (78 ft. 8⅞ in. by 154 ft. 2⅜ in.), including the campanile, that is, again close to 1:2.

67. The contradictions and imperfections in proportions resulting from the bimodular system would be difficult to explain as resulting from the ex novo reading proposed by Cohen, Beyond Beauty. See n. 61 above.

68. Brunelleschi's planning of S. Spirito a decade and a half later confirms this assessment, as it extends the inner design logic of S. Lorenzo a step further and more. The earlier scheme was produced by interlayering three architectures. In it, two diverse typologies—the Early Christian, basilican nave extension, and the T-shaped trecento transept—were articulated and unified by Brunelleschi's two modular spatial units. This underlying heterogeneity, however, together with the site situation and exigencies of the project as expansion, limited the uniformity of the resulting synthesis, as noted. By contrast, in the totally ex novo planning of S. Spirito (ca. 1434) the entirety of the spatial scheme was developed from a single module, the pendentive-domed side-aisle bay, which was simply doubled in the nave bays, quadrupled in the crossing and main transept spaces, and halved, so to speak, in the chapels. Except for the functionally necessary extension of the nave and the omission of Brunelleschi's planned chapels at the facade, all four wings of the building are uniform.

69. Saalman, The Buildings, 188–98.

70. These would include the Siena Duomo, the Palazzo Pubblico, and the Palazzo Vecchio. Also, as Amee Yunn revealed, the Bargello retained the lower stories of several medieval towers that had been on its site inside its walls until the radical nineteenth-century restoration; Yunn, “The Bargello: A New History of the First Communal Palace of Florence, 1255–1346” (PhD diss., Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 2009).

71. On the eleventh-century ceiling, see Paatz and Paatz, Die Kirchen, vol. 2, 474. Juergen Schulz emphasizes the novelty of Michelozzo's ceiling, dated from 1448; the present ceiling “seems to be a restoration of the seventeenth century”; Schulz, Venetian Painted Ceilings of the Renaissance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 6 n. 14.

72. Its chancel forms a domed square whose side length equaled the difference between the overall length of the sacristy and the central square. On the sacristy proportions, see Dorothea Nyberg, “A Study of Proportions in Brunelleschi's Architecture” (master's thesis, New York University, 1953).

73. A sacristy built 1306–8 existed behind the campanile.

74. Marvin Trachtenberg, “Archaeology, Merriment, and Murder: The First Cortile of the Palazzo Vecchio and Its Transformations in the Renaissance,” Art Bulletin 71, no. 4 (1989): 565–609.

75. Trachtenberg, Building-in-Time, 162–64.

76. See the persuasive article by Robert Bork, “Ars Sine Historia Nihil Est? How the ‘Story Deficit’ Helped to Doom Gothic Architecture,” in Architecture, Liturgy, and Identity, ed. Achim Timmermann and Zoë Opacic (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), 323–34.

77. Howard Saalman, Filippo Brunelleschi: The Cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore (London: Zwemmer, 1980), 70–80.

78. Ginori Conti (La Basilica di S. Lorenzo, 52ff., 169) and Herzner (“Zur Baugeschichte,” 106–8 and n. 95) see Dolfini only as patron, not architect.

79. The modern line of this (mis)interpretation originates in Fabriczy, Filippo Brunelleschi, 157ff.; compare Folnesics, Brunelleschi, 32–34; Hyman, Florentine Studies, 325–26; Saalman, The Buildings, 112–13; and recently, Cohen, Beyond Beauty, 206, citing “the majority scholarly opinion that Brunelleschi built on foundations begun by Dolfini,” as against “a minority of scholars” who “downplay or do not comment on possible design contributions by Dolfini” (207). Herzner, in fact, is unique in building a case “against” Dolfini.

80. Manetti, Life, 102–11, lines 1176–1290.

81. Ibid., lines 1203–7.

82. Trachtenberg, Building-in-Time, 70–94, 287–301; and Saalman, introduction to Manetti, Life.

83. Manetti, Life, lines 1238–39: “E poi che la chiesa in questa forma fu cominciata, gran tempo s’uficio la chiesa uecchia.”

84. Cohen (Beyond Beauty, 185–88) notes Manetti's depiction of Giovanni and Brunelleschi starting anew, although he excludes it in his interpretation of the church's building history.

85. Even normally sharp-eyed, fault-finding scholars are caught in this discourse, for example, Saalman, The Buildings, 109–12. Compare Luporini, Brunelleschi, 49; Battisti, Filippo Brunelleschi, 179; Gabriele Morolli, “Le fasi del San Lorenzo,” in Brunelleschiani, ed. Franco Borsi, Gabriele Morolli, and Francesco Quinterio (Rome: Officina Edizione, 1979), 77–79; Ute Schedler, Filippo Brunelleschi: Synthese von Antike und Mittelalter (Petersburg: Michael Imhof, 2004), 42; and Cohen, Beyond Beauty, 190–93. Giorgio Vasari, of course, did not challenge it. This misconstruction occurs too often to usefully catalog and is in any case repetitive.

86. See Saalman, “Capital Studies.” I will consider these variations and their meaning in a forthcoming investigation following the track of the present study.

87. See Herzner, “Zur Baugeschichte,” 99–104; and Cohen, Beyond Beauty, chap. 2, on variations of nave detailing.

88. To cite the relevant passages, from Ginori Conti, La Basilica di S. Lorenzo, 236–37, November 20, 1440: “… quod de anno 1419, vel circa, tempore recolende memorie domini Mattei Dolfini, tunc prioris ecclesie… S. Laurentii predicti, et infrascripti domini Benedicti (de Schiattenisbus) nunc prioris, et tunc canonici dicte ecclesie et templi fuisset incepta fundari cappella major ecclesie predicti. …”; and ibid., 241–42, August 13, 1442: “Attendentes quod iam sint viginti tres anni vel circa prefati prior, canonici, et Capitulum, et nonnulli homines, et circumspecti viri cives florentini parrochiani dictie ecclesie S. Laurentii … construere inceperunt, et edificare novam ecclesiam S Laurentii et latere superiori, et maiorem capellam, et cum aliis capellis, sacristia, et aliis opportunis. …” As has been often observed, the second reference to the “1419” founding is a paraphrase of the first.

89. See above all Herzner, “Zur Baugeschichte,” 106–8. In a close analysis, Cohen concurs (Beyond Beauty, 192–93), although generally he is on the other side of the authorship debate. Elam (“Cosimo de’ Medici,” 163) dismisses the 1440 testimony, citing 1421 as the founding.

90. Cianfogni, Memorie istoriche, 192; this point is emphasized by Herzner, “Zur Baugeschichte,” 107. Saalman (The Buildings, 110 n. 16, who graphically and textually tracks the construction to 1427/1451/1485) finds that the houses appear to have been torn down slowly in the 1420s, not all at once, but only as construction proceeded. Although legal, expropriation was always difficult in Florence, where property owners could cause significant delays. For the mid- and late-trecento difficulties the city regime itself encountered in obtaining the land for both the Piazza del Duomo and the Piazza della Signoria, see Trachtenberg, Dominion of the Eye, 77–80, 137–40.

91. The relevant passage of the contemporary description of the event reads: “… et fuvvi il Vicario, e gli Operai, e I Maestri, che s’andò detta sera … a Processione; e ognuno, e Priore, e Canonici coll’Ulivo in mano; e posoronsi dietro al Campanile, ed ognuno diede una marrata dove si debbon fare I fondamenti” (Ginori Conti, La Basilica di S. Lorenzo, 56). Following Saalman's paraphrase/translation (The Buildings, 112–13), on August 10, 1421, the prior and canons, together with the operai and masters marched in “procession behind the campanile” and all made a symbolic cut with the spade “where the foundations were to be made.”

92. Ginori Conti, La Basilica di S. Lorenzo, 52. I concur with Herzner (“Zur Baugeschichte,” 115 n. 90) that it is “virtually unthinkable” that the primary S. Lorenzo archivists Cianfogni or Moreni would have overlooked such a reference.

93. In Building-in-Time and Florentine practice, change in design was normal and frequent and was not ritually marked, even, for example, in the 1350s radical change of the Duomo project, lapsed since about 1310, or through the several major design changes during the construction of the Campanile, among others.

94. Herzner, “Zur Baugeschichte,” 106–8.

95. If one were to assert that the project founded in 1421 was Dolfini's, hardly any of it could have been built before he died a few months later and his design replaced by Brunelleschi's. Thus, even in such an unlikely scenario, the transept extension plan as built would still be entirely the project of the latter.

96. Herzner, “Zur Baugeschichte,” 108. On the dates, see Elam, “Early Building History,” 184, doc. A; and idem, “Cosimo de’ Medici,” 161 n. 18.

97. Elam, “Cosimo de’ Medici,” app. B. The protocols indicate that priors generally selected and headed the committees ex officio. In some years, the prior and clerics, as the indispensable core of administration, assumed all planning and building responsibility without lay operai (1434, 1437, 1438).

98. Elam, “Cosimo de’ Medici,” 163 n. 25.

99. Cohen, Beyond Beauty, 204.

100. Trachtenberg, “Old Sacristy as Model.”

101. Saalman (The Buildings, 112–13) rightly emphasizes the architectural experience of operai and other members of building committees, but he errs in attributing competence to them in actual design and construction, for which professionals were always needed, especially in large-scale, complex undertakings. Saalman radically underestimates the novelty of the S. Lorenzo plan and in general casts Brunelleschi as an architectural conservative. On Dolfini's career, see Cianfogni, Memorie istoriche, 181–231; and Cohen, Beyond Beauty, 204. In the documentation published by Hyman (Florentine Studies), the current prior closely supervises the construction process.

102. Diane Zervas, “Filippo Brunelleschi's Political Career,” Burlington Magazine 121 (1979): 630–38; and Trachtenberg, Building-in-Time, 351–55.

103. See n. 16 above.

104. Saalman, The Buildings, 107–9.

105. Although the Medici, beginning with Giovanni di Bicci, tended to maintain a continuous presence from year to year among the operai, even in their case a few discontinuities occurred, notably, in the critical early years from 1421 to 1423. The 1422 appointment protocol cites the previous “year of good service” as grounds for reappointment of the same—Medici-less—group; Giovanni rejoined only in April 1423 (Elam, “Cosimo de’ Medici,” app. B). Thus, during the very years in which, according to Manetti, Giovanni had revolutionized the plan and the project, he actually was absent from the committee.As pointed out to me by Jack Wasserman (personal communication, 2014), in 1440 and 1442 Schiattesi (prior since November 1422; Moreni, Continuazione delle memorie istoriche, 355; and Elam, “Cosimo de’ Medici,” 160 n. 188) limited Medici involvement to their sacristy and adjoining chapel, while emphasizing the role of the canons and priors in the facture of the cappella maggiore and that of the private donors in the “standard” chapels.

106. Herzner (“Zur Baugeschichte,” 105) suggests that he was just misinformed. Elam (“Cosimo de’ Medici,” 165) proposes that it “may be that Manetti's story of the prior's plan was invented to explain oddities of the transept.”

107. Saalman, introduction to Manetti, Life.

108. Ibid., 25–27 (respectively, 25, 27, 26, 26).

109. Elam (“Cosimo de’ Medici,” 160–61) observes that Manetti's “wealth of apparently telling circumstantial detail should not mislead us into taking anything he says for granted,” as when he, for example, “grossly underplays Cosimo's role in the [S. Lorenzo] story.”

110. Cohen, Beyond Beauty, 191.

111. Charles Davis, “Topographical and Historical Propaganda in Early Florentine Chronicles and in Villani,” Medioevo e Rinascimento 2 (1988): 33–51.

112. Manetti, Life, 102–11, lines 1176–1287.

113. Ibid., 94 (lines 1038–41), 104 (lines 1207–10).

114. See Herzner, “Zur Baugeschichte”; and the incisive summary of Elam, “Cosimo de’ Medici,” 176. Some work on the foundations and lower walls of the choir also occurred in the initial campaign.

115. Manetti, Life, 108–11, lines 1271–84.

116. Ibid., 109, lines 1260–68.

117. Ibid., 108–9, lines 1269–70.

118. F. W. Kent, Lorenzo de’Medici, 2.

119. Fabriczy (Filippo Brunelleschi, 153) first notes the underrepresentation of Cosimo's patronage in Manetti.

120. Herzner, “Zur Baugeschichte,” 98ff.

121. See Battisti, Filippo Brunelleschi, 326–27, for a critical synopsis.

122. D. Frazer Jenkins, “Cosimo de’ Medici's Patronage of Architecture and the Theory of Magnificence,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 33 (1970): 162–70, at 169.

123. Elam, “Cosimo de’ Medici,” 178.

124. Manetti, Life, lines 1176–82: “Chosi medesimamente murandosi la chiesa di Santo Lorenzo di Firenze, principiato pe popolanj di quella, e fattone capo maestro el priore della chiesa, che u’ era in que tenpi, che era oppenione, che gli intendessi secondo gli altrj architettorj di que tenpi, e aueuala comincata di pilastrj di mattoni, Gouanni de Medicj . . .huomo di riputatione de magiorj della citta e riccho, auendo affare la sagrestia e una capella. . . .”

125. Goldthwaite, Wealth, 171–72; compare Pietro Rodolico, Le pietre delle città d’Italia (Florence: F. le Monnier, 1953), 252–53.

126. Cohen asserts a rarity of brick usage in Florence, identifying a single example in the capitals of S. Pier Scheraggio (Beyond Beauty, 216 and n. 32). However, as noted, brick was used extensively, especially in vaulting, usually hidden under plaster. Hyman (Florentine Studies, 326, 329–30, 350) documents massive use of bricks in S. Lorenzo in the 1440s and 1450s, where it is included in wall and support structures, although never for the surface appearance. The clamps mentioned in some of the documentation indicate construction of arches and vaults. In S. Croce, the nave arches are of brick, but these are frescoed to resemble voussoirs of stone (Trachtenberg, Dominion of the Eye, fig. 205). In the Duomo, the ribs facing down to the viewer in the nave are pietra forte, but the elements above the vaults are fabricated of brick, as is the entire cupola above the bottom stone courses, including the famous spinapesce technique. Brick is often mixed into raw masonry walls with stone, whose revetment or intonaco mask irregular, random mixtures of materials, often broken stone blocks and brick fragments. Compare the walls of the Palazzo Vecchio cortile with the intonaco removed (Trachtenberg, “The First Cortile,” 570), the facade of the Badia Fiesolana, and the unrevetted facade of S. Lorenzo itself. Where walls were thus composite, they were meant to be hidden. See Michael J. Waters, “Materials, Materiality, and Spolia in Italian Renaissance Architecture” (PhD diss., Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 2014).

127. Max Grossman, “A Case of Double Identity: The Public and Private Faces of the Palazzo Tolomei in Siena,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 72 (2013): 48–77.

128. On the role of materiality in Italian Renaissance architecture, see Waters, “Materials, Materiality.”

129. Manetti, Life, 56–57, lines 421–38.

130. Flavio Biondo, Italy Illuminated, trans. and ed. Jeffrey A. White (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005), 73; I thank Michael Waters for this reference. See also 1450s descriptions of Medicean buildings, including the Palazzo Medici, S. Lorenzo, and the Old Sacristy, strongly in material luxury terms (Rab Hatfield, “Some Unknown Descriptions of the Medici Palace in 1459,” Art Bulletin 52 [1970]: 232–49). However, since neither the nave extension nor the replacement of the old nave had yet been realized, Biondo possibly was referring to the transept pilasters, if not thinking of the columns of the old nave itself, which may have used marble spoils.

131. Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, 1.166–67.

132. Jenkins, “Cosimo de’ Medici's Patronage of Architecture.” On Cosimo's patronage, see Dale Kent, Cosimo de’ Medici and the Florentine Renaissance: The Patron's Oeuvre (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000).

133. F. W. Kent, Lorenzo de’ Medici, 148.

134. Ibid.

135. Georgia Clarke, “Magnificence and the City: Giovanni II Bentivoglio and Architecture in Fifteenth-Century Bologna,” Renaissance Studies 13 (1999): 397–411; F. W. Kent, “‘Piu superba di quella di Lorenzo’: Courtly and Family Interest in the Building of Filippo Strozzi's Palace,” Renaissance Quarterly 30 (1977): 315 n. 17; and idem, Lorenzo de’ Medici, 107.

136. Andrew Butterfield, The Sculptures of Andrea del Verrocchio (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 47.

137. Alberti, Art of Building, bk. VIII, 5. My thanks to Heather Horton for calling my attention to this passage.

138. F. W. Kent, Lorenzo de’ Medici, 87–88.

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Marvin Trachtenberg

Marvin Trachtenberg is Edith Kitzmiller Professor of the History of Art at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Much of his published work centers on medieval and Renaissance architectural and urban history, particularly in Italy [Institute of Fine Arts, 1 East 78th Street, New York, N.Y. 10075, [email protected]].