What Brunelleschi Saw: Monument and Site at the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence

Marvin Trachtenberg

The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 47, No. 1. (Mar., 1988), pp. 14-44.

Stable URL:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0037-9808%28198803%2947%3A1%3C14%3AWBSMAS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Q

The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians is currently published by Society of Architectural Historians.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtainedprior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content inthe JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/journals/sah.html.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.

The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academicjournals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers,and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community takeadvantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

http://www.jstor.orgWed Jun 20 12:09:49 2007

What Brunelleschi Saw: Monument and Site at the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence

M A R V I N T R A CHTENBE RG Institute of Fine Arts, New York University

For Richard Krautheimer at 90

Urbanistic practice in trecento Florence, although it spawned no cod$ed theory, was more conceptually developed than we usually imagine. Buildings wereforcefully presented and tautly interwoven with their sites by means o f inventive, empirical procedures. Intricate webs o f geometry structured architectural scenes o f Giottesque three-dimen- sionality. Order and meaning were bestowed on urbanistic scenes that might well have become disordered and unfocused through the slow evolution and redesign o f architectural projects. A pre-eminent case in point was the Piazza della Signoria. Documentary, archaeological, and historical evidence suggests that as the Palazzo Vecchio rose in 1299-1315, it underwent fundamental design changes largely inspired by the growing piazza around it and that the piazza itself; as it grew to its final form through the trecento, was guided with surprising precision by the visual demands ofthe palace, the medieval obsession with geo- metric structure, and the urbanistic patterns of the city.

THEC R E A T I O N of grand public buildings and squares in the densely-knit cities of late medieval Italy is one of the most brilliant aspects of the period. A particularly striking feature of this process, plainly visible in air views and city plans though rarely studied by urbanists, concerns the impact of the new buildings on their surroundings, and conversely, the pressures exerted by the surroundings on the shapes of the intruding buildings.' This interaction generally was complicated by the

The material in this article was taken from a book in preparation on the Palazzo Vecchio, in which most of the issues raised are further explored. An earlier version of this paper was given as a lecture during the academic year 1986-1987 at Princeton University, Union College, Williams College, and the Villa I Tatti. I am grateful to the Guggen- heim Foundation and the Villa I Tatti for generous research support, to Berta Leggeri for making available key information, and especially to Piero Micheli for invaluable assistance in gaining access to the build- ing, documentation, and surveys, as well his ideas and counsel on nu- merous technical and historical details. My thanks to Eve Borsook, Irving Lavin, Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, and Robert Mark for their cri- tiques of the lecture, and I am especially indebted to Anne-Marie San- kovitch and the J S A H editor, Tod Marder, for helpful criticism of the manuscript.

1. For Tuscan cities, see the visual material in E. Detti, G. F. Di Pietro, G. Fanelli, et al., Cittd murate e sviluppo contemporaneo, 42 centri

way that buildings and squares evolved gradually through nu- merous campaigns, frequently resulting in a dynamic progres- sion of responses between an evolving building and its evolving setting.

If anywhere, we would certainly think to encounter this pro- cess at the great town hall of the pre-eminent center of medieval Italian architecture and urbanism (Fig. 1). At the Palazzo Vec- chi0 in Florence, however, the question of a monument-site interaction would strike most observers as a distinctly unprom- ising topic. In the prevailing view, the trecento palazzo and its square constitute a rigid block of mass and space nearly as frozen as the impression of it in a reconstruction of Brunelleschi's famous lost perspective panel depicting the site (Fig. 2). Even though it now is well established that the immense L-shaped piazza flanking the two principal sides of the palace was grad- ually carved out of a densely built-up and populated area of houses and other properties, there remains an unspoken con- sensus that the square was more or less predetermined in plan from the beginning in 1299, its only important complication being the Loggia della Signoria (or Loggia dei Lanzi) added toward 1380.' And in this account of the site, the palazzo is even more strikingly immobile; its original trecento block (ex- clusive of the Renaissance additions to the rear) is seen as a building seemingly carved with a single chisel stroke by its supposed architect, Arnolfo di Cambio, from a giant block of pietraforte. So dominant is this view that the thin literature on the palazzo-which establishes that the building was begun in

della Toscana, Lucca, 1968; and G. Fanelli and F. Trivisonno, Cittd antica in Toscana, Florence, 1982. For Italy more generally, Le Piazze, Monu-menti d'ltalia series, Instituto geografico de agostini, Novara, 1981.

2. C. Frey published the documentation and an extensive analysis of the history of the piazza in Die Loggia dei Lanzi z u Florenz, Berlin, 1885, together with the plan of the site before the creation of the square. Frey's dense history has recently been clarified by N. Rubinstein ("The Piazza della Signoria in Florence," Festschrifr Herbert Siebenhiiner, Wiirz-burg, 1978, 19 ff.), whose discussion concentrates on chronology and function, with the form of the piazza dealt with in a general way. See also G. Fanelli, Firenze architettura e citt6, 2 vols., Florence, 1973, 94 ff., for a broad urbanistic approach. The Frey-Rubinstein chronology is the basis of my Fig. 16.

JSAH XLVII:14-44. MARCH 1988 14

Fig. 1. Piazza della Signoria, Florence. View from northwest corner near the Via dei Calzaiuoli (Brogi).

Fig. 2. Filippo Brunelleschi, view of the Piazza della Signoria (reconstruction drawing, C. Ragghianti, Filippo Brunelleschi, Florence, 1977).

1299, partly occupied by 1302, and completed in 1310-1315- This scenario, however, so contradicts what we know about does not even hint at any possible complications in its planning other medieval sites that it should give us pause for reflection. history.' More typically, major buildings in the period were the subject

3. There is no solid studv of the buildine. Vasari's attribution to " Arnolfo echoes through practically every mention of the building, usu- ally as unquestioning repetition; the matter needs reconsideration. The essential literature on the palazzo is to be found in A. Lensi, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, 1929; N . Rodolico and G. Marchini, I palazzi del pop010 nei comuni toscani del medio wo, Milan, 1962, 157 ff.; J. Paul, Der P a l a u o Vecchio in Florenz: Ursprung und Bedeutung seiner Form, Florence, 1969, and idem, Die mittelalterlichen Kommunalpal&te in Italien, Dresden,

1969. Paul's are the most reliable of these references. The name of the building was originally the Palazzo della Signoria or Palazzo dei Priori; after the Medici transferred their main residence to the Palazzo Pitti in the 16th century (and the government of the Priors was extinct), it became simply the "old" palace. The name of the Loggia underwent a similar transformation, taking its popular name after the lances of the Medici guards; unlike the palazzo, its original name is still often used.

16 JSAH, XLVII:l, MARCH 1988

of repeated design changes of all sorts, sometimes radical and controversial, but just as often less blatant and almost hidden in the final structure. To cite one of the most extensive cases, the revetment of the flanks of the Florentine Duomo nave combines Arnolfo di Cambio's scheme for the dado zone with several phases of Francesco Talenti's wall and portal designs in such a subtle manner that only a careful analysis of the documentation and the fabric enables us to disentangle the phases. The same is true of the lower part of the nearby Campanile, where Andrea Pisano's doubling of Giotto's design for the lowest story is so subtly handled as to continue to fool the inattentive ~bserver.~ These examples suggest that the investigator of trecento build- ing histories must search for subtle, ghostlike phenomena, bur- ied in the fabric, hidden in its structure, sleeping in seemingly innocuous documents, and often found in combinations of such slender threads of evidence.

Viewed not as a static icon of art history but as a complex work potentially full of design evolution, the Palazzo Vecchio arouses our suspicions about its traditional history. The undeni- able fact is that the building externally is a composite of several strikingly diverse architectural forms (Fig. 3): (1) the elegantly rusticated palace block of 1299-1306 with its refined bifora windows; (2) the harsh military forms of the galleried battle- ments, or ballatoio, built after 1306, an intimidating structure more befitting a giant fortress than a civic palace; (3) the formally strident watchbox atop the tower that was begun around 1308, its massive shaft set daringly forward over the ballatoio falade; and (4) the columnar belfry or aerial campanile of c. 1310-13 15 which caps the tower.5

It is possible that this diversity was intended from the begin- ning in 1299, but we cannot assume it. Certainly the combi- nation of forms did not correspond to any particular iconography of the time. There was, in fact, no fixed iconography for Tuscan communal palaces as of 1299.6 The scheme was and remained fluid. If there was a kind of standard form that served as a point of departure, it was a three- or four-storied block crowned with a set of unimposing, cornicelike battlements, not unlike the

4. For illustrations, see M. Trachtenberg, The Campanile of Florence Cathedral, New York, 1971, Figs. 7, 248 f. For an example of the controversies arising from varying interpretations of these multicam- paign trecento structures, cf. W. and E. Paatz, Die Kirchen von Florenz, 6 vols., Frankfurt, 1940-1953, 111, 320 ff.; H. Saalman, "Santa Maria del Fiore, 1294-1418," Art Bulletin, XLIV, 1964,471 ff.; Trachtenberg, Campanile, Chapters 2, 3, 5; idem, review article on G. Kreytenberg, Der Dom z u Florenz, Berlin, 1974, in Art Bulletin, XLI, 1979, 113 ff. For different opinions about these buildings, see G. Kiesow, "Zur Bau- geschichte des florentiner Domes," Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen In- stitutes in Florenz, X, 1961, 1 ff.; and G. Kreytenberg, Dom; and idem, "Der Campanile von Giotto," Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, XX, 1978, 147 ff.

5. The dates given here are in part explained in the text below. 6. Cf. Paul, Palazzo Vecchio, and idem, Kommunalpaliiste.

Fig. 3. Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, 1299-1315. View from northwest (author).

private palaces of the period. But great towers with extravagant belfries or even simple towers, which we tend to see as part of the building type, were not necessary to the scheme. The Bar- gello had a tower from the beginning, an expropriated private tower, but the town halls of Volterra (early 13th century and after), San Gimignano (begun 1288), and Siena (begun 1297), for example, were first built as towerless blocks, and only later did they acquire towers as supplementary forms. Some town halls never received them. The proliferation of the civic tower in 14th-century Tuscany appears largely to have been the result of Florentine influence. It was the very creation of the Palazzo Vecchio tower and its domination of the most imposing of communal palaces that appear to have established the full-scale tower as an essential part of the fully developed Tuscan town hall, with Siena, Volterra, and other cities later imitating the form of the Florentine structure.

Thus, in 1299 there was no mandate for the Palazzo Vecchio builders to turn the old tower of the Foraboschi family, which had been incorporated in the fabric, into the extravagant tower that eventually rose over the building, nor to include the equally

1. - F ' r

Fig. 4. View of Siena with timber belfry over church tower, in the Biadaiolo Fiorentino codex, Biblioteca Laurenziana, Florence, 1330s. Detail with timber belfry over church tower (author).

unprecedented, swollen form of the battlements.' A design evo- lution toward these forms is a likely possibility, given the fluid iconography of the time and the tendency of the period to realize building projects sequentially.

Evidence of the palazzo design evolution: the campana magna

The building history of the palazzo appears to have entered a critical phase in 1306. At this time the main rusticated block, with its public halls and multiroomed cortile area, seems to have been essentially complete, but not much more of the building. The Foraboschi tower still rose above it to an unknown height (later it would be partly cut down to serve as a base for the new tower), and on it a modest palace bell transferred from another site had been hung in a wooden belfry in 1304.8 Such provisional wooden belfries were not unknown in the period; an example can be seen in a Sienese church tower, presumably the Duomo, at the upper left of the view of Siena in the mid-14th-century Biadaiolo Codex (Fig. 4). The Palazzo Vecchio belfry of 1304 probably resembled the Sienese example of this vernacular type. A reconstruction of the west facade of the palace as it stood

7. There was no mandate for rustication either. 8. On the old bell and the 1304 operation, A. Gotti, Storia del Palazzo

Vecchio in Firenze, Florence, 1889, 28 f. The belfry is described as ". . . hediffitio lignaminis super que ipse campana poni et esse debat construi et fieri faciendo. . . ."

partly complete in 1306, with its gawky tower and belfry, is offered in Fig. 22.

At this point we encounter the key documentary evidence for design changes in the building. This documentation con- cerns the giant palace bell commissioned in 1306, a proud cam- pana magna to replace its modest predecessor. The history of this new bell and, most particularly, the problems the builders encountered in creating a proper location for it on the palace offer valuable insights into the history of the building, especially the tower. The bell was a huge casting weighing 16,000 librae or some 5,700 kg. Mentioned as under fabrication in August 1306, it was complete on 17 June 1307.9 What is significant is not the completion of the bell but that at its completion there was no proper place on the palazzo to hang it, for on 5 July 1307 payment is authorized for placing it on a wooden "edifice or tower" on the recently paved piazza.'O We have seen that such provisional wooden belfries were known above towers, at Siena and even on the Palazzo Vecchio in 1304. But to erect such a timber belfry in the public square, and not up on the building where it belonged, was another matter. It must have been an embarrassing expedient that was an unusual predicament for Florentine builders who, in the interest of economy, sought to coordinate the fabrication of building components with the need for them in the building under constr~ction.~'

In other words, at the time the new bell was commissioned in 1306, the builders probably anticipated that a palace belfry would soon be ready to receive it; without this expectation the builders would no doubt have postponed the commissioning. The most appropriate location for the belfry was, of course, atop the tower where the first palace bell had hung since 1304; part of the work mentioned in documents of 19 August 1306 in an appropriation that also included the new bell might well have been connected with such a new belfry because the work is defined as "readaptation and covering of the palace and its t~wer. ' ' '~ By "tower" was meant here the old Foraboschi tower, whose timber belfry of 1304 would have been inadequate for the campana magna. If indeed a new belfry was already under construction in 1306, it could not have been very ambitious, considering the fact that it would be needed at the completion of the bell foreseen within a year. The projected belfry may have been simply a wooden structure of the type discussed above (replacing a smaller belfry of 1304), perhaps in conjunction with minor masonry construction to which the wording of the 19 August 1306 document would specifically refer. If so, in the

9. R. Davidsohn, Forschungen z u r Geschichte von Florenz, 4 vols., Ber- lin. 1908, IV, 500.

10. Ibid., 500. 11. Cf. Trachtenberg, Campanile, Chapter 5; H . Saalman, Filippo

Brunelleschi, The Cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore, London, 1980, passim. 12. Frey, Loggia, 194 f., Doc. 61.

18 JSAH. XLVII: l , MARCH 1988

summer of 1307 the location of the new timber belfry would

have been transferred from the tower to the square where, on

a temporary basis, the structure was set up as an independent

wooden "edifice or tower."

For the planning history of the palazzo, the crucial fact among

these events is that the new tower-belfry, whatever its form, was not ready to support the campana magna in June 1307. This

situation might indicate a construction delay of the usual sort,

slight but sufficient to justify the temporary wooden belfry erect-

ed on the piazza. By the succeeding July 1308, it had evidently

become clear that the delay would be so lengthy as to justify

the cost of putting the new bell on the palazzo in a provisional

belfry, not on the tower but presumably in a bell-cote erected

over the battlements.I3

This bell-cote would probably be the one seen in the 1342

Bigallo fresco, at the corner of the north fapde just above and

to the left of the Baptistery lantern (Fig. 5), and mentioned in

a diary of 1344.14 By this time the campana magna had long since

been moved from this bell-cote up to the completed tower,

where it appears in the fresco.15 T h e bell that took the campana

magna's place in the bell-cote was most likely the Campana del Consiglio, one of the supplementary bells the palace had ac-

cumulated to signal various public events, in this case council

meetings.16 Interestingly, an analogy to the Florentine situation can be observed at the Palazzo dei Priori at Volterra in the

remnant of the bell-cote used before the building received its

13. 500 lire are provided for tower construction and placing the bell over the palace; Davidsohn, Florenz, IV, 500,26 July; Frey, Loggia, 198, Doc. 74. On 31 March 1309, additional funds in the amount of 400 lire for the placement of the bell are approved (Davidsohn, Florenz, IV, 500). That the bell was not placed on the tower at this time is inferred from the ongoing construction of the tower in these years, which was not completed until after 1310. The 1308-1309 funding is for placing the bell on the palace ("pro campana magna poni facienda super pal- latio"). Contrast the specificity of the reference to the tower in the placement of the first Palazzo Vecchio bell over the Foraboschi tower in 1304: ". . . campana que olim erat super turim Pallati domini Capitani ponenda et poni facienda super turim Pallati dominomm Priorium Ar- tium ex Vexilliferi Justitie . . ." (Gotti, Palauo, 28). Other documents, such as the appropriation of 19 August 1306, list the "tower" in addition to the "palace" when work on the former is intended (text above and n. 12). Placement on the "palace" can only have meant in a bell-cote.

14. Gotti, Palarro, 30. This bell-cote can be more clearly seen in the color illustration in G. Brucker, Florence, six sikles de splendeur et de gloire, Paris, 1984, 23. The remnant of this bell-cote is visible in the 18th- century rendering of the palace published by D. M. Galli, "Restauri e burocrazia, Palazzo Vecchio a Firenze nel settecento," Labyrinthor, I, 11, 1982, Fig. 1. The rendering also indicates a second bell-cote at the other end of the battlements (see text below for its presumed use). The two bell-cote fragments also appear in less accurate 19th-century engravings (Lensi Orlandi, I1 Palarro Vecchio di Firenze, Florence, 1977, Figs. 170 f.).

15. The campana magna is first mentioned above the tower on 30 October 1318 (Davidsohn, Florenz, IV, 501).

16. Gotti, Palauo, 30.

Fig. 5. Fresco of the Madonna della Misericordia, Bigallo, Florence, 1342. Detail showing Palazzo Vecchio bell-cote over battlements.

late 14th-century tower.17 But the main point is that the bell-

cote of 1308 at the Palazzo Vecchio was an expensive,I8 wasteful

measure (without the supplementary bells it would have become

useless) and can only have been funded because a more mon-

umental bell-hanging on the tower was going to take a long

time to build, and a costly bell-cote was preferable to leaving

the even more costly campana magna down in the piazza for

years awaiting its permanent, monumental home.

T h e decisive question is what was behind the extensive delay

in the completion of the tower-belfry, which cannot be attrib-

uted simply to a suspension of work, for just at this time (be-

ginning in 1308) the construction of the tower receives the

strong, continuous support of funds and of special officials to

supervise the work.I9 Nor can the availability of building ma-

17. Trachtenberg, Campanile, Fig. 337. 18. It required two fundings and cost well in excess of 400 lire (see

n. 13). Part of the expenses, of course, would have been incurred by the process of lifting the bell into the bell-cote.

19. For the tower officials, W. Braunfels, MittelalterlicheStadtbaukunst in der Toskana, Berlin, 1952,199, n. 680. For tower funding, Davidsohn, Floretrz, IV, 500 f., 20 July 1308; 10 December 1308; 1310 (no date).

Fig. 6. Palazzo Vecchio, cross section and plan of tower (author).

terials have been a ~roblem, given the ~lentiful Florentine quar- ries of the pietraforte of which the palace is constructed. If the delay that emerged between 1306 and 1308 was not due to a suspension of work or lack of money or materials, the cause may well have been a change in the tower design, most probably a major increase in its projected size and complexity that took a number of years to realize.

This probable alteration of the tower project opens a Pandora's box regarding the design of the Palazzo Vecchio, for if a change in the tower occurred as we now have good reason to suspect, perhaps other aspects of the enterprise were also modified. The tower as built is integrated with the battlements, or ballatoio, in a complex way, and there is no evidence that the battlements had been built as of 1306. Thus, the redesign of the tower might well have accompanied a redesign of the rest of the as-yet- unbuilt superstructure. A modification of the battlements might also help explain some puzzling documentation of roofing op- erations between 1306 and 1309, which is too soon after the probable completion of the main palace block in 1306 to be attributed to simple decay.20 The battlements and the roof meet closely, and any basic change in the former would have neces- sitated alterations of the latter. Such possibilities concerning the superstructure of the palazzo lead us to search the fabric for concrete archaeological evidence of design changes.

Tower archaeology

Physical evidence for a change in design is present in certain anomalous features of the tower. To understand these pecu- liarities, we must first acquaint ourselves with its plan and struc- ture (Fig. 6).2' The tower consists of the following basic ele- ments: (1)the narrow, off-square Foraboschi family tower, hidden behind the rusticated layer of the new palace fa~ade and rising to a level just below the corbelling; (2) reinforcing masonry fill that all but completely solidifies this old tower, indicated in the plan by cross-hatching; (3) the new tower construction, visible as the shaft rising above the battlements, larger and more regular in plan than the Foraboschi structure, and partly supported by the corbelling on the fa~ade and by the hollowed-out front wall of the battlements, as well as by extensive corbelling at the rear (east) and right (south) sides; (4) the watch-box, with a corbel- supported gallery; and (5) the arched, columnar belfry.

To the archaeological eye, the tower-infill and the corbelled tower-expansion are the most intriguing of these features. When did the tower-infill occur, and why? Was it intended from the beginning in 1299? If an expanded tower was foreseen initially,

20. Frey, Loggia, 194, Doc. 61; 198, Doc. 76. 21. The well-known cross sections of A. Haupt, Renaissance Palaces

o fNor thern Italy and Tuscany, 3 vols., New York, 1931, I, Fig. 3; and G. Rohault de Flewy, Toscane au moyen age, Paris, 1870-1873, Fig. 9, are inaccurate.

20 JSAH, XLVII: l , MARCH 1988

Fig. 7. Palazzo Vecchio, west fa~ade at tower, with three blinded win- B A dows (author).

Fig. 8. Palazzo Vecchio, west elevation, deviation of blinded windows from tower axis (after A. Haupt, RenaissancePalaces ofNorthern Italy and Twcany, 3 vols., New York, 1931, I, Fig. 3).

why was it built on the absurdly narrow base that theold Forabo- schi tower offered, instead of more firmly over a broader new hidden shaft and foundation? This line of questioning could be pursued towards a number of plausible speculations. More de- finitive answers, however, can be found through further ar- chaeological observation.

The key to the tower archaeology is a set of puzzling features: three windows near the tower axis on the palace fapde (Fig. 7). What is most puzzling about these windows is that they are blind. One explanation would be that they were built as they appear, that is, merely as voids in the rusticated stone skin in front of the solidified Foraboschi tower. Such blind windows (originally, perhaps, with false glazing) would have been added to give relief and continuity to the fa~ade and to mask illusion- istically the presence of the Foraboschi shaft behind it.22 This

explanation, however, is contradicted by three anomalies: the shapes and sizes of the triad of windows do not match the flanking fenestration; they are all slightly displaced to the left of the tower axis (A in Fig. 8); and the small mezzanine window is axially displaced to the right of the other two openings (B in Fig. 8). Were the windows in question merely blanks in the rusticated skin, nothing would have prevented the builders from rationalizing their shapes and axes, which would have served appearances more effectively and been in keeping with the strict- ness of window configuration seen elsewhere on the building.23 If not false, the three windows below the tower originally must have been real. That is, what we see are voids in the rustication in front of corresponding openings, now filled, in the structural

22. Cf. Paul, Palazzo, 10; also my earlier interpretation (Trachten- berg, Campanile, 168). 23. The exceptions are a few minor openings on the west front.

TRACHTENBERG: M O N U M E N T A N D SITE A T T H E PALAZZO V E C C H I O 21

Fig. 9. Palazzo Vecchio, walled-up opening to tower adjacent to tower stair entrance, above the secondo piano (author).

masonry behind them, in the Foraboschi tower wall. This ex- planation helps us understand the troublesome irregularities of the triad, because real windows would have been structurally or functionally determined in their shape and placement. Thus,

they might correspond to pre-existing windows in the Fora- boschi tower; they could involve pre-1299 openings reshaped to new needs (such as precise alignment of their sills with the

palazzo cornicework); or they could be new openings of 1299 broken into the Foraboschi wall. The irregularity of their size and their disparate axes, combined with the precision of sill- alignment, suggests that a pragmatic combination of these op- tions occurred.

The hypothesis that the three windows were originally real ones is confirmed by a discovery made during recent work on the palazzo facade: directly behind the rusticated frame of the tower-axis mezzanine window lies a corresponding, congruent window frame in the old Foraboschi wall, a framework com- plete with rusty iron hinges for shutters.24 That this information

24. Presented in the tesi di laurea of A. Balloni, C. Colapietro. G. Lombardi, Indagine sulla Torre di "Arnolfo," Facold di Architettura at

was limited to one of the three windows and that the date of the rear window frame was not established r re- or ~ost-1299?) do not matter with respect to our present purpose. The discovery incontrovertibly establishes the original presence of a two-lay- ered window in the palace faqade near the tower axis and, hence, the existence of one interior space originally behind it, lit by the window. The reconstructed existence of this room is enough to suggest that in 1299 the builders meant not to fill up the Foraboschi tower with reinforcing masonry, but instead to reuse

its interior in the new palace. This space took the form of a vertical series of narrow rooms lit by ample windows, rooms similar (if not in some cases identical) to those that had been used for generations by the Foraboschi family but with the floor

and ceiling levels in some instances probably reset in corre- spondence with the Palazzo Vecchio levels, along with related modification of fenestration. Further evidence for an original project that would have kept the spaces of the Foraboschi tower open is found next to the entrance to the tower stair above the secondo piano of the palace: an arched opening walled up, but originally giving into the tower interior (Fig. 9).

That the Foraboschi tower was by all evidence left open in an initial palace project would obviously mean that it was de- cided to fill in the old tower for structural reinforcement only after the main rusticated palazzo walls were up. The question is when and why this reinforcement occurred. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, an early date suggests itself-pre- cisely that phase of construction in 1306-1308 where we have

found evidence for basic changes in the tower project.z5 Two explanations may be inferred for the tower-infill during

this phase of radical revision. Perhaps the builders suddenly became anxious about their daring idea of setting such a sub- stantial part of the prodigious tower over fragile corbelling and concluded that the least they could do to ensure the success of their structural adventure would be to reinforce its base as much as possible. The tower-infill, however, would not have been in itself a sufficiently large operation to account for the long delay in the completion of the tower. Thus the alternative explanation is more plausible; namely, that only at this time, 1306-1308,

the Universitb degli Studi di Firenze, 1977-1978,53 f. and Fig. 16. At the window the infill of the tower was extended outward in another layer to wall up the window frame with solid ashlar, now hidden behind intonaco. The authors, however, failed to seize the significance of this discovery. They also missed the point that it contradicts their thesis that only the foundations of the Foraboschi tower were reused in the Palazzo Vecchio, and that the hidden shaft was itself new, post-1299 fabric.

25. There is no reference to the tower-infill either in the later doc- umentation for the palazzo or in Vasari's detailed description of Michel- ozzo's inte~entions. For what it is worth, Vasari believed that the tower-infill was by Arnolfo: ". . . Avendo dunque, Arnolfo ripiena la detta torre di buona materia, ad altri maestri fu poi facile fawi sopra il campanile altissimo che oggi vi si vede . . ." (G. Vasari, Le Vite, 9 vols., ed. G. Milanesi, Florence, 1878, I, 290).

22 JSAH, X L V I I : l , MARCH 1988

Fig. 10. First Palazzo Vecchio project, 1299. Re- constructed cross section of tower, reproduced to same scale as Fig. 6 (author).

did the daring corbelled-tower scheme evolve and become the cause for the protracted extension of tower construction.

Reconstruction of the$rst project

The original idea in 1299 would have been for the tower to

rise entirely behind the ballatoio fa~ade, continuing upwards the relatively narrow plan of the supporting, "hollow" Foraboschi structure, as seen in a reconstructed cross section and elevation of the early tower and west fa~ade project (Figs. 10 , l l ) . Perhaps the visible part of the tower was to be new construction above a partly amputated Foraboschi base, with some minor squaring- out to the rear with corbelling above the irregular Foraboschi plan and the addition of a relatively short belfry shaft. As the drawings suggest, this belfry project might have been modeled after the contemporary Bargello tower (c. 1290), an earlier ex- ample of a new, monumental belfry atop an old family keep

Fig. 11. First Palazzo Vecchio project, 1299. Hypothetical reconstruc- tion of west facade, with Bargello-type upper tower (Haupt, with au- thor's alterations).

(Fig. 12).26 If this was the initial intention in 1299, however, it had not yet been realized in 1304, when the first palazzo bell

was hung in a wooden belfry atop the Foraboschi tower; nor had such a project been achieved by 1306-1307 when the same timber arrangement evidently was planned for the campana mag- na. These wooden belfries may have been stopgap measures, forced by the urgent needs for a bell-hanging above the tower, and taken with the idea that eventually a Bargello-type of mon- umental masonry belfry, as possibly planned in 1299, would be

built. On the other hand, it is equally possible that the original intention had been simply to leave the Foraboschi structure standing above the palace to its full height and to provide it

26. W. Paatz, "Zur Baugeschichte des Palazzo del Podesti in Flo- renz," Mitteilungen des kunsthistorischen Instituter in Florenz, 111, 1938, 308; Paul, Kommunalpalaste, 210.

' 'I &t

Fig. 12. Bargello, Florence, 1250-14th century. View from southwest (author).

with a timber belfry over a new crown through some remod- eling or minor construction, much as actually occurred in 1304- 1306 and as is imagined in Fig. 13-"readaptation" and "cov- ering" as the 1306 document specifies, as opposed to the basic new tower construction authorized in 1308.

In either event, the infill of the old shaft would have occurred as part of the new project of 1307-1308 for a thicker, higher, heavier, and cantilevered tower, which needed as much rein- forcement as possible. This necessity is obvious in a comparison between the comparatively stable, unproblematic first project and the daringly expanded, overbalanced27project of 1307-1308 and after (see Figs. 6, 10).

The change in the tower project was in all probability ac- companied by a change in the design of the main battlements of the palazzo. These battlements were deeply implicated in the design and construction of the tower. The two form an inte- grated structure: the battlements penetrate the tower, and the tower embraces the battlements in its forward projection, which

27. The corbeling on the front of the Foraboschi shaft is far greater than its extension to the rear, which merely squares off the structure.

Fig. 13. First Palazzo Vecchio project, 1299. Alternative reconstruction of west faGade, retaining Foraboschi tower (Haupt, with author's alter- ations).

rests on the ballatoio wall and corbels. The five corbels beneath the tower were specially designed for the extra load, fortified in their material (veinless pietra serena instead of the weaker, veinedpietra forte) and in their greater thickness and closer spac- ing in comparison with their neighbors (Fig. 14). It is, no doubt, theoretically possible that in 1306 the battlements had already been completed and that their portion under the tower was shortly thereafter dismantled and rebuilt to accommodate the enlarged tower. However, the difference in spacing between the thinner corbels of the ballatoio and the thicker ones under the tower is such that the latter could not have replaced the former: only three-and-one-half of the broader flanking arches with thinner corbels would fit in the space of the extant four arches below the tower. Nor is there evidence of telltale masonry breaks or sutures. To the contrary, the integrity of the battle- ments can be obsenred in the stonework and in the repeated forms of corbels, windows, and crenelations that take the en- larged tower in their measure without significant interruptions of their regular spacing other than those pointed out.

Assuming that the extant battlements are part of a second project, we must ask what they might have replaced as the originally planned crown of the palazzo block.Just as, according to the present hypothesis, the extant "supertower" displaced an early project for an ordinary, thinner shaft, so the ballatoio, which may be thought of as "~u~erbattlements," may well have re-

24 JSAH, XLVII:l, MARCH 1988

Fig. 14. Palazzo Vecchio, detail of battlements at tower (author).

placed a scheme of ordinary battlements without galleries, such as we have already seen in the reconstructions of the first project (Figs. 11,13). These battlements would correspond to the ubiq- uitous contemporary type, as seen at the Bargello, the Florentine city gates, the Florentine "new towns" like Scarperia, and other communal palaces of the period such as those at Siena and S. G i m i g n a n ~ . ~ ~

Let us summarize the ideas presented so far. Essentially the hypothesis is that the executed building differed radically from a first project of 1299. The difference consisted in the super- structure of the building. The first project (in either of the reconstruction alternatives) called for a narrow, relatively small tower set back and rising behind simple battlements. The second project, developed after 1307, dramatically increased the scale of the superstructure by inflating the battlements with a win- dowed gallery and by heightening the tower and thickening it by projecting it foward over the battlements. Furthermore, the enlarged tower was complicated in its superstructure by the massive columnar belfry and the giant battlemented watchbox.

To explain why the changes took place is a challenging mat- ter. The design of the tower, so structurally daring, even dan-

28. The battlements of both Scarperia and S. Gimignano are modern reconstructions.

Fig. 15. Palazzo Vecchio as built, 1299-1318, elevationofwest fa~ade (Haupt, with author's corrections).

gerous, was something that the builders were well aware of as evidenced by their infill of the Foraboschi shaft to solidify the base of the extravagant structure, thereby sacrificing much valu- able space. Obviously, the design revolution would never have occurred without powerful motivation.

This motivation was complex. Many factors were at work: the escalating ambitions of architects and patrons; the compe- tition with the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena that was being enlarged at the time; and, above all, the shifting political atmosphere, in particular the post-traumatic climate in Florence in the years immediately following the reign of terror of 1301-1304 (Dante its most famous victim) and the violent civil war of the latter year in which as much as one-tenth of Florentine real estate was put to arson. This climate precipitated the numerous steps

Fig. 16. Piazza della Signoria. Schematic plan showing development 1299-1389 (author).

-- -- - I I . .

\ \ \ .

?' ' ' K! ;,. <*-;; 4, : I . . , .

I&,-: *- I$--:; m ' - 9q;jJ:; L. I- a m . - - :ai:.:' __- , .. . s ' m m

taken in 1306-1307 to strengthen the authority and integrity of the Florentine state, steps that included a visually and mili- tarily aggrandized Palazzo Vecchio (with its proud campana magna) as a more powerful symbol of stability and order. Sim- ilarly, the siege of Florence by the Emperor Henry VII that materialized in 1310-1313 was probably a major factor behind the final design of the tower superstructure as it evolved in those years. The watchbox stood guard not over the piazza-the bal- latoio did that-but over the countryside, as a symbol of Flor- entine resistence to the foreign enemy in the field. The massive belfry colu~nns in particular seem to have reflected those of the imperial watchtower at San Miniato a1 Tedesco and probably represented a defiant symbolic response to the dire imperial threat.z9 These and other historical connections constitute a major aspect of the palazzo's history that will be treated at length in another publication.JO Relevant to the present study are the urbanistic factors behind the evolving palazzo design: the site changed dramatically in 1299 and 1307 and afterwards, and it is the interaction between this evolving site and the evolving design of the monument that we now shall follow.

Fig. 17. Palazzo Vecchio, view from north (author).

Piazza and palazzo

It was fitting that the Palazzo Vecchio was a participant in the political dramas of the early trecento, for its very site was determined by a much earlier episode of the chronic Florentine civil warfare. In 1258, at the height of the Guelf-Ghibelline conflict, the Florentines punished the hated Ghibelline family of the Uberti by destroying their center city property and vow- ing to leave the area forever unbuilt as a grim reminder to future rebels and also because they felt that terrain was cursed.31 For a generation the Platea Ubertorum or Piazza degli Uberti served little other than this symbolic purpose, but with time, it became an increasingly irritating waste of land to Florentines caught up in new conflicts. The siting of the Palazzo Vecchio at the south boundary of the Uberti land solved the dilemma, putting the terrain to good use without actually building on it (Fig. 16).

It is already known that the first Palazzo Vecchio project did not face the west, as it does today, but was oriented to the north,

29. Curiously, the several authors who have associated the Palazzo Vecchio and the S. Miniato tower overlooked the historical connection with the siege of Florence (cf. Trachtenberg, Campanile, 167, n. 63). 30. See introductory note. 31. Braunfels, Toskana, 200.

towards the Uberti area, which in 1299 became the initial Piazza della S i g n ~ r i a . ~ ~ Closely surrounded in other directions by nar- row streets and a dense web of medieval houses, churches, and other real estate, the palazzo rose on the south side of the relatively small square as a narrow, symmetrical, three-storied facade, at its center the original ceremonial entrance to the building (Fig. 17). From most of the square the view of the small, narrow Foraboschi tower was largely or entirely blocked by the palace. As earlier suggested, the battlements originally planned for this front were probably of standard trecento form. The frontal prospect of a steep, narrow, towerless, multistoried facade capped by simple battlements would have been reminis- cent of innumerable public buildings of the period, such as the Palazzo dei Priori in S. Gimignano, the original central section of the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, and the 14th-century Palazzo del Arte della Lana in Florence (Fig. 18).33 These buildings reinforce our reconstruction of the first north facade project (Fig. 19). A comparative view of this scheme with battlements enlarged to their eventual proportions emphasizes how un- characteristically top-heavy such an inflated north facade would have looked before the palazzo was redesigned for another pros- pect (Fig. 20).

The north front of the building had been planned from the outset as a symmetrical, monumental facade overlooking the pre-existing Platea Ubertorum. The west side of the building, though uniformly rusticated, exhibited the set-back old Fora- boschi tower and a small, asymmetrically situated portal, with scattered sets of windows corresponding to varied interior fea- tures. This informality of design evidently did not matter as long as the west wall merely fronted a narrow street, where it presented a cramped, tilted perspective (Fig. 21). However, the west precinct of the palace was not limited to this street for long. Beginning as early as 1299, houses were purchased there, and by 1306 enough of them to the west of the palace had been demolished to create a second, west piazza (see Fig. 16).34 With the creation of the west piazza, the function and perception of the west wall changed dramatically, as suggested in a recon- struction sketch of the site in 1306 (Fig. 22).35 By virtue of the new piazza, the west wall had become an important facade. The problem was that it was plainly a side wall lacking symmetry,

regularity, and orchestrated presentation. The planned cornice of narrow battlements, foreseen primarily as a cap to the nar- rower north front, would be inadequate to pull the west wall into a facade gestalt. Nor would the prominent appearance of

32. The original orientation is discussed in Paul, Palazzo Vecchio, 52 f.; and Rubinstein, Piazza, 22.

33. Paul, Palazzo Vecchio, 59ff. 34. Rubinstein, Piazza, 22. 35. This view is meant to suggest the site only in an extremely

schematic way, based on the site plan sketched in Fig. 16, itself based on Prey and Rubinstein (n. 2, above).

Fig. 18. Palazzo del Arte della Lana, Florence, 14th century (author).

the small Foraboschi tower, originally intended mainly as a symbolic accent and convenient belfry site, effectively serve the new situation, even with a Bargello-like crown. In fact, its meagerness would further contribute to the embarrassing dis- parities of scale and organization, especially with respect to the featured facade of the original project.

The planners of 1299 had nor clearly foreseen this turn of events. In a manner typical of the period, they had not rigorously followed through the implications of their planning, which they would have tended in any case not to deal with until absolutely necessary.36 By 1306-1307 the problem was pressing. The pal- ace builders faced a difficulty that they knew would get worse,

36. The most blatant example of this tendency occurred in the design of the cupola of the Duomo: its planners of the 1360s had no more than a foggy notion of how the unprecedented structure would be achieved but knew that the problem would be one for a later generation actually to confront.

Fig. 19. First Palazzo Vecchio project, 1299. Reconstruction elevation from north, overlooking the Platea U k o r u m (author).

Fig. 20. Palazzo Vecchio with ballatoio, as it would have looked from the Platea Ubertorum (author).

28 JSAH, XLVII : l , MARCH 1988

the Signoria in the latter year having been granted authority (not exercised until 1319) further to expand the piazza;' which would serve only to increase the exposure and importance of the ungainly wall that was now destined to become the primary facade of the building.

Only in redesigning the superstructure was there any real hope of resolving the difficulty, for the rusticated west front itself could not be significantly improved without fundamental rebuilding not only of the wall but the interior behind it.'& The first superstructure project, we have argued, had been designed primarily for the original north facade. The main emphasis of this traditionally ordered facade would have been its rustication and elegant window detail; its superstructure would have been intended to provide little more than an adequate cornice, sub- servient and complementary to the principal massing and its richly textured surface, with the short tower nearly or com- pletely out of sight from the Platea Ubertorum. The project de- veloped in 1307-1308 dramatically shifted this balance by rad- ically emphasizing the superstructure. It now became as important as the main block below, gaining a visual power that tranformed the look of the entire building. The primary aim of the project was to make a fagade out of the messy side wall presented to

37. Rubinstein, Piazza, 22. 38. Compare the solution of the cathedral side wall problem in 1357-

1358, as analyzed by Saalman, Santa Maria del Fiore, 471 ff.

the west piazza, and the new strategy was visually to overpower the disorderly substructure with a mighty colossus of a super- structure far too grand for the small, taut north facade. Yet while this superstructure draws the eye away from the disarray of the main block, it does not negate the integrity of its rusticated volumes, a subtle feat of shaping and proportioning.

The eventual superstructure was developed from the funda- mental components of the first scheme, the battlements and tower. The redesign tactics were to make both of these forms independently much larger; to integrate them, forming an even

Fig. 21. Palazzo Vecchio. West fa~ade as viewed from area of originally adjacent street (author).

Fig. 22. Palazzo Vecchio. Reconstructed view of state of construction from the west piazza in 1306, with timber belfry of 1304 on Foraboschi tower, which is given a new crown. First bell of palazzo shown, with size exaggerated for clarity (author).

Fig. 23. Palazzo Vecchio, from west (author).

Fig. 24. View of Palazzo Vecchio in scene of the Expulsion of the Duke of Athens, 1343, fresco formerly in the Carceri delle Stinche, now in the Palazzo Vecchio (author).

larger whole; and finally, to endow the mammoth structure with dynamic energies and levitational illusionism. Thus, a gal- lery inserted into the battlements inflates their scale, while the operation by no means inevitable in contemporary urbanistic tower is elevated and thickened through forward extension to practice40). As a result the palace could be seen in oblique per- the ballatoio fa~ade, thereby unifying the ballatoio and the tower spective, more effectively displaying the effects of the formi- and endowing the latter with an antigravitational effect that dable tower and gaining for the whole a visual impression of lifts it skyward over the piazza. far greater scale, mass, and unity than was achieved by the two

fa~ades independently. From the diagonal viewpoint, moreover, Towards the oblique perspective the asymmetrical location of the tower, which lends a queasy

This analysis has emphasized the frontal views of the palace imbalance to the west perspective (Fig. 23), achieves a com- from the north and west, but it is evident that the builders pelling, dynamic balance. The left front edge of the tower rises intended from a date early in the trecento-perhaps as early as at the center of the west fa~ade. Thus, from the oblique per- 13W9-that the two piazzas eventually be joined into one (an spective the north tower wall is seen to the left of the center

40. Some im~ortant sites of the ~e r iod retained double oiazzas that never were unified in the period (though they were mostly connected),

39. In 1307 the two piazzas were already seen as parts of a single, for example at the cathedral in Lucca (a close parallel to the 1306 state continuous space: "platea. . . existente . . . circa pallatium populi" (Frey, of the Piazza della Signoria), S. Maria Novella in Florence (with its old Loggia, 196, 31 July), and authority was granted to further enlarge the and new squares), and also at the Modena and Milan cathedrals, and square (Ibid., 195,6 April). Cf. Rubinstein, Piazza, 22 ff. the civic squares at S. Gimignano and Bologna.

30 J S A H , XLVII : l , M A R C H 1988

line, to a degree balancing the west tower f a ~ a d e to the right of center (see Figs. 1, 3). In a larger way the whole tower, perceived to the right of the fa~ade center, counterbalances the

heavy dark mass of the north wall of the main palace block, which is in the shade except for short periods in the summer. In all, this dynamic counterbalancing sharpens the visual ener- gies of the building. W e should especially take note of the way it establishes the northwest corner of the tower as the visual

axis of the palace, which will be important to our discussion

later.J1 The main point here, however, is that as redesigned after

1307, the building begs to be seen not frontally but obliquely, as in the 14th-century viewsof the palazzo, including the earliest accurate depiction in 1343 (Fig. 24), when the piazza had been realized only partly and the oblique view was available only in

a cramped manner.42

This perspectival pull towards the diagonal view must have been a significant impetus to enlarge the piazza along the oblique viewpath of the building, although the practical and honorific need for a larger piazza43 also was a major factor, as was the intrinsic formal logic of the piazza. Its evolution (which entailed

always the expensive and often controversial expropriation and demolition of valuable private and ecclesiastical real estate) pro- ceeded in stages: further to the west after the completion of the

palace in 1319, and then towards the northwest in the 1350s to join the two previously separated areas, with the final align-

ment of the sides achieved from the 1360s through the 1380s

(see Fig. 16).44 In the early phases of interaction between the building and

its site the latter was the prime mover, influencing the design of the palace first in 1299, when the structure was oriented towards and limited by the Platea Ubertorum, and then again

after 1307, when the west piazza inspired the new tower and battlements. Now, in the final phases of site planning the fully

evolved building became the active force. As finally built the Palazzo Vecchio radiates a powerful volumetric energy. The building rises as a colossal, hyperactive massing that fills the void around it with an overpowering presence. It needs a lot of

41. A. Parronchi, Stud i su la dolceprospettiua, Milan, 1964,274, stresses this axis for a different reason.

42. The small early tower project would have had a much slighter oblique effect. The diagonal perspective was common in medieval Tus- can sites, as noted by a number of observers including Fanelli, Firenze, I, 97, and especially E. Guidoni, Arte e urbanistica i n Toscana 1000-1315, Rome, 1970, 69 ff. The Bargello would be a relevant precedent. An oblique perspective even more spectacular than the Piazza della Signoria was created at the Piazza del Duomo: the view of the cupola and tribunes from the foot of the Via del Proconsolo, a vista opened in the 1390s just after the completion of the Piazza della Signoria (see below). As is well known, the oblique view was characteristic of contemporary paint- ing (see n. 86).

43. Stressed throughout by Rubinstein, Piazza . 44. Ibid., and Frey, Loggia, for documentation.

space to avoid a claustrophobic effect on the observer; to achieve a comfortable three-dimensional perspective; and to be set off

from surrounding buildings in a decorous manner, a concern voiced regularly in trecento documents.45

The question is, how much space and of what form, precisely? From just how far away should we ideally see the building? Intuitive judgments were not enough to resolve these questions

and to decide just where to draw the line around the huge, ever-

expanding square, not for trecento planners for whom more

determinate factors were always critical. Nor did the difficulties of real estate expropriation (which favored retaining old street lines) play a strongly limiting role at the piazza. T o be sure, such practical considerations, in severe form, blocked any ex- tension of the piazza around to the south or east sides of the

palace.46 Practical concerns were significant on the south bound-

ary of the square, and perhaps on the east, but far less so for the final lines drawn in the 1360s and 1380s opposite the main fa~adesof the palazzo at the north and west edges. Along these two borders practical limitations gave way to urbanistic needs and aesthetic ambitions. Here, some ideal concept was at work in determining the piazza dimensions. Rows of houses and other

properties were demolished or, still more revealing, brutally sliced through to push the building lines back ("amputated,"

reads the document), and then reconstructed along or close to the new borderlines with new fa~ades of prescribed form: fronts

12-braccia high, "pulcrum et decentem," on the north; and rus- ticated on the west, with a long tract taking the form of an immense free-standing precinct wall, which was 16-braccia high (the so-called Mura or Tetto dei Pi~ani) .~ ' These extraordinary features evidently reflected an ideal scheme. But what precisely was this scheme. and what concerns were behind it?

45. Braunfels, Toskana, 116 ff. 46. The Duke of Athens unsuccessfully attempted this in 1342-1343.

Rubinstein, Piazza, 23. 47. Frey, Loggia, 216 f., Doc. 119, 220-227, 229 f., Doc. 139. The

myth that the Mura (or Tetto) dei Pisani was built by Pisan war prisoners in 1364 was demolished by Frey, who explained that the wall of the 1380s replaced a smaller precinct wall, closer to the palazzo, undocu- mented in date but built possibly at the time of the finalization of the north side of the piazza following 1362, in any case not by prisoners but Florentine masons (Ibid., 43 f.; cf. Rubinstein, Piazza , 24, 26). The final structure, together with the houses behind it, was replaced by the late 19th-century insurance building (Palazzo delle Assicurazioni Ge- nerali di Venezia, 1871). Early plans of Florence (Pozzi, 1855; Fantozzi, 1843; most editions of Zocchi, 1781) indicate that the Pisani street line was retained, although a corner was omitted to create a piazzetta at the southwest of the piazza in the Via di Vacchereccia. For old views of the structure, see Lensi Orlandi, Palazzo, Figs. 153, 158 f., 194 f. The word "tetto" referred to its overhanging roof, which gave the Mura a loggialike character (see Frey, Loggia, 43 f.). Many of the north piazza fa~adeswere also rusticated, in the arcaded form typical of the decades (Piazza del Duomo, Via dei Calzaiuoli); they are clearly seen in the Bellotto view (Lensi Orlandi, Palazzo, Fig. 158) and in our Fig. 30 of the Via delle Farine.

From 1349 onward in the city council deliberations concern- ing the destruction of property and rebuilding along the piazza

boundary, there is a recurring preoccupation with achieving straight, aligned, squared borders in the piazza. This concern echoes through such phrases as "ita quod recta linea procedat"

(1349)48 and in the 1386 rulings that in its final form the piazza be "squadretur et adequetur"j9 and that "debeat ipsa platea qua- drari et ad quadrum et in quadro honorabiliter actari."jo Evi- dently, the builders who had earlier squared the palazzo tower

with elaborate corbelling were now determined somehow to "square" the piazza. It was necessary that the fully formed piazza

accommodate not only practical needs and provide an adequate space and an oblique perspective for the palazzo: the piazza had to achieve its own formal perfection.

In the debates about the borders of the piazza were heard opinions about which building lines or corners should be the basis of the final configuration, but the records do not provide

the basis for those opinions or any specific dimensions. Yet from what we know of the planning of large-scale public spaces in Florence, precise dimensions and especially the ratios between those dimensions and the geometric figures they formed were all-important. These were absorbing problems of the most for-

midable building project of the Florentine trecento, the Duomo planning of the 1350s and 1 3 6 0 ~ , ~ ' and while we are prone to separate the planning of church interiors from that of piazzas, this distinction has limited validity, especially in the present case. There is every evidence that the leaders of the cathedral workshop participated in, or even dominated, the planning of

the Piazza della S i g n ~ r i a . ~ ~ Lorenzo di Filippo, during his long tenure as Duomo capomaestro (1384-1394), supervised the pav- ing of the piazza in 1386 and, in the following years, was put in charge of rebuilding, adjacent to the piazza, the church of S. Cecilia originally on the terrain of the square.53 In a similar

48. Frey, Loggia, 209, Doc. 104. 49. Rubinstein, Piazza, 26. 50. Frey, Loggia, 226; cf. Rubinstein, Piazza, 26. 51. M . Trachtenberg, "The Planning of Florence Cathedral from

1296 to 1366/67," Master's thesis, New York University, 1963,44 ff.; H. Saalman, Santa Maria del Fiore, 478 ff.; L. Gori Montanelli, La trad- izione architettonica Torcana, Florence, 1971, 69 ff.; idem, "I1 sistema proporzionale dell'interno del Duomo di Forenze," Festschrift Ulrich Middeldorf; ed. H . Kosegarten and P. Tigler, Berlin, 1972, I, 64-72.

52. Beginning as early as 1362, the tower officials (a commission directing various communal projects) were in charge of the piazza plan- ning (Frey, Loggia, 216, Doc. 119; 219, Doc. 128), but the Opera del Duomo was put in charge of specific projects in and around the square, including the paving of the piazza in the 1380s (Ibid., 218, Doc. 127), the reconstruction of the churches of S. Romolo and S. Cecilia originally on the site and rebuilt adjacent to it (Ibid., 41 f., 91 f.), and the widening of the Via dei Calzaiuoli (Ibid., 248, 9 October 1391).

53. Frey, Loggia, 40 ff., 221 f., 227 ff. A cathedral architect was probably also in charge of the reconstructed S. Romolo (and not Agnolo Gaddi as Vasari supposed; Ibid., 91 f.).

fashion, two other architects worked on projects bordering the

piazza during their tenure as capomaestro at the cathedral: Gio- vanni di Lapo Ghini built the Palazzo della Mercanzia in 1359,54 and Simone di Francesco Talenti contributed heavily to the Loggia della Signoria in 1376.55 These were the two principal

"satellite" buildings of the Palazzo Vecchio on the square. The major street connecting the cathedral and the palazzo, the Via dei Calzaiuoli, was systematized by the cathedral workshop in 1389-1391, using a type of rusticated stone fa~ade also appear-

ing at the Piazza del Duomo and the Piazza della Signoria.j6 In general, most if not all of the prominent Florentine architects

of the 14th century, whose names appear at such major com- munal projects as the Bargello and Orsannmichele, worked at one time at the cathedral, which functioned as the architectural center of the city well into the quat t r~cento.~ ' If the architects of the Piazza della Signoria were collectively those of the ca-

thedral-unfortunately we do not know which individuals might

have contributed most to the century-long process of creating the piazza, although the ambitious Ghini and Simone Talenti

and the tenacious Lorenzo di Filippo would be strong candi- dates-there is every reason to believe that these builders used

similar techniques in laying out both roofed and unroofed public spaces.jV1anning the 200 x 150-braccia layout of the Piazza della Signoria was in many ways not all that different from laying out the 270-braccia length of the cathedral and the colossal

54. G. Milanesi, N u o v i documenti per la storia dell'arte toscana, Florence, 1901, 56.

55. Frey, Loggia, 15 ff. The documents record only one architect unequivocally as capomaestro of the piazza, the obscure Giovanni Jun- tini in 1386 (Ibid., 219, Doc. 130).

56. See n. 52 above, and Braunfels, Torkana, 118 f. 57. See Braunfels's discussion of the "Stadtbaumeister" (Toskana, 216

ff.). His claim that there was no active city architect between the time of Arnolfo di Cambio and Brunelleschi is open to question. There is no concrete evidence that Arnolfo played such a role, while on the other hand Braunfels's own evidence (see especially p. 244) suggests how extensive was the participation of the Duomo leaders (not always capomaertri, but important masons) in other workshops. Neri di Fiora- vanti, for example, worked at the Campanile, the Duomo, Orsanmi- chele, and the Bargello; Benci di Cione at the Bargello, the Duomo, and the Loggia as structural expert. In my opinion (Campanile, 75 ff.) Andrea Pisano designed Orsanmichele as well as part of the Campanile. The real point should not be lost in the issue as to whether Florence was in architectural control of a single figure at one moment or another. It was a small city with a number of ambitious communal projects underway within a few blocks of each other and with a limited pool of architectural talent for leadership; in a sense, Florence was a single workshop in the trecento, with the Duomo as its chief center, and with designers moving rather freely between projects. See also Saalman's analysis, Cupola, 181ff.

58. The tenures of the three capomaestri overlap three of the main phases of planning at the piazza-the early 1360s, the 1370s, and the late 1380s. See Guidoni, Urbanistica, 53 ff., for specific evidence of a uniformity of geometric design techniques applied to various architec- tural and urbanistic problems (although with frequent forced and ex- aggerated interpretations). David Friedman's forthcoming book on the Florentine New Towns explores the geometry of town planning.

32 JSAH, XLVII: l , MARCH 1988

Fig. 25. North-south circulation diagram of Florence in the trecento (author).

72-braccia diameter of the cupola Nor was the concern of the piazza planners for its geometric regularity ("debeat ipsa platea quadrari et ad quadrum et in quadro honorabiliter actari . . .") unrelated to the concern of the 1366 report on the Duomo project: that it be corrected to proper proportions (". . . non uscendo la chiesa di sua ragione di lunghecza n.5 di larghecza n.5 d'altecza . . .").59 In fact, there is suggestive evidence in the dimensions of the Piazza della Signoria that the techniques used in finalizing its borders were those of standard 14th-century geometric planning best documented at the cathedral.

Although we think of the Piazza della Signoria as having a rather regular L-shape, its plan reveals that this is an illusion, in good part gained through sustained and conscious efforts. Its form is quite irregular, and one does not easily find in it geo- metric alignments and correspondences. This raises the obvious

point that there are crucial differences between the designing of interior spaces and piazzas. The geometry of a church interior, for example, tends to be far more regular than a piazza, for while the latter meets directly with a problematic, irregular web of real estate, the church walls normally define a crisp, regular perimeter within the buffer-space of its building site; and within

59. C. Guasti, Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence, 1887, 167, Doc. 141.

Fig. 26. Via dei Calzaiuoli, Florence, two blocks opening onto the Piazza della Signoria, showing the widening and rusticated facing of 1389-1391 (author).

those church walls the dividing and shaping of space is usually rather clear and obvious. The underlying geometry of the me- dieval piazza is rarely obvious, and to perceive it (where it exists) we need generally to take into account not only the history of the piazza but the historical and physical contingencies of the surrounding area.

To comprehend the pattern of the Piazza della Signoria, we must first take note of a shift that occurred in the main streets in central Florence (Fig. 25). In 1299, when the palazzo was begun, an ancient main street (the cardo of Roman Florence) led from the Duomo area through the city center: the Via Calimala- Por San Maria, running from the Baptistery and the Bishop's Palace past the Mercato to the Ponte Vecchio. With the creation of the Palazzo Vecchio, the Via dei Cerchi, which ran from the area south of the Duomo toward the Piazza degli Uberti, ac- quired a potential new importance. After the Duke of Athens created the Via delle Farine in 1343 to connect the Via dei Cerchi with the piazza, the narrow street provided a direct conduit to the north fagade of the palace; but the importance of this conduit was soon overshadowed. In the course of the century, in conjunction with the evolving Palazzo Vecchio and its ever-expanding square, a new urban axis took shape on the Via dei Calzaiuoli, running from the Duomo and Baptistery past Orsanmichele to the northwest corner of the Piazza della S i g n ~ r i a . ~ ~ This comer became the main entrance to the square in place of the Via dei Cerchi inlet. With the widening of the blocks on the Via dei Calzaiuoli between the piazza and Or- sanmichele in 1389 and their new rusticated facing, a monu- mental foyer to the square was created (Fig. 26).61

60. Braunfels, Toskana, 119; Fanelli, Firenze, 97 f. 61. The street nomenclature is complicated by changes over the

centuries and by the Florentine habit of assigning different names to various stretches of a street. The present Via dei Calzaiuoli, which runs from the Duomo to the Piazza della Signoria, originally began as the

~ ~ ,

T R A C H T E N B E R G : M O N U M E N T A N D SITE AT T H E PALAZZO V E C C H I O 33

Fig. 27. Piazza della Signoria, scaled plan with dimensional analysis (author).

The emergence of the major entrance to the Piazza della Signoria on the Via dei Calzaiuoli was inevitable. A principal

axis of central Florence, the street terminated at the critical line of view to the palace, dramatizing the oblique perspective of the building. The Via dei Calzaiuoli corner also figured in the shaping of the piazza and in giving a form of regular geometry to the site. Indeed, the corner is crucial to understanding how

the planners determined the extent of the expansion of the piazza in the 1360s-1380s, that is, precisely how far from the palazzo to set its northern and western sides or exactly where to set the corner on the Via dei Calzaiuoli.

The distance to the near corner of the Via dei Calzaiuoli from the base of the visual axis of the palace as noted earlier (the

corner of the tower) is 92.5 ( ~ i ~ .m. 27).62 l-hiS dimension

the 94 m' (c' 160 height of the

Corso degli Adamari, continued as the Via de' Pittori, and ended as the Via de' Cacciajuoli. Strictly speaking, the Via dei Cerchi ends a block before the piazza, the last segment being the Via delle Farine. Cf. Frey, 391, and D. Guccerelli, Stradario storico biografico della cittd di Firenze, Florence, 1929.

62. This dimension, as most of the others below, is taken from a recent plan of the piazza drawn at the scale of 100:1, by the technical office of the Comune di Firenze. This plan is the basis of Fig. 27, which smooths out some of the irregularities on the north side (mainly post- trecento changes), and restores the Tetto (Mura) dei Pisani in the place of the present 19th-century insurance building, following indications of historical maps of the city. See n. 47, above.

measured to the top of the pyramidal spire that roofs the co-

lumnar belfry and supports a staff carrying the bannerlike Flor-

entine symbols, the gilded copper Marzocco and Giglio.'j3The dimensional relationship was even closer before the widening of the Via dei Calzaiuoli in 1389. The question is, what was the significance of this striking correspondence? Was it merely

63. Like so many aspects of the palazzo, the construction of the original roof spire is not found in surviving documents. Repair work on it, howeve;, seems to appear as early as 19 February 1333 in an appropriation for repair of the "coperture campane magne palatii populi de et rovina (Davidsohn,~ l IV, 502). ~~ ~ copper Marzocco of the trecento was gilded in 1396, possibly a regilding of its weathered surface (Lensi, Palazzo Vecchio, 47). In 1453, the entire superstructure was refurbished, with the pyramid given a roofing of gilded copper and the symbols replaced (Ibid., 59). The superstructure is omitted from the mid-trecento views of the oalazzo (in the Bieallo

0

view, possibly for lack of space), but it appears in the early quattrocento S. Zenobius relief panel originally in the wall of the Tower of the Girolami (now in the Palazzo Vecchio; Ibid., ill. on p. 30). The 1453 gilding of the little spire made it so prominent that it appears in most subsequent depictions of the palazzo, including the Del Massaio view of Florence of c. 1470, the Berlin "Chain" woodcut of 1471-1482, and the Savanarola panel (Fanelli, Firenze, 11, Figs. 386, 388, 393) and the Domenico di Michelino "Dante" panel of the 1470s.

The height of the tower less the spire is 87 m. (c. 150 braccia), which comes close enough to the 92.5- to 94-m. viewing distance to establish a more than 90 percent parity, and I would have used it in the analysis of the piazza were it not for the near-perfect parity offered by the roof spire.

34 JSAH, X L V I I : l , M A R C H 1988

accidental, or was it by design? If by design, it would of necessity have yielded some meaningful benefit to the builders. Most

likely, it would fit not only into a system of values but into a set of further dimensional correspondences to be found in the piazza, and ideally it would be supported by analogies with other

sites. It would not be an isolated phenomenon.

The correspondence of the height of the tower and the dis- tance from its base to the Via dei Calzaiuoli yields a comfortable

45" viewing angle of the tower. This was significant to the

trecento architects, concerned not only with the way buildings were formed, but intensely with the way they were perceived.

A well-designed monument, after being built at tremendous

expense, demanded to be properly exhibited, even at high cost. This concern involved both visual access and the mental satis- faction of planners with mathematical harmonies built into the view. At the piazza, the concern was not limited to the vertical

angle of vicw. The Via dei Calzaiuoli perspective from the west side of the street, at a point 98.5 m. (c. 170 braccia) from the

northwest edge of the tower, offers a 90" horizontal sweep from its north to its west wall (Fig. 28).'j4 This "squared" angle,

moreover, is precisely bisected into two 45" arcs by the line to

the palace axis. In other words, the observer arriving at the foot of the Via dei Calzaiuoli was offered a 90" panorama with the

tower at its center rising to a 45" viewing angle. By moving to

the left or right of the street, our observer could achieve either the precise 45" vertical angle or the exactly bisected 90" sweep, but not both simultaneously. The differences were slight, how- ever, especially to the empirical, multipoint-perspective vision

of the ~er iod . To the eye the effect was essentially the same

from one side of the street to the other: a grand architectural scene in which a vast asymmetrical space and a colossal asym-

metrical building were made to form a precisely divided, bal- anced tableau, dominated by the huge tower at its center.

W e have stressed how the tower, with its northwest corner forming the dynamically balanced axis of the entire building,

took visual control over the ~a lace after 1306. It appears that the tower (with all its trenchant political symbolism) eventually was brought by the planners to take visual control of the piazza

as well, thus becoming the tightly balanced focus of the entire site. Our eye always leaps to the tower when we first arrive at the piazza, and now it is clear that this is not only due to its

great height. Confirming our reading of intentionality in the angular cor-

respondences of the Via dei Calzaiuoli view is the remarkably analogous panorama created contemporaneously at the Piazza

del Duomo. Like the Palazzo Vecchio, the east end of the Duomo was erected over a site cleared of ancient real estate,

64. The north border meanders slightly back and forth from a the- oretical straight line from the Via dei Calzaiuoli to the far corner at the Mercanzia, which is used for the angular calculation.

Fig. 28. Piazza della Signoria, isometric rendering of viewing angles from the corner of the Via dei Calzaiuoli (author).

and as it was being built in the late 14th century, space was opened around it following a master plan of 1388 (Fig. 29). To the north of the whole cathedral and to the south of the nave,

streets of even width were carved out. These streets did not allow a full comfortable view of the mountainous east end, which needed not a street but a deep, wide piazza to be properly viewed. This space was provided by a large triangular area opened up to the southeast of the cupola. As was the case at the Piazza della Signoria, the key viewpoint in this major area of the Piazza del Duomo was at the foot of an important artery, the Via del

Proconsolo. The viewpoint also was arranged to provide a closely framed view of the completed Campanile, achieved in part by the angular cropping of houses blocking the line of view, further evidencing Florentine concern with how their monuments were

seen and their determination to set things right, and in a daunt- ingly precise manner.'j5 The cupola, however, was the main

aspect of the view. Remarkably, the distance from the Via del Proconsolo corner to the cupola axis (c. 165 braccia) is close to the height of the cupola (c. 170 braccia as probably projected in the trecento), yielding the same 45" viewing angle as at the

65. Note that on one side the sightline grazes the Duomo, while on the other it is close enough to the opposite street wall to suggest that the Piazza to the south of the Duomo was widened to a line determined by the Campanile view. The Opera del Duomo began to open this view to the Campanile as early as 1367 with the destruction of some of its own property (Trachtenberg, Campanile, 124). It should be noted that the width of the area south of the Duomo was determined in part by the call for an equal street width around the Duomo, here effected directly opposite the south tribune, with the piazza walls to the east shaved back on a diagonal as a transition to the area near the Campanile; however, this street width may have been partly determined with the west view to the Campanile in mind.

T R A C H T E N B E R G : M O N U M E N T A N D SITE AT T H E PALAZZO V E C C H I O 35

Fig. 29. Piazza del Duomo, Florence. Plan with view- ing angles to the cupola and Campanile from the foot of the Via del Proconsolo (author, after 18th-century plan of Sgrilli).

p a l a ~ z o . ~ ~Continuing the analogy, we should observe that the panorama is about 90" at the Duomo, and while the line to the cupola axis does not precisely bisect the viewing angle, it is close enough to make the cupola look centered.'j7

It is to be further observed that the conception of parity of

building height and viewing distance found at the Piazza della Signoria and the cupola was not an innovation of the late 14th century. It had already been introduced to Florentine planning in the late Dugento systematization of the Baptistery area and

66. The cupola extrados rises to c. 150 braccia (the height of Palazzo Vecchio tower without the spire). Brunelleschi's enormous lantern is nearly two-thirds the height of the cupola vault itself. If we can judge from the Spanish Chapel fresco, in the trecento project the original idea called for a lantern approximately one-third the height of the vault, bringing the total height of the structure to c. 170 braccia.

67. Cf. Fanelli's extensive analysis of the Piazza del Duomo (Firenze, I, 98 ff.; 11, 278), which overlooks the significance of this area. He does make the important point (p. 97) that the Piazza del Duomo is meant essentially to set off the cathedral, the great space of the complex being inside the building, unlike the Piazza della Signoria, whose function is spatial as well as visual. One can continue the comparison: at both the Duomo and the Palazzo Vecchio the planners surrounded the monu- ment with two kinds of space-a relatively narrow belt of streets and a true piazza from which actually to view the structure. The difference is in the balance between the two modes: at the Duomo the streets dominate; at the palazzo the piazza dominates. Other parts of the Piazza del Duomo also incorporated precise geometric planning: the parallelism to the north of the building, and the distance from Arnolfo's fa~ade to the Baptistery, discussed below. Also, it would seem more than coin- cidental that the three free views of the Campanile-from the Volta de Pecori, the Via dei Martelli, and the space opposite the south tribune of the Duomo-ran, respectively, 131 braccia, c. 130 braccia, and c. 144 braccia, all close to the 139-braccia height of the tower itself. Thus, to the trecento the space around the cathedral was not the formless void that it superficially seems, but the result of an empirical series of related dimensional calculations.

the Arnolfian Duomo faqade project of 1296. The new faqade,

which cut across the old nave of S. Reparata, was set at on a

line about 73 braccia from the center of the Baptistery, which itself rises 72 braccia to the top of the lantern, creating a near- perfect 1:I view from the center portal of the ~ a t h e d r a l . ~ ~

T o medieval planners the angular symmetries and correspon-

dences that we have observed around the Duomo and at the Piazza della Signoria had a value more definable and elevated than viewing comfort and aesthetic balance. Geometrical for- mulas, as we know, were of high significance to medieval build- ers, not only as design techniques but as an architectural feature

of absolute value. Harmonious proportions were synonymous with strength and beauty and were signs of the worthiness of a building (or the roofless building formed by a piazza) for man

and God, and this made proportions a sine qua non of medieval design.69 Thus at the Piazza della Signoria we find a nexus of viewing angles, distance, and building height contributing to

an intrinsic, almost spiritual perfection. But it would have been far from "perfection" were this single knot of mathematical

correspondence the only one to be found in thevast, complicated site. This was especially true since what was most crucial to the

thinking of medieval architects was not the mere presence of a particular ratio or formula, but the "recurrence of the same proportions" to "automatically create an organic unit."70 Let us

determine to what extent this benign state obtained at the Piazza

della Signoria, first by pointing out which ratios or formulas were apt to be found in such a trecento site, and then by studying the site for their recurring presence, using our tower-Calzaiuoli line as a point of departure.

As is well established, one of the key ratios in medieval design

was the simplest, 1:l . Geometrically, this ratio forms a square, a figure ubiquitous in trecento architecture, notably in ground- plans and vault-bays.71 An associated design formula, the quad-

rature series, used the diagonal of a square as the length of the sides of a larger square whose diagonal provides the sides of a

still larger square, and so In Florence this series was used,

68. My thanks to Tod Marder for prompting me to follow up my suspicions about the Baptistery view. Kreytenberg has observed that the fasade corners align with the projection of the oblique sides of the Baptistery (Dom, Fig. 30). This alignment, although undoubtedly taken into account by the planners, was probably a factor secondary to the parity of building height and viewing distance, which we have found to be a preoccupation of planning in the period.

69. On this subject see, for example, P. Frankl, "The Secret of the Medieval Masons," Art Bulletin, XXVII, 1945, 60 ff.; J. S. Ackerman, " 'Ars Sine Scientia Nihil Est,' " Art Bulletin, XXXI, 1949, 84 ff.; 0. Von Simson, The Gothic Cathedral, Origins of Gothic Architecture and the Medieval Concept of Order, London, 1956.

70. Frankl, "Secret," 65. 71. The Duomo, Orsanmichele, Camera dell'Arme of the Palazzo

Vecchio, Bargello court and council hall, etc. 72. On the quadrature series, Frankl, "Secret"; also Guidoni, Urbani-

stica, 69 ff.; and Nyberg (n. 74, below).

36 JSAH, XLVII : l , MARCH 1988

Fig. 30. Piazza della Signoria at the Via delle Farine, showing rusticated trecento facing of the piazza and street, after 1362 (author).

for example, in the dimensions of the cathedral piers and foun- dation~:~ in marble intarsia design (the Baptistery and Cam- panile), and in a simplified way, later by Br~nelleschi.~~ These two geometric principles together with the preference for pre- cise alignments were at work at the Piazza della Signoria. Used loosely and pragmatically, indeed improvisationally (not unlike the methods of empirical 14th-century perspective), they appear to pervade the dimensioning of the entire site in a brilliantly "recurring" manner. In my opinion, the resulting pattern of dimensions is so dense that it can only have been largely inten- tional.

Thus, the line between the base of the tower and the Via dei Calzaiuoli forms the diagonal of a roughly square area. Its sides measure about 70-79 m., with the east side along the palazzo measuring 75 m. (about 130 braccia). The latter dimension ap- proximates the diagonal of a secondary square formed in the old Uberti area, with two sides measuring precisely 52 and 52.5 m. (about 90 braccia). In this piazzetta, we use as a key point the east corner of the Via delle Farine (Fig. 30), the last block of the Via dei Cerchi path that was widened, probably in the

73. Gori Montanelli, Tradizione, 77 ff.; Saalman, Santa Maria del Fiore, 478; cf. idem., "Early Renaissance Architectural Theory and Practice in Antonio Filarete's Trattato di Architetettura," Ar t Bulletin, XLI, 1959, 89 ff.

74. E.g., in the Old Sacristy plan. See D. Nyberg, "A Study of Proportions in Brunelleschi's Architecture," M.A. thesis, New York University, 1953, and idem., "Brunelleschi's Use of Proportions in the Pazzi Chapel," Marsyas, VII, 1957, 1 ff.

75. This operation is not recorded in the documents, but in the absence of other evidence it may be seen as part of the definition of the north border of the piazza in 1362. See Frey's analysis of the operation of 1362 (Loggia, 91 f., note), revealing the widening of other streets in the area at the time; the building commission was given wide discre- tionary powers, which they may well have exercised by adding to the project the Via delle Farine foyer (which may have been seen as an integral part of the systematization of the north border of the piazza). On the other hand, it is possible that the foyer was created in connection

Fig. 31. View through Via delle Farine from Via dei Cerchi, showing view of Palazzo Vecchio west facade and tower (author).

1360~:~ to bring its east wall into near-precise alignment with the west palace front. The location of the west wall of this CerchiIFarine foyer permitted the west fa~ade of the palazzo and the tower to be seen from the narrow street in a tightly framed manner similar to the view of the Campanile from the Via del Proconsolo corner (Figs. 31, 32). This widening oper- ation reveals that the Via dei Cerchi retained its importance in the fully developed scheme.76

Proceeding further, we observe that the dimensions of the sides of the Uberti-square are close to the 51-m. diagonal of the palace. The Loggia della Signoria, which is set on a line

with the widening of the Via dei Calzaiuoli in 1389-1391, although this would seem less likely. Were it the case, the argument of this paper would not be affected except to revise the order of planning events in Fig. 35 and the accompanying text.

76. Other streets around the Piazza were also widened, including the Via dei Magazzini and the Via di Vacchereccia, though not in the monumental manner of the Via dei Calzaiuoli and the Via delle Farine. See Frey, Loggia, 12; 91, note; 44.

T R A C H T E N B E R G : M O N U M E N T A N D SITE A T T H E PALAZZO V E C C H I O 37

Fig. 32. Diagrammatic indication of view of Palazzo Vec- chi0 before and after widening of the Via delle Farine entrance foyer to the Piazza della Signoria. Dimensions and angles exaggerated for clarity (author).

extending the south wall of the palazzo, also is included in this network, for its width together with its distance from the ad-

jacent corner of the palazzo comes to 50 m. That the planners accounted for the space between the two buildings is indicated

by the repetition of this distance-11.9 m. (c. 20 braccia)-in the interaxial spacing of the loggia piers. The 50-m. distance, in addition, put the western corner of the Loggia in alignment with the pre-1389 east wall of the Via dei Calzaiuoli. T o add a final echo to this scheme of recurring measures, the 72-m. edge of the piazza on the south is nearly equal to the 71-m.

length of the adjacent west perimeter, creating an overlapping square area.j7

77. See Guidoni, Urbanistica, Figs. 32, 33, for examples of such "squared" monumental sites. Fanelli's geometric analysis of the Piazza deua Signoria is imprecise and largely anachronistic (Firettze, I, 97; 11, 280).

Again the cathedral planning serves to amplify our interpre-

tation. The way the large and small sub-squares of the Piazza della Signoria were dimensionally related is reminiscent of the

way the Duomo planners of the 1360s managed to bring into mathematical harmony the disparate modules of the nave bay

system and the cupola, using not the quadrature series but simple whole ratios. T o the four bays of the nave (based on a 33-34 braccia module) were "added" the oversized crossing piers, bringing the whole to 144 braccia, twice the 72-braccia diameter

of the Similarly, at both the Duomo and the Signoria,

proportions of plan and elevation are integrated three dimen-

sionally (as we have already observed in the integrated visual angles of view of the piazza and the cupola). At the Duomo, the cupola rises to a theoretical 144 braccia internally, equalling the

length of the nave. The tambour base is located 72 braccia above the pavement. At the Signoria, the squares of the piazza plan are reflected in the emphatically square proportions of the west

fagade of the palazzo (measured to the top of the battlements). And as in the internal proportions of the cupola, the total height of the palazzo exterior (including the tower) is twice the base of its main fasade.j9

The geometric definition of the western piazza and the north-

ern piazzetta may have reflected more than a Florentine obses-

sion with perfection of a design. It also appears to reflect the functional development of the site. Towards the mid-trecento the two areas came to serve different functions.R0 With the construction between 1345 and the 1360s of the imposing palace

of the Mercanzia and the nearby residences of the Esecutore di Giustizia and the Ufficiali della Condotta, the Uberti area as-

sumed something of the character of a specialized administrative piazzetta. Its detachment from the Palazzo Vecchio and the rest

of the piazza was underscored in 1380 with the walling-up of the north door of the palace. Simultaneously, the public char- acter of the main, western piazza ("of the Signoria, and of the

78. Trachtenberg, Florence Cathedral, 65 ff. Cf. A. Gatti's earlier study of the Duomo problem (La Basilica Petroniana, Bologna, 1913, 51 ff.) and also Gori Montanelli, Tradizione.

79. The remarkable chain of recurring and related ratios established at the piazza can be expanded and described in another way. The point of departure was the predetermined distance from the Via della Ninna to the northwest corner of the Foraboschi tower, designated as X. The width of the west palace wall (terminated near the Piazza degli Uberti) became 2X. This later determined the height of the fafade through the battlements, again 2X. The tower rose to 4X (through its battlements), which together with its spire (4X+) determined the viewing distance to the Via dei Calzaiuoli. This 4 X + viewing distance formed the di-

agonal of a square whose sides measured about \ly, serving as

the diagonal of the piazzetta whose sides were another such formula. These in turn were in near parity with the diagonal of the palazzo and the length of the Loggia plus its distance from the palazzo. See Gori Montanelli, Tradizione, 61, for a more complete analysis of the Palazzo Vecchio fafade proportions, involving ratio of the heights of the fafade and the battlements and of the tower and its crown.

80. Rubinstein, Piazza, 26.

38 JSAH, X L V I I : l , M A R C H 1988

people," as Rubinstein puts it) was aggrandized by its integration into the main circulation axis of Florence and the construction

of the Loggia della Signoria. Yet this distinction should not be carried too far. The Florentine state, for all its multiple offices, remained one, just as did the piazza. The manner in which the piazza and piazzetta are geometrically differentiated yet made

to form part of a large, articulate unit full of recurring measures, with a compelling visual focus on the symbol-charged tower,

may be seen as a metaphoric expression of the highly articulated unity of the Florentine republic.

Responding to Florentine topography

The facts suggest that the geometric intricacy of planning at

the Piazza della Signoria was determined by more than the

internal coherence of measure. It was affected by the street circulation patterns that we have observed, but also by the very geometry underlying the larger Florentine topography, in a manner bound up with the form of the palazzo itself. It is not generally realized that the center of Florence embodies two

conflicting street patterns (something so obvious that it is over- looked, Fig. 33). One is the grid pattern inherited from Roman Florence, aligned like most planned Roman cities on the lines

of the compass, with streets running north-south and east-west. This grid conflicted with the bed of the Arno, which slants

southeast to northwest. The medieval streets in the triangular area between the Arno and the Roman grid are generally aligned

with the river.81 The palazzo and the piazza lie in the border zone between the two conflicting street patterns, with the palaz- zo engaged in the medieval grid, while most of the square is

closer to Roman Florence. It is revealing how the planners eventually resolved this conflict with subtle manipulations of

building lines. The plan of the palazzo entailed a passive acceptance of the

grid generated by the Arno. Its west wall was laid out along an

adjacent medieval street, and the east wall was established par- allel to it, with the connecting north wall squared to the adjacent

fronts. The rear wall to the south followed the narrow Via della Ninna, opposite the flanks of S. Pier Scheraggio, probably over re-used foundations, even though this resulted in a sharp de- viation from rectangularity in the plan. Although Giovanni Villani lamented this "deformation" writing shortly afterwards,

unwittingly announcing the theme of the eventual piazza plan-

ning in his wish that the palazzo could have been squared,82 he could hardly have foreseen the problem that would later arise during the evolution of the piazza due to the orientation of the

81. Compare the historical map in Fanelli, Firenze, 11, Fig. 3. 82. G. Villani, Cronica, Book IX, Chapter XXVI.

Fig. 33. Diagrammatic plan of Florence showing angular divergence of Roman Florence from the area along the Arno, with situation of the palace and square, and the pivoted correction of the piazza borders to square with palace (author).

If the north side of the fully evolved square had been allowed to run parallel to the "Roman" streets behind it, a strong and

objectionable nonparallelism would have resulted vis-a-vis the north palace falade, roughly aligned as it was with the Arno grid. Similarly, if the west line of the Via dei Calzaiuoli had

been extended in a straight line as the west border of the piazza, that border would have been noticeably nonparallel to the west wall of the palace. Both results would have disturbed planners obsessed with getting things "square." This goal meant not only straightening and squaring the outer piazza borders and

creating coherent dimensions but making those borders run nearly parallel to the walls of the palace they faced.

The solution? Because the completed palazzo obviously could not be turned to align with Roman Florence, the incomplete

piazza would be turned towards the palace. Thus, the two sides of the piazza opposite the main palace walls appear to have been pivoted clockwise to a close (but never perfect) parallelism with

those walls, using the Via dei Calzaiuoli corner as the theoretical

fulcrum (Figs. 33, 35). That is, when the piazza boundaries were finalized, they deviated from the Roman grid they might have followed (i.e., the Via del Carbo/Fiaschi to the north, the Via dei Calzaiuoli on the west). As part of the boundary-defining

procedure described earlier, this new alignment was achieved by slicing through or demolishing houses along the piazza bor- ders and then rebuilding them with uniform fasades and in one case a free-standing precinct wall. There was greater exactitude

T R A C H T E N B E R G : M O N U M E N T A N D SITE AT T H E PALAZZO V E C C H I O 39

on the west than on the north border, where residual practical factors created slight divergences from a straight line.83 Once

again the cathedral provides a comparison, for the procedure was substantially the same in 1388 in creating the piazzalike Via delle Fondamenta to the north of the Duomo, where prop- erty was demolished and uniformly rusticated fasades were built in near-parallelism to the polygonal Duomo walls (Fig. 29).84

At the Duomo, as at the Piazza della Signoria, this operation produced a coherence of building and site that otherwise would

have been compromised. The alignment of the borders of the Piazza della Signoria

contributes strongly to the illusion, sought by the ~lanners , of the piazza as a regular L-shaped space. Other measures added to this impression. Directly opposite the principal palace front, on the west, the most extreme definition of the shape of the piazza was created in the huge "Mura dei Pisani," a precinct wall that must have been a controversial feature for it blocked the view and access to the piazza from the houses behind it. T h e "squared" impression of the piazza, furthermore, was rein- forced by the way the pavement (from 1351 onwards) had been divided into rectangular sections of The illusion of

unity between palace and square, finally, was heightened by the rusticated treatment prescribed for the new house fronts on the

west side (realized also extensively on the north), which was intended to reflect the grandiose rustication of the palazzo walls

and to continue the rustication of the bordering Via dei Cal- zaiuoli and Via delle Farine. That the east and south sides (dom- inated, respectively, by the Palazzo della Mercanzia and the Loggia della Signoria) were allowed to form odd angles scarcely

affects the illusion from the all-important viewpoint at the foot of the Via dei C a l ~ a i u o l i . ~ ~

83. Defining a more precise parallelism on the west may have been a factor in the replacement of the first Mura dei Pisani with the second, larger wall in the late 1380s (cf. n. 47). Changes subsequent to the trecento affected the north border, in particular the loss of the S. Romolo fasade and the addition of the protruding Palazzo Uguccioni. D. Gio- seffi, "Complementi di prospettiva," Critica d'Arte, n.s. XXIV, 1957, 486, notes the difficulty of precisely reconstructing the north piazza border.

84. As at the Piazza della Signoria, not every segment of the piazza boundary ran precisely parallel to the monument; special allowance evidently made for contingencies around the Via dei Servi.

85. Rubinstein, Piazza, 22, 26. 86. The odd angles of these buildings were not arbitrary. The Loggia,

as pointed out, is aligned with the south wall of the palazzo. Although the slant of the Mercanzia may have been connected with a reuse of old foundations, it would seem more probable, given the comprehensive planning of the rest of the piazza, that its angle was to some degree purposeful. Just as the Loggia ran to the south wall of the palazzo, so the Mercanzia ran toward the east terminus of the extension of the north palace wall begun by the Duke of Athens in 1342-1343. As can be seen in the Savanrola panel (Lensi, Palazzo, 94), until the cinquecento this wall was only one story high and thus was set off clearly from the higher buildings adjacent to it on the Via dei Gondi and along the do~anabehind the palace. This interpretation would mean that the odd

W h y were the piazza walls not made perfectly parallel with the palazzo? Leaving aside the imponderable factor of real estate,

two answers may be offered. T h e trecento eye was presumably

quite willing to tolerate such approximate visual solutions. But more important, there were conflicting desiderata. Because of the angles involved, the goal of a center line of vision to the

tower from the Via dei Calzaiuoli corner conflicted with the ideal of ~ e r f e c t parallelism (Fig. 34). Had the piazza walls been built exactly parallel to those of the palazzo, the line of vision

to the tower would no longer have been at the viewing center. Evidently centering precision had the higher priority, and un-

derstandably so, for it put the palazzo in the exact center of the

principal view of the piazza.87 By accepting it, the planners effected a compromise in the degree of parallelism, between the severe nonalignment of the pre-existing street lines and ideal

perfection. Once again, the 14th-century manner of achieving

an optimal solution of complex design problems through a prag- matic, empirical approach and subtle reconciliation is evident. In this particular case, a comparison with practices of contem- porary painting is irresistible: the near-parallelism of the piazza

walls would be an urbanistic counterpart to the mode of "soft- ened oblique settings" of trecento perspective construction, which

also provided a subtle compromise solution to conflicting aes- thetic demands.HR This connection and the emphasis at the piazza on creating a panoramic tableau of controlled pictorial character strongly suggest that if in fact its creators came from the Duomo

workshop as I have suggested, among them may well have been those painters who were so conspicuous in the mid-trecento cathedral planning, beginning with Giotto and including Tad-

deo Gaddi, Orcagna, and their colleagues and followers.

T h e conceptual procedure

There remains the question of how the builders actually went

about planning the grand and intricate scheme. O n the strictly technical side, one imagines that the designers of the piazza combined the drafting and physical survey procedures docu- mented in the Duomo planning of the 1350s and 1360s with

the urbanistic surveying required for such projects as the new

walls, the Florentine New Towns, and the detailed plan of

angles in question were intended to "close" the circuit of the piazza at both ends, where the lines of the Loggia and the Mercanzia ran toward the corners, respectively, of the palace and the palace extension.

87. Medieval optical theory would have supported this emphasis on the central line of vision. See D. C. Lindberg, John Pecham and the Science ofOptics, Madison, Milwaukee, and London, 1970, 37 ff., in particular the following passage summarizing a principal theory of the ~erx~ec t i va communis of John Pecham, considered the "standard elementary optical textbook of the late Middle Ages": ". . . when the eye views the object as a whole, only the point seen by the central axis of the visual pyramid . . . is seen with perfect clarity" (p. 39).

88. J. White, The Birth and Rebirth of'Pictorial Space, Boston, 1967, 61 ff. and passim.

40 J S A H , X L V I I : 1, M A R C H 1988

v C9L79lUOLI CORNER

Mf BUILT

~ ~ o o o . o . ~ ~ . o PR€ E XISTING L ~ N ~ S

- - - IDEAL PARALLELISM Fig. 34. Analysis of alternative solutions for bringing the north and west borders of the Piazza della Signoria into parallelism with the Palazzo Vecchio, with effects on the visual line of bisection (author).

Florence created in the early 14th century.89 Such techniques empirically. In a manner characteristic of the century, they seem were undoubtedly employed at almost every large-scale Flor- to have known from rather early on generally how the design entine building site. But it is the conceptual procedure devised would proceed, but they made final decisions only as they faced for the unique problems of the Piazza della Signoria that we immediate problems. In Fig. 35 can be found an attempt to want more precisely to reconstruct here. The final configuration reconstruct the approximate sequence of these planning deci- of the piazza was comprehensive in program and organization, sions in laying out the final lines of the square.90 but the web of its order was unevenly woven, here taut and

1. 1362 ff.: the process began at the Via dei Calzaiuoli, where precise, there loose and approximate, with many ambiguities

the east corner was established some 94 m. distant from the and overlappings, yet forming a richly coherent whole. It was

94-m. height of the tower (after 1389 the distance from the not the result of a single mind or committee working at a single

street was reduced to 92.5 m.). This operation established the moment according to an inflexible and rigorous logic, but the

maximum northern and western reaches of the piazza. cumulative product of several generations of planners working

90. Note that the plan is not to scale and that certain features, such as the pivoting, are exaggerated for clarity. Compare the more accurate

89. Fanelli, Firenre, 11 1 f. plan of Fig. 27.

Fig. 35. Piazza della Signoria, reconstruction of planning sequence, 1360s to 1380s. Circled numbers indicate phases. Plan not to scale; lines simplified and angles exaggerated for clarity (author).

2. The Via dei Calzaiuoli corner served as a hinge for bring- ing the north side of the piazza into rough parallelism with the north palazzo fa~ade. This operation, probably conceived si- multaneously with the determination of the 94-m. diagonal, brought the distance between the palazzo and the north side of the piazza to 52 m., approximating the 51-m. diagonal mea- surement of the plan of the palazzo.

3. A third or perhaps simultaneous operation9' was the wid- ening of the Via delle Farine, creating a minor entrance. The east side of the new foyer was aligned with the west fafade of

the palace, while the displacement of the west foyer wall made that f a ~ a d e fully visible from the narrow street.

4. 1374 ff.: the west corner of the Loggia della Signoria, which dominates the south side of the piazza, was established on line with the east side of Via dei Calzaiuoli (before its wid- ening in 1389) and an extension of the south side of the palazzo (lines perhaps running close in both cases to existing streets near the Loggia). This corner was 50 m. from the palace. Thus, the palace was framed on the right and left with blocks of space of equal dimensions, as seen from the Via dei Calzaiuoli (a cen- tering complementary to the centering of the tower from the same perspective). These dimensions corresponded to and may have been partly generated by the diagonal dimension of the palace.

42 JSAH, X L V I I : l , MARCH 1988

5 . 1386 ff.: a second hinge was set on the west side of the Via dei Calzaiuoli, from which the west side of the square was swung westward into approximate parallelism with the west

palace fafade. This operation was dominated by the construction of the Mura dei Pisani, but the main result was a 90' panorama from the principal viewpoint.

6. 1389 ff.: the Via dei Calzaiuoli was widened, creating a grander entrance to the piazza, altering the exact parity of pre-

vious dimensions but establishing the principal view of the pi-

azza and the palazzo with renewed emphasis.

Brunelleschi's perspective panel

That this prominent case of inspired architectural and urban-

istic planning was so long overlooked was not caused by a

problem inherent in the site. Rather, as is so often the case, it was mainly the result of our having been distracted by self- serving Renaissance propaganda about the rudeness and unso- phistication of the preceding age. W e have found that, to the contrary, both the Palazzo Vecchio and the Piazza della Signoria

were shaped with high inventiveness and sophistication of pur- pose and meaning. In them, the intense perfectionism that tre- cento artists lavished on altarpieces, frescoes, shrines, and churches

was concentrated with enduring energies on a majestic town hall and a vast, roofless space. The shaping of the square con-

stituted an urbanistic counterpart of the formal grandeur and subtlety of S. Croce and S. Maria Novella, the encrustation

intricacies of the Campanile, and the sheer conceptual and tech- nical brilliance of the Palazzo Vecchio superstructure. Unlike any other Florentine square, the enormous void of the Piazza della Signoria was itself a monument, a telling symbol of the

power and sovereignty of the community. But in the final anal-

ysis, monument and site were one at the Palazzo Vecchio; the powerful mass of the palace and the sweeping, ordered volumes

of the piazza, both solid and void, were welded visually and conceptually into a single cohesive unit. The vision is one em- inently of the trecento. It is the perfect architectural and ur-

banistic counterpart to the Giottesque creation in painting of "tactile" physical volumes shaping and shaped by surrounding illusionistic spaces, configured in supple empirical, oblique per- spective, and fused into an inseparable unity of form and mean-

ing.

In this connection it might be added in conclusion that, while historians may have been long deceived by Renaissance prop-

aganda about the medieval past, at least one Renaissance archi- tect probably was not. In the present context, the chief exhibit

in this regard is one of the two now-lost panels that Brunelleschi (1377-1446) created to demonstrate the concept of linear per- spective, the panel depicting the Piazza della Signoria illustrated in a reconstruction at the outset of this paper (see Fig. 2). W e

do not know if this reconstruction is more accurate than the many others that have appeared, but a few things are clear about the lost work itself. Two of these facts are relevant to our

argument. First, the viewpoint used by Brunelleschi, according to his biographer, Antonio di Tuccio Manetti, was at or close by the Via dei Calzaiuoli corner. Second, from the description (confirmed by Vasari), it is clear that Brunelleschi's subject was not just the palazzo, but the entire piazza as revealed from this viewpoint.92 T o me these fundamental aspects of the panel were neither arbitrary nor dictated by an inherited trecento preference

for wide-angle, oblique views9' nor by a quattrocento attraction to the prominent pavement grid of the piazza.'" would like

to think that Brunelleschi understood the subtleties of the site, whose dimensions had been finalized only during his youth. It is not unreasonable to think it likely that he was fascinated by

its geometric construction and intrigued by the illusion of a

92. The relevant text of Manetti reads, "He made a perspective of the piazza of the Palazzo dei Signori in Florence together with all that is in front of it and around it that is encompassed by the eye when one stands outside the piazza, or better, along the front of the church of San Romolo beyond the Canto di Calimala Francesca, which opens into that piazza a few feet toward Orto San Michele." (Antonio di Tuccio Manetti, The L i j feBrunelleschi, ed. Howard Saalman, trans. Catherine Enggass, University Park and London, 1970, 44). San Romolo was a small church on the north ~ i a z z a border near the Via dei Calzaiuoli corner; the Canto di Calimala Francesca was the first corner on the west side of the piazza proceeding from the Via dei Calzaiuoli (the Via Calimaruzza); see the map in White, Birth, 118. The passage from Vasari reads, ". . . before long he began another Lpainting], drawing the palace, the piazza, and the Loggia de' Signori, with the Tetto dei Pisani and all the buildings about.. ." (Vasari, Le Vite, 11, 332). Note that Vasari does not merely echo Manetti, but explicitly qualifies his state- ment, suggesting that the 16th-century writer personally knew the ane el. as has been often noted. 1 ,

Although the content of these two passages would seem clear enough and is accepted by a number of students of the subject (e.g., C. Ragghian- ti, Filippo Brunelleschi, Florence, 1977, 167 ff.; S. Edgerton, Jr., The Renaissance Rediscovery feLinear Perspective, New York, 1975, 132), some scholars have tried to suggest that Brunelleschi's viewpoint was not at the corner or that his viewing angle was not 90" but 60" or less. These suggestions cast Vasari's testimony in doubt, usually on the grounds that it would have been extremely difficult for Brunelleschi to depict the entire 90" scene with buildings running at different angles and walls at the extreme edges (e.g., White, Birth, 117 ff.). O r it is imagined that Brunelleschi would never have depicted the grid of the piazza pavement from the diagonal, hence another viewpoint permitting frontal, single- point perspective construction must be found in Manetti's text (Gioseffi, Prospettiva, 482 ff.). I argue below that the 90" view of the entire piazza was the integrated trecento visual structure that Brunelleschi accepted as his subiect and that its difficulties were an attraction for the chief inventor of the Florentine cupola structure. In addition, there is the evidence of the fascination with the panel on the part of Uccello, himself a devotee of difficult perspective construction, including the two-point system of the oblique view.

93. Emphasized by White, Birth, 117 ff., although he believes Bru- nelleschi used a viewing angle of less than 90".

94. Gioseffi, Prospettiva, 482 ff. These factors may have had a sub- sidiary role in Brunelleschi's conception.

TRACHTENBERG: MONUMENT AND SITE AT THE PALAZZO VECCHIO 43

space that looks square although it is not, and with a site that seems precisely balanced, even symmetrical, though it is asym- metrical. That he chose the Via dei Calzaiuoli corner suggests Brunelleschi's full knowledge that it was the theoretical fulcrum of the entire, intricately composed scene, the focus of its geo-

metric and visual complexities, and the point from which they could best be taken in. These were complexities that he knew

would put to the fullest test the visual magic of his new inven- tion of rational perspective, a fuller test even than the Baptistery panel, whose subject was chosen also because of its intricacy of

geometry and detaiL9' The panel depicting the Piazza della Signoria was not just a

demonstration of accurate representation of the angles, lines,

and spaces of the piazza. The goal was not accuracy but illusion, and above all the demonstration of a new pictorial method. A

conceptual leap was i~ivolved. The trecento planners had com- bined an intricate, improvisational chain of quadratic figures,

inspired by an obsession with getting things "square," with the diagonal perspective demanded by the palazzo. What Brunel- leschi did was to take this oblique, anaxial configuration, with

all its ambiguities and irregularities, and submit it to the nascent Renaissance ideal of orthogonal rationality. Put another way,

he sought to convert an empirically composed urbanistic tableau

95. Edgerton argues that the Baptistery was "an ideal subject" for Brunelleschi, who "thought in terms of geometric proportions," because "the building's width (approximately fifty-six braccia) nearly equals its height (exclusive of the lantern)-which, furthermore, nearly equals the distance of the building from the portal of the cathedral where Brunelleschi stood to paint it. This afforded him a remarkably neat ratio of 1:l:l among height, width, and viewing distance" (Perspective, 138 f.). Although on the right track, this analysis unfortunately confuses things three-dimensionally. While the distance from within the Duomo portal to the east facing Baptistery wall is on the order of 56-58 braccia, that wall rises only to 42 braccia (to the top of the attic); the lantern base and diametric dimensions lie at a plane much farther away, close to 80 braccia from where Brunelleschi stood. If indeed the Edgerton equation was a factor in Brunelleschi's thinking, it was not quite as "neat" as the author has suggested. I would like to argue that in addition, or in place of this possible equation, Brunelleschi may have been struck by other proportional aspects of the site, perhaps even more forcibly. If any equality of dimensions was a factor, surely it was the 1:l ratio of the ~ a ~ t i s t e r y height through the top of the lantern to the distance of its axis from the Duomo fasade. (Edgerton, though entangling the parity question, offers good reasons why Brunelleschi would have fa- vored a subject with a distance: height equality.) Similarly, the artist would have observed how the lines of the oblique sides of the Baptistery extend to the Duomo fafade corners (see n. 68). Moreover, the space around the Baptistery forms a near square (c. 145 x 131 braccia), with the whole thus loosely forming an octagon-in-square configuration. I would like to think that, as at the Piazza della Signoria, it was the underlying geometric structure of the entire site and its relationship to the viewpoint-area that compelled Brunelleschi to carry out his exper- iment. Whether his viewing angle was 90" (White, Birth, 115) or only 53" (Edgerton, 140 f.), or an intermediate figure, the vertical angle included at least the c. 45" to the top of the lantern and surely a good deal below the horizon line. Cf. J. White's remarks on the angle of the Baptistery panel in his review of Edgerton in JSAH, XXXVI, 1977, 46.

into a scene determined by new a priori rules, thereby becoming in effect the first Renaissance urbanist even if only at the level

of theory and illusion. In so doing, he may well have rationalized not only perspective construction but also many particulars of the scene: how could he have resisted resolving the slight geo- metric ambiguities on the Via dei Calzaiuoli to a single point, or tightening up the loose, empirical geometry of the plan

(which in any case would have been probably required by ra- tional perspective con~t ruc t ion)?~~ If it was hard to show so many

complex, conflicting forms as the piazza presented, so much the

better to prove the validity of the new perspective method and Brunelleschi's ability to use it. Regardless of problematic details, clearly the panel constituted a close conceptual parallel to Bru- nelleschi's work at the cupola. In both cases a trecento archi- tectural vision was endowed with a quattrocento structure: in

one instance pictorial, in the other, technological. And just as the cupola hid most of its structural magic within its shells, so

in the panel of the Piazza della Signoria Brunelleschi's intricate structure of controlling perspective lines was not revealed be- neath its illusionistic tempera surface. But even with their rev- olutionary techniques veiled, both the gigantic vault and the

little panel openly demonstrated Brunelleschi's mastery of the

organizing principles of a previous age and the significance of his own progressive vision.

Brunelleschi's panel was a quintessential work of the early quattrocento. Despite its rationalized image, the panel came to have a glaring flaw to later Renaissance eyes, for the Trecento

visual tensions still would have clung to it. The asymmetrical,

dynamically counterbalanced, oblique view of the palazzo em- phasized its restless Gothic energies and lacked the lucidity and

repose of the new aesthetic fashion. Furthermore, the prominent pavement grid of the piazza, seen obliquely, defied the post- Albertian preference for single vanishing point perspective. Thus,

it was not surprising that to truly "rationalize" the image all later Renaissance representations of the square suppressed the oblique aspect of the site and showed it directly from the north or the west in untroubled single point perspective, with the

palazzo seen frontally much as it appeared in the early trecento before the full evolution of the p i a ~ z a . ~ '

96. All known later perspective renderings of the piazza reduce its various angles to uniform rectilinearity. See n. 97.

97. White (Birth, 126) points out this shift to an Albertian repre- sentation of the piazza; see also the remarks of Edgerton (Perspective, 132, with further bibliography). For the Renaissance views, see Lensi Orlandi, Palazzo, Figs. 70, 111, 122, 138, 139, 152. Also, the magnif- icent Bellotto view of the 1740s and the Zocchi-Gregori etching (Figs. 157, 158). The exception is the J. Stella etching of 1650, an extreme "Brunelleschian" wide-angle view full of Baroque movement. Inter- estingly, the 19th-century views return to the diagonal perspective, beginning with the Antonio Terreni print of 1801, which becomes standard in the period of historicism, photography, and Gothic revival (Figs. 170, 171, 173), and culminates in the Brogi plates of the end of the century.

44 JSAH, X L V I I : l , MARCH 1 9 8 8

Posacript: When this article was in page proof, Paula Spillner kindly provided me a copy of her remarkable dissertation on trecento Florentine urbanism, Ut Civitas Amplietur: Studies in Florentine Urban Development, 1282-1400, Columbia University, 1987. In it a lengthy chapter traces the develo~ment of the Piazza della Sienoria and ancillarv streets and " buildings in great detail, much augmenting the Frey-Rubinstein chro-nology. In general, Spillner's findings do not contradict my own. In one case, concerning the date of the Via delle Farine, I have made a necessary change in the text. Otherwise, where Spillner's discussion is critical to my argument, I have restricted comment to the following remarks appended to my footnotes.

For n. 32, on the selection of the building site, see the penetrating discussion in Spillner, 393 ff. For n. 44, concerning the finalization of the north border, Spillner dates it in two stages: the tract to the west of the Via delle Farine in 1349; and the tract to the east in 1362, continuing the building line of 1349 (Studies, 412, 422 f.). The docu- mentation of the northwest tract, however, does not entirely support this dating. Central to the systematization of this area was the recon- struction of the church of S. Romolo, displaced from its site in the northwest quadrant of the piazza (Studies, 412ff.). Although it was intended already in 1349 to align the northwest border, land for the new church to be re-sited there was not purchased until 1352. The final decision concerning the size and orientation of the new S. Romolo was made only in 1356, after considerable debate, and the church itself was not completed until 1380. Since the new church provided the principal building front on the northwest segment of the piazza border, it is difficult to imagine how this border could have been finalized before 1356 (although it could have been roughed out). T o the contrary, it would seem perhaps more likely that, in a manner typical of Florentine urbanistic practice, with its constant delays and changes of intent, the 1349 decision was not carried out until after 1356, and then perhaps along a somewhat changed building line. This alternative scenario would explain the firm order given in 1362 to align the north border of the piazza, not merely a part of it as in the 1349 directive, making 1362 the probable date for the finalization of the north piazza front.

For n. 46, on the Duke of Athens, see Spillner, 406 ff. For n. 47, on the Mura dei Pisani, Spillner (who publishes a plan of the structure, Fig. 81) doubts that it took the form of a blank wall, despite early depictions of it in that state, on the grounds that "this was not only a highly improbable arrangement for the 14th century, but is contradicted

by the evidence of shop construction here" (463 n. 154). Leaving aside the question of "improbability." concerning which the author gives no evidence, it should be noted that the documents only locate the new shops as somewhere on the piazza; they could well have been in the block to the north of the Mura dei Pisani or. for that matter. on the north side of the piazza. For n. 52, on the respective roles of the tower officials and the cathedral workshop in communal works, see Saalman, Cupola, 181 ff., and now Spillner, 55 ff. O n the question of geometric techniques in urban planning in n. 58, see now Spillner, passim. For n. 60, on the opening of the Via delle Farine, see Spillner, 410 f. and n. 82. The evidence for dating the Via delle Farine is not unequivocal, however, since the document specifies only that a street was opened between the piazza and the Via del Garbo/Fiaschi, which conceivably could have meant a tract of the present Via dei Magazzini. For n. 68, it is conceivable that this preoccupation with parity of building height and viewing distance might have been connected not only with geo- metric theory, but also with the geometric surveying techniques of the period discussed by Spillner, 82ff. For n. 75, on the widening of the Via delle Farine, Spillner (412, 450 n. 91) dates the operation to 1349, based on a problematic interpretation of a decision in that year to widen an unnamed street leading to the piazza from the church of S. Martino. She explains, "This last refers not to the existing 15th century church of S. Martino del Vescovo, but to an earlier church located one block further east [?I on Via dei Cerchi/delle Farine (see Paatz, Die Kirchen, I, 411 ff)." The Paatz reference, however, concerns the church of S. Carlo Borromeo on the Via dei Calzaiuoli (originally, S. Michele Vec- chio, S. Anna). I found no "S. Martino" in the Via dei Cerchi nor anywhere in the area except for the church of S. Martino a1 Vescovo (now S. Martino dei Buonuomini), whose extant 15th-century structure replaced an earlier church of S. Martino dating back to the 1 l t h century (Paatz, Die Kirchen, IV, 123 ff.). S. Martino is located two blocks from the piazza on the Via dei Magazzini, which presumably would be the street widened in 1349, as in Frey, Loggia, 91 f., note. In what appears a partial reversal of her 1349 date for the widening of the Via delle Farine, Spillner, 424, elsewhere in the context ofthe piazza development following 1362 dates the two similarly rusticated palaces flanking it in the second half of the 14th century, which is consistent with my in- terpretation and supports my position in n. 44 as well. For n. 89, concerning urban planning techniques, see now Spillner, 78 ff.