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2 Interlude: Brunelleschi's peepshow
and the invention of perspective

At least a decade before Alberti's theoretical work, Filippo
di Ser Brunellesco (1377–1446) painted two panels in the
course of an experiment that according to Edgerton
“marked an event which ultimately was to change the
modes, if not the course of Western history” (1975, p. 3;
see also De Santillana, 1959).[1] Although these two panels
have not been preserved, we know that they are the first
paintings to correctly embody linear perspective. The first
panel was a view of the church of San Giovanni di Firenze,
later known as the Florentine Baptistery, as seen from a
point about five feet inside the portal of the as yet unfinished
cathedral of Florence, Santa Maria del Fiore, across
the Piazza del Duomo. According to Brunelleschi's biographer
of the 1480s, Antonio di Tuccio Manetti, in order
to constrain the viewer to place his eye at the center of
projection, Brunelleschi

Figure 2-1 shows Edgerton's reconstruction of the first
panel and how it was held. In Chapter 3, we will see that
this method, Brunelleschi's peepshow,[2] is an effective
method for the creation of an illusion of depth.

Manetti and Vasari thought that Brunelleschi had gone
beyond this brilliant demonstration; they claimed he had
invented perspective. Here is Manetti's account:

Manetti and Vasari notwithstanding, the current consensus
is that he did not know the contruzione legittima.[3] It would
take us too far afield to discuss the various ingenious reconstructions
of the method Brunelleschi used in painting
these panels without using the construzione legittima. But
because there are some tantalizing clues to why his method
did not become public knowledge, I would like nevertheless
to explore the question of Brunelleschi's priority.

Mariano Taccola reported Brunelleschi to have said:

Why would Brunnelleschi be afraid that people would belittle
his achievements? Perhaps, as Lynes (1980) thinks,
Brunelleschi had good reason to be secretive: He had used
an empirical, not geometric, method to create his panels;
but he deceived his contemporaries and claimed to be the
originator of the construzione legittima. This is not inconsistent
with Vasari's (1965) Adlerian analysis of Brunelleschi:

In all fairness, we should note, however, that Vasari also
wrote:

This encomium does little to mitigate the impression of
Brunelleschi's ruthlessness left by Vasari's gripping description
of his rivalry with Lorenzo Ghiberti over the
assignment of the latter to share the commission to raise
the cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence.

The story of this rivalry, as told by Vasari (1965), opens
in 1417. Brunelleschi was among the several Florentine
architects consulted on the difficult problem of raising the
cupola. After Brunelleschi had worked out an approach to
the problem,

he took it into his head to return to Rome; ... for Filippo thought
that he would be valued more highly if he had to be sought after
than if he stayed in Florence. ... [The consuls and wardens] wrote
to Filippo in Rome, begging him to return to Florence; and this
being just what Filippo wanted, he very politely did what they
asked. (p. 142)

After Filippo returned, he presented his ideas to the consuls
and wardens and suggested that architects from Florence,
Tuscany, Germany, and France also be consulted. Although
his scheme was well-received, he was asked to
make a model for the consuls to study. “However, he
showed no inclination to provide one; and instead he took
his leave of them, saying that he had been approached by
letter to go back to Rome.” The wardens begged him to
stay, had his friends plead with him, offered him an allowance;
but Filippo left for Rome. In 1420, Filippo and
the foremost architects of his day were assembled to present
their plans. Because Filippo's plan was by far the simplest,
he was called “an ass and a babbler” and dismissed
from the audience. But Filippo refused to leave and “he
was carried out by the ushers, leaving all the people at the
audience convinced that he was deranged.” Nevertheless,
Filippo managed to have another hearing called. At the
meeting, he persisted in his refusal to present a model, but
challenged

But a group of workmen and citizens managed to persuade
the consuls that Filippo should be given a partner. When
Filippo heard that his friend Lorenzo Ghiberti, whom he

had assisted in polishing the superb reliefs Lorenzo had
made for the doors of San Giovanni, had been selected as
his partner and was to receive a salary equal to his own,

Filippo returned to work believing that he had persuaded
the wardens to dismiss Lorenzo. But he was wrong; they
didn't. And so “he thought of another way to disgrace
him and to demonstrate how little knowledge he had of
the profession” (p. 153). He proposed to the wardens in
Lorenzo's presence that the next stage of the work be divided
between them. Lorenzo was in no position to disagree
and was allowed to choose the task he preferred.
When Filippo had finished his part, Lorenzo had barely
finished a fraction of his, and Filippo let it be known that
Lorenzo's work was not competent. When the wardens
caught wind of this, they asked him to show them what
he would have done. Filippo's response impressed them
so deeply that “the wardens and the other artists ... realized
what a mistake they had made in favouring Lorenzo.”
Filippo was made “overseer and superintendent for life of
the entire building, stipulating that nothing was to be done
save on his orders” (p. 155). Although Lorenzo was disgraced,
he continued to draw his salary for three years,
thanks to his powerful friends.

This episode is sufficient, I think, to undermine Vasari's
depiction of Brunelleschi as a kind, gentle, and lovable
genius who never was “blind to merit and worth in others.”
It is difficult to see him only as a victim, as Vasari
concludes, “in some respects unfortunate” who “was always
having to contend with someone or other.” Even
though Vasari testifies to Brunelleschi's good moral character,
and claims that Brunelleschi only defended what was
legitimately his against Lorenzo, there are nagging doubts:
If Filippo had been Lorenzo's faithful friend, why did Lorenzo
agree to share an honor he had not earned? And why
was Brunelleschi so secretive? Did he really have a reason
to fear plagiarism? After all, the other architects were willing
to present their models and discuss their plans in public.
Furthermore, we know that his secretiveness was not an
attempt to hide incompetence; he was probably the only
architect who knew how to raise the cupola of Santa Maria
del Fiore.

But it may be that Brunelleschi's strange behavior in the
episode of the cupola was the outcome of an attempt to
hide the fact that his creativity was intuitive rather than
analytic. Twice Brunelleschi did not give a theoretical account
of a major achievement of his. Perhaps he knew how
to erect the cupola but could not explain why this method
was correct, just as he knew how to paint startlingly realistic
and perspectivally correct panels without knowing
the rules of the construzione legittima. When Brunelleschi
invented perspective and when he sought the commission
for the erection of the cupola, he may have been behaving
as he had during the episode of the egg; that is, he may
have invented a trick to paint pictures in perspective without
having developed the underlying geometric theory,
and he may have come up with methods to erect a tall
cupola without having a rigorous rationale to offer. Perhaps
in both cases he allowed people to infer that he understood
the process more conceptually than he really did,
and in both cases he was unreasonably worried about having
allowed people to believe that he knew something that
no one could legitimately expect him to know. As a result,
he allowed people to think that he was mad rather than

present his plans for the cupola; perhaps for the same reason
he destroyed the panels, in order to take his secret with
him to the grave. Thus I believe that Alberti, and not
Brunelleschi, invented perspective as a communicable set
of practical procedures that can be used by artists. Otherwise
Brunelleschi, driven by ambition as he was, would
have made sure that Alberti did not receive acknowledgment
of priority in the discovery of the construzione legittima.
So Filippo was not only an extraordinarily ambitious,
competitive, secretive, slightly paranoid, cunning, somewhat
manipulative genius. He was, if my speculative analysis
of his personality is correct, a man deeply concerned
with disguising the nature of his creativity, afraid that he
would not be held in high esteem unless he was thought
to possess abstract theoretical knowledge.[5]