FLORENCE.- The Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore has purchased an previously unknown early Renaissance sculpture, a portrait of Filippo Brunelleschi, the great architect already lauded by his contemporaries for his great feat of designing the dome of the Florence Cathedral, and as a leading figure in the early 15th-century Renaissance arts. The work is a head in terracotta (25.6 x 22.1 x 20.2 cm) sculpted rather than cast from a compact and almost solid block of clay, as its considerable weight confirms (7.1 kg). Andrea di Lazzaro Cavalcanti, called Il Buggiano (1412 - 1462), adopted son and sole heir of Brunelleschi, modelled the work following his adoptive father’s death.

The art historians Giancarlo Gentilini and Alfredo Bellandi are behind this exceptional discovery. They identified the sculpture as the model created by Il Buggiano, presumably between February and March of 1447, for the marble bust of Brunelleschi in the memorial monument in the Florence Cathedral, commissioned from him by the Workers of the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore.

The sculpture was found among the furnishings of a historic residence in the Florentine area. It has survived for almost 700 years, which is incredible considering the fragility of terracotta. It was purchased by the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore for 300 thousand euros and, following its restoration, will go on exhibit and then become part of the collection of the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo.

This can undoubtedly be called an exceptional discovery because, in addition to the undeniable value of Andrea Cavalcanti’s art, portraits of Brunelleschi at the time of or shortly after his death are very rare. Apart from the one in the marble monument in the Florence Cathedral and the death mask in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, only two others are known in paintings: the youthful profile that Masaccio added to the frescoes in the Brancacci chapel at the Carmine church, in the scene depicting the throne of St Peter (1427-28), and the much more modest one in the well-known panel preserved in the Louvre Museum. Vasari attributed this work to Paolo Uccello and its dating to around 1470 is still under discussion. It should be added that our work is one of the oldest terracotta effigies in existence, not so distant in age from the famous bust of Niccolò da Uzzano, attributed to Donatello or Desiderio da Settignano (Florence, Museo Nazionale del Bargello). This also makes it an important testimonial to the rebirth of the sculptural portrait as a genre, one of the most representative of the new spirit of Humanism.

“The terracotta head with Filippo Brunelleschi’s facial features was moulded by Andrea Cavalcanti (Il Buggiano), who was Filippo’s adopted son and heir”, said Antonio Natali, a council member of the Opera of Santa Maria del Fiore. “It is known that the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore gave both of them remarkable commissions: Brunelleschi goes without saying. However, Buggiano will be remembered for his admirable humanistic lavers in the sacristies of the cathedral and, at this point in time, especially the monument celebrating Brunelleschi in the cathedral, now that the terracotta head, the model for it, has been found. With these premises, everyone will understand how the acquisition by the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore was actually unavoidable”.

“We believe that this is truly an exceptional opportunity, an unimaginable privilege, to be able to present the previously unknown, vivid portrait of Filippo Brunelleschi, modelled by his adoptive son, Andrea Cavalcanti, shortly after his death”, stated Giancarlo Gentilini and Alfredo Bellandi. As the many formal and technical aspects indicate, the work we present here should be considered as the model prepared by Buggiano for the execution of the marble portrait. It is a ‘life-like’ portrait, considering that Brunelleschi was notoriously “small in stature and features” (Vasari 1568), and the measurements of the face (perhaps slightly reduced by the usual ‘shrinkage’ of the clay) are substantially comparable to those found in the plaster death mask and the marble effigy. But compared to the facial cast, the image, now devoid of the contractions of rigor mortis, has more harmonious proportions. The face could almost be inscribed within a sphere”.

The work needs to be restored, and although (apart from a single gap in the chin, where an old, clumsy plaster repair makes it seem bigger), it has scratches all over it and a chalky residue veiling and traces of paint applications (one with seemingly natural tones and at least two brown ones, perhaps to simulate bronze, after the restoration of the chin).

The stages of the story

On April 15, 1446, Brunelleschi died in his home in Florence and il Buggiano probably made the funereal mask on the same day and in that same place where he also lived. The making of funereal masks had been practiced in the ancient Roman world and was also well-known and practiced in Florence. On 30 December of the same year, the Consoli [Consuls] of the Arte della Lana [Wool Guild] established that Brunelleschi’s body, provisionally laid in Giotto’s Bell Tower, would be buried in the Cathedral. On 18 February of the following year, 1447, the Workers of the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore decided to create a wall monument in his honour, consisting of his “life-like figure” and a celebratory ‘memorial’ epigraph to be written by Marsuppini. Shortly after, on 27 February, Andrea Cavalcanti, who had been working for some time in the Santa Maria del Fiore site, received the marble for the creation of the monument from the Opera. Between February and March of 1447, Cavalcanti made the model for the clipeate bust of the memorial monument in the Florence Cathedral. The monument was finished in 1447. We know that it was still being worked on towards the end of May when the epigraph composed by Marsuppini was approved. After the monument was completed, the model was presumably relegated to the sculptor’s workshop with the materials for study and secondary purposes. The state of preservation of the work indicates that it was later reused as an independent sculpture, probably preserved for a long time with the knowledge of the illustrious identity of the effigy that later fell into oblivion.

Andrea di Lazzaro di Cavalcante, called Il Buggiano, was born in the village of Valdinievole in 1412. The son of Brunelleschi’s brother’s sharecropper, he was adopted at the age of seven by Filippo, who was already an established and influential sculptor and architect. Brunelleschi included him in the main worksites for the Florentine churches where he sculpted remarkable works largely designed by Brunelleschi himself, such as the two splendid lavers in the Sacristies of the Cathedral and the Medici Tomb in the centre of the Old Sacristy in San Lorenzo. A prolific and versatile sculptor in marble, wood, terracotta and plaster, he is remembered by Antonio Manetti in the Notizia di Filippo di ser Brunellesco (Vita di Filippo Brunelleschi) [An account of Filippo di ser Brunellesco (Life of Filippo Brunelleschi)](ca. 1487) as “his disciple” and “his heir”. Vasari draws on this illustrious civic tradition in the Torrentina edition of the Vite [Lives] where he provides a brief profile of the sculptor who died in Florence on 21 February 1462.

Il Buggiano had an austere style that showed the influence of Donatello. His sculptures of the children that populate antique sarcophagi, lavers and Marian reliefs, are charged with a vigorous facial expressiveness, and stand out in the early 15th-century classicist revival for their revisitation of ancient art guided by philological knowledge and the application of the 15th-century naturalism inspired by Donatello, Michelozzo, Luca della Robbia and Bernardo Rossellino. Around 1450, Rossellino involved him in the crowning work for the Bruni Monument in Santa Croce. Through these artists he developed his composite style with a deliberately archaic stamp that distinguishes him in the pentagram of Renaissance sculpture.