#32 Brunelleschi & The Dome III

* It’s thought that Bruno returned to Florence probably in 1416 or 1417 * Which means he was in Rome for 15 years. * How did he earn a living? * Vasari says he didn’t have to at first. * Before he left Florence he sold a small farm that he owned. * So he lived off that money for a while. * When that ran out he worked as a goldsmith. * Vasari states that while in Rome, there wasn’t a single standing classical structure that Bruno didn’t measure and study. * When he got back to Florence, he would have noticed that the Duomo had just acquired its new name, Santa Maria del Fiore, “Saint Mary of the Flower,” having previously been referred to as Santa Reparata, the name of the older cathedral, which was now completely demolished. * The cathedral gets its name from the lily flower, the symbol of Florence. * They got it from the French monarch – Fleur-de-lis * fleur means “flower”, and lis means “lily” * And no-one seems sure how it came to represent the French throne. * One hypothesis is that the French or Franks, before entering Gaul itself, lived for a long time around the river named Leie in Dutch in the Flanders. * In French it’s the Lys. * And a species of wild iris, the Iris pseudacorus, grew around there. * So they were the Flower of Lys. * The city name is from Roman Colonia Florentia, “flowering colony,” either literal or figurative, and became Old Italian Fiorenze, modern Italian Firenze. * Controversy continues over who founded Florence. * One old theory is that Florence was founded by Sulla as a military colony * But the most commonly accepted story tells us that Julius Caesar founded Florentia around 59 BC, * He made it a strategic garrison on the narrowest crossing of the Arno river and controlling the Via Flaminia linking Rome to northern Italy and Gaul (France). * Archaeological evidence suggests the presence of an earlier village founded by the Etruscans of Fiesole around 200 BC. * But the Roman garrison might have been founded as late as 30 B.C. which would make it under Augustus. * Might have been Agrippa who set it up. * Which would make the whole Pantheon – Duomo connection even more exciting. * And as we’ll see – a flower was an important part of Bruno’s solution for building the dome. * When Bruno arrived back in Florence he is described as “middle aged, short, bald, and pugnacious looking, with an aquiline nose, thin lips, and a weak chin”. * So basically he looked like Ray. * He had dirty and disheveled clothing. * But in Florence looking like that was almost a badge of genius. * He was simply the latest in a long and illustrious line of ugly or unkempt artists. * The name of the painter Cimabue means “ox head,” * Giotto was so unattractive that Giovanni Boccaccio devoted a tale to his appearance in the Decameron, * He marvelled  at how “Nature has frequently planted astonishing genius in men of monstrously ugly appearance.” * Later, Michelangelo would become legendary for his ugliness, which was partly the result of a broken nose earned in a fracas with the sculptor Pietro Torrigiani. * And like both Giotto and Filippo, Michelangelo was indifferent to the state of his dress,