Huck wrote: 02 Jun 2022, 13:14
Brunelleschi had an understanding of cranes and this would have made him to a master for flying actors during triumphal processions. Has this something to do with card playing?
You are seriously underestimating this fellow. You may never be interested to learn about him, but if you are curious about him, you might start with the famous short story
La novella del Grasso legnaiuolo, by Antonio Manetti. I don't know if there are German translations, but here is the most recent English one, which you can probably read in half an hour or so online -
https://archive.org/details/fatwoodworker0000mane
Beginning of introduction:
THE FAT WOODWORKER is a delightful story in the tradition of the Italian Renaissance beffe, stories of practical, often cruel, jokes. It is the tale of a prank engineered by the great Renaissance architect, Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446), played upon an unsuspecting (and perhaps less-than-brilliant) woodworker named Manetto, in reprisal for the woodworker's social slight.
Here are a few other quotations I've posted recently, which illustrate his range, far beyond a mere engineer.
Brunelleschi was a member of one of the most creative circles that we know about in the first half of the 15th century. Remarks and description by Lauro Martines, commenting on "The Fat Woodcarver" (Lauro Martines,
An Italian Renaissance Sextet. Six Tales in Historical Context (Marsilio Publishers, 1994; translations by Murtha Baca), pp. 215-216:
“Few if any texts from the early history of Florence provide so intriguing and detailed a profile as this one [The Fat Woodworker], however laconic, of a mixed group of men who regularly met to chatter and have supper together. But we shall need to bring in supplementary particulars, in order to make up for what contemporary Florentine observers would themselves have brought to the story.
“Grasso's friends – and oddly they were this, even after his disgrace - “were a spirited group of respectable citizens,” who came “from the governing class (reggimento) and from among the masters of the more intellectual and imaginative of the crafts (maestri d'alcune arti miste e d'ingegno), such as painters, goldsmiths, sculptors, woodcarvers, and the like.” The company thus included a remarkable social scatter, ranging from members of the political oligarchy, such as their host Tomaso Pecori, to a major goldsmith, art theorist, and engineer (Brunelleschi), a vastly gifted sculptor (Donatello), and a highly talented woodworker, Grasso himself. Lay religious confraternities in Florence were also composed of men from the different strata of society; but religious association for ritual purposes was one thing and a chatty company, come together for the business of pleasure, was something else. Moreover, the sort of dining club, with its broad social makeup, which collected at Pecori's house on that wintry Sunday evening of 1409 was rarely to be found outside of Florence in those years, and would have been most improbable either at Venice or one of the princely states, say, Milan or Ferrara. Only Siena, I reckon, and perhaps Bologna, had the social and mental structures for kindred groups and reunions. At that moment, having recently and fiercely defended its liberties against the expansion of Milanese autocracy under the Visconti, and being much preoccupied with the grand decorating and completion of the city's gigantic cathedral, the republic of Florence was a meeting ground for productive encounters between talented or clever men from diverse backgrounds. Indeed, a minor share of its major political offices, all held for short terms of two to six months, was still reserved for men from the lesser craft guilds, with the result that rich bankers, petty tradesmen, and great landowner regularly served together in public office.”
Vasari wrote of him, in the biography where he attributed to him the authorship of the apparatus of the Annunciation of San Felice [25 March 1439], that he frequented "scholarly people," that he had refined his knowledge of geometry through his friendship with Paolo Toscanelli, often managing to amaze him with the wit of his reasoning despite the fact that he had "no letters," that is, no knowledge of Latin. He further added:
And thus following, he attended to the things of Christian scripture, not hesitating to intervene in the disputes and sermons of learned persons; of which he made so much capital by his admirable memory, that messer Paulo predetto [Toscanelli], celebrating him, used to say that in hearing Filippo [Brunelleschi] argue, he seemed to him a new St. Paul.
He still gave much attention at this time to the things of Dante, whose sites and measures were well understood by him; and often in comparisons attaching him [Dante], he made use of them in his reasonings. Nor ever with thought did he do anything but scheming and imagining ingenious and difficult things.
One thus draws, no longer the image of a craftsman but of an artist who united the mechanical skill of the trade with the speculative refinement of the intellectual, accessing, through them, the most exclusive circles of city culture. It was not only his frequentation of humanists and men of power that made Filippo Brunelleschi the only possible creator of the spectacles for the Council [of 1439], but also his interest in scriptural and theological subjects, his profound knowledge of Dante whose "sites and measures he investigated, "his continual design of "ingenious and difficult things." Following the lines of Vasari's biography, I am inclined to believe that it was precisely the study of the Comedy that challenged the architect to visualize the ineffable with the construction of the paradises for feasts in the churches, and that these, in turn, served him to experiment with the machinery with which he arrived at the daring solution of the dome.
(Paolo Ventrone, “La propaganda unionista negli spettacoli del 1439,” in Paolo Ventrone,
Teatro civile e sacra rappresentazione a Firenze nel Rinascimento (Firenze, Le Lettere, 2016), pp. 118-140 (139-140)
Original -
Di lui scriveva il Vasari, nella biografia dove gli attribuiva la paternità dell'apparato dell'Annunciazione di San Felice, che era frequentatore di “persone studiose,” che aveva affinato le sue conoscenze di geometria grazie all'amicizia con Paolo Toscanelli, riuscendo spesso a stupirlo per l'arguzia dei suoi ragionamenti nonostante non avesse “lettere,” cioè non conoscesse il latino. Aggiungeva inoltre:
E così sequitando, dava opera alle cose della scrittura cristiana, non restando d'intervenire alle dispute ed alle prediche delle persone dotte; delle quali faceva tanto capitale per la mirabil memoria sua, che messer Paulo predetto [Toscanelli], celebrandolo, usava dire che nel sentire arguir Filippo [Brunelleschi], gli pareva un nuovo San Paulo.
Diede ancora molta opera in questo tempo alle cose di Dante, le quali furon da lui bene intese circa i siti e le misure; e spesso nelle comparazioni allegandolo, se ne serviva ne' suoi ragionamenti. Né mai col pensiero faceva altro che macchinare e immaginare cose ingegnose e difficili.
Si disegna, in tal modo, non più l'immagine di un artigiano ma di un artista che univa la perizia meccanica del mestiere alla finezza speculativa dell'intelletuale, accedendo, per esse, ai circoli più esclusivi della cultura cittadina. Non è solo la frequentazione degli umanisti e degli uomini di potere a rendere Filippo Brunelleschi l'unico possibile artefice degli spettacoli per il Concilio, ma anche il suo interesse per argomenti scritturali e teologici, la sua profonda conoscenza di Dante del quale indagava “i siti e le misure,” la continua progettazione di “cose ingegnose e difficili.” Sequendo le linee della biografia vasariana sono propensa a credere che proprio lo studio della Commedia abbia sfidato l'architetto alla visualizzazione dell'ineffabile con la costruzione dei paradisi per le feste nelle chiese, e che questi, a loro volta, gli siano serviti a sperimentare i macchinari con i quali pervenne all'arditissima soluzione della cupola.
Compare this to how Marcello describes Filippo Maria, as "at one time the keenest in the invention of all the greatest things" (
qui unquam fuerunt in omnium maximarum rerum inventione acutissimus).
No one would have reason to think that the scheming duke of Milan would have done anything so trivial as invent a card game, but because we know his biography much better than many others of the time, we get a much better picture of the complexity of his mind and his variety of interests. The same goes for Brunelleschi, whose biography is a little less known, but at least we have a few surviving poems by him, which is better than having nothing written by Visconti himself. In matters of puzzles and games, as well as engineering contraptions, and even fascination with Dante's
Commedia, these men had similar minds and interests. It is easy to imagine Filippo Maria showing Brunelleschi some of the inventions he had on hand, including playing cards with Michelino's deck.
Brunelleschi's associates included known card painters like Lo Scheggia (as previously Brunelleschi had befriended and admired Masaccio), who painted triumphal subjects as well. The workshops of many of these kinds of artists were concentrated in the Santi Apostoli district.
