on the clergy house opposite the south door of the cathedral, watching his handiwork, was born in 1377, the son of a well-to-do Florentine of good family who wished to make him a notary.  The boy, however, wanted to be an artist, and was therefore placed with a goldsmith, which was in those days the natural course.  As a youth he attempted everything, being of a pertinacious and inquiring mind, and he was also a great debater and student of Dante; and, taking to sculpture, he was one of those who, as we shall see in a later chapter, competed for the commission for the Baptistery gates.  It was indeed his failure in that competition which decided him to concentrate on architecture.  That he was a fine sculptor his competitive design, now preserved in the Bargello, and his Christ crucified in S. Maria Novella, prove; but in leading him to architecture the stars undoubtedly did rightly.

It was in 1403 that the decision giving Ghiberti the Baptistery commission was made, when Brunelleschi was twenty-six and Donatello, destined to be his life-long friend, was seventeen; and when Brunelleschi decided to go to Rome for the study of his new branch of industry, architecture, Donatello went too.  There they worked together, copying and measuring everything of beauty, Brunelleschi having always before his mind the problem of how to place a dome upon the cathedral of his native city.  But, having a shrewd knowledge of human nature and immense patience, he did not hasten to urge upon the authorities his claims as the heaven-born architect, but contented himself with smaller works, and even assisted his rival Ghiberti with his gates, joining at that task Donatello and Luca della Robbia, and giving lessons in perspective to a youth who was to do more than any man after Giotto to assure the great days of painting and become the exemplar of the finest masters—­Masaccio.

It was not until 1419 that Brunelleschi’s persistence and belief in his own powers satisfied the controllers of the cathedral works that he might perhaps be as good as his word and was the right man to build the dome; but at last he was able to begin. [1] For the story of his difficulties, told minutely and probably with sufficient accuracy, one must go to Vasari:  it is well worth reading, and is a lurid commentary on the suspicions and jealousies of the world.  The building of the dome, without scaffolding, occupied fourteen years, Brunelleschi’s device embracing two domes, one within the other, tied together with stone for material support and strength.  It is because of this inner dome that the impression of its size, from within the cathedral, can disappoint.  Meanwhile, in spite of all the wear and tear of the work, the satisfying of incredulous busy-bodies, and the removal of such an incubus as Ghiberti, who because he was a superb modeller of bronze reliefs was made for a while joint architect with a salary that Brunelleschi felt should either be his own or no one’s, the little man found time also to build beautiful churches and cloisters all over Florence.  He lived to see his dome finished and the cathedral consecrated by Pope Eugenius IV in 1436, dying ten years later.  He was buried in the cathedral, and his adopted son and pupil, Buggiano, made the head of him on the tablet to his memory.