Walker

The Feud That Sparked the Renaissance: How Brunelleschi & Ghiberti Changed the Art World by Paul Robert Walker (2002)

In AD 1400, one of the trade guilds in the Italian city of Florence wanted to commission a set of bronze doors for the Baptistry of San Giovanni, an octagonal building near the city’s cathedral. At the time, Italy was a patchwork of independent republics, dutchies, and kingdoms competing against and fighting each other. By the end of the Fourteenth Century, Florence had experienced plague, political upheaval, several wars, a civil war, and economic depression. Its leaders looked for something to boost the morale of the people. Beautifying an important and beloved building was their solution. They could never know how monumental that idea was to Western history.

Instead of just hiring a well-known artist to make the doors, the organization in charge held a contest. There were seven contestants but two finalists: Filippo Brunelleschi and Lorenzo Ghiberti. Their submissions were both revolutionary but very different in style. According to sources it was a tie, so the committee asked the two winners to share the commission. Offended, Brunelleschi refused which awarded Ghiberti the job. This began a fifty-year competition that launched one of the most celebrated eras in art history: The Italian Renaissance.

The Feud That Sparked the Renaissance is part biography, part history, and part art class. Well researched, Walker uses primary sources to piece together his narrative: Ghiberti’s autobiography, a biography of Brunelleschi written by one of his students, and other information from within a generation or two after their deaths. Walker also uses city tax records, letters, official documents of the artworks commissioned from the artists, legal contracts, etc. to build his narrative about how the Renaissance began and how Florence became its center.

To flesh out his story more, Walker also uses legend and rumor, but he is careful to emphasize that these are in fact just rumors. I like that he doesn’t just dismiss them though. As a historian, Walker is part investigator. Feud is about this era and these stories, true or not, long influenced people’s opinions about this period. They’re still important. Walker sifts through all these resources to tell the reader about these two men. Many times, the author will start a section or chapter with a story of something great that happened to one of these men, how the event proves how amazing Brunelleschi or Ghiberti were. Then he’ll break the story down, separating legend from known fact. Then, Walker will use this to fill in the historical background. For example, Walker describes a possible journey Brunelleschi took to Rome after he lost the commission for the doors. He’ll look at the evidence for the story and how it may have affected the artist’s career. This story shifts into a short history about the state of the Papacy and Rome at the time, the Great Catholic Schism, and the rise of Florence. These sections are interesting and relevant to the overall narrative.

While The Feud That Sparked the Renaissance is mainly about Brunelleschi and Ghiberti, it is also about their influence on art itself. Walker describes their work as avant garde. While an accurate term, I had never seen it used to describe Renaissance art before. Avant garde art is new and/or ground-breaking art that shakes-up the status quo. The term was adopted in the Nineteenth Century to describe the innovations that became Modern Art. For me, it was unexpected to see it applied to Traditionalism. I like its use here though because, in my opinion, the phrase is accurate and illustrates what these men did.

Although The Feud That Sparked the Renaissance tells the story of great art and great artists, Walker is no idol-worshipper. Walker describes Brunelleschi’s and Ghiberti’s influences on other artists, such as Donatello and Masaccio, and later Leonardo and Michelangelo. According to Walker, these first two, together with Brunelleschi and Ghiberti, “laid the groundwork for all who came after them….” But this book doesn’t romanticize or whitewash heroes. To the author, these men were human. They were the stereotypical artists: catty, arrogant, and jealous. I thought Brunelleschi was presented as especially so. He’s a genius. We know it. He knew it, and he made sure no one forgot it. He disliked Ghiberti greatly and made sure everyone knew that too. No big deal though, Ghiberti didn’t like Brunelleschi either. By the end of their lives, their mutual hate was so great that they were actively trying to ruin each other’s careers.

Finally, the book is an excellent tour of early Renaissance art. It is clear Walker understands these works and has experience with them. His description of individual pieces is a joy to read. For example, he describes Donatello’s St. Mark as a work with “an aura of dignity and intelligence”, who gazes “out at the viewer with a calm and penetrating gaze that brings life from the stone.” Of Brunelleschi’s plans for the Church of Santo Spirito, Walker writes:

“[It] represents the culmination of [the architect’s] efforts to see a building as a single organism, with [its] parts working together in such a way that to change a part is to significantly alter the whole…. Santo Spirito offers the greatest opportunity to experience the mind of the architect… and to meet God on Filippo’s terms… as an intelligent human being who praises the source of that intellect.”

When you get to these sections, I recommend looking up pictures of these works to follow along. You won’t be sorry.

The Feud That Sparked the Renaissance is easy to read, and Walker’s ideas are well defined. The only part I found tedious was the chapter on taxes and public records. Walker makes clear why these sections were important, but I was bored. That’s my fault though. These details are not at all miscellaneous but are important to help the reader understand the financial issues the patrons and the artists experienced that led to some of their decisions. These sections did have one entertaining factor. Just like today, these guys tried every trick and exploited every loophole to lessen their tax burden. I giggled more than once at the audacity. At times, it sounded like the Florentine tax collectors did too. Because of these details, these figures from a distant past felt more real.

The contribution of Filippo Brunelleschi, Lorenzo Ghiberti, and their contemporaries to Western history and culture cannot be exaggerated. They competed against one another but also worked together sometimes. More importantly, they learned from each other. As a result, the quality of art exploded. They inspired the great Masters that followed who then built on their foundations — and we are the benefactors.