The Pazzi, their Chapel, & the Architect

by Michael Djordjevitch

Pazzi Chapel, Florence, 1920: by Sidney Tushingham (Syracuse University Art Collection)

Having recently encountered and contemplated a few painted and photographed views of this famous work of Renaissance architecture, let's now take a closer look at the building itself.  

First, the patrons: the Pazzi family were rivals to the Medici for much of the fifteenth century; theirs is a most astonishing, and sobering, tale of a powerful family's rise and fall.  

A short introduction: The Pazzi conspiracy: The Scholar, the Prince and the Priest. And a bit more on the Pazzi Conspiracy and its aftermath: Part 1 ; Part 2 ; Part 3.

And here, a book on the story:April Blood: Florence and the Plot Against the Medici, by Lauro Martinez, Oxford University Press, 2003

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While some may be drawn to visit the Pazzi Chapel by the lurid history of its patrons, today most visitors come here for its architect.  Innumerable Art History classes present this monument as the culminating work of the pioneering Renaissance master Brunelleschi, best known for realizing the dome of Florence's Cathedral, the Duomo.  

A typical encomium to Brunelleschi's achievement at the Pazzi Chapel

A number of scholars, however, have begun to seriously question Brunelleschi's involvement here.  New ideas were triggered when a thorough exploration of the fabric of the chapel, undertaken in the late 1950's and very early1960's, discovered a number of dated mason's inscriptions embedded in its mortar, giving us fixed dates for when the various phases of the building were built.  These inscriptions date most of the core construction of the building to well after Brunelleschi's death in 1446. 

The body of the building seems to have been begun at foundation level in 1442, when the chapel was consecrated on the fourth of July of that year.  The plurality of the fabric was finished sometime after 1461, when building its dome began.  The monument's ornament, what presents itself to our eyes today, was only being completed in the very year of the Pazzi conspiracy, in 1478!  Also contributing to the mystery, an earlier facade was found hidden behind the present one, revealing that the familiar face of our building represents a substantial change of design in the final phases of the chapel's construction. 

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The most accessible scholarly book in English on Brunelleschi, by Eugenio Battisti, "Filippo Brunelleschi: The Complete Work", Rizzoli, 1981 republished in 2012), takes these discoveries into account.  Thus, Mr. Battisti comes to the reasonable conclusion that, while Brunelleschi may have had a hand in the initial design of the work, the architects responsible for completing it were guided by Brunelleschi's already complete Sacristy for San Lorenzo, which the Pazzi Chapel closely resembles in many respects.   

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However, the new and indisputable evidence that the Pazzi Chapel was completed long after Brunelleschi's death opened the way for even more radical questions. The historian Marvin Trachtenberg took Battisti's conclusions to the next logical step when, in scrupulously studying the Pazzi Chapel through the lens of Brunelleschi's Sacristy, he concluded that the Chapel was a creative pastiche of the Sacristy by a distinctly different hand and mind: thus, not by Brunelleschi at all.  

What these two buildings have in common is the motif of paired columns framing an arch.  What had made the Sacristy for San Lorenzo radically new, however, in the context of its Late Medieval World, was foregrounding the Ancient Roman Corinthian Order as its primary architectural framework, and through this, ordering linked volumes that derive from the sphere (in other words, Roman vaulting).  In the Sacristy there is a focused clarity of purpose and expression.  This clarity is missing in the Chapel, where for example the columns-arch-motif (later popularized by Palladio) is applied indiscriminately, confusing rather than clarifying its complex intersection of volumes.

Trachtenberg made his case that the chapel is not by Brunelleschi in two articles, published in Casabella, a widely recognized Italian journal:

1. "Why the Pazzi Chapel is not by Brunelleschi", Casabella, June 1996

2. "Michelozzo and the Pazzi Chapel", Casabella, February 1997 (Free registration is required!)

Brunelleschi's late work does not revisit his earlier manner, as those who ascribe the Pazzi Chapel to him would have it. For Brunelleschi there are no "repeat performances".  His Tribunes and Lantern for the Dome of Florence's Duomo are radically new, further forays deep into the world of the Ancient Romans, what his contemporaries called "all' antica", the "ancient manner".  In this, and through their specific forms--scrolling volutes, layered elements, elisions, a sculptural three-dimensionality---Brunelleschi's late works prefigure the Baroque of two centuries later.

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Here in the lantern, then, we encounter a work so surprising, and so "ahead" of Brunelleschi's own earlier Renaissance style, that it abruptly falls off the radar of pretty much everyone who studies Brunelleschi or the early Renaissance.

More on Brunelleschi's design for the lantern here:

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So, why then did the Pazzi, these ruthless competitors of the Medici, ask their architect, Michelozzo, to conjure up a family monument so reminiscent of the Medici family monument?  Perhaps, here is where our modern expectations deceive us.  Perhaps it is the very differences between these two monuments, rather their similarities which were decisive?  Perhaps it was not that the new monument was seen as reminiscent of the older one, but rather, that it was seen as better.  At the very least, it was far more more complete, and certainly full of many more columns.  Perhaps, then, it was that the Pazzi were announcing that they were far better at whatever the Medici were ostensibly good at.

What a photo shows & and a painting reveals

by Michael Djordjevitch

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This photograph offers us a characteristic contemporary view of the Pazzi Chapel in Florence, seen here at the end of a long axis next to the Church of Santa Croce.  This is a view we can appreciate through wrought-iron gates even when as here the church grounds are closed.  

While a popular station on the touristic pilgrimage trail because of its association with Filippo Brunelleschi, the architect of the Dome of Florence's Duomo, this building turns out to be something of a mystery. 

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Here we see the chapel from another angle, in a painting from 1885 by Odoardo Borrani (1833-1905) , "La Cappella dei Pazzi; Il chiostro di Santa Croce a Firenze".  The painting shows another characteristic view of the chapel, this one particular to the 19th and earlier centuries. 

This view reflects the fact that our chapel was once also a chapter house, a place for meetings of the governing body of the Franciscan Monks to whom the church of Santa Croce once belonged.  In this capacity the chapel was closed to the outside world, accessible only though its cloister. 

The courtyard and the columns of its cloister were therefore once the primary frames for viewing and experiencing the Pazzi chapel, a fact reflected in this painting, where we see the chapel simultaneously framed by the columns of the cloister and an intrinsic part of its contemplative courtyard. 

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We see how this original context can be dramatized through the artistry of the artist in this second painting, from 1858, by Carl Georg Anton Graeb.  When we compare the two paintings the immediate difference that presents itself is that of the foreground.  Carl Graeb includes so much more of the cloister, envelops us in it. 

We also look in vain for the campanile which towers over the chapel in Orlando Borrani's painting; Graeb eliminates it to fix our attention on the chapel. Though securely in the middle ground of his view, Graeb pulls the chapel into the foreground of our experience through its framing and placement in the image, the play of light and shade, and the suppression of potentially competing elements such as the bell tower. 

Fine as Borrani's painting is, it is Graeb's which more fully makes use of painting's artistic possibilities, and takes fuller advantage of compositional technique to dramatise its subject while pulling the viewer into its orbit. Paradoxically, there is a compelling realism to Graeb's painting despite its clear distortions of angle and form. 

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Contrast this sense of heightened and dramatised reality with what a photograph taken from a similar angle shows us. Here it is not just that the vegetation and glare obscure the Pazzi Chapel.  In the photograph the cloister does not soar.  It appears smaller, it is not monumental, entirely everyday.  The cloister in the painting, on the other hand, not only frames an exceptional building but also parakes of its special qualities, acting as both frame and extension.

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The original context for the Pazzi chapel, seen here in a painting of 1718, was fundamentally changed when the smaller adjacent courtyard was demolished, opening the chapel to a direct view from the street.  This new, direct, and uninterrupted view tends to dis-enchant the chapel in a similar way to the photograph above.  No longer a personal discovery, a surprise, the chapel is now a public exhibit, competing for prominence with the adjacent church. Now foregrounded, the chapel takes pride of place in the new world of tourism, a changed reality that seems flat and de-natured indeed when one considers the Pazzi chapel's original role within its local Franciscan world. Further, there are real-world connections between presenting the world in a disenchanted way and creating new, unenchanting realities. 

You can find more on the dramatizing artistic possibilities of painting, and the pitfalls of the one-point realistic perspective we see in photography, here:

What Are These Kids Doing Here?

by Michael Djordjevitch

In Albany a pair of sculptures frame the entrance to the New York State Education Building, designed by Henry Hornbostel and completed in 1912.  The bronze sculptures were created by Charles Keck (1875-1951) and dedicated in 1913. 

These sculptures serve a more than merely picturesque purpose.  By their size, the precious bronze they're made of, and their high level of enrichment and ornamentation, the sculptures are full participants in the architecture of the Education Building and an essential part of its decor. They are major focal points in themselves as well as the main framing elements for the building's entrance.  For all these reasons the sculptures belong to a special category of sculpture, that of architectural sculpture.

This means they play a major role in conveying the purpose and character of this building, which is concerned with education and specifically the education of the young.  The major figures in these two sculptures are therefore children, engaged in the process of learning.  A closer look, however reveals a larger vision for educating the young, where the sustained focus of learning is balanced by play.  Thus, we are offered a diptych, and between the two sets of sculptures we are given a meditation on the whole of childhood.  Above the children  we also find a flock of roosting owls.  As attributes of Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom, the owls also represent wisdom.  Here they preside over youngsters who, through various activities embodying the dynamic of learning, are growing towards wisdom.

After sport and play

There is also more to these sculptures than the figures of just children and owls. The other parts of this ensemble--indeed the larger part of the whole---are made up entirely of architectural elements.  The children are perched on A highly enriched classical columnar base, itself set upon lion-headed feet.  Above the children rises the form of an urn crowned by owls which carry a set of linking wreaths in their beaks. The entire urn is made up of the Acanthus 'leaf' in its various forms, from compact to fully-manifest, a form we recognize as belonging to the capital of the Corinthian column. For the same reason we might think of the whole urn as Corinthian, that is, expressing organic sculptural form through the representative curves and contours of the leaf. The inclusion of all these architectural elements--along with their specifically architectural character that in this case is Corinthian, is also part of what makes these examples of architectural sculptures.

Learning and practicing

Furthermore, the sculptural and architectural elements are working together to create EVEN LARGER architectural elements, in the form of giant lamp standards that frame the building's main entrance.  These lamps light the threshold of this institution in a metaphorical sense as well as a literal one.  The bulbs of the lamp at the top of the sculpture, for example, also represent the wisdom already identified with the owls supporting them, the light of learning.  The children, the owls, even the light-bulb lamps are all Iconic Figures, speaking to the purpose of the institution in the cultural shorthand of recognizable symbols and motifs. 

This cultural shorthand extends to the entire composition, which we can recognize as a giant candelabrum, itself an element of classical furniture on a monumental, architectural scale.  Such candelabra are well known from many Ancient Roman examples, and they have their origins in the Greek Classical Period. 

In all these varied ways the Arts of Architecture and Sculpture can work together to make a greater, even a magical, whole. This is what sculptor Charles Keck created here.

For more Images of the Candelabra

An Ancient Greek Painting on Fifth Avenue?

Until June 24th, you can see a rare example of an Ancient Greek painting: in New York, at the Onassis Cultural Centre.   

by Michael Djordjevitch

This ancient painting from Pompeii, which once graced the peristyle of the House of the Tragic Poet, depicts Agamemnon about to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia, a disturbing story first told by Homer in the Iliad, Book II. This painting, however, follows the version performed in Athens in the late fifth century B.C., the finale of Euripides's play IPHIGENIA IN AULIS.  

Nor is this just any painting, but rather a Roman copy of a lost Ancient Greek masterpiece, The Sacrifice of Iphigenia, by a late fifth Century B.C. master, Timanthes.  This painting in a middle-class Roman context is akin to us framing a poster of a world-famous painting bought at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In a world without photography, moreover, the Pompeiian painting cannot have been a direct replica of the Greek original.  Rather, it is a copy of a copy of copies, where each step in the chain of transmission is mediated through the talent and knowledge of the individual copyist working from copybooks. Very few of these artisans would have been able to work from the original. 

And so we have here an echo of a lost Ancient Greek work that is also known to us through descriptions in Cicero and Quintilian.  Nonetheless, this Roman painting of a Greek painting probably does preserve for us something of the composition and the palette of Timanthes' work. 

As to the quality of the original, this reflection of Rubens has something to tell us:

"Who amongst us, if he were to attempt in reality to represent a celebrated work of Apelles or Timanthus, such as Pliny describes them, but would produce something absurd, or perfectly foreign to the exalted greatness of the ancients? 

Each one, relying on his own powers, would produce some wretched, crude, unfermented stuff, instead of an exquisite old wine, uniting strength and mellowness, outraging those great spirits whom I endeavor reverently to follow, satisfied, however, to honor the marks of their footsteps, instead of supposing—I acknowledge it candidly—that I can ever attain to their eminence even in mere conception,"

How central the Greek original was to the European artistic imagination can be readily studied in books and in articles such as this one: '"The Sacrifice of Iphigenia" in French and German Art Criticism, 1755-1757', H. Fullenwider, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 52. Bd., H. 4 (1989), pp. 539-549.

We also stumble onto Timanthes’s masterpiece in Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema's charming (and riveting) painting, "A Collection Of Pictures At The Time Of Augustus", of 1867.  Here, while it clearly dominates the 19th century painter's composition, curiously, it does not hold the attention of the depicted Roman audience, where even the person closest to the painting is but absorbed by the ornament of its golden frame, not the painting itself. How much like museum-goers today, at the Metropolitan Museum, for instance, where the visitor is too often overwhelmed by a plethora of competing masterpieces accumulated over time.

You can watch an excerpt of one of Michael's discussing our painting context below: