ancient cities

mathematical beauty, based on the human eye and
classical body measure within an ideal rational
grid space. Taking the imagined linear geometry
of light, eye, and optics as primary, Brunelleschi
represented (and redefined) the two foundational
monuments and spaces of medieval Florence—the
eleventh-century Romanesque Baptistery of
Florence and the late-thirteenth-to-fourteenthcentury
Piazza Signoria, Christian religious and
political centers—that framed the
ancient grid center while projecting
a new paradigm of Renaissance to
early modern civic space. This was a
Renaissance refoundation of classical
city, ancient urban life, ideal
“new town” optical grid space—a
refoundation of Florentia (city of
flowers, Venus-Flora), based on
the humanist eye and moral civic
character. It took a humanist to
imagine, but an artist to see and to
make, the “Renaissance city.”
From the portal of the Duomo
of Santa Maria del Fiore (Virgin
Mary of the Flower), across the
Paradiso, the traditional (eschatological)
space between Baptistery
and Cathedral, Brunelleschi refigured
the Baptistery in Renaissance
one-point perspective, setting the
classical domed polychrome marble
building block (Christianrecreation
of the Pantheon in Rome)
in a centralized grid space, a civic
theater, seen from a single focal
point on a two-dimensional, illusionistic
salvational plane. The
ancient Roman grid of three dimensions
became the Renaissance onepoint
(not converging, but focal)
perspective, framed window view
of two dimensions. This was
fundamentally different from earlier
transcendent unitary to multiple
human viewpoint medieval
civic views, such as Ambrogio
Lorenzetti’s “Allegory of Good
Government,” seen from the perspective
(according to Jack
Greenstein) of the central reclining
Renaissance City
655
The Duomo Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence. The dome was created by Brunelleschi
and built in the early fifteenth century.
Source: Sarah Quesenberry.
classical allegorical figure of Peace (Pax) on the
end dais wall of Aristotelian Justice in the Council
Chamber of the Nine (thus Sala della Pace) in
the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena (1338) or a dense
medieval bird’s-eye view of the Florentine
Baptistery in a fresco fragment from the Loggia
del Bigallo of 1342. This was a singular view
from a human vantage point, an altogether different
kind of representation.