The unpublished face of Filippo Brunelleschi, the Renaissance genius who erected the dome of the cathedral of Florence, the largest and most revolutionary in the world, it was “hidden” in a noble villa in that stretch of Florentine countryside that intersects with nearby Empoli. Forged in terracotta, it had ended up among the furnishings of a clearing house. No one had even imagined that that statue from 1447 represented the divine architect. And above all that its author was Andrea di Lazzaro Cavalcanti, said the Buggiano (1412 – 1462), adopted son and only heir of Brunelleschi, who he had created it the day after his father’s death.
The discovery
It is an extraordinary discovery that was presented today, May 23rd by the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, the ancient institution that oversees the masterpieces of Piazza del Duomo in Florence, including the cathedral, Giotto’s bell tower and the Baptistery . The art historians Giancarlo Gentilini and Alfredo Bellandi discovered the truth about that finely shaped head. Brunelleschi’s son modeled it without the aid of a cast, shaping a compact block of clay. The sculpture (25.6 x 22.1 x 20.2 centimeters and weighing 7.1 kilos) is not only a work of art, but an exceptional historical document. Because, as scholars maintain, portraits of Brunelleschi are very rare. «It is a “true” portrait, considering that Brunelleschi was notoriously “small in person and features” (Vasari 1568), and the measurements of the face (perhaps slightly reduced by the usual ‘shrinkage’ of the clay) – explain the professors Giancarlo Gentilini and Alfredo Bellandi – are substantially comparable to those that can be seen in the plaster death mask and in the marble effigy, but compared to the facial cast the image, now devoid of the contraction of the rigor mortistakes on more harmonious proportions, the face can almost be inscribed in a sphere”.
The particularity
But the sculpture also has another peculiar extraordinary nature. It remained intact for six centuries, almost a miracle for a terracotta passed anonymously from hand to hand until the last clearance. The Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore acquired it for 300 thousand euros and, after a restoration, it will be the protagonist of an exhibition. Finally, it will fully enter the collection of the splendid museum of the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo.
The life of Brunelleschi’s adopted son and only heir is also interesting. Andrea di Lazzaro Cavalcanti was the son of Brunelleschi’s brother’s sharecropper. Filippo adopted him when the child was seven years old. He made him study and above all introduced him to the art of sculpture on the construction sites of the churches of Florence. He soon became an excellent sculptor and his adoptive father’s first disciple.
