Why was Brunelleschi the most complete and representative Rennaisance Artist?

The rise of Renaissance culture was predetermined by the assortment of disparate events and ideas surfacing during the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries . The most important concept to come out of all the innovative developments of the late fourteenth century was a renewed belief in the power and the majesty of the human being . An interest to individuality was a line of demarcation between the medieval period , where God was the center , and the epoch of Renaissance . The Renaissance is viewed as culmination of a general

rebirth of humanistic pursuits and a freeing of the artist from the restrictive dogma of the medieval Church . The status of art and the artist shifted significantly and our contemporary views on both are based very much on certain assumptions about the role of art in culture that were first developed during the Renaissance . It was in the Renaissance that the role of artist went from simple maker to that of creator (with individual genius ) - the appellation once reserved only to God . As a consequence , art took on even greater significance becoming not only an expression of its age and its means of production but also the very embodiment of genius . Filippo Brunelleschi fairly takes the place of such a genius . It was he , the Italian architect and sculptor who made revolutionary discoveries in architecture . This Florentine was the first and perhaps the most distinguished of the Renaissance architects . The best support for the veracity of this statement is Brunelleschi 's solution for the dome of Florence Cathedral , the building that made him most complete and representative Renaissance artist

The story of Brunelleschi 's success begins with his failure . In 1401 the competition for a pair of bronze doors for Baptistery was announced (Web Gallery of Art . This was to be one of the greatest competitions at the age , and it pitted two of Florence 's most talented young artists against each other : Filippo Brunelleschi and Lorenzo Ghiberti . The competition asked each artist to submit design of cast bronze around the subject of the sacrifice of Isaac . Brunelleschi lost the bid . But this perhaps initial loss was the Renaissance 's gain in that his later discoveries in architecture were to prove revolutionary . At the time of competition the Florence Cathedral was still unfinished . The problem was how to successfully bridge the enormous area of central tower without the use of flying buttresses , which were out of question because of their obvious incompatibility with the beautiful Romanesque marble exterior . Brunelleschi studied many ancient building projects in Rome such a Parthenon and suggested that a dome could in fact be built without the visual distraction created by buttressing . His answer was the implementation of classical vaulting techniques

Thus Brunelleschi 's innovative design provided further evidence of the new sensibility of Renaissance art . Brunelleschi understood that the principles of buttressing were useful in spreading the enormous weight of a dome over a greater expanse - thereby alleviating much of stress on...