Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/431

Rh merits, gave his attention to many professions, nor had any long time elapsed before he was considered by good judges to be an excellent architect. This he proved in various works which served for the decoration of houses, as, for example, for that of the house of Apollonio Lapi, his kinsman, at the corner of the Ciai, towards the Mercato Vecchio, where he laboured industriously all the time that the edifice was in course of erection; and he did the same thing at the tower and house of Petraja at Gastello, outside of Florence. In the palace of the Signoria also, Filippo distributed and arranged all the rooms occupied for the affairs of their office by the officials of the “Monte.” He therein constructed the windows and doors after the manner of the ancients, a thing not then very frequently done, architecture being in a very rude state in Tuscany.

There was at that time a statue of Santa Maria Maddalena to be executed in linden-wood, for the monks of Santo Spirito in Florence, and which was to be placed in one of their chapels; Filippo therefore, who had executed various small works in sculpture, being desirous of proving that he could succeed in the greater also, undertook to execute this statue, which, being completed and fixed in its place, was considered exceedingly beautiful; but in the subsequent conflagration of the church in 1471 it was burnt, with many other remarkable things. Filippo Brunelleschi gave considerable attention to the study of perspective, the rules of which were then very imperfectly understood, and often falsely interpreted; and in this he expended much time, until at length he discovered a perfectly correct method, that of taking the ground plan and sections by means of intersecting lines, a truly ingenious thing, and of great utility to the arts of design. In these inquiries Filippo found so much pleasure that he executed a drawing of the Piazza San Giovanni, wherein he pourtrayed