The Rivals

Great rivalries are like bad sororities: they're full of drama, impossible not to gawk at, and occasionally include prolonged fits of hair-pulling. So, when ranking the greatest rivalries of all-time, one would be well-advised to consider the Italian renaissance as sorority row.

Sure there was the rivalry between Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael that makes Angelina, Brad and Jennifer look like Three's Company, but what you might not know is about the rivalry touted as "the feud that sparked the renaissance." The feud was between two goldsmiths, the affable Lorenzo Ghiberti (pictured left) and the fiery Filippo Brunelleschi (other left).

Their rivalry would begin in 1401 with the competition for the now famous San Giovanni Baptistry doors (which we'll see while in Florence). Built as a peace offering to a vexed God following one of the worst outbreaks of Black Death, the bronze doors consist of twenty-eight panels and took 21 years and over 34,000 pounds of bronze to build. In the beginning, seven artists would enter the 1401 competition, but the final decision would come down to Ghiberti and Brunelleschi. Thirty-four judges voted on the two artists' sample reliefs and, to this day, no one is certain of their decision. Ghiberti informs us in his autobiography that he crushed Brunelleschi, winning "without a single dissenting vote." Brunelleschi's biographer asserts that it was a split-decision and the goldsmiths were commissioned to work together. However, Brunelleschi refused to be a team player and walked away from the project and Florence. He would never touch bronze again.

Now fast-forward seventeen years. It's August 19, 1418 and Florence's majestic new cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore, has been under construction for over a century. Since its inception, the big question has been how to construct the principal dome. A dome that, if constructed as designed, would be the highest and widest vault ever raised. The problem was that nobody in Florence, or anywhere else in Italy, knew how to make it work. So, with much of the cathedral already built and no excuses to be had, the Opera del Duomo (the committee in charge of construction) launched a competition to solve the greatest architectural mystery yet known to Florentines. The response would be tremendous. Carpenters, masons, cabinetmakers, and artists from all over Tuscany responded to the call. Yet, once again, only two would be left standing at the final bell.

Both artists would be chosen, but in this instance Brunelleschi played nice and accepted the committee's decision. His reasoning was twofold. First, he had invested too much time and ingenuity to walk away. Second, he knew that Ghiberti had the architectural experience of a bistecca fiorentina. Brunelleschi would prove this by engineering some of the greatest mechanical devices known to man in order to build the Duomo in revolutionary fashion, while Ghiberti stood in the shadows. Yet both men were being paid the same salary, 3 gold florins a month, a fact which most likely infuriated the combustible Brunelleschi. However, his opportunity to expose his rival would come shortly.

Brunelleschi had just won another competition, this time by developing a wooden chain that would aid in building the dome. Yet when the wood arrived to begin construction, he immediately fell ill, complaining of a side ache. Days passed without any progression on the dome. Finally he would return to the building site, his head and chest bandaged, looking as though he had one foot in the grave. With Brunelleschi looking like a corpse, the task of building the wooden chain fell to Ghiberti. Aside from his lack of architectural knowledge, one other detail would thwart Ghiberti in building the chain: Brunelleschi had not shared his design with any of his colleagues.

With work grinding to a halt, Ghiberti was forced to take over the reigns and do his best at making the wood chain work. With fears mounting over the state of Brunelleschi, Ghiberti put the men back to work on the complicated task. Doing the best he could, he managed to interconnect three beams along one wall, at which point Brunelleschi made a Lazarusesque recovery. He rose from his deathbed, quickly made his way to the cupola, and found energy enough to declare Ghiberti's work worthless. The beams would all need to be removed and replaced under proper supervision. Little surprise that a short time later Brunelleschi's salary was tripled, while Lorenzo's remained the same.

Thus, as sands in the hourglass, such was the relationship between these two Florentine heavyweights. In the end both would gain eternal recognition, Ghiberti for his gates and Brunelleschi for his dome--but not without a good deal of hair-pulling along the way.

Information taken from Brunelleschi's Dome, written by Ross King, published by Penguin Books: New York, 2000.