life, on the 16th of April, 1446,[1] after having laboured much in the performance of those works[2] by which he earned an honoured name on earth, and obtained a place of repose in heaven.[3] His death was deeply deplored by his country, which appreciated and esteemed him much more when dead than it had done while living. He was buried with most honourable and solemn obsequies in Santa Maria del Fiore, although his family sepulchre was in San Marco, beneath the pulpit and opposite the door, where may be found his escutcheon, bearing two fig-leaves with waves of green on a field of gold. His family belongs to the Ferrarese, and came from Ficaruolo, a castle on the Po,[4] and this is expressed by the leaves, which denote the place, and by waves which signify the river. The death of Filippo was mourned by large numbers of his brother artists, more especially by those who were poor, and whom he constantly aided and benefited. Thus living in so Christian-like a manner he left to the world the memory of his excellence, and of his extraor-
- ↑ Dal Migliore, and with him Kicha and Bottari, assign 1444 as the year of Brunellesco’s death, but erroneously, since Vasari’s date is in strict accordance with the memorials of the times. See Gaye, i, 144, note.
- ↑ The loggia of the hospital for convalescents, now the schools of St. Paul, on the Piazza di Santa Maria Novella, is attributed by some writers to Brunellesco, as is also the oratory of SS. Pietro e Paolo, called the Madonna di pie di Piazza in Pescia; but Gaye, Carteggio Inedito, is inclined to consider this last the work of Filippo’s disciple, Andrea di Lazzaro Cavalcanti, called II Buggiano.
- ↑ Another work not mentioned by the biographers of Brunellesco is an arch in the sacristy of the Canons, in the Duomo. A decree of the wardens, issued on the 15th October, 1436, makes mention of this work. See Moreni, Vita del Brunellesco, p. 284, note.
- ↑ Vasari took this notice, almost word for word, from the anonymous
author of the Vita del Brunellesco, p. 293. There is full confirmation of
its truth in the burial-registers of the convent of San Marco, where the
origin of the Brunelleschi family is recorded as here given by Vasari,
with the addition of the following words: —
“Sciendum est quod creditur hoc sepulcrurn fuisse patris illius magni architectori Philippi ser Brunelleschi, qui habet statuam in Ecclesia Cathedrali, oh testudinem mirabilem ipsius ab eo factam ec.”
So far the Florentine editors of 1846-9. Schorn remarks, that “the descent of the Brunelleschi from the ancient family of the Lapi, called in earlier times Aldobrandi, admits of no doubt; but of that family having originated in Ficaruolo, there is as little proof as there is of the assertion that the Lapi family was founded by the father of Arnolfo.” —German Translation of Vasari, vol. ii, p. 223.
