Lives of the Artists Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Lives of the Artists - Essay Example Specifically, I will discuss what distinguished Brunelleschi’s work from that of his predecessors. Before he expounds on the biography of Brunelleschi, Vasari provides his own evaluation of the great architect’s work. Vasari says that Brunelleschi had a truly lofty genius and credits him with building the most beautiful, the tallest and the most remarkable structure among those that have ever been built either in his time or in the times of antiquity. His role as a father of the Renaissance style of architecture is explained in the following way: â€Å"he gave a new form to architecture which had been going astray for hundreds of years† (Vasari 110). In Vasari’s opinion, before Brunelleschi, men had spent fortunes in vain attempting to construct desirable buildings. Their efforts resulted in having buildings devoid of any sense of order since they were constructed using bad methods. Those buildings lacked grace in a shameful way and displayed poor design and â€Å"the worst kind of decoration† along with weird inventions. Brunelleschi managed to create new forms on the basis of Classical Roman architecture which he combined with the achievements of Tuscan and late Gothic architecture. Unlike his predecessors, Brunelleschi introduced the concept of order to the art of construction. In his view, based on multiyear observations of the remains of Roman architecture, proportion was the ground for beautiful constructions. It allowed constructing buildings with clear space and mass, which were easily comprehended, contrary to the complexity of the Gothic form. Building symmetrical and proportional buildings became possible due to the introduction of the linear perspective by Brunelleschi. These geometrical calculations helped to erect buildings that followed mathematical order. The method of perspective, according to Vasari, was