Brunelleschi’s floor design, in the form of
a Latin cross with three naves, resembles
that of San Lorenzo. Both churches be-
came emblematic of the classical propor-
tions and elegant style of Renaissance
church architecture.
Fascinated by problems of engineer-
ing, Brunelleschi also turned his attention
to the design of fortifications (for the city
of Pisa), aqueducts (near Assisi), and river-
boats for use on the shallow Arno.
Brunelleschi’s genius for design as well as
engineering allowed him to establish the
occupation of architect as an independent
profession, free of the medieval restric-
tions of builders’ and masons’ guilds. He
was honored at his death with burial in
Santa Maria del Fiore, still the most
prominent structure in Florence.
SEEALSO: architecture; Ghiberti, Lorenzo
Bruni, Leonardo ...............................
(1369–1444)
Scholar, historian, and leading citizen of
Florence, Leonardo Bruni was born in the
town of Arezzo. He studied law and the
classics, taking inspiration from the histo-
rians and orators of ancient Greece and
Rome. An ardent supporter of the Floren-
tine republic, in 1401 he praised the city
in aPanegyric to the City of Florence.In
1405 he attained the important post of
apostolic secretary to Pope Innocent VII.
He was elected as the chancellor of Flo-
rence in 1410 but resigned within a year
and returned to Rome as a papal secretary.
In 1415, after Pope John XXIII was
ousted from office, Bruni returned to Flo-
rence.
In the meantime, Bruni’s scholarship
was bringing to light the works of Plato,
Aristotle, Plutarch, and Demosthenes,
whom he translated from Greek into Latin,
making them accessible to many students
and scholars for the first time. Bruni wrote
popular biographies of the Italian poets
Petrarch and Dante, the Roman orator Ci-
cero and the Greek philosopher Aristotle.
He is best known forHistory of the Floren-
tine People, which was inspired by the
books of the Roman historian Livy. Writ-
inginLatin,hebeganthisworkin1415
and continued on it until his death nearly
thirty years later. Unlike the medieval
chroniclers, who relied on legends and
hearsay,History of the Florentine People
drew on primary sources and important
public and private documents.
In his works of history, Bruni was the
first scholar of the Renaissance to describe
a period of ignorance and superstition af-
ter the collapse of the western Roman Em-
pire, an age followed by his own more sen-
sible and enlightened times. (This gave rise
to the concept of the “Middle Ages,” a
phrase coined by Bruni’s contemporary
Flavio Biondo to describe the period in
Europe fromA.D. 500 to 1500 that has en-
dured to the present day.) Bruni also pio-
neered the movement of “humanism,” a
secular study of art and philosophy that
made no reference to faith and that lay
outside the strict boundaries of religious
doctrine. As a political leader he advocated
a streamlined and more democratic gov-
ernment for Florence; hisDe Militiasup-
ported the founding of a citizen army for
the republic to replace the rapacious and
unreliable mercenaries known as condot-
tieri. He was made an honorary citizen of
the city, exempt from taxation and other
forms of service, for penning theHistory
of the Florentine People, which the city gov-
ernment published in 1442. In 1427, he
again attained the post of chancellor,
which he held until his death in 1444.Bruni, Leonardo