The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

by Stephen Greenblatt

FLORENCE AT THE dawn of the fifteenth century had few of the architectural features with which it is now graced, features that deliberately evoke on a grand scale the dream of the ancient past. Brunelleschi’s magnificent cupola on the Duomo, the city’s vast cathedral—the first large dome constructed since Roman antiquity and to this day the principal feature of the city’s skyline—did not yet exist, nor did his elegantly arched loggia of the Foundling Hospital or his other projects carefully constructed on principles derived from antiquity. The cathedral’s baptistery lacked the famous classicizing doors designed by Ghiberti, and the Church of S. Maria Novella was without Leon Battista Alberti’s harmonious, gracefully symmetrical facade. The architect Michelozzi had not designed the beautiful, austere buildings for the Convent of San Marco.