HLIPPO BRUNELIESCHI
while the motifs mentioned so far can be traced back to the Middle
Ages or Antiquity, the spatial expression created with their aid is
wholly new and has all the delicacy and serenity of the Early Renais-
sance. The nave is just twice as high as it is wide. Ground floor and
clerestory are of equal height. The aisles have square bays, again half
as wide as they are high. The nave consists of exactly four and a half
squares, and the odd half was intended to be disposed of in a special
way to be mentioned presently. "Walking through the church, one
may not at once consciously register all these proportions, but
they contribute all the same decisively to the effect of serene order
which the interior produces. It is difficult to-day to imagine the
^enthusiasm of the Early Renaissance for such simple mathematical
relations in space. One must remember in order to appreciate it that
at that very moment—about 1425—painters in Florence discovered
the laws of perspective. Just as they had no longer been satisfied with
an arbitrary presentation of the space inside their pictures, so archi-
tects were now anxious to find rational proportions for their build-
ings. The effort of the I5th century te master space is only compar-
able with that of our own age, .although that of the Renaissance
concerned an ideal world and ours a material. The invention of
printing towards the middle of the century proved a most powerful
conquest of space. The discovery of America towards its end pro-
duced results nearly as important. Both must be named with the
discovery of perspective as aspects of Western space enthusiasm,
an attitude utterly alien to Antiquity, and one to which attention
has already been drawn more than once in this book.
The feature of Sto. Spirito most important in this connection is
the ground plan of its eastern parts. For here Brunelleschi has
departed decisively from the normal composition of Romanesque
or Gothic churches. The way in which he made the transepts
exactly identical with the choir, ran an aisle round all three and
placed a dome over the crossing makes us feel, looking eastward, as
if we were in a centrally planned building, a type usual in Roman
architecture, both religious and secular, but very rare in mediaeval
Christian churches.
Even the west end was intended to be finished in a way stressing
- this centralising tendency at the expense of practical advantages.
Brunelleschi had originally meant to continue the aisle round the west
as round the east, north and south ends. He would then have had
to put in four instead of the customary three entrances, to comply
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