RENAISSANCE AND MANNERISM C. I42O-C. I6OO

with the four bays of aisle along the inner side of the facade. It would
all have been exceedingly unusual—a sacrifice to aesthetic consistency
and the desire for centralisation. Indeed, during the very year in
which Sto. Spirito was begun, Brunelleschi had designed a com-
pletely central church, the first of the Renaissance. It is S. Maria degli

Angeli (figs. 43 and
44). After three
years, in 143 7, the
building was dis-
continued, and only
ground-floor walls
now remain. But
we can read the
plan and compare it
with reliable en-
gravings taken, it
seems, from lost
original drawings. S. Maria
degli Angeli was to be wholly
Roman in character and very
massive, the outcome no doubt
of a long stay of Brunelleschi
in Rome to which we can
with a good deal of certainty
assign the date 1433. The light,
slim columns of the other
buildings are here replaced by
pilasters attached to solid piers
at the eight corners of the
octagon. Eight chapels sur-
round it, each with niches
hollowed out into the thick-
ness of the walls. The dome also was to be of one piece in side and
out like a Roman dome and not on the Gothic principle of an
outer and a separate inner shell, still applied by Brunelleschi to
Florence Cathedral. Of Romanesque or Proto-Renaissance con-
nections there are here none left. What Roman building in
particular inspired Brunelleschi we can no longer say. There were
plenty of remains still in existence in the I5th century and drawn
by architects, which have now disappeared.

82

J . T

43 AND 44. FILIPPO BRUNELLESCHI: S.
MARIA DEGLI ANGELI, FLORENCE, BEGUN
1434.