45 • UPPER HALF I TEMPLE OF MINERVA MEDICA,

ROME, f. A,D. 250. LOWER HALF: MICHEL-

O22O*S ROTUNDA AT THE EAST END OF THE SS.

ANNUNZIATA, FLORENCE, BEGUN 1444.

THE FIRST CENTRAL PLANS OF THE RENAISSANCE
However, one more central
building, or rather part of a
building, was begun shortly
after S. Maria degli Angeli
and completed, and this is a
direct copy of an existing
Roman monument. Michel-
0220 (1396-1472) began in
1445 to add to the mediaeval
church of the SS. Annunziata
a round east end with eight
chapels or niches exactly as he
had seen it done in the so-called
temple of Minerva Medica
in Rome (fig. 45). So while in the early works of Brunelleschi we
cannot too much emphasise the independence of the new forms
from those of Roman antiquity, the discovery of how much could
be learned from Rome to satisfy topical aesthetic needs came as early
as the thirties and forties That it appears most clearly in centrally
planned buildings is eminently characteristic. For a central plan is
not an other-worldly, but a this-worldly conception. The prime
function of the mediaeval church had been to lead the faithful to
the altar. In a completely centralised building (fig. 44) no such
movement is possible. The building has its full effect only when it
is looked at from the one focal point. There the spectator must stand
and, by standing there, he becomes himself "the measure of all
things". Thus the religious meaning of the church is replaced by a
human one. Man is in the church no longer pressing forward to
reach a transcendental goal, but enjoying the beauty that surrounds
him and the glorious sensation of being the centre of this beauty.
No more telling symbol could have been conceived for the new
attitude of the humanists and their patrons to Man and religion.
Pico della Mirandola, one of the most interesting of the philosophers
round Lorenzo the Magnificent, delivered an address in 1486 on The
Dignity of Man. M^chiavelli, a little later, wrote his book The Prince
to glorify the power of Man's will, and set it as the prime moving
force against die powers of religion that had up to his time inter-
fered with practical thought. And again a little later Count Castig-
lione composed his Courtier to show his contemporaries their ideal
of universal man. The courtier, he says, should be agreeable in his
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