Brunelleschi and the Moment of the Renaissance

Marvin Trachtenberg is Edith Kitzmiller Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, where he taught Gothic and Renaissance architecture for over fifty years. His books include Building-in-Time: From Giotto to Alberti and Modern Oblivion (2010). He lives in Bellport, New York.

"In the concise and beautifully illustrated Brunelleschi and the Moment of the Renaissance, Trachtenberg sets forth what we actually know and understand about the architect’s work. Along the way Trachtenberg . . . illuminates such well known but cloudy questions as Brunelleschi’s relationship with the sculptor Donatello, putting to rest the pervasive myth that the two traveled together to Rome . . . While this book is nominally about a single architect’s career and accomplishments, readers will also learn a great deal about the wider Renaissance from this deft account, which wears its deep scholarship lightly." - Wall Street Journal: Holiday Gift Guide 2025"Marvin Trachtenberg takes us walking through everyday Renaissance Florence as he enters into dialogue with Brunelleschi’s design genius, capturing the drama of invention with the insights of an expert and the bravura of a master storyteller. Trachtenberg debunks myths crafted by the architect’s early biographers, as he opens our eyes to seeing the most famous of monuments in a whole new light. From the invention of a dome for the monumental cathedral to the crafting of a whole new architectural language, the Florentine Renaissance is in a very real sense born before our eyes in this scholarly page-turner." - Barry Bergdoll, Meyer Schapiro Professor of Art History, Columbia University"What more might be said about Brunelleschi after centuries of scholarship on him? Yet Trachtenberg offers a fresh, often surprising and challenging reading on a subject that seemed long exhausted. A lesson in asking unasked (and leading) questions and in looking hard at the works that yields a masterful artistic biography by one of the foremost scholars of Renaissance architecture." - Alina Payne, Alexander P. Misheff Professor of History of Art and Architecture, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies"In this assured book, we find the architect Brunelleschi (and his peers Lorenzo Ghiberti and Donatello) springing off the page . . . Trachtenberg builds on a lifetime of investigating Brunelleschi to deliver a lively appraisal." - Country Life"In this striking new book, Marvin Trachtenberg sets out to "demythologise" Brunelleschi . . . Trachtenberg succeeds in breaking down many of the myths that have blighted our understanding of Brunelleschi, and in offering a refreshingly new perspective on his career. Best of all, he makes it seem easy." - The Critic"An original account of an original mind. Beautifully illustrated . . . it is also impeccably researched . . . a fundamental reassessment of that social, financial and cultural rupture that was the Florentine and Italian Renaissance, derived from a lifelong examination of one figure’s mastery of human-centred religious creativity" - Booklaunch"[This book] present[s] a wider reading of the architect and his period, and accomplishes it beautifully . . . Trachtenberg’s monograph will surely prove to be an essential study on the topic both to the benefit of the general public and to the avail of scholarly research for years to come." - Sixteenth Century Journal

• Introduction1: Entering history sideways 2:: Building 'Brunelleschi's dome' 3: The moment of Renaissance architecture 4: Brunelleschi's architectural revolution 5: Finishing the Duomo Chronology References Further Reading AcknowledgementsPhoto AcknowledgementsIndex