Brunelleschi, the portrait found after almost 600 years on display in Florence

The heart of the exhibition is a fifteenth-century terracotta head depicting Brunelleschi, found in 2022 among the furnishings of a historic residence in the Florentine area. The work, of small dimensions – 25.6 centimeters high, 22.1 wide and 20.2 deep – was identified in 2023 by art historians Alfredo Bellandi and Giancarlo Gentilini as the model of the portrait bust created by Andrea di Lazzaro Cavalcanti, known as Buggiano (1412-1462), for the architect’s commemorative monument preserved in the Florence Cathedral.

Brunelleschi’s adopted son and heir, Buggiano would have created the bust around 1447, shortly after the master’s death in 1446. The terracotta sculpture, purchased by the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore in 2024 and subsequently restored, is presented to the public for the first time. A testimony of particular historical and artistic value, also due to the rarity of the portraits of the great architect created during his life or immediately after his death.

The exhibition itinerary, curated by Alfredo Bellandi, Giancarlo Gentilini and Antonio Natali, develops in several rooms and reconstructs the cultural and artistic context in which the figure of Brunelleschi matured, relating his story to that of other protagonists of the Florentine Renaissance, from Ghiberti to Donatello.

The first room is dedicated to the fortune of Brunelleschi’s image and to the celebration of illustrious men of the past, particularly widespread in the nineteenth century. Among the works on display, Brunelleschi takes the test of the egg (1845) by Giuseppe Fattori stands out, coming from the Gallery of Modern Art of Palazzo Pitti, which depicts the famous episode of the challenge launched by the architect to the other designers involved in the construction of the dome of the Duomo. Alongside Fattori’s painting, exhibited for the first time in Italy, is The Death of Brunelleschi (1852) by Frederic Leighton, on loan from the Leighton House Museum in London. The work reflects the nineteenth-century gaze on the great architect and on the fascination exerted by Renaissance Florence.

In the second room the protagonist returns to being the face of Filippo. The terracotta head is displayed next to the funeral mask from 1446, also created by Buggiano. The comparison between the two works allows us to illustrate the procedure followed in the Florentine workshops: the physiognomic features of the deceased were obtained from the funerary mask, subsequently transferred into the terracotta models and definitive sculptures. The third room delves into the role of terracotta models in fifteenth-century sculptural practice. Among the works present is San Gerolamo by Andrea del Verrocchio, a terracotta painted in imitation of bronze, dating back to around 1470 and coming from the Chigi Saracini Collection in Siena. The preparatory models represented a fundamental phase of the artistic work, because they allowed volumes, proportions and plays of light and shadow to be verified before the creation of the definitive work. The exhibition ends with a tribute to Buggiano and his production. Alongside the references to the two marble sinks created for the Sacristy of the Masses and the Sacristy of the Canons of the Cathedral, three of his Madonnas and Child will be on display. The sculptures will be compared with works of similar subject created by Michelozzo, Luca della Robbia and Andrea Guardi, offering an overview of the different artistic interpretations developed in fifteenth-century Florence.

«It is an extraordinary discovery that gives us the face of one of the greatest protagonists of the Renaissance and allows us to look at Filippo Brunelleschi with new eyes», declared the president of the Tuscany Region Eugenio Giani, underlining the value of the initiative for the valorization of the regional cultural heritage. «Almost six hundred years after its creation, this portrait returns to tell us a precious page of our history». For the president of the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, Luca Bagnoli, the discovery and acquisition of the sculpture represents “much more than the enrichment of a collection”: it is the recovery of a testimony directly linked to the history of the Cathedral and its most illustrious architect. An operation which, he observed, combines scientific research, conservation and valorisation, giving back to the community a fragment of its memory.

The regional councilor for culture Cristina Manetti highlighted the informative value of the exhibition, which allows you to get closer not only to the artist, but also to Brunelleschi the man, through a journey dedicated to the relationships between the artists, the techniques and creativity of the Florentine workshops. Particular attention has been paid to accessibility: entry to the exhibition will in fact be free. The curator Antonio Natali explained that the intention is not to present the portrait as an isolated work, but to insert it into the historical and cultural context that produced it. The objective, he underlined, is to overcome the image of Brunelleschi celebrated exclusively as a genius, to also delve into lesser-known aspects of his personality and his creative path. Bellandi and Gentilini defined the rediscovery of the terracotta head as an exceptional event for studies on early fifteenth-century Florentine sculpture. The sculpture, modeled by Buggiano after the death of his adoptive father, constitutes, according to the two scholars, a testimony of extraordinary historical and identity value, capable of handing down the true features of one of the protagonists of the Renaissance season.