Early Life
Little is known about the early life of Brunelleschi, the only sources being Antonio Manetti and Giorgio Vasari. According to these sources, Filippo's father was Brunellesco di Lippo, a lawyer, and his mother was Giuliana Spini. Filippo was the middle of their three children. The young Filippo was given a literary and mathematical education intended to enable him to follow in the footsteps of his father, a civil servant. Being artistically inclined, however, Filippo enrolled in the Arte della Seta, the silk merchants' Guild, which also included goldsmiths, metalworkers, and bronze workers. He became a master goldsmith in 1398. It was thus not a coincidence that his first important building commission, the Ospedale degli Innocenti, came from the guild to which he belonged.
In 1401, Brunelleschi entered a competition to design a new set of bronze doors for the Florence Baptistery. Seven competitors each produced a gilded bronze panel, depicting the Sacrifice of Isaac. Brunelleschi's entry, which, with that of Lorenzo Ghiberti, is one of only two to have survived, made reference to the Greco-Roman Boy with Thorn, whilst Ghiberti used a naked torso in the Classical style for his figure of Isaac. In 1403, Ghiberti was announced the victor, largely because of his superior technical skill: his panel showed a more sophisticated knowledge of bronze-casting being cast as a single piece. Brunelleschi's panel, by contrast, consisted of several pieces bolted to the back plate. Ghiberti went on to complete a second set of bronze doors for the baptistery, whose beauty Michelangelo extolled a hundred years later, saying "surely these must be the "Gates of Paradise".
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