And now let us see who were the underlings employed by Brunellesco. Finding the workmen of the Florentine Lodge were disaffected, he got ten Lombards, and shut out all the Florentines, till they humbly came back, begging to be taken on again, which he did at a lower salary than before.
The Lombard element was still strong in the guild. A certain Maestro di legno, named Magister Antonio of Vercelli, invented a convenient mode of drawing up weights into the cupola. The workmen had a kitchen and eating-house up in the dome, so that they did not need to descend in the middle of the day. In fact the Opera made strict laws about this.
In 1436 another competition of models for the lantern was proclaimed, and again Brunellesco won the palm against Ghiberti and others. It seems that when the commission was given to Brunellesco, the Masonic Guild must have felt it infra dig. to make a non-member capo maestro of the dome. Consequently they matriculated him into the fraternity. But with his jealousy of the maestranze and determination to show that one need not be a Freemason to build a church, he ignored this membership and never paid his fees, on which the Masters of the laborerium sued him for debt, and he was imprisoned. This did not suit the City Patrons of the Opera, who were the all-powerful Arte della Lana, especially as Brunellesco's Arte della Seta was also on his side. A stormy meeting was held in the Opera on August 20, 1434, at which the civic party was too strong for the Maestri. It was decreed that Brunellesco should be liberated, and one of the Arte dei Maestri was imprisoned, on the plea of hindering public works![264]
After this triumph of independent architecture Brunellesco became in a manner architect in chief to the city. He built the pretty Loggie of the Foundling Hospital on Piazza della SS. Annunziata, and the Pazzi Chapel at Sta. Croce, both of which Luca della Robbia adorned with his beautiful blue and white reliefs. He erected the fine Palazzo Quaratesi on Piazza Ognissanti, and the remarkably grand church of Santo Spirito was after his death built from his designs.
Brunellesco's strike for independence appears to have given the death-blow to the great Masonic Guild which, as it became more unwieldy, had been slowly disintegrating. The local members in large cities like Siena and Florence, becoming too strong for the original Lombard element, had asserted their independence by forming other guilds of a local nature, in which even the ancient quartette of patron saints was forgotten. How long the lodge in Florence kept together after Brunellesco's defiance I do not know, though its educative influence certainly lingered on till Michael Angelo's time, he being as all-round an artist as any Magister of older days who could build a church and decorate it too.
The laborerium of the Florentine Opera must, however, have been closed by the time of Michael Angelo; for Lorenzo de' Medici had to supplement it by giving up his garden in the Via Larga as a school of sculpture, there being then no place where the art was taught. His teaching, however, was a heritage from the ancient guild, for old Bertoldo, scholar of Donatello, was the Master there, and the works of the Masonic Brotherhood for two centuries, together with the classic treasures collected by the Medici, were his models.
CHAPTER IV
THE MILAN LODGE
THE MILAN LODGE
All these marked * were engaged on Oct. 4, 1387, to work with Magister Simone. The second batch given below and marked † joined the Lodge on Oct. 9, five days after.