o did from his desire to be
superior both to Lorenzo and to Donato, in proportion as architecture is
held to be more necessary for the practical needs of men than sculpture
and painting. After he had sold a little farm that he had at Settignano,
they departed from Florence and went to Rome, where, seeing the grandeur
of the buildings and the perfection of the fabrics of the temples,
Filippo would stand in a maze like a man out of his mind. And so, having
made arrangements for measuring the cornices and taking the ground-plans
of those buildings, he and Donato kept labouring continually, sparing
neither time nor expense. There was no place, either in Rome or in the
Campagna without, that they left unvisited, and nothing of the good that
they did not measure, if only they could find it. And since Filippo was
free from domestic cares, he gave himself over body and soul to his
studies, and took no thought for eating or sleeping, being intent on one
thing only--namely, architecture, which was now dead (I mean the good
ancient Orders, and not the barbarous German, which was much in use in
his time). And he had in his mind two vast conceptions, one being to
restore to light the good manner of architecture, since he believed that
if he could recover it he would leave behind no less a name for himself
than Cimabue and Giotto had done; and the other was to find a method, if
he could, of raising the Cupola of S. Maria del Fiore in Florence, the
difficulties of which were such that after the death of Arnolfo Lapi
there had been no one courageous enough to think of raising it without
vast expenditure for a wooden framework. Yet he did not impart this his
invention to Donato or to any living soul, nor did he rest in Rome till
he had considered all the difficulties connected with the Ritonda,
wondering how the vaulting was raised. He had noted and drawn all the
ancient vaults, and was for ever studying them; and if peradventure they
had found pieces of capitals, columns, cornices, and bases of buildings
buried underground, they would set to work and have them dug out, in
order to examine them thoroughly. Wherefore a rumour spread through
Rome, as they passed through the streets, going about carelessly
dressed, so that they were called the "treasure-seekers," people
believing that they were persons who studied geomancy in order to
discover treasure; and this was because they had one day found an
ancient earthenware vase full of medals. F