Filippo Brunelleschi

In December 1826 the cathedral works office of Florence ordered two seated statues for the niches of the Palazzo dei Canonici, the canons' residence just built along the south side of the cathedral. One of them was to be Filippo Brunelleschi, the architect who raised its dome in the 15th century. This plaster is Pampaloni's model for that figure.

For the face he went into the cathedral itself. On Brunelleschi's tomb there is a marble portrait made around 1446 by Buggiano, his pupil and adopted son, and the features here follow it. The seated pose came from Michelangelo's statues on the Medici tombs in San Lorenzo, and seated men of genius became a habit of 19th-century public sculpture after this pair.

In the marble on the square, set in place in June 1830, Brunelleschi lifts his head toward the dome he designed.