The Day the Universe Changed - James Burke [38]
Pienza is only one example of the increasing involvement of the authorities in public projects. The contract for the doors of the Florence Baptistery was put up to competition, to be judged by a panel of thirty-four experts, some of whom came from outside the city. Guilds commissioned the statuary for the guild church of Or San Michele. One of the statues is Donatello’s St George, the first of an entirely new kind of sculpture, showing the hero as a human being, with human characteristics clearly marked. The Silk Workers’ Guild financed Brunelleschi’s first major work after the Dome, the Foundling Hospital, finished in 1424. Above all, patronage by the wealthy Medicis was at work everywhere. Cosimo de’ Medici paid for Michelozzo’s Palazzo and the Marciana, the first public library in Italy.
New town planning permitted towns to be custom-built. The Italian town of Palmanova was constructed in one piece as a fortress in 1593. The radial streets centring on the command post ran directly to the bastions, affording ease of movement for troops and munitions along the wall.
A portolan chart of 1374, produced by the great Catalan cartographers. Nothing is known south of Cape Bojador. Mariners’ interests are served by the criss-crossing wind lines and the detailed attention to coastal landmarks. Inland country is virtually unmapped.
Parallel with these developments ran a series of events that started where the original use of perspective had begun - with cartography. Once again, this was triggered by the growing Turkish threat. Two groups of people had paramount interest in solving the Turkish problem. The first was the Byzantine Emperor. After the failure of Manuel II Palaeologos to raise money and aid for the defence of Constantinople, his grandson John tried again. By this time the situation was much more serious.
John offered to heal the breach between his church and the Roman Papacy. He agreed to send delegates to a council to discuss some form of ecumenical solution to the schism between East and West. The Roman Pope, Eugenius IV, was in a strong position to dictate terms, since the Turks, in Thessaloniki by 1430, were now almost on John’s doorstep.
The Council met first at Ferrara, and then, when Florence offered to pay all expenses, it moved there. On 6 July 1439 over five hundred delegates assembled at the church of S. Maria del Fiori to open the Council. Significantly for what was to follow, some of them came from Jerusalem, Rhodes, Trebizond, and remote parts of Africa and the East.
The other people with a vital interest in solving the Turkish problem were Toscanelli and the Portuguese King. Toscanelli’s family had been traders in spices for several generations and were concerned that if, as seemed likely, the Turks cut off the route to the East by occupying Constantinople, either supplies would stop coming or the Turks would charge exorbitantly for being the middle-men. This would have the effect of destroying the market. The King of Portugal was also interested in the spice trade. His country had been trying for decades to find alternative routes to the Spice Islands, off the Malay peninsula. As early as 1415 they had begun exploring the west coast of Africa, and had already colonised the Canaries, the Azores and Madeira. In 1419 Prince Henry, known as ‘the Navigator’, set up a school of navigation at or near Sagres, Cape St Vincent, the westernmost point of Europe. As a good Christian he wanted to carry the Church’s message to the African natives and hoped to find the legendary Christian ruler of central Africa, Prester John. He also wanted to feel out the territorial limits of Muslim power on the continent and to develop new trade routes, in particular with a view to finding another way to the Spice Islands of the East.
In 1425 Henry’s brother Dom Pedro had visited Florence to pick up maps and geographical material which he had ordered and also, he hoped, to collect the considerable sum of money which the city owed the Portuguese. He had made contact with Toscanelli,