Brunelleschi's Herringbone Technique Found in Earlier Florentine Chapel

Restoration of the Cappella Capponi in Florence's Church of Santa Felicita has revealed that Filippo Brunelleschi used his famous herringbone brick technique there before applying it to the Duomo's dome. The chapel, originally commissioned as the Cappella Barbadori in 1420, was built on a preexisting space. The restoration, funded by Friends of Florence and conducted from March 2017 to April 2018, uncovered that much of its ancient dome was constructed with the same self-supporting brick pattern that allowed the cathedral's dome to stand. This discovery challenges the long-held belief that the Duomo's dome was the first use of this technique in modern architecture. The chapel also houses Pontormo's Annunciation fresco and Deposition panel, both masterpieces of Mannerism, which underwent chemical and stratigraphic analyses to study pigments and binders, revealing possible underdrawings and pentimenti. The chapel passed to the Capponi family in 1525, and in 1526 Lodovico Capponi commissioned Pontormo for the pictorial decoration, completed in 1528.