Filarete (c. 1400-1469)

Italian sculptor and architect. His masterpiece is the huge west door of St Peter's, Rome, cast in bronze, with enamelled and gilded decoration, about 1445. He is also remembered for his imaginative Tratto d'architettura/Treatise on Architecture, in which he develops plans for an ideal city named Sforzinda, after a prominent Milanese patron, Francesco Sforza.

Filarete was born in Florence. His nickname, derived from the Greek for ‘lover of virtue’ is typical of his desire to emulate the sculpture and architecture of antiquity.

His reduced version of a Roman statue of Marcus Aurelius is the earliest datable bronze statuette of the Renaissance and was presented in 1465 to Piero de' Medici. In the same year Filarete dedicated a copy of his Treatise on Architecture to Piero. Though widely read, his treatise was called ridiculous by Vasari. His principal surviving building is the hospital in Milan (Ospedale Maggiore,1456-65), where Lombard ornamented brickwork is combined with Renaissance forms derived from Brunelleschi.