Colour Sketch for 'The Death of Brunelleschi'

Colour Sketch for 'The Death of Brunelleschi', painted in oil on canvas in 1852 and held at Leighton House, is a preparatory work from Leighton's early career, when he was just 20 years old and working in Italy. Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446), the Florentine architect and engineer who designed the dome of Florence Cathedral, was a hero of the Renaissance revival that fascinated mid-Victorian culture. Leighton's choice of this subject at such an early age reflects his immersion in the intellectual and cultural world of Florence, where he spent extended periods during his formative training. Death-bed scenes of cultural heroes were a well-established genre in Victorian history painting, combining biographical drama with the opportunity to populate a composition with architectural and period detail.

As an early colour sketch from 1852, this work predates Leighton's mature style by two decades and shows a young painter working within the conventions of mid-Victorian history painting rather than the distinctive approach he would develop. The exploratory sketch format reveals the compositional thinking underlying a more ambitious planned composition. Figure grouping around the dying man, architectural setting, and tonal distribution are the primary problems being worked out.