How Brunelleschi Engineered Florence's Iconic Dome

"No one who trav­els to Flo­rence can help see­ing the dome of the Cathe­dral of Saint Mary of the Flower. That's true not just because of its sheer loom­ing phys­i­cal pres­ence over the rest of the city, but also because of its impor­tance as an achieve­ment in var­i­ous kinds of his­to­ry, from that of engi­neer­ing to archi­tec­ture to reli­gion. Its sto­ry is told by art his­to­ri­ans Beth Har­ris and Steven Zuck­er in their new Smarthis­to­ry video above, which begins in the year 1417."

"At the time, Zuck­er explains, Flo­rence had a "huge" prob­lem: the ground­work for its ambi­tious­ly large cathe­dral had been laid a cen­tu­ry before, but nobody knew how to build the dome for which its plans called. The assump­tion, says Har­ris, was that "by the time they had to build it, they would fig­ure out how to do it," a reflec­tion of both the more relaxed speed of con­struc­tion in the fif­teenth cen­tu­ry, as well as a pace of inno­va­tion."

"Such a struc­ture had­n't been built since the Pan­theon in antiq­ui­ty, the out­do­ing of which would, at least in the­o­ry, con­firm Florence's recep­tion of the torch of civ­i­liza­tion from Rome. But none of the tra­di­tion­al tech­niques could sup­port a dome of this size, atop so high a tow­er, dur­ing con­struc­tion. Sal­va­tion even­tu­al­ly came in the unpromis­ing form of Fil­ip­po Brunelleschi, an archi­tect, sculp­tor, and gold­smith with­out much of a résumé - but, cru­cial­ly, with a deep under­stand­ing of the Pan­theon."

Florence's cathedral dome dominates the city physically and symbolizes achievements in engineering, architecture, and religion. By 1417 the cathedral's groundwork had been laid a century earlier, but builders still lacked a method to construct the enormously large dome specified by the plans. Traditional techniques could not support a dome of that scale atop such a high tower during construction, and the only architectural precedent of comparable ambition dated to the Pantheon in antiquity. The fifteenth-century climate of relaxed construction pace and rapid innovation enabled a practical solution. Filippo Brunelleschi, an architect, sculptor, and goldsmith with deep knowledge of the Pantheon, provided the engineering innovations that made the dome possible.

Read at Open Culture