![]() ![]() ![]() The wars of Renaissance Italy also enter into the action, as do the superstitions of the era, making the ambitions of the Duke of Milan just one more factor in a project With the devices Brunelleschi invented to hoist 70 million pounds of stone, brick and mortar hundreds of feet in the air) and professional intrigue (most furiously expressed in his lifelong rivalry with Lorenzo Ghiberti,Ĭreator of the bronze doors of the nearby baptistery). As told by the British novelist Ross King, the story of ''Brunelleschi's Dome'' is a pleasing pastiche of engineering marvels (starting Then, after a last-ditch competition in the summer and fall of 1418, the puzzle was turned over to a cantankerous, resolutely secretive goldsmith and clockmaker named Filippo Brunelleschi, whose self-confidence was, luckilyįor the citizens of Florence, matched only by his brilliance. But for 50 years, a model of the new duomo had sat forbiddingly in the south aisle, waiting for someone to figure out just how such a structure could be built without collapsing. Rome, long recognized as the largest in the world. Than a century, Florence had been constructing a lavish cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore, according to a plan that included an enormous dome - a dome whose 143-foot 6-inch diameter would surpass that of the Pantheon in ![]() Ven in an age of faith, it was a proposition designed to test a man's confidence, not just in divine providence but in human ingenuity. ![]()
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