Filippo Brunelleschi’s perfect cupola on the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore (Duomo) in central Florence. The cupola was added to the medieval duomo after Burnelleschi won the competition to design it in 1418. For nearly fifty years before that, a hole in the roof let in rain and baking sunshine.
There was already a brick model of a proposed dome for the people to see – in a side-aisle of the cathedral. It had been produced in 1296 by Arnolfo di Cambio. This design was held sacrosanct by the Florentines, and called for an octagonal dome higher and wider than any that had ever been built, with no external buttresses to keep it from spreading and falling under its own weight.
Brunelleschi was a goldsmith whose expertise since his apprenticeship as a boy was well-recognised. His interests expanded far beyond the traditional scales of the goldsmith, and he had visited Rome, making a close personal study of the archticture there, recording their secrets in cipher.
Despite no formal training in architecture, Brunellesci won a contest to design and build the dome. As well as technical skills, he also possessed a lot of political skills, which helped him negotiate a number of intrigues, not least of which a general feeling that such a massive project was impossible.
“Even more so since the construction masters were already worrying about the difficulty to have to build a vault that wide and so high: seeing its height and width, its weight, its buttressing and supports, arches, and other armatures, which all had to be raised from the ground, it looked in such a fashion that not only the effort seemed awful, but its realization properly impossible.”
Antonio Tuccio Manetti
The way that Brunellesci went about the project is fascinating, but too long to go into here. For more information, start with these two online resources:
Brunelleschi’s Dome (National Geographic)
The Secrets of the Florentine Dome Karel Vereycken/Schiller Institute
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