Brunelleschis Dome (25 page)

On clear days it is even visible from as far away as Pistoia, fifteen miles to the west, where in the fifteenth century the citizens renamed one of their streets the Via dell’Apparenza “Street of the Appearance,” as if the dome were not simply brick, stone, and marble, the result of a remarkable feat of structural engineering, but instead a miraculous apparition, the handiwork of God or his angels that had materialized overnight in the Arno Valley like the fresco in the convent of Santissima Annunziata that the Florentines believed was painted by an angel. And there is indeed something miraculous about the sight of the dome, regardless of where it is viewed from, whether close up or far away. The fact that it was built by men — and built amid war and intrigue, with only a limited understanding of the forces of nature — only makes it more of a wonder.

1
See Franklin K. B.Toker, “Florence Cathedral: The Design Stage,”
Art Bulletin
60 (1978): pp. 226-24.

2
Although the precise details of his role in the design of the cupola are not known for certain, Neri is constantly identified in the documents as the leader of the committee: the 1367 project is defined as
facto per Nerium Fioravantis et alios magistros et pictore
s (done by Neri di Fioravanti and other masters and painters). Other members of the committee included Taddeo Gaddi, formerly one of Giotto’s assistants; Andrea Orcagna, a pupil of Andrea Pisano and the most preeminent artist in Florence following the death of Giotto; and Orcagna’s brother, Benci di Cione.

3
Much later the Spanish architect Antonio Gaudí would refer to the flying buttresses of Gothic cathedrals as unfortunate “crutches.” He sought to design structures that would channel the lateral thrusts to the ground more directly. See Jack Zunz,“Working on the Edge:The Engineer’s Dilemma,” in
Structural Engineering: History and Development
, ed. R. J.W. Milne (London: E. & F. N. Spon, 1997), 62.

4
The exact dating of the plan for the tambour is difficult to determine, as is its original designer. Giorgio Vasari, not always reliable, attributes its design to Brunelleschi: see
Lives of the Artists
, 2 vols, ed. and trans. George Bull (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1987), 1: 141.This argument is accepted in Carlo Guasti,
La cupola di Santa Maria del Fiore
(Florence, 1857), 189-90; and Frank D. Prager and Gustina Scaglia,
Brunelleschi: Studies of His Technology and Inventions
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1971), 18-22. Other scholars date the plans for the project much earlier, attributing them variously to Arnolfo di Cambio, Giovanni di Lapo Ghini, or Andrea Orcagna. See A. Nardini-Despotti-Mospignotti,
Filippo Brunelleschi e la cupola
(Florence, 1885), 97;E. von Stegmann and H. von Geymüller,
Die Architektur der Renaissance in der Toskana
(Munich, 1885-93), 38ff; and Howard Saalman,
Filippo Brunelleschi: The Cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore
(London: A. Zwemmer, 1980), 48.

5
The dome of San Vitale in Ravenna, built in the sixth century
A.D.
, consists of a double shell. Closer to home, the Baptistery of San Giovanni in Florence is technically a double dome in that it features an octagonal vault surmounted by a pyramidal wooden roof. It is usually assumed that the Baptistery is the prototype for the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore. After the cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore was built, it would become a standard feature of domes in Europe, including St. Peter’s in Rome. Sir Christopher Wren’s design for St. Paul’s in London would even call for three domes, one inside the other.

1
For Brunelleschi’s career as a clockmaker, see Frank D. Prager, “Brunelleschi’s
Clock?” Physis 10
(1963): 203-16.

2
A point made by Frederick Hartt in “Art and Freedom in Quattrocento Florence,” in
Essays in Memory of Karl Lehmann
, ed. Lucy Freeman Sandler (New York: Institute of Fine Arts, 1964), 124.

3
See Richard Krautheimer,
Lorenzo Ghiberti
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1956), 3.

1
For the classic statement of this connection, see Hans Baron,
The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and Republican Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1955).

2
This ordinance had commanded Florence’s merchants to employ the more cumbersome Roman numerals instead of Arabic ones, whose shapes had not yet been standardized, therefore giving rise, potentially, to confusion and error. Resistance to Arabic notation was common in Europe during the Middle Ages. See David M. Burton,
Burton’s History of Mathematics
(Dubuque, Iowa:William C. Brown, 1994), 255.

3
Filippo’s reputation as the revivalist of Roman architecture — a reputation established by Manetti and Vasari — has lately come under scrutiny from a Notes number of scholars who argue that his architectural vocabulary (pediments, semicircular arches, fluted pilasters, Corinthian capitals) could actually have been acquired much closer to home, and from buildings of a more recent date. See, for example, Howard Saalman,“Filippo Brunelleschi: Capital Studies,”
Art Bulletin 40
(1959): 115ff; Howard Burns, “Quattrocento Architecture and the Antique: Some Problems,” in
Classical Influences on European Culture,
ed. R.R. Bolgar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 269-87; and John
Onians, Bearers of Meaning:The Classical Orders in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and
the Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 130-36. Onians argues, for instance, that Filippo participated in a “Tuscan Renaissance” as opposed to a Roman one: Filippo saw his task “as essentially to purify and regularise the primitive Tuscan architecture which was best represented in the Baptistery” (136). Onians even dismisses Filippo’s visit to Rome as an invention of Manetti. But for evidence of this sojourn, see Diane Finiello Zervas,“Filippo Brunelleschi’s Political Career,”
Burlington
Magazine
121 (October 1979): 633. A case for Filippo’s study of Roman remains — particularly their structural details — is also made by Rowland Mainstone,“Brunelleschi’s Dome of S. Maria del Fiore and some Related Structures,”
Transactions of the Newcomen Society
42 (1969-70): 123; and Mainstone, “Brunelleschi’s Dome,” Architectural Review, September 1977, 164-66.

1
See Martin Kemp,“Science, Non-science and Nonsense: The Interpretation of Brunelleschi’s Perspective,”
Art History,
June 1978, 143-45; and Jehane R.Kuhn, “Measured Appearances: Documentation and Design in Early Perspective Drawing,”
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes
53 (1990): 114-32.

2
Mainstone,“Brunelleschi’s Dome,” 159.

3
See, for example, J. Durm, “Die Domkuppel in Florenz und die Kuppel der Peterskirche in Rom,”
Zeitschrift für Bauwesen
(Berlin, 1887), 353-74; Stegmann and Geymüller, Die Architektur der Renaissance, and Paolo Sanpaolesi,
La cupola di Santa Maria del Fiore
(Rome: Reale Istituto d’Archaologia e Storia dell’Arte, 1941).

1
It has been suggested that Lorenzo, like Filippo, proposed to vault the cupola without armature. See Paolo Sanpaolesi,“Il concorso del 1418-20 per la cupole Notes di S. Maria del Fiore,”
Rivista d’arte,
1936, 330. But no evidence supports this claim. See Krautheimer,
Lorenzo Ghiberti
, 254.

2
The Barbadori Chapel was endowed by Bartolomeo Barbadori, a wealthy wool merchant who died of the plague in 1400. His son Tommaso was serving the Opera del Duomo in 1418. The Ridolfi Chapel was endowed by Schiatta Ridolfi, one of the wool consuls in 1418.

3
Marvin Trachtenberg, review of
Filippo Brunelleschi
, by Howard Saalman,
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians
42 (1983): 292.

4
For the argument in favor of Filippo’s authorship, see Saalman,
Filippo Brunelleschi
, 77-79.

1
Sanpaolesi,
La cupola di Santa Maria del Fiore
, 21.

2
Vincent Cronin,
The Florentine Renaissance
(London: Collins, 1967), 96.

3
William Barclay Parsons,
Engineers and Engineering in the Renaissance
(Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1939), 589.

1
These dimensions have been calculated in Frank D. Prager, “Brunelleschi’s Inventions and the Renewal of Roman Masonry Work,”
Osiris
9 (1950): 517.

2
Ibid., 524.

3
Ibid., 517.

4
Prager and Scaglia, Brunelleschi: Studies of his Technology and Inventions, 80.

5
See Paul Lawrence Rose,
The Italian Renaissance of Mathematics: Studies in Humanists and Mathematicians from Petrarch to Galileo
(Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1975).

6
On the possible design of Filippo’s clock, see Prager, “Brunelleschi’s Clock?” 203-16.

1
Hugh Plommer, ed., Vitruvius and Later Roman Building Manuals (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 53.

2
John Fitchen notes that many Byzantine churches besides Santa Sophia incorporated wooden ties to reduce the impact of earthquakes. See
The Construction of Gothic Cathedrals: A Study of Medieval Vault Erection
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), 278.

3
Mainstone,“Brunelleschi’s Dome of S. Maria del Fiore,” 116.

1
The story is printed in Thomas Roscoe, ed.,
The Italian Novelists
, 4 vols. (London, 1827), 3:305-24.

1
The only source for this story — not related by either Manetti or Vasari — is Giovanni Battista Nelli’s account in
Brevi vite di artisti fiorentini
, published during the sixteenth century.

2
Maurice Dumas, ed.,
A History of Technology and Invention
(London: John Murray, 1980), 397.

3
Eugenio Battisti,
Brunelleschi: The Complete Work
, trans. Robert Erich Wolf (London: Thames & Hudson, 1981), 361. Several scholars have proposed a different method of curvature control, the so-called
gualandrino con tre corde
mentioned in the 1426 amendments to the cupola program. This procedure involves a complicated series of triangulations performed with three ropes stretched across the diameter of the cupola. For reconstructions, see Mainstone, “Brunelleschi’s Dome,” 164; and Saalman,
Filippo Brunelleschi
, 162-64. In fact, however, the
gualandrino
was not a system of curvature control but a safety harness worn by the masons: see Battisti,
Brunelleschi
, 361.

4
See Howard Saalman, “Giovanni di Gherardo da Prato’s Designs Concerning the Cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence,”
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians
18 (1950): 18.

1
For information on the brick-making industry in Florence, I am indebted to Richard A. Goldthwaite,
The Building of Renaissance Florence: An Economic and Social History
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), 171-172.

2
Saalman,
Filippo Brunelleschi
, 199.

3
Mainstone, “Brunelleschi’s Dome of Santa Maria del Fiore,” 141. Mainstone calculates that at this pace there would be “ample time for each course to become self-supporting before the next was added” (114-15).

4
Samuel Kline Cohn Jr.,
The Laboring Classes in Renaissance Florence
(New York: Academic Press, 1980), 205.

5
Vasari, Lives of the Artists, 1:156.

6
Mainstone,“Brunelleschi’s Dome of S. Maria del Fiore,” 113.

7
See Robert Field, Geometrical Patterns from Tiles and Brickwork (Diss, England: Tarquin, 1996), 14, 40; and Andrew Plumbridge and Wim Meulenkamp,
Brickwork: Architecture and Design
(London: Studio Vista, 1993), 146-47.

8
See Iris Origo, “The Domestic Enemy: The Eastern Slaves in Tuscany in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,”
Speculum:A Journal of Mediaeval Studies
30 (July 1995): 321-56.

1
See Christine Smith,
Architecture in the Culture of Early Humanism: Ethics, Aesthetics and Eloquence, 1400-1470
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 40-53.

2
This point is made in Smith, Architecture in the Culture of Early Humanism, 45.

3
Mainstone,“Brunelleschi’s Dome,” 163.

4
Ibid., 164.

5
See Karl Lehmann, “The Dome of Heaven,”
Art Bulletin
27 (1945), 1-27; and Abbas Daneshvari,
Medieval Tomb Towers of Iran: An Iconographical Study
(Lexington: Mazdâ Publishers, 1986), 14-16.