Brunelleschis Dome (26 page)

1
M. E. Mallett,
Florentine Galleys of the Fifteenth Century
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), 16.

2
See Maximilian Frumkin,“Early History of Patents for Invention,”
Transactions of the Newcomen Society
26 (1947-49.): 48.

3
Prager and Scaglia,
Brunelleschi: Studies of His Technology and Inventions
, 111.

4
Ibid.

1
Prager and Scaglia,
Brunelleschi: Studies of His Technology and Inventions
, 131.

2
Ibid.

1
Goldthwaite,
The Building of Renaissance Florence
, 257.

2
See Zervas, “Filippo Brunelleschi’s Political Career,” 630-39.

3
Battisti,
Filippo Brunelleschi
, 42.

1
Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales
, 3 vols., trans. Richard M. Gummere (London: Heinemann, 1920), 2:363.

2
See Smith,
Architecture in the Culture of Early Humanism
, 30; and Martin Kemp, “From
Mimesis
to
Fantasia
: The Quattrocento Vocabulary of Creation, Inspiration and Genius in the Visual Arts,”
Viator
8 (1977): 394.

3
For a discussion, see Kemp,“From
Mimesis
to
Fantasia
,” 347-98.

1
The details of this system of lighting are not recorded, unfortunately, and so remain a matter of conjecture. But alchemists of the day — inspired by stories from the Roman histories about how a perpetual fire was kindled in the Temple of Vesta in Rome — were interested in flames that would burn continuously. Accordingly, they conducted experiments in which, for example, salt was added to lamp oil to make it burn more slowly. Other experiments — equally unsuccessful — saw wicks made from “incombustible” stones. For a discussion of these experiments, see Giovanni Battista della Porta,
Natural Magick in XX Books
(London, 1658), 303.

2
Paolo Galluzzi,
Mechanical Marvels: Invention in the Age of Leonardo
(Florence: Giunti, 1996), 20.

3
The fresco was begun by Vasari in 1572 and completed after his death by Federico Zuccaro (1540-1609). It was restored between 1981 and 1994.

4
Mainstone,“Brunelleschi’s Dome of S. Maria del Fiore,” 120-21. In 1743 three iron rings needed to be installed in St. Peter’s in order to prevent the cracked dome from collapsing altogether. The incorporation of these chains is a landmark in the history of structural engineering. Three French mathematicians — Boscovitch, le Seur, and Jacquier — calculated the horizontal thrust of the dome as well as the tensile strength of iron and the resistance of the drum walls. Their work represents the first time that statics and structural mechanics were successfully applied to such a problem. For discussions, see Hans Straub,
A History of Civil Engineering
, trans. E. Rockwell (London: L. Hill, 1952), 112-16; and Edoardo Benvenuto,
An Introduction to the History of Structural Mechanics
, 2 vols (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1991), 2:352.

Alberti, Leon Battista.
Ten Books on Architecture.
London: A.Tiranti, 1965.

Battisti, Eugenio.
Brunelleschi:The Complete Work.
London: Thames & Hudson, 1981.

Gaertner, Peter.
Brunelleschi.
Cologne: Könemann, 1998.

Galluzzi, Paolo. Mechanical Marvels: Invention in the Age of Leonardo. Florence: Giunti, 1996.

Ghiberti, Lorenzo.
The Commentaries
, trans. Julius von Schlosser. London: Courtauld Institute of Art, 1948-67.

Goldthwaite, Richard A.
The Building of Renaissance Florence: An Economic and Social History
. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980.

Mainstone, Rowland J.“Brunelleschi’s Dome.”
Architectural Review
(September 1977): 157-66.

—— . “Brunelleschi’s Dome of S. Maria del Fiore and Some Related Structures,”
Transactions of the Newcomen Society
42 (1969-70): 107-26.

—— .
Developments in Structural Form.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975.

Manetti, Antonio di Tucci.
The Life of Brunelleschi
, trans. Catherine Enggass. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1970.

Prager, Frank D.“Brunelleschi’s Clock?”
Physis
10 (1963): 203-16.

—— . “Brunelleschi’s Inventions and the Renewal of Roman Masonry Work.”
Osiris
9 (1950): 457-554.

Prager, Frank D. and Gustina Scaglia.
Brunelleschi: Studies of His Technology and Inventions
. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1970.

Saalman, Howard. Filippo Brunelleschi: The Cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore. London: A. Zwemmer, 1980.

Toker, Franklin K. B.“Florence Cathedral: The Design Stage,”
Art Bulletin
60 (1978): 214-30.

Vasari, Giorgio.
Lives of the Artists
. 2 vols. ed. and trans. George Bull. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1987.

*
The history of science is full of such codes. The English scientist and inventor Robert Hooke would keep secret his discovery of the law of elasticity by means of an anagram — CEIIINOSSSTUU — that, once unscrambled, read UT TENSIO SIC VIS (As the elongation, so the force). There were, naturally, pitfalls to this method of encryptment. Galileo used a cipher to announce to Johann Kepler his discovery of the rings of Saturn, an anagram that, once unscrambled, should have read, OBSERVO ALTISSIMUM PLANETAM TERGEMINIM (I have observed the most distant of planets to have a triple form). Kepler, however, translated it thus: SALVE UMBISTINEUM GEMINATUM MARTIA PROLES (Hail, twin companionship, children of Mars).

*
It was from these sorts of communications that, centuries later, the freemasons — a secret society having nothing to do with architecture — would develop their rituals. Many of their secret signs of recognition, for example, are borrowed from the system of words, signs, and touches that Hiram of Tyre, the master mason of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, was said to have used in order to communicate with the vast army of workers under his command.

*
Vitruvius describes the problem in an anecdote about an engineer named Callias who designed a model of a revolving crane that was to be set on the walls of Rhodes and used to capture enemy siege engines. The model itself functioned perfectly well, but the enlarged version did not, forcing the Rhodians to resort to the old-fashioned method of pouring rubbish and excrement over the heads of their besiegers. Nor were such difficulties in scaling up designs limited to ancient or medieval times. In the late 1980s the Pentagon encountered just this problem when it expanded one of its successful designs — the Trident intercontinental ballistic missile — only to discover that the end product, the Trident 2 missile, had the flaw of triggering its own self-destruct mechanism four seconds after leaving the water.

*
That Filippo read no Latin — or very little, at any rate — is known because of the fact that in 1436 Alberti translated
De Pictura
, his work on perspective, into Italian so that his master could read it.

*
Lorenzo’s work on the Baptistery door does not fully explain why Filippo should have surpassed him, for Filippo too was busy with other projects in the years when the dome was beginning to rise. His other commitments included the Ospedale degli Innocenti and the sacristy in San Lorenzo, both begun in 1419, as well as the gargantuan project of rebuilding San Lorenzo itself.

*
A less official method of detecting homosexuals was for mothers to rattle their sons’ coin bags: if the coins exclaimed,“fire, fire, fire,” the money was said to be the gift of a sodomite.

*
An even more prized relic had so far eluded the Florentines: the skull of St. John the Baptist. In 1411 the Commune had negotiated to purchase it from the Antipope John XXIII. The deal fell through, however, so some thirty years later the architect Filarete, acting as an agent for the Commune, tried to steal the skull and smuggle it to Florence. Caught in the act, he was sent to prison.

*
This farm was the source of one of Filippo’s jokes at Lorenzo’s expense. As the farm, called Lepriano, did not prove a successful investment, Lorenzo was forced to sell it. Years later Filippo was asked what he thought was the best piece of work Lorenzo had ever done, to which he replied: “Selling Lepriano.”

*
This concern for where the bones of such a distinguished citizen of Florence should be laid to rest prefigures how, over a century later, the corpse of Michelangelo would be smuggled back to Florence in a bale of wool after the great sculptor died in Rome. Michelangelo’s saintliness is stressed by his friend Vasari, who relates the “miracle” of how the corpse showed no signs of putrefaction twenty-five days after death, when it was finally buried in Santa Croce.

*
The words
genius
and
ingenious
are etymologically related to ones that describe the building of machines. In medieval Latin the word for machine was
ingenium
, and an
ingeniator
was someone who built them, generally for military purposes.

*
Ancient Romans had a dubious method of protecting their buildings from lightning: believing that eagles and sea-calves were never struck, they buried the corpses of these creatures within the walls in the hope of warding off disaster.