Good Book: Brunelleschi’s Dome, by Ross King

Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture

The subhead on Brunelleschi’s Dome, by Ross King, is “How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture”, which suited me fine, since I like books on architecture. But it's misleading. Although this book is about architecture, it is also about life and politics and scandals and innovation and ingenuity and legislation and monopolies and class and warfare of Florence of the 1400s.

Think David McCullough type history books. It’s not quite the same, Mr. King having his own style, but it’s similar. You get the big, broad picture, with context.

Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) won a design contest for a dome for Santa Maria del Fiore, a cathedral already under construction for more than a century. The dome was to be, and reportedly still is, the largest dome in the world, at 143 feet in diameter.

The plan was one thing. Building it was impossible using known methods. So:

He engineered the perfect placement of brick and stone, built ingenious hoists and cranes…to carry an estimated seventy million pounds hundreds of feet in the air, and designed the workers’ platforms and routines so carefully that only one man died during the construction – all the while defying those who said the dome would surely collapse.

This drama was played out amid plagues, wars, political feuds…

This is not to mention private feuds. I love how it was thought useful to trade caustic sonnets in those days.

And, just to make it more interesting, Brunelleschi wasn’t even in the building trade beforehand. He was a goldsmith and clock maker, age 41. He would spend 28 years on the dome project.

This book is as lively as a good novel, with lots of history and science and technology, too.

Chapter headings: A More Beautiful and Honourable Temple, The Goldsmith of San Giovanni, The Treasure Hunters, An Ass and a Babbler, The Rivals, Men without Name or Family, Some Unheard-of Machine, The Chain of Stone, The Tale of the Fat Carpenter, The Pointed Fifth, Bricks and Mortar, Circle by Circle, The Monster of the Arno, Debacle at Lucca, From Bad to Worse, Consecration, The Lantern, Magni Ingenii Viri Philippi Brunelleschi, The Nest of Delights.

Brunelleschi’s Dome, by Ross King, c. 2000, published in trade paperback by Penguin, ISBN 0142000159, illustrated b/w, 194+ pages, including index.

For a website with photos and information on the dome in question, see here.