Books - #? Brunelleschi's Dome by Ross King

It surely must be difficult to write a factual book about events occurring in Florence in the late 1300s and 1400s. While there is history to be read, there isn’t much.

Filippo Brunelleschi was the architect / builder for the dome of the Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence. He won the commission and invested over 25 years in the endeavor. He invented ox assisted equipment to raise hundreds of thousands of pounds of rock in a days work. He dared to study and reason the history of building and then invent new ways of construction. His mark was made with fierce secrecy of his ideas knowing that “copyright” was not yet an effective protection of ones’ ideas. He was doubted, later earned trust, made mistakes, paid for them, and agonized to do it all over again. He was arrogant. He earned respect, but not loyalty.

He was a successful man for his time, but it seems he lived and died in the same household most of his life. Contemporaries lived far beyond Filippo’s humble life style.

My favorite story had something to do with a man that Filippo knew. It seems he went to the man’s house, bolted the door when he knew the man was coming home. When the man tried to get in, Filippo mocked the man – using the man’s voice and told him to go away… the man was confused hearing his own voice… and left. It seems the jest included capturing the man and pretending he was another man. Family of the “other man” pretended that he was of their family. After being put in jail for a pretended crime, he was finally released. Then the “other man” confessed to a dream that he was the man Fillipo was fooling. YES, hard to follow… but the man actually came to believe that the spirits of the two men were switched for the night. While it is hard to say if any of it is true, it would stand to reason that an inventor might well create such an elaborate scheme. It is strange Hollywood has never used this story…
There is one other interesting story where Fillipo invented a boat that would transport marble and other heavy building materials. He won this commission, the boat was built and it was a total disaster from the start. The equivalent of 10 years wages for Fillipo was lost… AND he paid for it himself. It represented a third of all that he had. How many people would have been willing to do the same? Perhaps the times required that he had no choice, but regardless… he paid it, and continued to dedicate the remainder of his life to the chapel and the famous dome he designed and constructed.

Fillipo was commissioned decades after the chapel had been started; his job was to build the dome. While it is not the Astrodome, it was the greatest of his time, and considering the materials used and the tools & equipment available, it is still the best in the world. The width of the dome is over 140 feet; compare that to the U.S. Capitol which is only 95 feet.

And all this was from a time when disease could easily claim the lives of 80% of the population in a single season of the year. The book was dry reading, but only 160 pages. It is a quick read, I’d recommend it.