Status Updates From Brunelleschi's Dome

Lorenzo Ghiberti was keen on advice from others when designing his door panel, whereas Brunelleschi preferred to work in isolation.

Started reading, in preparation for this summer's vacation..

Started reading, in preparation for this summer's vacation:

Excellent little read on the building of Santa Maria del Fiore's dome. Amazingly researched with a great bibliography.

Interesting story both historically and architecturally.

My first Ross King, picked it upon a recommendation. Wonderful and fluid narration.

I love art history but this book is a bit boring. I am reading it even so but it might not be for everyone.

I want to go see it.

Just as interesting the 2nd time

Discs 3 & 4 give an error, so I'll return to it later.

loving this....as we prepare to visit Italy!

Apparently Boccaccio looked down upon Dante for marrying, as a wife distracts from study; it is related here that it is a custom in Florence and among high artistry that men even in their forties weren't yet married, and in general didn't expect geniuses to be handsome or comely, compensating in other manners.

Excellent read; however, as the original plans are so complicated, the lack of illustration included is limiting.

A contest to build a dome, interesting!

I enjoy the details of the life and times of the early 1400's.

Fun facts so far.

Enjoying this book.Fascinating technical detail.Brilliant architect.

Enjoyed the story on Paolo Toscanelli, mathematician and astronomer...Should be better known.

Prostitutes became a common sight in Florence, not least because the law required them to wear distinctive garb: gloves, high-heeled shoes, and a bell on the head.

Florence's churches were so crammed with tombs that during the fifteenth century one bishop voiced concerns about so many coursed defiling the House of God. HIs worries might also have been justified on the grounds of public health: in times of plague the houses nearest the churches were always the first to become infected.

Invention of various types of breathing apparatus and underwater masks, as well as inflatable bladders to raise and lower divers... these were used in 1446 when Alberti raised part of the hull of one of Caligula's ships from the bottom of Lake Nemi by using divers from Genoa.

The cupola.. built di giro in giro.. like Dante's Paradiso - the nine concentric circles also di giro in giro.

Fossils in the Renaissance... These petrified remains were objects of great curiosity: Alberti, in some fascination, describes having seen worms with hairy backs and a great number of feet "living" inside blocks of limestone.

The sandstone chains, so essential to the dome's success,a re also one of its secrets: it is impossible to know their composition for the simple reason that all of them are embedded to the masonry and therefore hidden from view.

That Filippo Brunelleschi read no Latin (or very little) is known because of the fact that in 1436 Alberti translated De Pictura

In 1423, a Sicilian adventurer named Giovanni Aurispa returned from Constantinople with a hoard of 238 manuscripts written in Greek... Among these treasures there were six lost plays by Aeschylus and seven by Sophocles, as well as works by Plutarch, Lucian, Strabo and Demosthenes.

Giovanni da Prato, an architect and humanist-philosopher, also formed part of the committee to supervise the building of the Dome. Prato was a lecturer on Dante at the university of Florence.

I am delighted when the various books I am reading cross each other. The Odyssey is mentioned (Book iV), with Telemachus removing the wooden wheels of his chariots at night so that they would not "creep" under the weight when they were not used... A problem with wooden structures that Brunelleschi had to take into account when thinking about his dome.

It discusses now Brunelleschi's 'discovery' of Perspective... and I found this...

http://smarthistory.khanacademy.org/B...

After the Black Death of 1348, the population of Rome sunk to 20,000.