Brunelleschi's Dome Quotes

“Filippo, on the other hand, offered a simpler and more daring solution: he proposed to do away with the centering altogether. This was an astounding proposal. Even the smallest arches were built over wooden centering. How then would it be possible to span the enormous diameter called for in the 1367 model without any support, particularly when the bricks at the top of the vault would be inclined at 60-degree angles to the horizontal? So astonishing was the plan that many of Filippo’s contemporaries considered him a lunatic. And it has likewise confounded more recent commentators who are reluctant to believe that such a feat could actually have been possible.”
― Ross King, Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture

“The Black Death was a faithful visitor to Florence. It arrived, on average, once every ten years, always in the summer.”
― Ross King, Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture

“The most famous example of the latter was the so-called Ciompi uprising of 1378, when the city’s downtrodden cloth workers revolted against their masters and, amid mass disturbances, set fire to the palaces of the aristocratic families and temporarily seized control of the Republic.”
― Ross King, Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture

“Cicero claimed that architecture was a manual art on the same level as farming, tailoring, and metalworking,”
― Ross King, Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture

“and a bronze statue of St. John the Baptist for the Guild of Cloth Merchants. Completed in 1414 and installed in a niche at Orsanmichele, this statue, at almost nine feet tall, was the largest work in bronze ever cast in Florence—a testament to Lorenzo’s ambition and skill.”
― Ross King, Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture

“The panel was then ready for demonstration. Standing six feet inside the doorway of Santa Maria del Fiore—on the exact spot, in other words, where Filippo had executed the panel—the observer was to turn the painted side of the panel away from himself and peer through the small aperture. In his other hand he was to hold a mirror, the reflection of which, when the glass was held at arm’s length, showed (in reverse) the painted image of the Baptistery and the Piazza San Giovanni. So lifelike was this reflection that the observer was unable to tell whether the peephole revealed the actual scene that should have been before him—the “real scene” lying beyond the panel—or only a perfect illusion of that reality.”
― Ross King, Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture

“This prejudice against the “dishonesty” of perspective was adopted in Christian art, with the result that naturalistic space was renounced throughout the Middle Ages. Only in the first decades of the fourteenth century did the ancient methods of perspective reappear when Giotto began using chiaroscuro—a treatment of light and shade—to create realistic three-dimensional effects.”
― Ross King, Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture

“By 1418 Filippo was probably best known for an experiment in linear perspective. This experiment must have been conducted in or before 1413, when Domenico da Prato refers to him as “the perspective expert, ingenious man, Filippo di Ser Brunellesco, remarkable for skill and fame.” It was one of the first of Filippo’s many innovations and a landmark in the history of painting.”
― Ross King, Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture

“Yet Hadrian’s architects were not entirely successful, for a series of cracks are visible along the inside of the dome, running like lightning strokes down the ceiling to the springing line, the point where the dome begins to curve inward. These fractures are the result of the hoop stress that causes the dome to spread at its haunches, stretching the fabric horizontally around the circumference. Filippo could have seen a similar pattern of radial cracks around the base of the semidome in the Baths of Trajan, and indeed such cracks have been an all too common feature of masonry domes. Containment of this horizontal stress—one that it appears not even a concrete wall 23 feet thick could neutralize—was therefore of paramount importance in constructing a stable cupola. For all their ingenuity, not even the Romans, it seemed, could provide the solution to the challenge laid down by Neri di Fioravanti and his committee.”
― Ross King, Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture

“Five thousand tons of concrete were poured in horizontal layers on to wooden formwork, but at the top of the dome lightweight aggregates such as pumice and, more inventive still, empty amphorae (clay bottles used for shipping olive oil) were added to the concrete in place of stone in order to reduce the load. The inside of the dome was also coffered, which not only lightened the load still further but also added a decorative feature that has since been extensively imitated.”
― Ross King, Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture

“The stones in a dome, however, are not only crushed from above but also thrust outward by the pull energy known as “hoop stress,” in the same way as the rubber of an inflated balloon will bulge outward if one compresses it from above. The problem for architects is that stone and brick do not respond nearly so well to this lateral thrust as they do to compression.”
― Ross King, Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture

“Unlike the octagonal cupola in the Domus Aurea, the dome of the Pantheon is colossal, spanning 142 feet internally and rising to a height of 143 feet. Almost thirteen centuries after its construction it was still the largest dome ever built, and it had escaped plunder because it was now converted into a church, Santa Maria Rotonda. The modern Romans and pilgrims alike were amazed by the immense dome. With no visible signs of support, it seemed to defy the laws of nature. They called it the “house of devils,” attributing its construction not to the skilled engineers of the ancient world but rather to the sinister forces of demons.”
― Ross King, Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture

“Its most interesting architectural feature, however, is an octagonal room in the east wing that is roofed by a dome whose span is some 35 feet across.”
― Ross King, Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture

“After large parts of the city were burned in the fire of A.D. 64, Nero had established regulations (much like those adopted after the Great Fire of London in 1666) that widened the streets, controlled the water supply, and—most vital from an architectural perspective—restricted the use of inflammable building materials. The Romans therefore started to use concrete, a new invention, in their buildings.”
― Ross King, Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture

“But the knowledge that Filippo sought to uncover was unique. In calculating the proportions of columns and pediments he determined the measurements specific to the three architectural orders (Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian) that had been invented by the Greeks and then imitated and refined by the Romans. These orders were governed by precise mathematical ratios, a series of proportional rules that regulated aesthetic effect. The height of a Corinthian entablature, for example, is a quarter of the height of the columns on which it stands, while the height of each column is ten times its diameter, and so forth. Numerous examples of these three orders existed in Rome in the early 1400s. The columns in the Baths of Diocletian are Doric, for instance, while those at the Temple of Fortuna Virilis feature the Ionic, and the portico of the Pantheon the Corinthian. The Colosseum makes use of all three: Doric on the lowest level, Ionic on the second, and Corinthian at the top.”
― Ross King, Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture

“Manetti claims he was surveying the antiquities of Rome, measuring their heights and proportions. He fails to record what method Filippo used, but he could have determined the height of columns or buildings with an upright rod. This method would have been familiar to him from Leonardo Fibonacci’s Practica geometriae (1220), a work that was studied in the schools of Florence. Or he could have employed a quadrant or, even more simply, a mirror, whose use for mensuration Fibonacci likewise describes.”
― Ross King, Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture

“Or one could see the broken arches of aqueducts such as the Acqua Claudia. At 43 miles long, and with arches 100 feet in height, this structure was a testament not only to the fresh drinking water enjoyed by the ancient Romans (in comparison with their descendants, who took their water from the tainted, foul-smelling Tiber) but also to their remarkable engineering skills. Some modern-day Romans were even ignorant of its purpose, believing it to have been used to import olive oil from Naples.”
― Ross King, Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture

“The high road from the south, the Via Appia, expertly paved with basalt blocks fitted together without mortar, was an architectural marvel in itself, cutting straight as an arrow through mountains, marshes, and valleys. Of still more interest were the 300,000 sepulchers that still lined the road for miles, the products of an ancient law that had prevented anyone except the vestal virgins and the emperors from being buried within the walls of Rome.”
― Ross King, Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture

“million people had dwelled in Rome during the height of the Empire, but now the city’s population was less than that of Florence. The Black Death of 1348 had reduced numbers to 20,000, from which, over the next fifty years, they rose only slightly. Rome had shrunk into a tiny area inside its ancient walls, retreating from the seven hills to huddle among a few streets on the bank of the Tiber across from St.”
― Ross King, Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture

“Many experts considered its erection an impossible feat.”
― Ross King, Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture

“On August 19, 1418, a competition was announced in Florence, where the city's magnificent new cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore, had been under construction for more than a century”
― Ross King, Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture

“Buttresses were one of the prime structural features of Gothic architecture: by accommodating the thrust of the vaults transferred to them from strategic points, they allowed for walls pierced by a multitude of windows to rise to spectacular heights, filling the church with heavenly light—the aspiration of all Gothic builders.”
― Ross King, Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture