Brunelleschi'S Dome

855 Words4 Pages
Filippo Brunelleschi was a mastermind who greatly influenced the renaissance. He was a fat, short, ugly man, but despite his physical appearance he had a brilliant mind. It all started when Florence, a very prosperous city, was ashamed that nobody could find a successful way to structurally support the dome that was needed to finish the great cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore, that they had started to build. Long before the cathedral was going to be built, the cathedral’s committee, the Opera del Duomo, sent out a contest for anyone to design a cathedral. So Neri di Fioravanti’s design and model was chosen. The cathedral included a very large dome, larger than St. Peter’s Brasilica in the Vatican, but the dome was to be built with no buttresses or central support. As beautiful as the design for this cathedral was, no one knew how to construct the dome that Neri had in mind. Only the pantheon’s dome was built this way, yet no one knew exactly how it stood. So the Opera made another contest. This time contestants had to submit ideas on how to construct the dome in a way that would stand without central support. The winner would get 200 florins. So Filippo stepped up and took the challenge. He began by studying the architecture and design of many old mysterious Roman buildings. He designed the dome, the interior, and several machines to help lift tons of materials and marble, and even a boat to transport marble down the Arno River. After all what he did for the city of Florence and for the Cathedral, some believed that he influenced the renaissance greatly, but others think that he was the product of it. I believe that Filippo was a great influence for the renaissance. Since the renaissance was a period of European History that was a cultural rebirth, he brought many new ideas into the world. It basically means “rise out of the ashes, which had to do with Europe

More about Brunelleschi'S Dome

Open Document