How Did Brunelleschi Build The Dome Of Florence

Bryan Adkins
Art History II
Dr. Futral
8 February, 2015
Brunelleschi’s Dome of Florence During the early Renaissance period there were many iconic artists some of which specialized in different aspects of art, such as, painters, sculptors, architects, and etc. These iconic artists played a special role in the Renaissance period of Europe. Renaissance meaning the cultural rebirth of Europe. It was during this time that new discoveries were brought about such as, technology, styles of art, new architectural designs, and many more. A special artist who contributed greatly to this was Filippo Brunelleschi. His greatest accomplishment would have to be the construction and creation of the Dome of Florence. Brunelleschi lived from 1377-1446 and

Filippo had been educated with the intention of following in his father's footsteps as a lawyer and he studied Mathematics and literature (“Brunelleschi…”)”. Brunelleschi was in a memorable competition with a fellow artist by the name of Lorenzo Ghiberti, the competition was to see who could construct a set bronze doors for the Florence Baptistery. Ghiberti was this competition giving Brunelleschi the inspiration and drive to construct the Dome of Florence. “In 1419 Filippo was given the task of completing the dome for the Cathedral of Florence. This work occupied a great deal of Brunelleschi's life and the challenge was enormous, no dome of that size had been built since antiquity (“Brunelleschi…”)”. Creating this dome was a huge feat for Brunelleschi to overcome devoting most of his time and really using his engineering and architectural skills to create the tools and strategy for building the

However, Brunelleschi was not discouraged by this, he still believed that his plan of building a dome inside of a dome would work which eventually did. “Brunelleschi's design contained two shells for the dome, an inner shell made of a lightweight material, and an outer shell of heavier wind-resistant materials. He developed ribs around the dome, he had big ribs which can be seen from outside the dome, but lying between the big ribs are two more ribs that are held in place by wood laying horizontally around the dome. By creating two domes, Brunelleschi solved the problem of weight during construction because workers could sit atop the inner shell to build the outer shell of the dome (Brown)”. Another great challenge that Brunelleschi was faced with was the brick laying of the dome many believed that he would not be able to lay the bricks down without them falling apart. “Brunelleschi accomplished this by creating a herringbone pattern with the bricks that redirected the weight of the bricks outward towards the dome’s support, instead of downwards to the floor (Brown)”. The dome looked very gothic which was good because it matched the gothic church around Florence. There are parts of the dome however that are more classical looking then gothic. “The Cathedral was completely covered by colored marbles like the earlier Baptistery, there is stained