Filippo Brunelleschi

Filippo Brunelleschi built the dome of Florence cathedral, a structure nobody knew how to build when the cathedral was designed, and rediscovered linear perspective. Born in Florence in 1377 to a notary, he trained as a goldsmith and was registered as a master in 1398. In 1401 he competed for the commission to make bronze doors for the Baptistery and lost, or tied, with Lorenzo Ghiberti. He left for Rome with his friend Donatello and spent years measuring Roman ruins, which nobody had done systematically, studying how the ancients had handled vaults and proportion. Around 1413 he demonstrated linear perspective with a painted panel of the Baptistery, viewed through a peephole in its back against a mirror so that the painting could be compared directly with the building. The demonstration gave painters a geometric method for constructing depth, and Alberti codified it in 1435. The dome was the great problem. The cathedral had been left with an octagonal opening 42 metres across, too wide for the centring — the wooden framework — that arch construction normally required, and there was not enough timber in Tuscany for it. Brunelleschi won the commission in 1418 with a proposal to build without centring at all. His solution used two shells with a structural frame between them, a herringbone brick pattern that let each course lock itself in place as it was laid, and stone and iron chains encircling the structure to contain the outward thrust. He also designed the hoists and an ox-driven reversible gear to lift material hundreds of feet. It was consecrated in 1436 and remains the largest masonry dome ever built. He also designed the Ospedale degli Innocenti, San Lorenzo and the Pazzi Chapel. He died in 1446.

MyHistorian
A causal knowledge graph of history