This article is more than 5 years old.

Filippo Brunelleschi: The Man, His Machines and His Dome-This exhibit, accompanied by a ThinkPad playing a video on The Medici, described Brunelleschi’s efforts to build a dome on top of a church in Florence. During this time, the knowledge on how to engineer such an undertaking was all but lost.

This exhibit began as a book recommendation by former Arts Reference Librarian, Rebecca Kranz. Rebecca said, “Craig, you ought to read Brunelleschi’s Dome by Ross King.” After I read this book, I was amazed at what this man did. The technology to build a dome was practically lost. The church that would support the dome had sat open to the rain for over 100 years because no one could figure out how to place a dome on top. Brunelleschi, a former goldsmith, spent time studying the Panthenon in Rome and developed a plan. Not only did he devise a way to place a dome on a roofless building (Santa Maria del Fiore), but he designed and built the cranes and hoists as well. I like to think that Brunelleschi scaled up his goldsmithing gears to design gears to raise his cranes and hoists. Brunelleschi also devised a unique method of laying the bricks on the dome’s inner shell that allowed him to build without any internal supports. His use of 2 parallel shells to make his dome reduced the overall weight of the dome. Think about it, Brunelleschi didn’t start building at ground level-he had to start at the top of the walls, hundreds of feet off the ground. This dome is beautiful, practical, and is symbolizes the Renaissance in Italy.