He writes in a lively fashion that makes the arcane clear - or, at least, relatively clear.
Yes, he goes into the details of the dome-building project and the many machines that Brunelleschi invented to deal with problems that arose and the particular architectural and engineering strategies that he devised and employed.Įven in this, though, King writes as a story-teller.
So why did no many people buy King’s book and turn it into a bestseller? Although profusely and beautifully illustrated, the book by the Fanellis is rough going for anyone who isn’t an architect or engineer. If so, they would have purchased instead a much more technical look at the history of the dome, Brunelleschi’s Cupola: Past and Present of an Architectural Masterpiece by Giovanni Fanelli and Michele Fanelli, published in 2004. In his unquestionable brilliance the writers of the Renaissance found their proof that modern man was as great as - and could in fact surpass - the ancients from whom they took their inspiration.īut the tens of thousands of people who bought this book, published in 2000, weren’t looking for a treatise on architecture or on the details of the innovative engineering that made the dome possible.
But Marsuppini’s epitaph refers to Filippo as possessing divino ingenio, “divine genius,” marking the first recorded instance of an architect or sculptor being said to have received divine inspiration for his work…. Largely through his looming reputation, the profession was transformed during the Renaissance from a mechanical into a liberal art, from an art that was viewed as “common and low” to one that could be regarded as a noble occupation at the heart of the cultural endeavor.Įven more, Brunelleschi’s feat gave new meaning to the word “genius.” King writes:īefore Filippo’s time the faculty of genius was never attributed to architects (or to sculptors and painters, either, for that matter). Okay, I recognize that - as Ross King writes in Brunelleschi’s Dome: The Story of the Great Cathedral in Florence - building the dome over the long-undomed Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral had become, by the early 15 th century, “the greatest architectural puzzle of the age.”Īnd I see that, in solving that puzzle, Filippo Brunelleschi not only fashioned a great work of art - the dome remains the tallest and widest ever created without modern materials - but also raised the status of architect above the level of manual worker to that of the artist.
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