Brunelleschi's Dome (1-11)

Brunelleschi's Dome by Ross King is a biography of the great architect and a narrative of how the dome atop the Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence went from being the ambition of a city to a marvel of the world. In the following passage, the author, himself a renowned architect, describes how the capomaestro reached the design for the cathedral:

Neri di Fioravanti and his group rejected the external supports proposed by Giovanni di Lapo Ghini, however, and offered a different approach to the structure of the dome. Flying buttresses were rare in Italy, where architects regarded them as ugly and awkward makeshifts. But Neri's reasons for rejecting them were probably political as much as aesthetic or structural, in that they smacked of the architecture of Florence's traditional enemies: Germany, France, and Milan. how the German barbarians, the Goths, had covered Europe with their clumsy and disproportionate edifices would later become a popular theme with writers of the Italian Renaissance.

This paragraph stood out because it demonstrates how Ross King can relate this story in an engaging way. He goes out of his way to enlighten the reader as to the mindset and general feelings of the Florentines in during the Italian Renaissance.


King, Ross. Brunelleschi's Dome. New York: Walker & Company, 2000. Print.