Ross King: Brunelleschi's Dome: The Story of the Great Cathedral in Florence

By T.J. McNAMARA

Imagine the thriving city of Florence in the year 1296. Proud of their city, the Florentines began to build a glorious cathedral, designing it with space for a huge dome. But there was a problem: no one knew how to erect such a dome. They made a model which they kept in the half-built cathedral to show how the dome ought to be. If built, it would be the highest and widest vault raised - but how to make it remained a puzzle.

The people of Florence had a touching faith that some day God would send a man who could solve the puzzle. Their faith was rewarded by a goldsmith and clockmaker called Filippo Brunelleschi who was born in 1377.

Brunelleschi, artist and engineer, belongs to an immensely creative, close group of early Renaissance artists and architects: Donatello, who revolutionised sculpture, Masaccio who did the same for painting, Brunelleschi, and Alberti, the scholar who wrote the theory.

The dome Brunelleschi designed and built still dominates Florence today, a miracle of design and engineering. Whether your stay in Florence is only a brief stop in the Piazzale Michelangelo to see the bronze copy of the David and look across the river at the city, or whether you stay for years, the abiding memory will be the way the rhythm of the tiled rooftops culminates triumphantly in the great dome. The cathedral is seldom known by its name, Santa Maria del Fiore, but simply as the Duomo (the Dome).

Brunelleschi's struggle to build the dome and the personal, political and engineering problems he faced are chronicled with a novelist's flair by Ross King in his splendid work Brunelleschi's Dome, published now in paperback. It was the predecessor of his equally popular work about Michelangelo's Sistine ceiling.

The difficulties faced by Brunelleschi were enormous. The usual way to build an arch or dome was to support it with scaffolding called "centring" but the open space in the cathedral was 42m in width and the Florentines wanted a tall, soaring dome. All the timber in Tuscany would not have been sufficient to make the centring. Brunelleschi decided to build without scaffolding in such a way it supported itself as it progressed.

What the book graphically conveys is the immensity of the task and how the architect designed the cranes and lifts needed to take tonnes of stone to a great height and position it very accurately. It points out that the invention of many of the lifting devices attributed to Leonardo da Vinci may be drawings by the young Leonardo of things he had seen in the cathedral.

Brunelleschi's invention went everywhere. King tells how he set up a cafe high on the buildings so the workers would not have to return to the floor for lunch.

He describes the interlocking bricks Brunelleschi designed to fill between the ribs of the dome.

The book is not only good on the personality of the architect but also describes the life of the ordinary working men who worked for a lifetime on the cathedral.

The problems, the politics and the personalities are all tellingly revealed.

The effect of the book is to make any reader want to travel immediately to Florence to climb the narrow stairs (463 steps) between the outer and inner skins of the dome and then, at the top, gaze at the wonderful city below from beneath the crowning glory of the lantern designed by Brunelleschi which he did not live to see completed. He was buried in the cathedral, honoured as one of the city's greatest men.

The book is another fitting and very readable tribute.

* Pimlico $37