Santa Maria Del Fiore Research Paper

The Great Dome One of the biggest questions in archeology has been how the dome on top of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore was built. Scholars know who built it, but they don’t know the means of its creation. Filippo Brunelleschi was the man and mind behind the creation of the dome. The Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore has managed to raise several questions and curiosity amongst scholars. In the early 14th century a feud between Florence and other emerging cities began, each trying to beat the other with building bigger cathedrals. Florentines didn’t like the look of gothic cathedrals, for inspiration for their dome, they looked at ancient Rome’s famous building that payed tribute to all of the gods, the Pantheon. A mural, years
Cosimo de Medici decided to find the answers for the dome. They decided to patron Brunelleschi. The church authorities decided to offer a massive cash prize for a solution to the dome. Brunelleschi’s model was the only one that was free-standing and didn’t require any support. Him being fearful that his ideas would be stolen, he decided to write them in code and refused to share his ideas for the plan. The church authorities demanded Brunelleschi to do some kind of demonstration. Brunelleschi then challenged them to stand an egg on its end, after each of the authorities failed, Brunelleschi broke the bottom of the egg, and it stood up. The men complained saying that they could have done that, that the solution was so obvious. Brunelleschi proclaimed of course it was, and that so would the answer to the dome if he shared his plans. The Authorities gave him the commission for the
Most walls are built by laying bricks on straight lines. Because the walls were curving in, Brunelleschi had to change the brick laying pattern due to the weakness of the mortar compared to the brick. Gravity pulls the wall inward and so a crack could appear in one of the layers of the mortar, and the wall would collapse. Brunelleschi’s new brick laying design was composed of bricks laying down horizontally and then are interrupted by vertical bricks, instead of the bricks being set down horizontally, they are in a zig zag pattern. This patter is called spina pesca, or