Author Tracey E. Fern climbed the 463 steps to the top of the Duomo in Florence, Italy. She “wondered how such an enormous structure could have been built in the fifteenth century.”
Researching the Duomo, she found Filippo Brunelleschi. She wrote Pippo The Fool, about how Filippo, considered a fool, constructed a masterpiece.
The Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore/The Duomo
Filippo, an architect without formal training, entered a competition that changed his life and that of the city of Florence forever. In 1418, the Florence wool merchant’s guild decided to solve a problem. The Duomo’s construction begun in 1296, had never been finished. No one knew how to construct a dome without buttresses and Gothic arches for support. In Florence, both were thought to be undesirable. The existing walls also required an octagonal shape. How could a stable eight-sided dome be built?
Filippo Brunelleschi
The guild held a competition for architects with the winner building the dome. Filippo Brunelleschi’s idea seemed the most promising. He designed an interior and an exterior dome. With this design, expensive wooden scaffolds would not be needed. But Filippo would not tell anyone how he would construct the dome. He thought his idea would be stolen. Filippo seemed both stubborn and foolish — Pippo the Fool.
The people in charge of the project hired Filippo. But they required that well-known architect, Lorenzo Ghiberti, to work on the project with him. Lorenzo had lost to Filippo in the competition. Now Filippo was forced to work with Lorenzo.
It was Filippo, without any help from Lorenzo, who constructed the dome. He invented complex machines that lifted heavy sandstone beams and over four million bricks above the Cathedral. These machines were unique. According to National Geographic, “…they weren’t rivaled until the industrial revolution.”
Filippo designed the dome’s brickwork in a herringbone pattern. This added stability. And his design used a lighter interior and exterior two-dome design. This worked where a heavier single-dome design might have failed.
Completed in sixteen years, the dome is a testament to the genius of Filippo Brunelleschi.
If you like this post, then please consider sharing it and leaving a comment below. Thank you! Barbara Lowell, Children’s Author
Michelangelo’s David didn’t happen the way you might think. The marble wasn’t a lovely block recently cut from the quarry. And it wasn’t presented to Michelangelo to sculpt into a masterpiece.
Instead, the giant marble block had been worked on before by two sculptors. Both rejected it. They thought it was too imperfect a piece to sculpt into a stable statue. One or both had also damaged the piece. Even the great Leonardo Da Vinci refused to work on it.
For twenty-five years it lay untouched in the Opera del Duomo’s courtyard in Florence. In 1501, Michelangelo was asked to turn the marble into a statue of the biblical figure David. At 26 years old, he was already a master artist and sculptor.
Michelangelo Bounarroti
Michelangelo agreed, believing that he could sculpt David from the rough marble. He worked on the statue privately at his workshop hiding it from view. He chipped away for over two years, often with little sleep, focusing solely on his work. Michelangelo successfully transformed the enormous marble block into a work of art. It stands 17 feet tall.
Florence, Italy
In January 1504, he presented his statue to the board members of the Cathedral of Florence. They had commissioned the statue to be placed along the Cathedral’s roofline with other statues. But when they saw Michelangelo’s David they knew it belonged in a prominent place in Florence — one where everyone could see it. The Piazza deel Signoria, Florence’s seat of government was chosen as the site.
In May 1504, forty men worked for four days to move David the half mile from Michelangelo’s workshop to its new home. A witness wrote:
“It was midnight, May 14th, and the Giant was taken out of the workshop. They even had to tear down the archway, so huge he was. Forty men were pushing the large wooden cart where David stood protected by ropes, sliding it through town on trunks. The Giant eventually got to Signoria Square on June 8th 1504, where it was installed next to the entrance to the Palazzo Vecchio, replacing Donatello’s bronze sculpture of Judith and Holofernes”. — From the Galleria dell’ Accademia (AccademiaGalley) website at:https://accademia.org
The statue of David became a symbol of freedom for the people of Florence. It warned others that Florence would defend itself just as David had defended the Israelites.
David at the Accademia Gallery
In 1873, David was moved into the Galleria dell’ Accademia, or Accademia Gallery, to protect it from additional weathering and damage. It stands there today, a magnificent testament to the genius and skill of its sculptor, Michelangelo Buonarroti.
If you like this post, then please consider sharing it and leaving a comment below. Thank you! Barbara Lowell, Children’s Author
Galileo Galilei, lived in Pisa home of the tall leaning tower — just right for an experiment challenging Greek philosopher Aristotle.
View of Pisa from the Leaning Tower of Pisa
Aristotle said that a heavier object falling from the same height, at the same time, would travel faster than a lighter object. Galileo disagreed. He said both objects would reach the ground about the same time.
It is said that at the top of the tower, Galileo dropped two spherical objects, one heavier than the other, perhaps a cannonball and a musketball. Both hit the ground at about the same time, disproving Aristotle’s law of gravity. Whether this actually occurred, or it was instead a thought experiment, Galileo wrote about it in his book, On Motion.
The Leaning Tower of Pisa
In Pisa, disproving Aristotle did not win fans for Galileo, and he was no longer asked to teach at the university there. But he wasn’t done challenging Aristotle. This time the challenge took place in the sky above.
The Dutch invented a telescope that made faraway objects appear closer. Galileo knew he could improve the Dutch telescope. When he did, he discovered that he could see the actual surface of the moon. It was not at all as Aristotle described it — completely smooth. Instead, the surface had peaks and valleys.
Galileo and his telescope
With his telescope, he also discovered the largest of Jupiter’s four moons. He published his discoveries in his book, Starry Messenger. Europeans learned about Earth’s moon and Jupiter’s moon, and Galileo became famous. He was invited by the Grand Duke of Tuscany to live in Florence and spend his days searching the sky for new discoveries.
What he discovered again challenged Aristotle. Aristotle said that our solar system was Earth centered. The sun and other planets revolved around the Earth.
What Galileo observed through his telescope made him realize that Aristotle was wrong. The sun was at the center of our solar system and the earth, like the other planets, revolved around it.
Unfortunately, disputing Aristotle again won him no fans. And finally landed him under house arrest for the rest of his life. But later scientists proved him right, the sun is the center of our solar system.
When I visited the Leaning Tower of Pisa, I was amazed that I had no sensation of leaning once inside the tower. Even at the top, it felt as if the tower stood perfectly straight.
If you like this post, then please consider sharing it and leaving a comment below. Thank you! Barbara Lowell, Children’s Author
