Northern Italy

We had been to the Florence Duomo (cathedral) on a previous trip, but I had failed to get an adequate picture of Ghiberti's self-portrait in the doors of the Baptistry. This time I made sure that I got a good one. In 1334 the Florentine Signory approved the design by Giotto of the campanile tower. It is distinguished not by its square shape (which Giotto had hoped to top with a spire), but by its lovely Gothic tracery windows, the reliefs, and in the colored, carved lower panels in marble, carved by Giotto. After his death, the work was carried on by Pisano, Donatello, and Francesco Talenti, to whom the tower owes its crowning glory--the highest arcade with its single Gothic window. There is a story about Brunelleschi's selection to design and construct the dome of the church. He was one of many candidates who interviewed for the job. He told them he would top the tower with a dome, the largest to be built since the Romans built the Pantheon. They asked him how he would do it. He refused to tell them on the grounds that once he explained it, every other architect would copy the idea and claim it as his own. They persisted. Finally he said, "If you can tell me how to stand an egg on its end, then I will tell you how I plan to build the dome." After three weeks of trying to stand an egg on its end, they relented and asked Brunelleschi back for another interview. "We cannot figure out how to stand an egg on end. How would you do it?" "Simple," he said. He took a hard-boiled egg, tapped the end slightly, then set it up on end." "Oh, that's easy," they responeded. "You didn't figure it out," he told them. "We could have done so," they said. He answered, "Similarly, once I build the dome, everyone else will say that they could have done it." They gave him the job, and he built the dome.Les mer