Florence Cathedral

The February edition of National Geographic has published a fascinating history of Filippo Brunelleschi's dome for the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore (Florence Cathedral) by Tom Mueller (CLICK). The article is accompanied by cutaway sections showing how the Cathedral was created. National Geographic's Senior Graphics Editor Fernando Gomez-Baptista and a team of artists spent four months creating these unprecedented graphics to show how the double-shelled dome was made. Brunelleschi - a goldsmith by training - was very secretive about its construction. Mueller doesn't include the apocryphal tale of how Brunelleschi won the competition to build the dome. According to legend, he challenged his competitors to balance an egg on its end. When they had all failed, he picked up the egg and crunched it down to stand on its broken end. If only it had been that simple....