Amazement

Sorry, another art history lesson. But I just can't help but be amazed by what they were able to create and make hundreds of years ago. I was flipping back through my pictures and have still been reading some of Vasari's art history. I was reading the chapter on Brunelleschi, the architect who designed the dome on the Duomo in Florence.

There is really no way for me to capture in a picture the grandness of this dome. It is huge! Here it is from far away...gives it a little perspective.

So for the history lesson. The church itself was rebuilt in the late 1200s-early 1300s. But they didn't complete the dome at that time. The church went without the dome for over a hundred years. Then they held a competition to see who would be the architect for the dome. They spent a long time debating this, not believing in Brunelleschi's ideas because they were centuries ahead of the time. But he finally won and had to use a little trickery to show Ghiberti (the guy who got second and was helping on the build but wasn't actually helping at all and had no clue what was going on) needed the boot and made this amazing done. It is constructed with big iron chains, had an inner and outer portion to the dome (which is cool because you can walk up the steps inbetween these domes to the top). He created a way to hold up all those tons of weight of the stones so they wouldn't topple on each other...oh and he had to figure out how to hoist all that stuff up that high. He also had a whole working area set up that high so that people didn't have to come down to get food or water or wine...they could just stay up there all day and increase productivity.  He was a genius!
Here is a cool image from USC that shows the structure.

Anyway, besides being amazed by all that went into it I loved getting to admire its beauty.