In The Shadow of the Duomo

 

When Ciro and Lisa, our friendly Airbnb hosts, first greeted us at our apartment in Florence, they opened the window shutters and there was the Duomo, the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore! We could almost reach out and touch it.

The view brought tears to my eyes. Not only were we looking at the dome designed by Brunelleschi, but we could see the campanile, or bell tower, designed by Giotto. The work of these giants of the Renaissance is right outside our window! It's inspiring to look out our window and see where it all began.

But there is another reason I teared up, too: In the early 1970s, Kevin had helped his father move some furniture for an elderly lady. She was quite taken with Kevin and insisted on giving him a beautiful little sketch of a cathedral "somewhere in Europe." She couldn't remember where. In the 1980s, when we planned our first trip to Europe, we were reading a brochure on Italy and discovered that the sketch was of Santa Maria del Fiore. After seeing the Duomo with our own eyes on our first trip in 1982, and on subsequent trips, our little sketch of the cathedral has become even more valued. And now we are living right next to the source.

Although the first stone for the cathedral was laid in 1296, it took 147 years to finish. The top sat open to the heavens for years before a competition to build the dome was announced in 1418. Several designs were submitted, including one by Brunelleschi, who said he could build the dome without using internal scaffolding. The panel charged with awarding the commission for the project asked Brunelleschi how he would construct the dome, since nothing like that had been done in Europe since the Roman Pantheon.

In those days there were no intellectual property laws, so Brunelleschi, who was known to be a bit cantankerous anyway, refused to provide more details. There is an unconfirmed story that he took a raw egg to the committee and asked them to stand it on end. When they all failed, Brunelleschi smacked the egg down on the table, breaking the end and allowing it to stand. "But we could have done that," said the committee members. "Yes," said Brunelleschi, "and if I tell you how I will build the dome, anyone can do that too." He won the commission. 

However, initially Brunelleschi had to share his commission with Ghiberti, his rival, who was awarded the contract to create the cathedral's baptistry doors. Brunelleschi felt he should have won that commission too, and the two artists were forever at odds.  (Michelangelo later said they were "fit to be the doors to paradise.") Having seen both artists' panels in the Uffizi, we think though both were impressive, Ghiberti deserved the job.

There are other stories about the cathedral too. One concerns a bull's head that projects from the north side of the cathedral. Supposedly, it represents a tribute to the animals who helped the most in the building of the cathedral--the oxen. But legend says it was put there by the master stonemason, who had been having an affair with the wife of a baker. When the baker found out, he took them to ecclesiastical court, and the two adulterers were banned from seeing each other. In retaliation, the stonemason affixed the bull's head to look down on the baker's establishment and remind him he had been cuckolded. Honestly, considering how little consideration was given to animals at the time, the latter story almost sounds more believable!

Another connection to the Renaissance is our morning “alarm.” Every morning at 7 a.m., if we haven't risen earlier, we awake to the sound of the bells ringing in Giotto's bell tower. I like knowing that for more than 500 years the people of Florence have been rising to bells ringing from that tower. What's more, we can always find our way "home" from anywhere in the city by looking for Brunelleschi's dome.

View from the library nearby. Yes, you can drink wine thetre. It's Italy!