"Brunelleschi's Dome" by Ross King

This is the story of the biggest dome in the world, the dome on the Duomo (the 'House of God', the cathedral) in Florence and the man who built it, without internal scaffolding, defying all expectations and critics, when no one knew how it could be built.

My wonderful wife, Steph, and I went to Florence this year; above is my picture of the Duomo showing Brunelleschi's dome. Now that I have read the book I want to go back to see it again; now I understand what is so incredible about the construction. Mind you, now that I understand more about the unorthodox details of the construction and I know how heavy just the lantern on top of the dome is, I am not sure I want to clamber up into the roof space and stare out from the lantern at the rooftops of Florence. Scary!

There is a lot in the book that I didn't properly understand. There were a lot of technical challenges to overcome. Just hoisting massive blocks of stone to the required height was difficult with the technology of the day (the main system was powered by an ox trudging round and round and there was a complicated system of gears including a type of clutch so that stuff could also be lowered while the ox trudged in the same direction). It was difficult to understand how the mason's could reach the overhanging bricks they were building. The problem with a dome or an arch is that it isn't really stable until the keystone is put in at the end; this is why arches are usually built on top of a wooden construction which is then taken away when the arch is finished. Brunelleschi didn't do this (it would have taken too long to source all that wood). How did they build it without it falling down? The other problem is that a dome converts the downward weight of the roof into an outwards thrust which is usually countered using buttresses. Brunelleschi used no buttresses. Instead he used circular rings of stone like coopers use iron staves around barrels. I still didn't really understand.

Not only does the book fascinate with the details of the unprecedented construction but it also has brilliant vignettes of Florentine life. There is a wonderful story about Brunelleschi playing a practical joke on a carpenter to convince him that he had swapped identity for 24 hours with someone else. The bemused carpenter ended up leaving Florence and making his fortune in Hungary. Time and again, King provided wonderful details and I wanted to know how he could find out so much about a time so long ago. 

In every way this book was brilliant. This year I have also read Ross King's Leonardo and the Last Supper which was also excellent. These two books are both among my top five non-fiction for 2014 and I shall definitely seek out more by this brilliant author.

December 2014; 167 pages

I have now also read the wonderful and brilliant The Judgement of Paris: as the Second Empire dies in the chaos of the Franco-Prussian war, the Siege of Paris and the Commune of Paris, Impressionism is born: Meissonier, Manet, Monet and many more.

"The Swerve" by Stephen Greenblatt

I still can't quite understand why I loved this book so much. In 1417 Poggio, a Florentine, having lost his job as Apostolic Secretary when his boss, Pope John XXIII was deposed and imprisoned, finds an old manuscript in an anonymous monastery. The manuscript is the lost poem De Rerum Natura by Roman poet Lucretius and it outlines the atomic theories of Democritus embedded in the atheistic philosophy of Epicure. These powerful ideas spell the end of the middle ages and the beginning of the modern world.

It sounds like a cheap thriller by Dan Brown or a dry as dust history. It is fact and I loved it. It is a wonderful book, beautifully written, and full of some mind-bending ideas of which the Epicurean philosophy is just a gourmet taster.

"Humans, Aristotle wrote, are social animals: to realize one's nature as a human then was to participate in a group activity." On page 69 Greenblatt debunks the Enlightenment idea of the lone genius in favour of a distinctly modern 'team work' approach to collaborative learning.

On page 71 Greenblatt quotes Flaubert: "Just when the gods had ceased to be, and the Christ had not yet come, there was a unique moment in history, between Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, when man stood alone." Perhaps that moment has returned to us today.

"Epicurus thought it mad to think that divine beings would be interested in human activities. Why should God take human form rather than that of an ant or an elephant? "Christians are like a council of frogs in a pond, croaking at the top of their lungs, 'For our sakes the world was created'." (p98)

"As every pious reader of Luke's Gospel knew, Jesus wept, but there were no verses that described him laughing or smiling, let alone pursuing pleasure." (p105)

"The pattern of dreaming and deferral and compromise is an altogether familiar one: it is the epitome of a failed life." (p151)

"The quintessential emblem of religion .... is the sacrifice of a child by a parent." (p194): Agamemnon and Iphigenia, Abraham and Isaac, God and Jesus.

Amerigo Vespucci described the life of the natives of Brazil as Epicurean. Vespucci was a Florentine and part of the humanist circle who read De Rerum Natura. Thomas More used Vespucci's book as a source for Utopia.

Thomas Harriot observed sun spots and the lunar surface and the sine law of refraction etc etc before others but did not publish for fear of being accused of atheism.

And there is so much more in this wonderful, wonderful book.

May 2012; 263 pages

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God