Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture

A More Beautiful and Honourable Temple -- The Goldsmith of San Giovanni -- The Treasure Hunters -- An Ass and a Babbler -- The Rivals -- Men without Name or Family -- Some Unheard-of Machine -- The Chain of Stone -- The Tale of the Fat Carpenter -- The Pointed Fifth -- Bricks and Mortar -- Circle by Circle -- The Monster of the Arno -- Debacle at Lucca -- From Bad to Worse -- Consecration -- The Lantern -- Magni Ingenii Viri Philippi Brunelleschi -- The Nest of Delights.;Brunelleschi's Dome is the story of how a Renaissance genius bent men, materials, and the very forces of nature to build an architectural wonder we continue to marvel at today. Denounced at first as a madman, Brunelleschi was celebrated at the end as a genius. Even today, in an age of soaring skyscrapers, the cathedral dome of Santa Maria del Fiore retains a rare power to astonish. Ross King brings its creation to life in a fifteenth-century chronicle with twenty-first-century resonance.