Dedicated to the Madonna of Florence, the Santa Maria del Fiore is a Gothic structured church, built on the remains of the original Church of Santa Maria del Fiore. Despite the Cathedral being designed and completed in Gothic style in 1418, the dome was left untouched as the first architect to work on the Cathedral, Arnolfo di Cambio, had no idea on how to build the dome. However, during the early Renaissance period (15th century) Filippo Brunelleschi, a goldsmith and clockmaker, solved the puzzle.
Greatly influenced by the dome of the Pantheon of Ancient Rome, Brunelleschi was able to build a dome 45m wide and 114.5m high. It is the largest masonry dome ever built. Due to the size of the dome, techniques that were previously used in Persia were once again used by Brunelleschi. Both the Pantheon and the Dome of Santa Maria del Fiore are one of the greatest achievements made, a revolutionary architecture built, during the time period of their constructions. Determined, before Brunelleschi’s design, that in order to compensate for the dome of its size (and weight), flying buttresses were definitely needed to hold the dome in place; thus the dome construction was held off as the Florentines neither wanted to build a dome with flying buttresses or knew how to build a dome with no flying buttresses.…show more content… Unlike the Roman Pantheon, which has an equal diameter and height, hence is a hemispherical dome, the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore has an elongated tip. This is because, whilst a dome essentially consists of arches, and cantilevered scaffoldings, in order to support the growing dome until the keystone in placed, to support the weight of the dome, as a free-standing arch, the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore however, did not follow this form of