Brunelleschis Dome Read Online Free PDF

without mortar, was an architectural marvel in itself, cutting straight as an arrow through mountains, marshes, and valleys. Of still more interest were the 300,000 sepulchers that still lined the road for miles, the products of an ancient law that had prevented anyone except the vestal virgins and the emperors from being buried within the walls of Rome. Or one could see the broken arches of aqueducts such as the Acqua Claudia. At 43 miles long, and with arches 100 feet in height, this structure was a testament not only to the fresh drinking water enjoyed by the ancient Romans (in comparison with their descendants, who took their water from the tainted, foul-smelling Tiber) but also to their remarkable engineering skills. Some modern-day Romans were even ignorant of its purpose, believing it to have been used to import olive oil from Naples.
    Filippo arrived in this squalid, crumbling city soon after the conclusion of the competition for the Baptistery doors. He would then remain in Rome, off and on, for roughly the next thirteen years, making occasional extended trips back to Florence. He originally came to Rome with another Florentine, the talented young sculptor Donatello, then an adolescent. It was an association that, despite some periods of turbulence, would endure for many years. The pair were well matched, given that Donatello was if anything even more hot-tempered than Filippo. A year or two earlier, at the age of fifteen, he had landed himself in trouble with magistrates in Pistoia for striking a German over the head with a large stick, and many years later he would travel to Ferrara intent upon murdering one of his runaway apprentices. His patrons likewise felt his wrath: if one of them refused to pay the full price for a statue, Donatello would demolish it in a fit of temper.
    The two young men lived like vagabonds, paying little attention to what they ate, how they dressed, or where they slept. Together they began digging among the vast ruins, hiring porters to cart away the rubble and becoming known to locals as the “treasure hunters” because it was believed they were searching for gold coins and other treasures — an impression reinforced whenever they excavated earthenware pots filled with antique medals. Their activities may have attracted suspicion and even fear, not merely because they were suspected of practicing geomancy (the art of divining the future by interpreting the patterns made by handfuls of scattered earth), but because pagan fragments were considered bad luck. In the fourteenth century, for example, the Sienese had unearthed an ancient Roman statue and, after placing it on the fountain in their main piazza, suffered a military defeat at the hands of the Florentines. The statue was promptly removed from the piazza and, in order to curse their enemies, reburied in Florentine territory.
    What exactly Filippo sought in these excavations was unknown even to Donatello. Antonio Manetti claims that Filippo, secretive as ever, made his study of the ancient ruins while pretending to be doing something else. He inscribed on strips of parchment a series of cryptic symbols and Arabic numbers: a secret code, that is, like the reversed handwriting that Leonardo da Vinci would later use to describe his own inventions. Before patents or copyrights, scientists frequently resorted to ciphers in order to conceal their discoveries from jealous rivals. Two centuries earlier the Oxford philosopher Roger Bacon, known as “Doctor Mirabilis” for his experiments with telescopes, flying machines, and robots, claimed that no scientist should ever write of his discoveries in plain language but must resort instead to “concealed writing.” *
    What was the purpose of Filippo’s cryptic symbols and Arabic numerals, the latter of which the Commune of Florence had banned in 1296? 2 Manetti claims he was surveying the antiquities of Rome, measuring their heights and proportions. He fails to record what method Filippo