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Brunelleschi’s Dome
Ross King

Brunelleschi’s Dome

A Top-10 New York Times and No. 1 Boston Globe bestseller, Brunelleschi’s Dome is the true story of how the Florentine goldsmith Filippo Brunelleschi bent men, materials and the 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. He engineered the perfect placement of brick and stone, built ingenious hoists and cranes (some among the most renowned machines of the Italian Renaissance) to carry an estimated 70 million pounds hundreds of feet into the air, and designed the workers’ platforms and routines so carefully that only two men died during the decades of construction—all the while defying those who said the dome would surely collapse and personal obstacles that at times threatened to overwhelm him.

Book Details:

  • Author: Ross King
  • Published Year: 2000
  • Rights Sold
    • US: Walker
    • UK: Random House
Ross King

Ross King

Ross King is the bestselling author of books on Italian, French and Canadian art and history. Among his books are Brunelleschi’s Dome (2000), Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling (2002), The Judgment of Paris (Governor General’s Award, 2006), Leonardo and The Last Supper (Governor General’s Award, 2012), and Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies (Charles Taylor Prize, 2017). He has also published two novels (Domino and Ex-Libris), a biography of Niccolò Machiavelli, an...
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Book Reviews

  • "A wonderfully vivid little book."
    Daily Telegraph
  • "An adventure yarn set on the wild frontiers of human knowledge … abounding with excellent stories."
    Financial Times
  • "As interesting as the architect’s triumph proves, his distractions prove even more revealing about the era."
    Newsday
  • "One of architecture’s great tales."
    Newsweek
  • "‘Buildings are a product of the artistic imagination and building technology, but they also depend on political will and cultural capital. Ross King, a skillful storyteller, describes how all these played a role in the construction of the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore in fifteenth-century Florence."
    Witold Rybczynski, author of The Story of Architecture,