A Virtual Florence Duomo Easter Visit
With the temporary closure of the Florence Cathedral complex, one would be forgiven for thinking that the architectural brilliance of Brunelleschi’s dome, plus the stunning frescoes that adorn the walls of the cupola, would be off limits to the public. Thanks to the latest 360° imaging technology, however, all of the Duomo can be explored (available by visiting the museumflorence.com website under virtual_cupola online in a uniquely immersive way). The cupola virtuale is an interactive journey of discovery that offers perspectives of the structure inaccessible to a regular guest, and during this season offers a virtual Florence Duomo Easter visit.
Panoramic views include ‘The Last Judgment’ frescoes in detail and the Cathedral altar; staircases towards the top of the dome, passing by the original tools involved in the construction and maintenance of the cupola; several vistas overlooking the city of Florence and its surrounding hills from the top of Duomo; and a closer look at the inner and outer dome, the architectural fabric of the structure.
Architectural Innovation
The 360° imaging is the latest example in the Duomo’s long history of novel methods being used to solve problems in design. Since its very inception the structure has been a centre for invention, as the great Filippo Brunelleschi would surely testify. Considered the founding father of Renaissance architecture, the cupola stands as Brunelleschi’s capolavoro (masterpiece) and remains the largest brick dome ever constructed.
The mystery of how to build a dome to sit atop the Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral, the symbol of the city, had evaded the Florentines for over 100 years after the beginning of its construction in 1296. The decision to reject the use of Gothic buttresses as structural support in 1367 was to mark an important early step in the Italian Renaissance and a new challenge. Proposals for the dome reached a staggering 80m (262 ft.) tall with a diameter of 42m (137 ft.). No dome of its size had been built since antiquity and the instructions of how to do so had long since been lost.
At the beginning of the 15th century, goldsmith Brunelleschi won a competition to build the dome with a new design that encompassed not one but two domes, a ‘double-shell’ consisting of an inner dome within a taller, external one. As for its symbolic importance, the cupola was the Cathedral’s, and Florence’s, pièce de résistance in a game of competing statuses played between the European powerhouses to prove one’s cultural supremacy.
Work began in earnest in the summer of 1420. Over the course of its 16-year construction Brunelleschi’s technical genius shined, firstly developing a sophisticated system of lifting mechanisms capable of accurately maneuvering all the incredibly heavy materials. Cranes, hoists and pulleys were all designed from scratch and remained the standard for construction tools right up until the industrial revolution. His solution of internal stone and iron chains to reinforce the ‘double-shell’ was also ingenious and ended debates over the dome’s structural feasibility.
To continue the virtual Florence Duomo Easter visit, the cupola virtuale experience offers the viewer the chance to appreciate the logistical difficulty of Brunelleschi’s feat of engineering by showing the 15th century construction tools (ropes, vices, screws, ladders), with both original artifacts and to-scale replicas. Of particular note also is the panoramic view between the inner and outer domes of the dome, placing one at the heart of the design that answered the century-long architectural mystery.
From inside the cupola progress to the four vistas from the top of the dome overlooking the city. Up here Florence is at its most revealing, its expansive mosaic of terracotta roofs stretching out and trickling onto the hills looming on the horizon. Admire the sister domes of Basilicas San Lorenzo and Santo Spirito (both partly designed by Brunelleschi) to the immediate west and south-west respectively, the white marble facades of Santa Croce and San Miniato al Monte to the south, and pick out the iconic Tuscan cypresses that line the Bardini and Boboli Gardens beyond the River Arno behind the Palazzo Vecchio. All this and more is set against a beautifully blue Mediterranean sky.
The Last Judgment in Detail
The crowning glory of the cupola virtuale is its all-encompassing views of the frescoes decorating the dome’s interior in six concentric rows leading towards the top. Long criticized for being so removed from the viewer, the cupola virtuale brings one face-to-face with what has since proved to hold an important place in Florentine art history. Suspended in air at the centre of the dome and with the ability to spin, rotate and zoom, The Last Judgment paintings are given new life; from the contorted, bloodied mass of the damned at the bottom; the triads of figures detailing the gifts of the Holy Ghost sat gracefully upon clouds; a bustling crowd of Saints and contemporary figures of Florentine nobility in the Elect; a swooping angelic chorus armed with the Instruments of Passion; and finally to the 24 Elders from the Book of Revelation perched in a ring, presiding over the tumultuous scene below.
Bold and deeply religious, the frescoes were born out of the labor of two different artists utilizing two different methods: firstly, Giorgio Vasari (1511 – 1574) who preferred a buon fresco technique of applying the pigments to wet plaster; and Federico Zuccari (1539 – 1609) latterly, who opted for the fresco secco method, painting onto dry plaster. These contrasting techniques also reflect differing styles, with Vasari’s championing of the delicate and subtle in the Tuscan tradition sitting at odds with Zuccari’s more grandiose approach that prefigured the Roman Baroque era.
Originally envisaged by Brunelleschi as being covered in resplendent gold, the interior of the cupola had in fact remained whitewashed for over a century following the death of the great architect in 1446. It took until 1572 before the reigning Grand Duke of Tuscany and willing patron of the arts, Cosimo I de’ Medici, commissioned Giorgio Vasari to fresco the dome’s walls. Vasari, by then known widely for his Lives of the Artists biographies, took influence thematically from Dante’s Divine Comedy and the Catholic Reformation in order to work out the iconographic subjects. By the time of his untimely death in 1574 however, only a third of the work had been completed.
The passing of Vasari paved the way for Federico Zuccari, a painter from Urbino intent on imparting his own style onto the frescoes, and he quickly set about altering physiques, costumes and color ranges. As the frescoes were to be viewed from such a distance, Zuccari favored a method that compromised on quality for a bolder final effect, which can be seen in the animated depictions of contemporary personalities in his Elect. Included are his Medici patrons, the King of France, Vasari and even himself. Zuccari’s finest work, however, is his visceral rendering of Hell, inspired by Luca Signorelli’s frescoes in Orvieto Cathedral, where devils and the damned combine in violent, deformed altercations in deep shades of blood red.
Don’t let such a rich history of art, architecture and innovation escape you while staying at home. It is at your fingertips. The cupola virtuale is the Firenze-phile’s go-to destination for their fill of culture during this lull in the artistic calendar. (will farnham)
