And above all, he was famous for being the author of a prank that had gone around the city - and it was no small title of merit in a mocking city like Florence. With the complicity of a large group of friends and a complex screenplay had made a naive woodsman, Manetto called the Fat, believe that he was another person.
That was another way - like the invention of perspective - to create a parallel space just as truthful as the real one.
He had made several trips to Rome to rediscover the monuments of antiquity, so he had a certain theoretical experience, curiosity, intelligence.
However, on the construction site of the dome, ... what methods does it use!
In the meantime, he makes projects on his own: he turns away, writes, draws.
He claims to be a unique designer.
Until now, the workers were used to proceeding collectively, relying on the experience of all. And then no one knew what he was thinking about; no one knew what he was going to do.
In short, the Florentines had to think more or less: "but who do you think you are?" A bad situation arose between the workers and Brunelleschi.
"All that remains is to strike and Ser Pippo will see how it ends."
They don't know him, they don't know who they're dealing with.
In reality, Brunelleschi knows how to solve the problem: he has understood how the dome will be built.
He can't stop.
Then he fires everyone. It arouses the hostility of the clients, but it goes on. He hires "Lombard" workers, those who are used to go around construction sites throughout Europe to build the cathedrals of the North. At that point, the Florentine workers went back, the workers asked to be hired again.
Brunelleschi won: they will return to the building site and with a lower salary.
You just have to understand how he's really going to do it, the Dome.
He explained it, actually.
He had made a wooden model "as big as an oven". Then, with the help of Donatello, he made another brick model that remained visible until 1431 right in Piazza del Duomo and even went so far as to build a smaller one in the Ridolfi chapel in the church of Sant'Jacopo Sopr'Arno (now destroyed) and he had also written about it.
However, between saying, explaining (especially explaining to who the designer is not) and putting it into practice there runs.
Brunelleschi portrayed by Masaccio
The idea was all in the head of this man, who Vasari, more than a century later, calls ugly and "sparse in the person" (and the funeral mask in white stucco that has preserved seems to prove him right)
But in this tiny, little man, there were great qualities.
There was generosity, loyalty, humor, spirit, willingness to be friends.
There was a mind as sharp as a knife, always ready to take up challenges and above all conscious of itself, of its own qualities and its own limits: "in judgment, it was clear of passion... - says Vasari- It knew itself and the degree of its virtue communicated to many". Better not to say!
Brunelleschi, in short, in spirit and education, was the only one able to accept a challenge like that of the dome.
It was so for the pure desire to try to live up to those "who have a soul full of such greatness - it is always Vasari who speaks - and the heart of so immense terribleness that if you do not start things difficult and almost impossible and those do not end with wonder of those who see them, never give rest to their lives.
He chose, first of all, a "pointed arch" shape, rather than a hemispherical one, so as to divide the surface into eight sails (segments) and to connect it to the octagonal drum that had already been built.
He then decided to provide two caps (practically two domes), one internal and one external.
The solution lay, for the most part, in the ancient masonry technique, which, however, was unprecedented in the fifteenth century.
During the construction phase, after the first seven meters, he adopted the construction technique known as "spinapesce": that is, by having a brick placed for a long time between the bricks placed horizontally inserted at regular intervals.
The protruding parts of the brick placed for a long time were used to support the next ring.
Here is a reconstruction:
So it was self-supporting. The external dome, built-in red terracotta and divided into segments separated by white ribs, so as to seem even larger, rested on the more robust internal one by means of supports.
He had also planned to close the dome with a lantern that with its weight would keep the building stable.
But this will be done later and work will begin only in 1446, the year of the death of Filippo Brunelleschi.
Obviously, in practice (and also in theory) the construction was much more complex and only in modern times, accurate engineering and static studies have clarified how it really proceeded.
The novelty was also in the fact that Brunelleschi represented the architect, the unique designer and that the works were entrusted to groups, each of which was responsible for a segment (a sail). In short, a sort of organization of work with ante-litteram islands.
And Brunelleschi is always there: he designs the big scaffolding that allows working from the inside, he chooses the clay for the bricks, he designs machines, pulleys, winches, internal ladders scaffolding, he tests the resistance of the ropes. Not only that. He also takes care of the wellbeing of the workers: he sets up food shops, canteens of all kinds, directly on the scaffolding so that they don't have to go up and down all the time.
And he is always with them: he clarifies, explains, discusses.
Safety at work was also important: according to recent studies in twenty years of construction only one person died and eight were injured, a few if we consider that the construction took fifty workers a day.
Twenty years of work, twenty years in which Brunelleschi is also involved in other projects of religious buildings, civil buildings, palaces, urban arrangements that will change the face of Florence.
But the heart is there in the building site of the dome.
On March 25, 1436, however, the great building is practically finished and it is decided to inaugurate it, as it is, without a lantern.
It was a great ceremony, a "special effects" event, in the presence of Pope Eugene IV.
The temporary wall that had delimited the building site in the church and that had prevented, until then, the view was knocked down.
The motet "Nuper rosarium Flores", composed for the occasion by Guillaume Dufay, is performed: an important piece in the history of music because it marks the moment of transition between the ancient isorhythmic style and the new contrapuntal style. Some musicologists have also found similarities between the proportions of the motet and Brunelleschi's proportions of the dome.
A witness, Giannozzo Manetti, tells us about the course of the ceremony and the effect of the music on the participants:
"...At the time of the elevation, the entire basilica resonated with such harmonious symphonies, accompanied by the sound of various instruments, that it would be said that the sound and song of paradise had descended from heaven to earth. »
The Florentine people, at first, remain with bated breath; then they wonder, they get excited, they cry.
The dome is finally there, magnificent, enormous, to the eternal glory of the city
End.