Ross King: Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture

The Black Death was a faithful visitor to Florence. It arrived, on average, once every ten years, always in the summer.

Perspective is the method of representing three-dimensional objects in recession on a two-dimensional surface in order to give the same impression of relative position, size, or distance as the actual objects do when viewed from a particular point. Filippo is generally regarded as its inventor, the one who discovered (or rediscovered) its mathematical laws. For example, he worked out the principle of the vanishing point, which was known to the Greeks and Romans but, like so much other knowledge, had long since been lost.

Freshly cut from a quarry, limestone and sandstone smell of rotten eggs, and the stronger this sulfurous stench, the better the quality of the stone.

In 1492, Filippo Maria captured both Brescia and Genoa, and a year later seized the town of Forli, only 50 miles from Florence. The following year, as plague raged through Tuscany, his forces defeated the Florentines at Zagonara, in Romagna. There were only three casualties, all Florentine soldiers who fell from their horses and drowned on the battlefield in their heavy plate armor (it had rained heavily in Zagonara the night before). This lack of bloodshed shows that warfare in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, contrary to popular conceptions, could be reasonably civilized. Most battles resembled chess matches in which opposing commanders sought to outmaneuver each other, the loser being the one who conceded that his position was technically vulnerable. These engagements were fought by mercenaries who settled the terms of warfare in advance, rather like sportsmen deciding the rules of the game.