Brunelleschi: The Genius Who Refused to Think Like Everyone Else

Remember the egg story I told you about? The one where all the clever men of Florence were asked how they would build the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore… and this stubborn architect simply flattened the base of an egg and made it stand upright? “We could have done that,” they protested. “Yes,” he replied, “and you could have built the dome too — if I had shown you how.”

That little egg won Filippo Brunelleschi the commission for the dome of Florence Cathedral. But he did so much more than the dome.

Florence didn’t have enough timber to build the traditional wooden scaffolding needed to support such a vast structure. Most architects would have quietly admitted defeat. Brunelleschi didn’t. He designed a double-shell dome that could support itself as it rose, lighter and stronger than anything attempted before. He laid the bricks in a herringbone pattern so they locked into place instead of sliding while the mortar was still wet. Even today, engineers still study it, trying to fully understand how a man in the 15th century solved a problem that had defeated generations before him.

And then — because that wasn’t enough — he invented machines. Hoists powered by oxen with reversible gears so the animals didn’t need to be turned around every time the direction changed. Cranes capable of lifting enormous sandstone blocks to heights Florence had never seen. He hated wasting time, hated inefficiency, and thought differently from everyone around him.

There’s a detail I just love: he arranged for food and diluted wine to be brought up to the workers at the top so they wouldn’t lose precious daylight climbing down for lunch. Imagine eating bread and cheese suspended above the skyline of Florence, building the future one brick at a time. It must have felt extraordinary.

Brunelleschi studied ancient Rome, measured the Pantheon obsessively, and returned to Florence seeing space in an entirely new way. He wasn’t simply constructing a dome — he was constructing a new mindset. And when you look up at that terracotta giant dominating the skyline today, you’re not just looking at architecture.

You’re looking at pure, stubborn genius.