This time of year, those of the Jewish and Christian faiths use eggs as symbols in their religious observances. Apparently, through the ages, eggs have been inspirational symbols for many world religions. And an egg was the inspiration for an important architectural design---the dome.
The story goes that in 1409, church officials in Florence were hoping to complete their cathedral roof. So they organized a contest which attracted prominent architects from all over Europe who, armed with proposals and elaborate models, came to present to a 34-judge panel.
Like most legends, there are many versions, but most renditions claim that a local goldsmith named Filippo Brunelleschi who had no prior building commissions showed up without plans or models, but with an egg.
Either he challenged the judges to try to balance an egg upright on a table, or, as another rendition suggests, the contestants were told that whoever could make an egg stand upright would win the commission.
Brunelleschi took the egg, cracked it into two parts and put one half-shell on the top of the other, causing the egg to stand upright.
He won the competition and was declared the project’s superintendent, but another contestant was named as his co-superintendent. The collaboration did not go smoothly. But Brunelleschi did invent a number of machines to aid in the construction. And his simple but revolutionary idea of building two domes, one on top of the other in order to reduce stress and allow the weight to be evenly distributed, was eggzactly appropriate for the cathedral.
El Duomo and countless public buildings throughout the world owe their eggistence to a Renaissance man and egg.
