DOME

The Structural/Spiritual Function of the Renaissance Dome

“The temple is erected there to signify and inspire the miracle of perfect centeredness; for this is the place of breakthrough into abundance. Someone at this point discovered eternity. (Campbell)

In the temple to God in the Catholic tradition, the dome is a place of centeredness. A dome is first a circle— a circle with arches connecting in equal diameter to the building’s base. A circle is the shape of perfection, eternity and the heavens, and vaulted it takes you there — from the nature of earth to heaven.  

The study of Ancient Roman and Renaissance temples consists of an understanding of symmetry and proportion. The design is meant to draw in visitors, inspire them to reverence, make them believe that this is the place from which they can be led to God, guided unto heaven and see the possibility of another realm. The dome is the representation of the physical portal between.

Before the Renaissance, before Ancient Rome, domes had been used in the sacred architecture of Hinduism, Islam, and many pagan religions. Though these domes weren’t soaring like the cathedral domes we think of today, they were still meant to represent the heavens, reminding the worshiper of the gods (or God) above.

The Roman Empire elevated the dome and achieved technical excellence in their efforts to reach God from a human scale. This feeling of exaltation was realized in the upwards reaching architecture. This vastness-within-reason provided a sense of freedom in which to contemplate and experience the power of God through the hands of man.

The way a space is designed can contribute to an individual's inner experience and sensual elevation. Within a cathedral, visitors are meant to be awe-inspired, overwhelmed by simultaneous magnitude and proximity to the holier heavens, resulting often in vaulted ceilings, large domes, stain glass windows. This design starts with a circle, a shape as small and essential as our very cells. 

THE CIRCLE: Structurally, Spiritually

Ancient Roman architect and engineer Vitruvius marked the circle as the “favorite shape of nature.” In his multi-volume work, De architectura, he states that architecture is an imitation of nature. As birds and bees build nests, so do humans in their construction of shelter against the elements. The principles set out in this series contemporarily inspired the Pantheon, a sacred Roman temple.

De architectura were later rediscovered and brought into popularity by Florentine humanist Leon Battista Alberti at the start of the Renaissance period — a time when architects were rejecting the complexity of Gothic form and moving back into symmetry, proportion, and regularity of parts. By imitating proportions of the human body, with the navel as the center of man, Alberti argued that architects can bring about a sense of harmony with the church. The “Vitruvian man,” popularized by Da Vinci, served as evidence of this “abstract bond that connects human soul and god in the corporeal world.” This geometrical derivation of plans was the desired design for Renaissance churches, the most famous of which is Brunelleschi’s dome at the Florence Cathedral. 

THE ARCH: Ancient Rome

Understanding the importance of the Vitruvian man, Renaissance architects studied Ancient Roman ruins as inspiration for construction of their new cathedrals. There, they found a wealth of arches across architecture: in the colosseum, temples, aquifers, arcades, and relieving arches incorporated into wall structures. This shape was so prevalent because of its self-supporting structural power. The arch was almost always semi-circular or segmental and made of flat, two-foot bricks, taking on an organic expression. In arches of considerable size, it was customary to adopt the double concentric type of arch to permit an adjustment of wall mass, carrying the weight of the building above.

This empirical engineering was a well-respected art in Ancient Rome: the word pontifex, meaning builder of bridges, became the title Romans gave to high priests — the greatest bridge builders of all — from mankind to the seat of God. 

If an arch is a bridge to God, then the dome functions as a symbol of heaven: the meeting of two arches.

THE DOME: Pantheon

The Pantheon was built as a pagan temple built in the reign of Augustus (27 BC - 14 AD) and was converted into a Catholic church in 609 AD. A rectangular vestibule links the front portico to the rotunda with a dome of 142 feet in diameter and height. The Pantheon is built on discharging arches to divert the dome’s pressure — the forces of the dome are thus separated into push and pull energies as gravity crushes it from above and thrusts it outward. The Pantheon to this day remains the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world.

The proportions work in a precise manner. Upon entering the rotunda, it is clear that every column, every arch, every divot within the dome's coffered texture is intentional.

“The Roman pantheon, whose one great eye opens its body to the starry firmament, invites interpretation as an attempt to raise this Vitruvius insight into the verticality of human being to the level of great architecture” (Harries) 

The architects of the Pantheon were influenced by Vitruvius’ writings on architecture and proportion, thus creating a space that feels holy and large, but also safe and nest-like. It is at once entirely feasible and completely impossible: how is it that man created a space that feels like earth? And also like heaven? 

The Pantheon was one of the first remaining sacred interior spaces, intended as a place for the public to gather inside and commune with God. To feel safe and yet part of the universal order. There was a sense of unity with this establishing mission, and is carried forward by the physical harmony of the invisible sphere that is held within.

CIRCLES OF DUALITY: Brunelleschi’s Dome

In the early 1400s, the Renaissance was budding in Florence, and Filippo Brunelleschi was selected to engineer the dome that would be the largest of all time, topping Florence’s duomo, the “most important ornament of the city,” in Alberti’s words — to be worthy of God (and show off power, money, prestige.) 

Inspiration for the Florence dome came directly from the Pantheon. Prior to being the engineer of this massive dome, Brunelleschi spent 13 years living in Rome as a vagrant, digging ancient ruins and learning about Roman construction and technologies. He studied the measurements of a design that allowed the Pantheon to carry its own weight, unreinforced by buttresses or columns. 

Trained as a watchmaker, Brunelleschi was sensitive to the precise ways things work together, and generated a design that bound weaker components with the stronger ones. In the 1400s, there hadn’t yet been a comprehensive understanding of physical laws or mathematics, so he largely relied on his intuition and practice on large-scale models.  “He compares the result to the human body, in which nature ‘joins bone with bones and binds the flesh with tendons, introducing connection.” (King)

The design of Brunelleschi’s dome is different than that of the Pantheon— instead of an evenly rounded form with an oculus at its top, the Florence dome is steeper, more pointed. Instead of the unity of the circle, two circles come together to meet at a cleft — perhaps a division which speaks to the dualism of the material world: “ascending in purification around the oculus of spiritual illumination from above.” Visually speaking, this dualism is resolved by a unifying lantern at its peak.

Brunelleschi’s dome is tall, standing out among the cityscape of Florence. It can be seen all around, fashioned as a sort of beacon, a monument to human ingenuity and to God.

It also introduces the question: is the dome more important for personal spiritual revelation and connection to God, or to show off the power of the church in its construction of these immense architectural marvels? 

OUR DOME

From the Pantheon to the Florence Cathedral and the thousands of elevated domes built since, the form continues to be a monument to both human intellect and God’s presence here on Earth. By making the heavens vaulted within the scale of human form, the architect too presents himself as “creator.” It confuses the appreciation of the dome as an access point for heaven. Whose heaven is being created?

The Renaissance dome seeks to emulate the experience of being outside, under the dome of the sky, yet within proportions that fit the human body. “Artificial harmony by man to echo the divine harmony of nature” and the harmony between macrocosm and microcosm. Merging math and religion, seeing God as a circle with no beginning or end. 

How many spaces do we interact with on a daily basis that give us this sense of awe and vastness? Living in the city, our apartments are small, the train is crowded, the buildings form tunnels around us as we walk. The geometric fraction of sky that we see is reduced to the movement of a singular cloud floating past, the peek of a blinding sun between buildings. We can’t see the dome of our own sky in its entirety. Not often anyway. 

Being within a dome is like being in the center of something, but far below it — like knowing that the heavens are there and present above us, but that we have capacity to create and reach them ourselves, generating an accessible axis to God. 

“We want to rest in this space, in this ageless, domed ring, which promises security and peace.” (Harries)

Even if man made these immense domes to inspire a feeling of God that fits his size, it’s still a spectacular sight. Even if man pretends to be God, to manufacture his own image of heaven, to bring control or ease or glory to church visitors, there is still awe and power standing below it. To stand in a crowd of people looking up, together, then walking back outside and see the real thing, real and large, and over us always. 

SOURCES 

Atkins, FAIA, James. “AIArchitect This Week | Il Duomo: Brunelleschi and the Dome of Santa Maria Del Fiore.” info.aia.org, n.d. https://info.aia.org/aiarchitect/thisweek08/0425/0425p_duomo.htm.

Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton (N.J.): Princeton University Press, 1968.

carolinarh. “Oculus.” The Artistic Adventure of Mankind, April 26, 2014. https://arsartisticadventureofmankind.wordpress.com/tag/oculus/.

Harries, Karsten. “Sphere and Cross: Vitruvian Reflections on the Pantheon Type.” In Body and Building: Essays on the Changing Relation of Body and Architecture, edited by George Dodds and Robert Tavernor. The MIT Press, 2005.

Jones, Cormac. “On the Symbolic Meaning of Domes, Part Five - the Symbolic World.” thesymbolicworld.com, March 4, 2022. https://thesymbolicworld.com/content/on-the-symbolic-meaning-of-domes-part-five.

Kanijilal, Ananya. “The Perfect Church:Circular Geometry, Harmony and the Vitruvian Man.” Introduction to the Renaissance, November 22, 2012. http://introrenaissance.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-perfect-churchcircular-geometry.html.

King, Ross. Brunelleschi’s Dome. New York: Bloomsbury, 2013.

Kosloski, Philip. “History of Domes in Churches .” Aleteia, July 24, 2017. https://aleteia.org/2017/07/24/look-up-the-spiritual-reason-why-churches-have-domes/.

Roccatelli, Prof. Ing. Carlo. “BRICK in ROMAN ANTIQUITY - ITALY.” www.giorgiozanetti.ca. Accessed April 28, 2023. https://www.giorgiozanetti.ca/bricks/bricks.html.

Senthilingam, Meera. “The Mysterious Neuroscience of Holy Buildings.” CNN, August 29, 2015. https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/daniel-libeskind-architecture-neuroscience/index.html.

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