Santa Maria del Fiore, Church, Florence, Italy
| General Attributes |
DOI| 10.34946/D6ZW26 | |
| Project Name | Santa Maria del Fiore, Church, Florence |
| Country | Italy |
| Status | Restricted |
| Citation |
| George Bent, Dave Pfaff, Florence As It Was 2026: Santa Maria del Fiore, Church, Florence - LiDAR - Terrestrial. Distributed by Open Heritage 3D. https://doi.org/10.34946/D6ZW26 |
| Data Type |
Size |
Device Name |
Device Type |
| LiDAR - Terrestrial | Not available | Not available | Not available |
| Background |
| Site Description | A cornerstone for the new cathedral of S. Maria del Fiore was laid in 1296, marking the initiation of this massive structure that would only be consecrated in 1436. Built around an extant church called S. Reparata, the remains of which may be examined below the flooring of the current building, the walls of the new cathedral pushed east toward what had been, two hundred years earlier, the corner of the set of walls that ringed the ancient city of Fiorenza. Named to honor the Virgin Mary, primary advocate of all the saints, this enormous monument was designed in the Tuscan gothic style, featuring solid walls with only a few tall lancet windows, a second story with no true triforium or clerestory, and a ceiling formed by quadripartite vaulted bays. By 1380 the nave and its two side aisles, transept wings, and apsidial chapels had been completed: only the covering of the expansive crossing remained, with no logical plan to proceed in place. In response to a competition held by the commune, Filippo Brunelleschi supplied a solution to cap the crossing with a double-vaulted dome, supported by an elevated drum and buttressed by semi-domes and internal chains that wrapped around the brickwork. Between 1417 and his death in 1446, Brunelleschi oversaw work on this project and, in the process, earning the right to be buried in the crypt of the cathedral. Most of the objects that originally adorned the interior and exterior of S. Maria del Fiore may now be viewed in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo (behind the church), but frescoes of Niccolò Tolentino and Sir John Hawkwood remain on the north nave wall.
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| Project Description | Florence As It Was has multiple aims within its broad goal of recreating selected structures in the city as they appeared in the year 1500. The pointclouds and photogrammetric models we build certainly serve their purposes as visual portals into the past, but the translations of early modern descriptions, transcriptions of contemporary documents, and the creation of a database of people, places, and things weaves these images into layers of information that help us interpret what we see. Intended as a study tool (as opposed to a substitution for the real thing), this project provides users with a combination of the type of original source materials that historians of art and architecture in particular typically use when crafting scholarly works. Its multi-variances routinely force us to make choices and adhere to a list of priorities as we go. We have progressed deliberately and with an eye toward posting the most original portions of our work first, and then filling in the gaps later on. We have concentrated much of our attention on the physically and politically challenging work of securing permissions, traveling to Florence, and then using state-of-the-art technology to scan the most important structures in the city before editing and modeling those scans so that they reflect accurately the dimensions and color patterns of those buildings.
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| UNESCO World Heritage Site | Historic Centre of Florence |
| External Project Link | View exhibit |
| Collection Date | 2019-12-09 to 2025-02-28 |
| Publication Date | 2026-03-16 |
| License Type | Restricted |
| Model Information |
| Reuse Score | B - High-Quality Model without Georeferencing |
| Curator Notes | This dataset is restricted, to request access please consult the Florence as It Was Project
https://florenceasitwas.wlu.edu/
florenceasitwas@wlu.edu |
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