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The Florence Cathedral’s building began in 1296 by Arnolfo di Cambio, and continued for the next 140 years before the dome was completed. When the main part of the cathedral was finished, a 140 foot space was left open to the sky because of no probable way of closing it off. In 1420, Filippo Brunelleschi, with the knowledge from studying architecture after his loss of the baptistery commission, took on the challenge of making a dome to fit over the space that would be structurally strong and capable of standing the test of time, without flying buttresses and traditional wooden centering that all domes had up to this point. Brunelleschi used his knowledge of the Pantheon in Rome to engineer a geometric linear perspective in cr