Filippo Brunelleschi

Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446) was a Florentine goldsmith turned architect and engineer. The son of a notary, he trained as a goldsmith and became a master in 1398. After losing the 1401 competition for the Florence Baptistery's bronze doors to Lorenzo Ghiberti, he studied Roman ruins with Donatello and turned to architecture. Around 1415 his painted panels established the mathematical rules of linear perspective.

From 1420 he built Florence Cathedral's great dome, completed in 1436 without timber centering through ingenious machines and self-supporting masonry; in 1421 he received the first recorded patent in Europe, for a river barge. He died in Florence in 1446, regarded as a founding father of Renaissance architecture.