Florence cathedral_Year 1357: the basilican body of Santa Maria del Fiore and the Duomo Nuovo of Siena, two large coeval building phases with different fates

In the spring of 1357, Talenti and Benci di Cione had the opportunity to examine the conditions of the basilican body of the Duomo Nuovo and to assess its vulnerable elements. Essentially, they had an extraordinary and unique opportunity to reflect not on the basis of a model of the design but by actually studying a real building of great size which clearly showed the shortcomings and errors made in the construction choices. In July 1357, while the structures of the Duomo Nuovo were being dismantled and the aisles were being freed from the rubble that had accumulated during the collapses, in Florence after a long period of little activity at the cathedral construction site, the large bays were started and completed within a few years, which were much larger than those that had collapsed in Siena cathedral. Francesco Talenti’s role as master builder in the cathedral of Florence suggests a connection between what happened in 1357 at the two building sites.