Migrating Inventions: Piero Sanpaolesi and the Case of the Double-Shelled Domes in Sultanyeh and Santa Maria del Fiore

This study of the technology of double-shelled domes as migrating inventions that traveled between Europe and the Mongol Empire presents evidence of continuous streams of communication that persisted between Florence and Iranian cities throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, such as Tabriz and Soltaniyeh. Situating the double-­ shelled dome within this broader Mediterranean context, their essay provides extensively documented grounds for a new system of classification of medieval and early modern domed structures: one based on the process of making with a focus on material qualities and technical devices inspired by the parallel between Brunelleschi’s dome in Florence and the mausoleum of Oljaitü. Following from the innovative work of the Italian conservator Piero Sanpaolesi (1971), who contested traditional Western-­ centered narrative that Brunelleschi’s design for the Florentine cathedral dome is a unique invention without precedent, they present an ambitious research hypothesis that challenges this canonical view by reshaping the traditional boundaries of the discipline in a transcultural historiographical framework.