Three men took part in the competition: the master mason Battista
D’Antonio; the Florentine sculptor of the famous Baptistery doors, Lorenzo
Ghiberti; and the Florentine jeweler Filippo Brunelleschi. To everyone’s surprise,
when the decision of the overseers was announced on April 16, 1420,
there was no winner; all three competitors were appointed to supervise the
construction program. Brunelleschi was well prepared for the work. He had
conducted experiments in the engineering problems necessary to construct
the dome and had made a simple and bold model that showed how his proposals
would work. Equally important, he had submitted drawings and an accurate
description of his plan in a document, the “modellum,” which was kept
with the city notaries.