Bodies in Motion

Donatello brought sculpture back to life with his bronze David (c. 1440s) — the first free-standing nude sculpture since antiquity. The figure stands in elegant contrapposto, weight on one leg, with a confidence that echoes ancient Greek and Roman work.

Brunelleschi's dome was an engineering miracle — built without scaffolding using a double-shell design and herringbone brickwork that allowed the structure to support itself during construction. No one had built a dome that large since the Roman Pantheon over a thousand years earlier.