GIOTTO'S BELL TOWER PROJECT
Giotto's bell tower is the bell tower of Santa Maria del Fiore, the cathedral of Florence, and is located in Piazza del Duomo.
Its foundations were dug around 1298 at the beginning of the construction of the new cathedral, when the master builder was Arnolfo di Cambio.
In 1334 Giotto di Bondone took over the position of master builder. Vasari, in Giotto's Life, refers to his arrival "in the year 1334 on the 9th of July, at the bell tower of S. Maria del Fiore", when he immediately began to take care of the construction of the first floor of the bell tower, disinterested - according to Giovanni Villani - from the construction site of the basilica.
The unusual position of the bell tower, aligned with the facade, reflects the desire to give it great importance as a sign of strong verticality in the center of the Insula Episcopalis, as well as probably the practical need to free the view of the apsidal area for the large dome, foreseen since Arnolfian project.
Giotto provided an original plan for the bell tower, with a pyramidal cusp termination 50 Florentine arms high (about 30 meters), according to which the total elevation should have been about 110-115 meters.
A drawing preserved in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo in Siena is considered by some scholars to be inspired by this project.
The height of the bell tower that can be visited to the public is still 82 meters and the number of original steps to climb to the top is 398 to which 15 must be added which are part of the first access ramp.
This is the final result of a work carried out with care and which I will be happy to show you in the coming days, hoping to arouse your interest.
This is the starting image taken with a Nikon D7500.
Small corrections have been applied with Camera Raw.
The first step was to transform the original image into black and white by adjusting curves and tonal values.
So I isolated the bell tower from everything else with a selection using the pen tool : the only tool with which in my opinion you can get precise selections.
At this point I replaced the sky with a texture to make the scene more dramatic.
Finally I removed a portion of the bell tower and applied a Camera Raw filter to lighten the shadows in some areas.
This is the final result.
The project was awarded by the 1x.com community.
I would appreciate your comment on this work.
Thanks for your support and patience.
Leonardo Bandinelli
