Page:Character of Renaissance Architecture.djvu/100

 AB (plan, Fig. 31) passes, one has a barrel vault and the other a dome, and, as each of the other corresponding parts of the plan are vaulted in the same way, there are four small domes in all. The effect of four smaller domes grouped around the great central one would be happy for both internal and external effect, if they were properly related in proportions, and the scheme were carried out in a structurally consistent and rational way; but such a scheme could not be developed here. For from the level of the aisle arches a dome, even on a proportionately high drum, could not be made to reach the level of the cornice of the enclosing wall unreasonably elevated for the sake of the gigantic external order. But Michael Angelo nevertheless constructed such a dome (A, Fig. 32), although it had to be sunk up to its crown beneath the aisle roof, and then, for external effect, he built another dome over it (B, Fig. 32). To light the lower dome it was necessary to sink oblique openings, a, through the massive masonry of the roof, and to light the useless vaulted chamber, b, which he was obliged to make over the barrel vault of the inner compartment (the crown of which is still farther down below the roof), the well, c, had to be sunk. Thus instead of making a reasonable design with ornamental details appropriate to its structural forms, Michael Angelo first conceived an ornamental scheme consisting of the inappropriate colossal order, and then fitted the building to it, filling up vacant spaces with extravagantly massive solids and useless voids, and resorting to other tortuous devices to piece out a fundamentally irrational system.

Such is St. Peter's church, which, though it has been much criticised, has been more generally lauded as a model of architectural greatness. Its real character has rarely been analyzed or rationally considered. That it has qualities of majesty and grandeur need not be denied; but these qualities are mainly due to its vast magnitude, and to what it retains of the design of its first, and greatest, architect. The manner in which the scheme of Bramante was modified and distorted by his successors, and chiefly by Michael Angelo, notwithstanding his professions of admiration for Bramante's intentions, is far from admirable, as I think the foregoing account of its structural and artistic aberrations must show. The building as a whole is characterized by incongruity and extravagance, and when we