Page:Character of Renaissance Architecture.djvu/86

56 save as to its strength to bear the mere crushing weight of the vault. In replacing the continuous colonnade, with its abutting load, of Bramante's drum by the isolated buttresses, Michael Angelo ignored the true principle of resistance to the continuous thrusts of a dome. It has been thought that the rib system justifies this, that the ribs gather the thrusts upon the buttresses and give the dome a somewhat Gothic character. But this cannot be so. It is impossible for a dome to have any Gothic character. In addition to what has been already said (p. 20) on this point, it may be further remarked that, so long as the surfaces between the ribs remain straight on plan, as in the dome of Florence, or are segments of a hemisphere, or of a dome of pointed form on a circular base, like the dome of St. Peter's, no ribs can be made to act in a Gothic way. A circular vault on Gothic principles would necessarily be a celled vault, more or

27.

less like the small vault of the Pazzi already described (p. 27). In such a vault there would have to be an arch (in a true Gothic vault a much stilted arch) in the circumference of the drum over the space between each pair of ribs. The crowns of these arches would reach to a considerable height, in a developed Gothic vault to nearly or quite the height of the crown of the vault itself. The triangular spaces enclosed by these arches and converging ribs would then be vaulted over by slightly arched courses of masonry running lengthwise of the triangle, or from the arches to the ribs, and approximately parallel with the crown of the cell (A, Fig. 27). Thus in place of an unbroken hemispherical or oval vault, we should have one consisting of deep cells. The drum would have to rise far above the springing, and the haunches would need to be loaded with a solid filling of masonry. The vault would thus be completely hidden from view on the outside. Nothing short of this would produce