Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 17.djvu/518

* SAINT PETEK'S CHURCH. 468 SAINT-PIERRE. Tlio first iKjpc to take up tlie work with vigor was Julius II. (1503-1513), who oniplovud lirr- mante to uiake an entirely new design for the churoh. This design is preserved; it includes a great central cupola around which the nave and aisles arc grouped. He died in 1514, and his suc- cessor as chief architect was Raphael, having as his immediate assistants the able architects Giuliano da San Gallo and Baldassare Pcruzzi (qq.v.). It seems that they dumged the plan to a Latin cross. In 154ti the work was put into the liands of Jlicliclangelo Buonarroti, who returned to the (ircck cross, and followed Bramante's main lines of the work, building upon the great piers of the earlier archi- tect. (See iliciiELANGELO. ) He carried up the vaults and pendentives and all that even now exists leading up to the great cupola, and he made during his lifetime a model in wood of the cupola itself, which is preserved, and which was very closely followed in the actual construc- tion. Until his death in 15G4 Michelangelo con- trolled the work. The cupola seems to have been completed about 1590 under the direction of Glacomo della Porta and Domenico Fontana. The final dedication of the church was in 1(326. The great colonnades inclosing of Piazza di San Pietro, one of the most efi'ective compositions of the late neo-classic style, was carried out by Bernini (([.v.) about the middle of the seven- teenth century. The entrance front, which in this church faces the east instead of the west, as is more usual, had not been carried very far. This unfortunate neglect made it the more easy for Carlo Jladerna to undertake his final and most unfortunate changes. Appointed architect in 1605, he re- turned to the idea of the Latin cross, which al- ways had many friends among the clergj- for rit- ualistic reasons. The addition made in this way to the church is in itself an enormous build- ing. Carlo Maderna's front, on the Piazza di San Pietro, is not at all a fine design: architects of all schools are agreed upon that ; but it could be endured as a tolerable piece of the decadenza. The serious mischief done is this, that one has to be half a mile from the church in order to see the cupola aright from the east. The great Piazza di San Pietro, about one thousand feet long, does not give nearly sufficient opportunity to retire from the front in order to see the cu- pola. Thus the most important part of the church can only be seen aright by him who will pass around to the west and northwest of the church and get permission to enter the Papal gardens there. From a point well chosen in that region the huge cupola rises from its substruc- tures, themselves enormous in scale, and the whole group, the mass, the artistic conce])tion embodied in these enormous combinations of cut stone is in its main outlines one of the finest conee])tions of modern times. The interior of the church is disfigured by ex- aggerated ornamentation and with strong con- trast of light and dark. Thus when one enters the church for the first time the most plainly visible thing is apt to be the adornment of the great piers by cartouches, picked out in strong contrast of light and shade on the dark marble surface. In ways like this the great pro- portions of the building are dwarfed, and to this is to be added the natural acceptance of the clas- sic system of [iroportion, in which the architec- tural members are always of the same relative size, so that a single acanthus leaf in the capitals of the nave nuiy be five feet long. The proportions of the interior, though far from perfect, are, on the whole, however, still to be received as in ac- cordance with a fairly rational architectural tradition. The church grows on tlie spectator continually, and the effect of the great cupola when seen from within is one of the most striking and most charming pieces of architectural dec- orative work in existence. The church is crowded with altars, mosaics, tombs, shrines, statues, fonts, and other works of art, insomuch that it forms a museum of the sculpture and the architectural decorative work of three centuries. The most prominent of the accessory structures inside the church is the great bronze Baldaechino. as lofty as most church towers, and covering the high altar. Beneath this is a shrine or confessionary. The crypt has been carefully guarded through all the change of plan and through the centuries of constantly renewed work on the building. It contains many precious monuments and frag- ments of the original Basilica of Saint Peter, of which it marks the level, ten or twelve feet below that of the modern church. Con- sult: Geymiiller, Les projets pritnitifs pour la basiliijiie de Saint Pierre de Rome (Paris, 1880) ; De Lorbac, Saint Pierre de Rome (ib., 1879) ; and Letarouilly, Le Vatican et la basi- liqiie de Saint Pierre a Rome (ib., 1882). SAINT PETER'S COLLEGE. A college at Cambridge, England, commonly called Peter- house, the oldest college in the university. It was founded in 1284 bj' Hugh de Balsham. Bishop of Ely. for a master and fourteen fellows. It was the outgrowth of an attempt by the Bisliop to introduce certain secular scholars into the Hos- pital of Saint .John in 1280. This ended in the triinsfer of those scholars to certain hostels near the Church of Saint Peter, which was impro- priated to the new foundation, and gave it the name it bears. (See Saixt John's College.) Peterhouse consists of a master and ten fellows, lecturers, tutors, and officers, honorary fellows, twenty-two scholars, and six exhibitioners, and some sixty undergraduates in all. There are eleven livings in the gift of the college. SAINT-PIERRE, saN'pe'ar'. A seaport on the southern coast of the French island of Reu- nion (q.v.). connected by rail with .Saint-Denis, the capital. It has lost its commercial impor- tance since the opening of the Port des Galets. but has a number of sugar mills and canning es- tablishments. Population, 27.520. SAINT-PIERRE. Previous to 1902 the most important city on the island of Mai'tinique (q.v.), French West Indies (Map: Antilles, R 7 ). It lay at the head of an open bay on the northwest coast of the island, and at the foot of Mont Pelee. It was an attractive and well- built town, and had a cathedral, a college, a fine botanical garden, a theatre, and several handsome public buildings. The harbor was an open road- stead, but the town had considerable commerce, the exportation of sugjir and rum being especially important. The population in 1901 was 26,011. On May 8. 1902. the entire city and the neigh- boring hamlets were destroyed by an explosive