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THE RENAISSANCE IN ENGLAND
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the drum, and looking down finds the space between the clerestory and outer wall open to the sky, that he discovers the buttresses there, and realizes the deceitful character of the architectural scheme. Perhaps this illustrates another point in which Wren "sought to reconcile the Gothic to a better manner." A similar treatment occurs in that part of the nave of St. Peter's which was built by Maderno. Michael Angelo's great external order had obliged him, as we saw (p. 68), to carry up the aisle wall to the height of the clerestory, but he filled up the space over the aisle with his small embedded dome (Fig. 32, p. 69). In Maderno's part the dome is omitted, and the space over the aisle vaulting is left open to the sky as in St. Paul's. But the buttresses of St. Peter's are solid cross walls with no suggestion of Gothic form. In the vaulting of the apse Wren has followed the quasi-mediæval form adopted by Michael Angelo in the apse of St. Peter's, dividing it into three shallow cells on converging ribs rising from the stumpy pilasters of the attic.


Fig 139.—Half section of the nave of St. Paul's.

Of the architectural treatment of the exterior as a whole little need be said further than that it has no relation to the real form of the building. The masking of the buttress system by the false wall, and the application of orders without any structural use or expression in harmony with the real structure, are entirely in keeping with the spirit the Renaissance. Wren's other churches exhibit a medley of elements from spurious Gothic to pseudo-classic in manifold irrational combi-