safe as the general tenor of his book would lead us to believe. And the same misgivings are betrayed in what is said by the numerous other writers whose opinions are cited by him, though like himself they write for the most part with a manifest bias in favour of Michael Angelo. Thus one of these writers proposes that the outer covering of lead should be stripped off on account of its weight, and be replaced with copper, to which Poleni objects,[1] affirming that the weight is an advantage, and tends to hold the dome together. Another writer suggests that the lantern be removed in order to relieve the fabric of its weight. Another thinks that the buttresses should be heavily weighted with statues. It was also proposed that additional buttresses should be set against the attic of the drum, and carried up against the dome itself; and again it was proposed that massive abutments be built up over each of the four great piers, but to this it was objected that the additional weight of such abutments would dangerously overcharge the substructure. The most radical suggestion was that both dome and drum be demolished and rebuilt in a more pointed form. All of these suggestions were rejected, and it was finally decided to employ the additional chains proposed by Poleni as already stated.
The dome of St. Peter's (Plate III) was conceived in a grandiose spirit, which, while it drew inspiration in part from the ancient Roman source, recklessly disregarded the lessons which Roman art should teach as to principles of construction. I have said that Brunelleschi led the way in a wrong direction when he set his great dome on the top of its drum, and had resort to clamps and chains for the resistance to its thrusts that should have been given by abutment. In following his example, Michael Angelo wandered still farther from the path of true and monumental art. To make a dome on a large scale a conspicuous object, from the springing to the crown, is a thing that cannot be safely done in stone masonry. To make it stand at all, resort must be had to extraneous and hidden means of support, and even these are of uncertain efficiency for any length of time. The ancient Roman and the Byzantine builders settled, I think, for all time the proper mode of constructing domed edifices. Bramante had recognized this, and while striving to include in his design for the dome of St. Peter's as much as he could of
- ↑ Op. cit., p. 399.
