Page:Character of Renaissance Architecture.djvu/95

A great deal has been said of the beauty of St. Peter's dome. It has been held up as a model of architectural elegance by countless writers from Vasari down. But no abstract beauty, no impressiveness as a commanding feature in the general view of the ancient city that it may have, can make amends for such structural defects. Its beauty has, however, I think, been exaggerated. Its lack of visible organic connection with the substructure makes it inferior in effect to the dome of Florence, where the structural lines of the edifice, from the ground upward, give a degree of organic unity, and the buttressed half-domed apses, grouped in happy subordination about the base of the drum, prepare the eye to appreciate the majesty of the soaring cupola as it rises over them. The dome of St. Peter's has not the beauty of logical composition. Beauty in architecture may, I think, be almost defined as the artistic coordination of structural parts. As in any natural organic form, a well-designed building has a consistent internal anatomy, and its external character is a consequence and expression of this. The dome of St. Peter's violates the true principles of organic composition, and this I believe to be incompatible with the highest architectural beauty.