ARCHITECTURE. 185 
and the reformation might have been retarded if Bramante’s simple plan 
had been adopted which he had sketched for a church upon the site of the 
old basilica, San Pietro, as his design did not require the immense sums 
that were afterwards expended in the erection of modern St. Peter’s. 
Pope Nicholas V. was the first who thought of building a new church 
(when the old one was considered decaying), and he caused Rosellini to 
draw a design, which was not followed and was lost. Seven popes after 
Nicholas permitted the matter to rest, until Julius II. revived it. Among 
many plans that of Bramante was selected. According to him the church 
was to consist of three aisles in the form of a Latin cross, with three 
entrances to them, under a portico of 36 columns, unhappily at unequal 
distances. The pillars of the interior were to have had niches, and the four 
chief pillars to have supported a dome of 127 feet in width and 67 feet in 
height from the drum, which was to have been a circular wall 32 feet high 
and 12 feet thick, surrounded by 48 disengaged Corinthian columns 3 feet 
thick. The dome, finally, was to have been surmounted by a lantern 94 feet 
high. 
On the 18th of April, 1506, the corner-stone of one of the chief pillars 
was laid by the pope, after the old basilica had been removed in injudicious 
hurry, and only a single one of its exquisite mosaics, that still exists in the 
present church, had been saved. Bramante, who must have foreseen an 
alteration of his plan after his death, aimed at having at least the dome 
retained, and so only the main pillars were constructed. But in spite of 
the great zeal with which he pursued the work, they were only completed 
to the main cornice with their arches at the time of his death in 1514. 
When Leo X. ascended the papal throne, Giuliano di San Gallo, Fra Gio- 
condo of Venice, and Raphael of Urbino, Bramante’s nephew, who had his 
drawings, were named as commissioners of the building. San Gallo soon 
returned to Venice, Fra Giocondo died, and Raphael continued the work 
alone, strengthened the foundations and the pillars themselves which had 
proved too weak, but died in 1520. After him Balthasar Peruzzi was 
architect, and made a new plan by which the church would have formed a 
Greek cross, but would have become of inferior effect. Around the great 
dome four smaller ones were to have been placed; the three great apsides 
which Bramante had already arranged, and which still remain, Peruzzi 
retained. This poor plan was only commenced, however, when Pope Paul 
III. appointed Antonio San Gallo, the nephew of Giuliano, as the assistant 
of Peruzzi, and he soon after the death of Peruzzi presented his own plan 
in a model made by Labacco, in which the form of the Latin cross was 
restored. This plan was rejected, and San Gallo died of vexation in 1546. 
Thus the work had advanced for forty years without any plan, when 
Michael Angelo Buonarotti drew a new design, and Paul III., who had 
called him to Rome, appointed him sole architect. Michael Angelo 
approached again the form of the Greek cross, and according to his plan 
the church was built as far as where in our ground plan (jig. 1) stands the 
first row of pillars in the main building, so that the ground plan was a 
square, with a fore-hall and three semicircles attached. Here, at the great 
185 
