that of Bramante's scheme to the dome of Brunelleschi as to internal effect), while the other two were to be pointed, with diverging surfaces. Following Brunelleschi, he introduced a system of enormous ribs rising over the buttresses of the drum, and converging on the opening at the crown of the vault. These ribs unite the outermost two shells, extending through the thickness of both, and support the lantern.
Of this hazardous scheme only the drum was completed when Michael Angelo died. But the existing dome, which was carried out by his immediate successors, is substantially his design, though the innermost shell of the model was omitted in execution, and the vault was thus made double instead of three-fold (Fig. 30). This dome does not, however, divide into two shells from near the springing, but is carried up in one solid mass almost to the level of the haunch. Michael Angelo may have thought that this would strengthen it, but the solid part has not a form capable of much resistance to thrust, and the isolated buttresses are located so far below the springing that they contribute practically nothing to the strength of the system, as already remarked, and as we shall presently see.
Although this great dome has been almost universally lauded, it is entirely indefensible from the point of view of sound principles of construction. The work shows that Michael Angelo was not imbued, as Bramante had been, with a sense of the essential conditions of stability in dome building as exemplified in the works of Roman antiquity. He had conceived an ardent admiration for the dome of Florence, and in emulation of it he changed the external outline from the hemispherical to the pointed form, and, lifting it out of the buttressing drum, set it on the top.[1]
This vast dome is an imposing object, but it is nevertheless a monument of structural error. Not only does its form and construction render it much less secure than Brunelleschi's dome, but its supporting drum is entirely unsuited to its function,
- ↑ Michael Angelo's remark, quoted by Fontana (Tempio Vaticano, vol. 2, p. 315): "Imitando l'antico del Pantheon, e la moderna di Santa Maria del Fiore, corresse i difetti dell'uno, e dell'altro," shows that he regarded as a defect the lowness of the Pantheon dome, which in point of construction is its capital merit, and that what he proposed to correct in the dome of Florence was its octagonal form, which is essential to its peculiar structural system.
