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THE DOME OF ST. PETER'S
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a circular vault on Gothic principles, or one in which the ribs could act in a Gothic way.[1] The nearest approach to such a form, in a vault that may with any propriety be called a dome, occurs over the crossing of nave and transept in the old cathedral of Salamanca in Spain (Fig. 28).[2] But this vault has a
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Fig. 28.—Interior of dome of Salamanca.
very different character from the imaginary one just described. It rises from the top of a high drum resting on pendentives, and is built on a system of salient converging ribs. The spaces
- ↑ A consistent exterior for such a vault would not, of course, be an unbroken drum, though a perfectly Gothic circular vault might be thus enclosed within a drum. A consistent external form would require salient buttresses against the lines of thrust, and the intervals between these buttresses would be open, as in a Gothic apse.
- ↑ The outside of this vault is figured in my Development and Character of Gothic Architecture, 2d edition, New York and London, The Macmillan Co., 1900, p. 287.
