Recent writers have ignored the condition of this monument. They do not appear to be aware of it; and although it has been fully set forth, and discussed at great length by the earlier Italian writers, few of them have found the true cause in its flagrant violation of the fundamental laws of stability. They attributed the alarming progress of disintegration, as we have seen, to accidents and circumstances of various kinds; and have sought to shift the responsibility to the shoulders of Bramante. They have affirmed that he did not take enough care to make his foundations secure. There appears to be some justice in this, though since his work was strengthened by his immediate successors[63] the ruptures in the dome cannot, according to the mathematicians, be attributed to this. The remarks of the old writers on Bramante must, I think, be taken with some allowance. Their bias against him is very marked. Thus Poleni quotes Condivi, a disciple of Michael Angelo, as saying, “Bramante being, as every one knows, given to every kind of pleasure, and a great spendthrift, not even the provision given by the Pope, however much it was, sufficed him, and seeking to expedite his work, he made the walls of bad materials, and of insufficient size and strength.”[64] 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 coördination 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. CHAPTER V CHURCH ARCHITECTURE OF THE ROMAN RENAISSANCE