year, the celebrated Raphael was appointed to succeed him. Although that great painter was an accomplished architect, in the sense in which that term was then becoming understood, the task he was now appointed to was as little suited to his taste as to his abilities. So great had been the haste of the late Pope, and so inconsiderate the zeal of his architect, that, though the great piers which were to support the dome had only been carried to such a height as to enable the arches to be turned which were to join them, they already showed signs of weakness, and it was evident they must either be rebuilt from the basement, or very considerably reinforced, if ever a dome was to be placed oil them (Wittmann 99). While men were disputing what was best to be done, Raphael died, and Baldassare Peruzzi was appointed to succeed him as architect.
Peruzzi, fearing that the work would never be completed on the scale originally designed, determined at once to abandon the nave of Bramante, and reduced the original design of building established by Bramante. He reduced the building to a square enclosing a Greek cross; designed the angles filled in with square sacristies, which were to be each surmounted by a dome of about one-third the diameter of the great one, being in fact the arrangement then and subsequently so universal in the Russian churches (Gorman 76). Before much was, done, however, he died, in 1536, and was succeeded by the celebrated Antonio Sangallo .
All Sangallo’s time, and all the funds he could command, were employed in strengthening the piers of the great dome, and in remedying the defects in construction introduced by his predecessors. His design, besides, does not seem to have met with much favour among his