r
of a despatch from the Duke's envoy, Averardo Serristori. The
ambassador related the events of Michelangelo's death, and supported
Nanni as "a worthy man, your vassal and true servant."

IX

Down to the last days of his life, Michelangelo was thus worried with
the jealousies excited by his superintendence of the building at S.
Peter's; and when he passed to the majority, he had not secured his
heart's desire, to wit, that the fabric should be forced to retain the
form he had designed for it. This was his own fault. Popes might issue
briefs to the effect that his plans should be followed; but when it
was discovered that, during his lifetime, he kept the builders in
ignorance of his intentions, and that he left no working models fit
for use, except in the case of the cupola, a free course was opened
for every kind of innovation. So it came to pass that subsequent
architects changed the essential features of his design by adding what
might be called a nave, or, in other words, by substituting the Latin
for the Greek cross in the ground-plan. He intended to front the mass
of the edifice with a majestic colonnade, giving externally to one
limb of the Greek cross a rectangular salience corresponding to its
three semicircular apses. From this decastyle colonnade projected a
tetrastyle portico, which introduced the people ascending from a
flight of steps to a gigantic portal. The portal opened on the church,
and all the glory of the dome was visible when they approached the
sanctuary. Externally, according to his conception, the cupola
dominated and crowned the edifice when viewed from a moderate or a
greater distance. The cupola was the integral and vital feature of the
structure. By producing one limb of the cross into a nave, destroying
the colonnade and portico, and erecting a huge facade of _barocco_
design, his followers threw the interior effect of the cupola into a
subordinate position, and externally crushed it out of view, except at
a great distance. In like manner they dealt with every particular of
his plan. As an old writer has remarked: "The cross which Michelangelo
made Greek is now Latin; and if it be thus with the essential form,
judge ye of the details!" It was not exactly their fault, but rather
that of the master, who chose to work by drawings and small clay
models, from which no accurate conception of his thought could be
derived by lesser craftsmen.

We cannot, therefore, regard S. Peter's in its p