steadily advancing. Michael Angelo was, therefore, able to raise the
central structure as far as the drum of the cupola before his death. His
plans and models were carefully preserved, and a special papal ordinance
decreed that henceforth there should be no deviation from the scheme he
had laid down. Unhappily this rule was not observed. Under Pius V.,
Vignola and Piero Ligorio did indeed continue his tradition; under Gregory
XIII., Sixtus V., and Clement VIII., Giacomo della Porta made no
substantial alterations; and in 1590 Domenico Fontana finished the dome.
But during the pontificate of Paul V., Carlo Maderno resumed the form of
the Latin cross, and completed the nave and vestibule, as they now stand,
upon this altered plan (1614). The consequence is what has been already
noted--at a moderate distance from the church the dome is lost to view; it
only takes its true position of predominance when seen from far. In the
year 1626, S. Peter's was consecrated by Urban VIII., and the mighty work
was finished. It remained for Bernini to add the colonnades of the piazza,
no less picturesque in their effect than admirably fitted for the
pageantry of world-important ceremonial. At the end of the eighteenth
century it was reckoned that the church had cost but little less than
fifty million scudi.

Michael Angelo forms the link between the second and third periods of the
Renaissance. Among the architects of the latter age we have to reckon
those who based their practice upon minute study of antique writers, and
who, more than any of their predecessors, realised the long-sought
restitution of the classic style according to precise scholastic
canons.[51] A new age had now begun for Italy. The glory and the grace of
the Renaissance, its blooming time of beauty, and its springtide of young
strength, were over. Strangers held the reins of power, and the
Reformation had begun to make itself felt in the Northern provinces of
Christendom. A colder and more formal spirit everywhere prevailed. The