St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican (Basilica Sancti Petri in Latin, Basilica di San Pietro in Vaticano in Italian), long held to be the vastest church in Christendom[5], is the major architectural monument of the Roman Renaissance and Baroque. Its construction, spread over one hundred and twenty years between the laying of the foundation stone by Pope Julius II on 18 April 1506 and the solemn consecration by Urban VIII on 18 November 1626, is one of the longest continuous building projects in the history of Western architecture. It mobilised twenty successive pontificates, a dozen architects — including Bramante, Raphael, Michelangelo, Carlo Maderno and Bernini — and 46,800,498 Roman currency écus (scudi) accumulated over 188 years of accounts (1506-1694)[6].
The present building succeeds the Constantinian basilica erected around 319-333 over the Vatican necropolis, on the traditional site of the martyrdom and burial of the apostle Peter (around 64-67, under Nero). In 1505, Julius II decided to demolish the ruinous old basilica and raise in its place a building worthy of the Roman triumph of the papacy. The project then ran through the whole 16th century: it endured the Sack of Rome in 1527, saw the revolutionary shift from the Greek-cross plan — a compact plan in the shape of a cross with four equal arms, centred beneath the dome — (Bramante, Michelangelo) to the Latin-cross plan — an elongated plan with a long nave, as in most of our churches — (Maderno, under Paul V in 1607), and culminated with Michelangelo's dome, completed by Giacomo della Porta in 1590.
Financing through indulgences — Julius II's bull in 1507, extended by Leo X in 1515 — triggered in Germany, through the ill-judged preaching of Johann Tetzel, the reaction of Martin Luther: the 95 Theses of 31 October 1517 are precisely an attack on the indulgences for the fabric of St Peter's. The construction of the most prestigious Catholic monument is thus the historical occasion of the Protestant rupture. Beyond indulgences, the decision to build an edifice of this scale was, on the Catholic side, an act of faith made against the times: begun as Christendom was cracking, completed after the Council of Trent and at the heart of the Catholic Reformation, St Peter's became the visible manifesto of a Church affirming itself as one, Roman and hierarchical. For posterity, the cumulative work of Michelangelo the architect — drum, attic and dome profile — remains the absolute summit of the Roman Renaissance, and the dome itself, beneath which have been venerated, ever since Paul VI announced on 26 June 1968 that the bones of the apostle had been "identified in a manner we can believe convincing"[7], the most recognisable architectural symbol of the Catholic Church.
The old Constantinian basilica (319-1606)
An imperial foundation over Peter's tomb
The apostle Peter, first bishop of Rome, was martyred by crucifixion in Nero's circus on Vatican Hill, probably between 64 and 67 AD; tradition — first reported by the apocryphal Acts of Peter, then by Origen — specifies that he was crucified head down[8]. His body was buried in the neighbouring necropolis, along the Via Cornelia. The memory of this tomb was continuously venerated by Roman Christians, as attested by the votive graffiti studied in the 20th century by the archaeologist Margherita Guarducci in the Vatican necropolis uncovered during the excavations ordered by Pius XII and carried out from 1940 to 1949[9].
Around 319, the emperor Constantine I undertook the construction of a great funerary basilica above the presumed burial place of the apostle. The building, traditionally dedicated by Pope Sylvester I on 18 November 326 while work was still ongoing, was completed around 333: a long vessel with five naves preceded by a porticoed atrium, measuring about 103.6 m in interior length and rising to 30 m beneath the exposed timber roof. The twenty-one marble columns of each row, reused from ancient buildings, opened onto a transept — the transverse nave forming the arms of the cross — beyond which stood, raised, the confessio — the small shrine built above the tomb, before which the faithful "confess", that is, proclaim, their faith in the apostle[10].
A ruin on borrowed time (14th-15th century)
Eleven centuries after its foundation, the Constantinian basilica was threatening ruin. During the Avignon exile of the papacy (1309-1377) and the Western Schism (1378-1417), maintenance was neglected; the walls sagged. Around 1450, the humanist Leon Battista Alberti, commissioned by Pope Nicholas V (1447-1455) to survey the building, delivered a damning diagnosis: the south wall leaned more than six Roman feet (about 1.8 m) out of plumb, and "an extremely long and high wall was built above a continuous series of openings, without any curve to give it strength"[11].
Nicholas V then conceived an initial plan of partial reconstruction entrusted to Alberti and Bernardo Rossellino. Ancient monuments were notably exploited as veritable quarries to recover materials — from the Colosseum alone, "in a single year more than 2,500 cartloads" of travertine and tufa were taken, according to the pontifical accounts examined by Eugène Müntz[12]. But the death of Nicholas V in 1455 and political turmoil halted the enterprise. For another fifty years, the old basilica remained standing, propped up and cracked, until the irreversible decision of Julius II.
Julius II and the decision to raze: 1505-1506
A builder pope
Elected on 1 November 1503, Julius II (Giuliano della Rovere, 1443-1513), nephew of Sixtus IV, led a tense pontificate in which war, diplomacy and patronage were inseparable. Soldier-pope, restorer of the Papal States, he commissioned from Michelangelo the vault of the Sistine Chapel (1508-1512), from Raphael the Vatican Stanze (from 1508) and from Bramante the Via Giulia, the tribunal of the Sapienza, the Belvedere courtyard and the enlargement of the Vatican palaces. The plan for the complete reconstruction of St Peter's belongs to this policy of visible manifestation of pontifical power at the moment when the pontiff sought to impose Rome as the spiritual and political capital of Italy.
The decision was not only architectural. As early as 1505, Julius II also commissioned from Michelangelo his own monumental tomb, initially planned as a free-standing mass of forty statues in the new basilica. Tomb and building that was to house it were born of the same ambition: to refound in Rome a sanctuary on the scale of triumphant Christianity.
The laying of the foundation stone (18 April 1506)
On 18 April 1506, Saturday in albis after Easter, Julius II descended into an excavation dug at the future south-west crossing pier — the pier that would later bear the statue of St Veronica —, in the presence of thirty-five cardinals. According to the account of the master of ceremonies Paris de Grassis, the sixty-three-year-old pope nearly fainted in the pit and reproached the workmen for digging too deep[13]. The ceremony laid the founding act: from that date, the building site of the fabrica nova coexisted with what remained of the Constantinian basilica, demolished in successive stages as the new structure rose.
"Master Ruiner": Bramante's nickname
The scale of the planned demolition scandalised part of the pontifical court, attached to the vetus basilica and its thousands of funerary monuments. In 1517, the apostolic secretary Andrea Guarna published in Milan a Latin satire, the Simia, in which the dead Bramante presents himself at the gates of paradise: St Peter, indignant, reproaches him for having demolished his house; Bramante, unfazed, proposes to the heavenly pope to raze heaven to rebuild it more conveniently[14]. From this literary dialogue came the famous nickname, already circulating in Rome before 1517, by which the people designated the architect: "Maestro Ruinante" — "Master Ruiner"[15].
Donato Bramante: the Greek cross (1506-1514)
The master of a new classicism
Donato di Pascuccio d'Antonio, known as Bramante (Fermignano, 1444 — Rome, 11 April 1514), trained in Urbino then in Milan in the circle of Leonardo da Vinci, arrived in Rome in 1499. His inaugural commission there was, as early as 1502, the famous Tempietto of San Pietro in Montorio — a small circular Doric-colonnaded shrine, considered by Vasari as the birth certificate of High Renaissance architecture[16]. It is this miniature model that served as the guiding idea for the new basilica: a centred building, in the form of a Greek cross — four equal arms arranged around a single centre —, crowned by a vast hemispherical dome inspired by the Pantheon of Agrippa (around 126 AD).
The "parchment plan" (1505)
Bramante's initial project is known through a large drawing on parchment kept at the Uffizi in Florence (Uffizi, U 1A), dated 1505: the famous Pergamenplan. In it Bramante proposed a perfect Greek cross inscribed in a square, each branch ending in a semicircular apse and flanked by four corner towers and four secondary domes, around a monumental central dome. The plan evokes Hagia Sophia in Constantinople as much as the imperial Roman baths. The central rotunda would certainly be the vastest since the Pantheon[17].
For lack of time, between 1506 and 1514 Bramante raised only the four crossing piers and the arches linking them — the skeleton of the future central crossing. At his death on 11 April 1514, the dome was neither definitively designed nor begun. Work continued without a single plan.
"It cannot be denied that Bramante was, in architecture, the greatest inventor since the Ancients. He was the first who brought to light good and beautiful architecture, forgotten from the time of Cicero until now." — Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, Giunti ed., Florence, 1568, Life of Bramante[18]
Raphael, the Sangallos and Peruzzi: the decade without direction (1514-1546)
Raphael and the Latin cross (1514-1520)
On Bramante's death, Leo X (Medici, 1513-1521) appointed by pontifical brief of 1 August 1514 an unexpected successor: the painter Raphael (1483-1520), then aged 31. The brief cites, as guarantee, the dying Bramante's wish: "At his death he justly opined that to you might be confided the building."[19]. Raphael, trained in Urbino then in Florence, had almost no architectural work behind him. He surrounded himself with Fra Giovanni Giocondo of Verona (died 1515), a specialist in statics, and Giuliano da Sangallo, Antonio's uncle.
Raphael profoundly modified Bramante's scheme: he lengthened the nave eastward, transforming the Greek cross into a Latin cross — an elongated plan with a long nave — with five bays and apsidal chapels. His premature death at 37, on 6 April 1520 — Good Friday — interrupted the project. Raphael's plan would have no direct sequel, but it opened the debate that would only be settled in 1607 by Paul V: should St Peter's be a centred building (in the antique manner) or a longitudinal building (in the medieval and Tridentine liturgical manner)?
Peruzzi, Sangallo the Younger and the long interruption
Raphael was succeeded by Baldassare Peruzzi (1481-1536), Bramante's Sienese pupil, who returned to the Greek-cross scheme in his 1521 project, then by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger (1484-1546), Giuliano's nephew, appointed coadjutor as early as 22 November 1516 and sole master of works from 1536.
The Sack of Rome by the imperial troops of Charles V, on 6 May 1527, almost completely halted works for several years. For two decades, the St Peter's building site was reduced to reinforcement operations: Sangallo the Younger thickened Bramante's piers, judged too slender to carry a dome, and built gigantic buttresses. Between 1539 and 1546, he had his joiner Antonio Labacco execute a large wooden model of the planned building — still kept in the Vatican Museums — whose seven metres in length are an exceptional material witness to a project never realised[20]. At Sangallo's death, on 3 August 1546, the basilica was a huge, disordered building site, whose overall plan remained under debate.
Michelangelo the architect: the return to Bramante (1547-1564)
An unexpected appointment (1 January 1547)
On 1 January 1547, Pope Paul III Farnese (1534-1549) appointed Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), then aged 71, chief architect (capomaestro) of St Peter's. The sculptor of the Pietà, the painter of the Last Judgment, had no desire to accept a burden he judged overwhelming. He finally resigned himself to it out of obedience and devotion. In a letter to his Roman friend Bartolomeo Ferratino, dated 1557, he returned to the reasons for his acceptance:
"I undertook this enterprise only for the love of God and out of reverence for the Apostle [...] and I wish to carry it through without any salary, as I promised His Holiness." — Michelangelo Buonarroti, letter to Bartolomeo Ferratino, 1557, quoted by Vasari in the Life of Michelangelo, Giunti ed., Florence, 1568[21]
This absolute gratuity — sine ulla mercede in his contract — is one of the most singular facts in the history of the building site. Michelangelo never accepted a penny for his seventeen years as architect of St Peter's.
The return to the Greek cross
Faced with the tangle left by Sangallo, Michelangelo carried out a radical purge. He denounced before the pope "la setta sangallesca" ("the Sangallo sect") and obtained permission to return to Bramante's centred idea, whom he called a "clear and strong architect" and to whom he paid homage in these terms:
"It cannot be denied that Bramante was as valiant in architecture as any other from the time of the Ancients until now. He laid the first plan of St Peter's, not full of confusion, but clear and clean, luminous and standing free on all sides. [...] Whoever departs from this order established by Bramante, as Sangallo did, departs from the truth." — Michelangelo, fragment of a letter quoted by Vasari, Vita di Michelangelo, 1568[22]
Michelangelo restored the Greek cross, massive and simplified: he folded back the transept arms, strengthened the peripheral walls, freed the dome and designed the circular drum — the great cylindrical wall pierced with windows that carries the dome — with sixteen coupled columns that would be the visible skeleton of the dome. At his death on 18 February 1564, the drum was almost complete; the wooden model of the dome itself, executed by Giovanni Franzese under his direction, is kept to this day in the Fabbrica di San Pietro.
After Michelangelo: fidelity to the model
In the months following Michelangelo's death (18 February 1564), under the pontificate of Pius IV (1559-1565), the master's plans — including the dome profile fixed by his wooden model kept at the Fabbrica — imposed themselves as the untouchable reference of the building site: his immediate successor Pirro Ligorio would moreover be dismissed for wanting to depart from them. This fidelity would be only partially respected: twenty-six years later, Della Porta would raise the dome on a more slender ovoid profile than the pure hemisphere planned by Michelangelo.
The dome: Della Porta, Fontana and Sixtus V (1574-1593)
Giacomo della Porta and the ovoid dome project
After Michelangelo's death, the building site remained in suspense for twenty years, led successively by Pirro Ligorio (dismissed in 1567 for wanting to alter the plan), by Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola (Vignola, 1564-1573), then by Giacomo della Porta (around 1533-1602), appointed in 1574 by Gregory XIII. Della Porta presented to Pope Sixtus V Peretti (1585-1590) a new dome design, more slender and ovoid than the pure hemisphere planned by Michelangelo: a profile historians consider the first visual affirmation of the Baroque in Rome[23].
The 22-month tour de force (1588-1590)
Sixtus V, a pope of Franciscan origin, inflexible and impatient, ordered in 1588 the completion of the dome before his death. Technical direction was entrusted to Domenico Fontana (1543-1607), an engineer of Ticinese origin, who had just accomplished the transport of the Vatican obelisk from Nero's circus to its present position, in front of the basilica (10 September 1586). For the dome, Fontana and Della Porta mobilised up to eight hundred workmen labouring day and night in shifts by torchlight. The dome's double shell was raised in twenty-two months, between 15 July 1588 and 14 May 1590, at a cost of about 200,000 gold ducats[24].
"Sixtus V, in the first year of his pontificate, wished this admirable dome, which had been conceived by Michelangelo, to be finally completed. He employed eight hundred men night and day there, and the work was brought to completion in twenty-two months — a thing that seemed impossible to all the Ancients and that no pope had ever accomplished." — Domenico Fontana, Della trasportatione dell'obelisco vaticano, Rome, Domenico Basa, 1590[25]
The inscription engraved on the lantern ring by Clement VIII in 1593 commemorates Sixtus V: "S. PETRI GLORIAE SIXTVS PP. V. A. MDXC PONTIF. V." — "To the glory of St Peter, Pope Sixtus V, in the year 1590, the fifth year of his pontificate." When one looks up in the very centre of the basilica, it is this sentence, engraved 117 metres above the ground, that serves as the collective signature of the dome's building site.
A cumulative work
The dome of St Peter's, in its present appearance, is a work of three hands: (a) the overall profile comes from Michelangelo; (b) the ovoid, more slender double shell comes from Della Porta; (c) the technical feat of execution comes from Fontana. It is also a metrological challenge to be measured against earlier models.
| Dome | Architect | Completion | Interior diameter | Total height (ground to summit) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pantheon of Rome | Hadrian's architects (old attribution to Apollodorus not retained) | around 126 | 43.30 m | 43.30 m (interior) |
| Hagia Sophia in Constantinople | Anthemius of Tralles, Isidore of Miletus | 537 | 31.40 m | 55.60 m |
| Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence | Filippo Brunelleschi | 1436 | 42.00 m (octagonal) | 90.00 m |
| St Peter's in the Vatican | Michelangelo / Della Porta | 1590 | 42.56 m | 136.57 m |
"I want to make the sister of Florence's dome — larger, but not more beautiful." — Words attributed to Michelangelo by Florentine tradition, concerning Brunelleschi's dome at Santa Maria del Fiore, reported in Vasari's commentaries[26]
St Peter's therefore does not have the largest diameter (the Pantheon exceeds it), but it is the first great modern dome to frankly exceed 100 metres in total height, and the first to dominate, isolated and visible from afar, an urban skyline — the direct model of the later great domes: the Invalides in Paris (Mansart, 1706), St Paul's in London (Wren, 1710), St Isaac's in St Petersburg (Montferrand, 1858), the Capitol in Washington (Walter, 1866). All are its direct children.
Maderno and the return to the Latin cross (1607-1614)
Paul V's decision (1607)
When Camillo Borghese was elected pope under the name of Paul V on 16 May 1605, the basilica presented a paradoxical situation: the dome had been in place for fifteen years, but the nave of Michelangelo's Greek cross was not built and one still entered the sanctuary through the old Constantinian basilica, part of which survived to the east, separated from the new building site by a transverse wall, the famous muro divisorio.
The Council of Trent (1545-1563) profoundly reformed the liturgy: longitudinal buildings were now needed, capable of gathering large crowds facing a central high altar and a visible pulpit. Many in the Curia judged that Michelangelo's Greek cross — inherited from an antique, humanist ideal — was no longer suited to Tridentine liturgy.
In September 1607 Paul V assembled a commission of ten architects. After debate, the commission decided for the Latin cross: the nave would be lengthened eastward to reach the outer limit of the old Constantinian basilica, which would finally have to be entirely demolished. Carlo Maderno (1556-1629), Domenico Fontana's nephew, was chosen to execute the project.
The nave and the facade (1607-1614)
Work on the nave opened on 7 May 1607, with seven hundred workmen. Maderno's nave comprises three bays, each flanked by side chapels, and brings the total interior length of the building from 175 metres (Michelangelo's Greek cross) to 211.5 metres. Above the entrance, Maderno raised a great Baroque facade 114.69 metres wide and 45.55 metres high, adorned with an attic — the small walled storey above the cornice — crowned by the statue of Christ the Redeemer and the eleven apostles (except Peter, placed below, before the steps).
The inscription running along the entablature seals Maderno's work:
IN HONOREM PRINCIPIS APOST. PAVLVS V BVRGHESIVS ROMANVS PONT. MAX. AN. MDCXII PONT. VII "In honour of the Prince of the Apostles, Paul V Borghese, Roman, Supreme Pontiff, in the year 1612, the seventh of his pontificate."
The facade controversy
Maderno's facade has, since its completion, been the subject of constant criticism. Its width (almost twice its height) and its advance toward the forecourt partly hide the dome as one approaches: to see it whole, one must step back as far as the Via della Conciliazione — which would only be cut through by Mussolini in 1936-1950. The same criticism recurs under the pen of Francesco Milizia in the 18th century, who called the facade "a fragile and embarrassed pediment... hiding the dome and unmasking the mass"[27]. Maderno was forced into this elongation by the nave he had to carry, but also by the need to mask the two lateral Vatican palaces, already built, which would otherwise have appeared on either side of the building. The two bell towers planned by Maderno at the ends were never completed; Bernini attempted to build one under Urban VIII, but it had to be demolished in 1646 for reasons of instability — one of the sculptor's rare public failures.
Financing and the indulgences scandal
Julius II's bull (1507) and Leo X's (1515)
To finance the fabrica nova, Julius II promulgated in 1507 a bull granting plenary indulgences to the faithful who contributed through their alms. A preaching mission was entrusted on 4 November 1507 to the Observant Franciscan Girolamo Torniello for the twenty-five cismontane provinces (Northern Italy, Austria, Bohemia, Poland)[28].
Under Leo X, the operation was considerably extended. The bull Sacrosanctis Salvatoris of 31 March 1515 authorised for eight years the preaching of indulgences in Germany for the benefit of the fabric of St Peter's. Albert of Brandenburg (1490-1545), at 23 Archbishop of Magdeburg and administrator of Halberstadt, had just gone into debt with the Fugger bank of Augsburg for 21,000 ducats to purchase the archbishopric of Mainz. A secret agreement provided that half the indulgence receipts would go to repay the Fuggers, the other half being destined for the Roman basilica.
Tetzel and Luther's reaction (1517)
Albert entrusted the preaching to the Dominican Johann Tetzel (1465-1519), commissioner of indulgences. Tetzel travelled through Saxony and formulated the popular doctrine without nuance:
"Sobald der Pfennig im Kasten klingt, die Seele aus dem Fegefeuer springt." "As soon as the coin sounds in the chest, the soul flies out of purgatory."[29]
It was against this perverted preaching — then, step by step, against the doctrine of indulgences itself — that Martin Luther, on 31 October 1517, posted the 95 Theses on the door of the castle church of Wittenberg. Several theses explicitly target the fabric of St Peter's:
"Why does the pope, who is today richer than the richest Crassus, not build St Peter's Basilica with his own money, rather than with that of poor believers?" — Martin Luther, Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum, thesis 86, Wittenberg, 31 October 1517[30]
The scandal grew, the St Peter's affair became the historical trigger of the Protestant Reformation, which broke definitively with Rome after the Diet of Worms (1521). The most prestigious Catholic building site of the Renaissance thus lies at the origin of the greatest internal fracture of Latin Christendom. For a full understanding of this moment, see Answers to Protestantism and The Council of Trent (1545-1563).
The Catholic position on indulgences
Against Tetzel's caricature, the Church long ago clarified the Catholic doctrine of indulgences: they are remissions of temporal punishment due for sins already forgiven in confession, granted through the application of the superabundant merits of Christ and the saints. They never "buy back" either sin or hell, and their fruit presupposes the penitent's real conversion. The Council of Trent, in its 1563 decree De indulgentiis, willed the abuses that had crept into them "amended and corrected" — "emendatos et correctos" — and totally abolished the "shameful profits" drawn from obtaining them — "pravos quaestus omnes... omnino abolendos esse"[31]. The 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church takes up the essentials of this doctrine in §§1471-1479, in the same line of continuity.
The baldacchino and the consecration: Urban VIII (1623-1626)
Bernini's baldacchino (1623-1634)
Elected on 6 August 1623, Urban VIII (Maffeo Barberini, 1623-1644) immediately entrusted the interior decoration to a young sculptor of genius whom he had known since childhood: Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), then aged 25. The principal commission was a gigantic baldacchino to mark the papal altar exactly above the confessio — St Peter's burial place. Designed in June 1623 and inaugurated on 28 June 1633, completed in 1634, the baldacchino rises to 28.74 m high and combines the twisted "Solomonic" column, the royal crown, the bronze canopy with fringes and the Barberini coats of arms.
The bronze needed for the casting was largely supplied by the plates torn from the portico of the Pantheon on Urban VIII's orders in 1625 — hence the famous saying attributed to Pasquino, one of Rome's "talking statues": "Quod non fecerunt barbari, fecerunt Barberini" — "What the barbarians did not do, the Barberini did"[32]. The popular phrase condemns in a single formula the appropriative spirit of pontifical Baroque, but the baldacchino remains one of the masterpieces of Western art — the first great architectural work of the Roman Baroque in its full maturity.
The solemn consecration (18 November 1626)
On 18 November 1626, after one hundred and twenty years of continuous work, Urban VIII solemnly consecrated the basilica. The date was chosen to coincide with the 1,300th anniversary of the traditional dedication of the old Constantinian basilica by Pope Sylvester I (18 November 326)[33]. According to the Roman Pontifical then in use, the bishop traced on the ground the Greek and Latin alphabets on two bands of ashes laid out in a St Andrew's cross, a gesture symbolising the Church's spiritual taking possession of the building. The epistle was taken from chapter 21 of Revelation (the descent of the heavenly Jerusalem) and the medieval hymn Urbs beata Ierusalem was sung at full voice beneath the dome.
The square and the colonnade (Bernini, 1656-1667)
The overall work was completed thirty years later, under Alexander VII Chigi (1655-1667). Bernini designed the oval St Peter's Square flanked by a monumental four-row colonnade, completed between 1656 and 1667 — 196 metres on the east-west axis, 149 metres on the transverse axis, 284 Doric columns sixteen metres high, 140 statues of saints on the entablature. The symbolism, explained by Bernini himself to his biographer Filippo Baldinucci, is that of the maternal arms of the Church embracing the whole of Christendom: "the two maternal arms of Mother Church"[34].
The interior and the dimensions
A monster cathedral
The completed building is by its dimensions an absolute anomaly in the history of Christian architecture. The total interior length, vestibule included, is 211.5 m; the transept width 137 m; the nave height under the vault 45.50 m; the total height from the ground to the top of the cross crowning the lantern, 136.57 m. The useful interior surface area (15,160 m²) would hold the whole of Cologne Cathedral. The announced reception capacity of the Vatican City State is 20,000 faithful[35].
The only Catholic churches approaching it in surface area are the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace in Yamoussoukro (Ivory Coast, completed in 1989, consecrated on 10 September 1990 by John Paul II), of directly Vatican inspiration but more extensive (30,000 m² counting presbytery and villa): the Guinness Book of Records has since held it to be the largest church in the world, ahead of St Peter's — whose reception capacity remains greater (20,000 against 18,000)[36] — and the Basilica of Our Lady of Aparecida in Brazil (consecrated in 1980).
A cumulative work: who did what
| Element | Architect | Period | Pope |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crossing piers and arches | Bramante | 1506-1514 | Julius II |
| Wooden model, buttresses | Sangallo the Younger | 1539-1546 | Paul III |
| Dome drum, recovered plan | Michelangelo | 1547-1564 | Paul III, Julius III, Paul IV, Pius IV |
| Ovoid double shell of the dome | Della Porta and Fontana | 1588-1590 | Sixtus V |
| Lantern | Della Porta | 1591-1593 | Clement VIII |
| Longitudinal nave and facade | Carlo Maderno | 1607-1614 | Paul V |
| Interior decoration, baldacchino, cathedra Petri | Bernini | 1623-1666 | Urban VIII, Innocent X, Alexander VII |
| Square and colonnade | Bernini | 1656-1667 | Alexander VII |
No Western civil or religious building has known such a long succession of distinct architectural geniuses relaying one another to carry a single project. It is precisely this cumulativeness that defines St Peter's as a building apart: not the work of one master, but the geometric locus of the greatest architectural ambitions of the Renaissance and the Baroque.
Reception, meaning and posterity
A work of the Catholic Reformation
Begun in 1506 — eleven years before Luther — the basilica was completed in 1626 — eighty years after the Council of Trent (1545-1563). A purely aesthetic reading (masterpiece of the Renaissance and Baroque) is therefore not enough. Its historical reading is inseparable from the great doctrinal confrontation of the 16th century: St Peter's is the visible incarnation of the Roman Catholic ecclesiology that the Protestant Reformation precisely contested. Centrality of the pope (the basilica is built over the tomb of Peter, the first pope); primacy of the Roman see; sacramentality of matter (altar, baldacchino, relics) condemned by the Reformers as "idolatry". The basilica became a political as much as an architectural archetype.
An ambivalent reception
Contemporary criticisms were not absent. Besides the quarrel over Maderno's facade already discussed, several voices denounced over the 17th century:
- The disproportion between the exterior envelope (judged massive and static) and the interior effect (striking);
- The cost accumulated over 188 years of accounts (1506-1694) — 46,800,498 Roman currency écus (scudi), i.e., in weighted equivalence, several times the annual revenue of the Papal States;
- The indulgences affair of 1517, weighing with all its weight on Protestant memory;
- The plundering of ancient marbles and bronzes for the new fabric (Pantheon, Forum, Colosseum).
The great Lutheran historian Leopold von Ranke, in his Römische Päpste, nevertheless respectfully salutes, concerning Julius II, the church of St Peter "rising powerfully under him"[37].
St Peter's today
The building consecrated in 1626 has since undergone only few structural modifications. The strengthening of the dome's chains under Benedict XIV in 1742-1747, following an alarming report by three Jesuit mathematicians — Roger Boscovich, Thomas Le Seur and François Jacquier — is one of the rare weighty interventions; the new sacristy added by Pius VI at the end of the 18th century, the other. The restoration campaigns of the 20th and 21st centuries, in particular the great facade-cleaning campaign for the Jubilee 2000 under John Paul II, restored the building's original luminosity.
At the foot of the papal altar, beneath Bernini's baldacchino, the Vatican excavations (1940-1949) then the study of the graffiti by the archaeologist Margherita Guarducci brought to light, among the necropolis's votive graffiti, the famous "Peter is here" (Petr[os] eni), the proposed reading of a 3rd-century inscription. On 26 June 1968, closing the Year of Faith, Paul VI announced that the bones of the apostle had been "identified in a manner we can believe convincing"[38] — a prudent formula leaving the scholarly debate open. The basilica, two thousand years after the apostle's martyrdom, thus remains, in the Gospel parable's image, like a house built on rock (cf. Mt 7:24-25)[39].
To go further
- Read the article on the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic response — the context of the 1517 indulgences affair.
- Read the article on the Council of Trent (1545-1563) — the Catholic reform that partly decided the shift to the Latin cross under Paul V.
- Read the article on the Catholic Counter-Reformation — the theological and political framework of the basilica's completion between 1564 and 1626.
- Read the article on Christian relics — on the question of St Peter's tomb and the confessio.
- Consult freely available the Acta Sanctorum and the Bullarium Romanum (vol. IV-VI) for the indulgence bulls of Julius II and Leo X.
- Visit the Museo della Fabbrica di San Pietro in Rome, which keeps Sangallo's great wooden model and Michelangelo's dome model.
Notes and References
Richard Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture, Pelican History of Art, Yale University Press, 4th ed. 1986, ISBN 978-0-300-05296-1, p. 54-63 (chapter on the Constantinian basilica) and p. 71-72 (on the 326 dedication). Standard scholarly reference on the old basilica.
1 10Length with vestibule, transept and surface area from the Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), "Basilica of St. Peter" notice (vol. 13): "entire length of the basilica including the vestibule, 693.8 feet" (211.5 m); "length of the transepts in interior, 451 feet" (137 m); "surface area [...] 163,182.2 sq. feet" (15,160 m²) — measurements established, the article specifies, "in accordance with [...] those of Carlo Fontana". Height to the top of the cross (136.57 m), interior dome diameter (42.56 m), nave height (45.50 m) and capacity (20,000 faithful) from the official pages of the Vatican City State: "un'altezza alla sommità della croce di 136,57 metri" and "un diametro interno di 42,56 metri" ("Cupola" page, 15 October 2018); "in grado di accogliere 20.000 fedeli", "lunga circa 190 metri", central nave "alta sino al culmine della volta 45,50 metri" ("Basilica" page, 15 October 2018) — pages published on vaticanstate.va, verified on the archive capture of 19 July 2020 (site restructured since). Completion of the double shell in twenty-two months (15 July 1588 – 14 May 1590) is documented by the registers of the Reverenda Fabbrica (see magnuson-1982-coupole and fontana-1590 notes).
2 35Carlo Fontana, Templum Vaticanum et ipsius origo — Il Tempio Vaticano e sua origine, Giovanni Francesco Buagni, Rome, 1694, book VI, chap. II, p. 433-434 (Italian text, with the Latin text opposite), from the registers of the Reverenda Fabbrica: "ascende alla somma di quarantasei milioni, ottocento mila, quattrocento novantotto scudi di moneta Romana, di Giulj dieci per scudo" — i.e. 46,800,498 Roman currency écus of ten giuli each; models, demolished walls, Urban VIII's campanile and church furnishings excluded from the total. The 188 years are Fontana's own: "Il Tempio Vaticano fù terminato, come di presente si scorge in anni cento ottanta otto" (book VI, chap. III, p. 435). The "Carlo Fontana" notice in the Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) takes up this calculation as "46,800,052 crowns, without including models". Passages verified on the digitisation of the original edition (archive.org, McGill copy).
3 6The Guinness Book of Records, "largest church in the world" (largest church) category, has awarded this title since its completion in 1989 (consecrated on 10 September 1990 by John Paul II) to the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace in Yamoussoukro: 30,000 m² and 158 m high, ahead of St Peter's Basilica (15,160 m² of useful interior surface area). The Yamoussoukro total does however include the presbytery and the villa, which are not strictly part of the church, and its capacity (18,000 faithful) remains below that of St Peter's (20,000 faithful, official figure of the Vatican City State).
4 5 36Paul VI, general audience of 26 June 1968, closing the Year of Faith (19th centenary of the martyrdom of Peter and Paul): "[...] anche le reliquie di San Pietro sono state identificate in modo che possiamo ritenere convincente, e ne diamo lode a chi vi ha impiegato attentissimo studio e lunga e grande fatica." Official Italian text on vatican.va (content/paul-vi/it/audiences/1968/documents/hf_p-vi_aud_19680626.html, verified online); the article's French wording ("identified in a manner we can believe convincing") is its translation.
7 38The Acts of Peter (apocryphal, late 2nd century) give, in the final scene of the apostle's martyrdom, the earliest surviving account of his crucifixion head down, at his own request, because he judged himself unworthy of dying like his Master. Origen (mid-3rd century) takes up this tradition, quoted by Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History, III, 1, 2. On Peter's martyrdom in Rome under Nero, see also Tertullian, Scorpiace, XV (late 2nd century).
8Excavations ordered by Pius XII, carried out from 1940 to 1949: official report B. M. Apollonj Ghetti, A. Ferrua, E. Josi, E. Kirschbaum, Esplorazioni sotto la Confessione di San Pietro in Vaticano eseguite negli anni 1940-1949, 2 vol., Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, Vatican City, 1951 — the very title of the report fixes the 1940-1949 range. Synthesis and reading of the graffiti by Margherita Guarducci, La tomba di San Pietro. Una straordinaria vicenda, Rusconi, Milan, 1989, 384 p. ISBN 88-18-23010-9; and her founding article "I graffiti sotto la Confessione di San Pietro in Vaticano", in the Atti della Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia, series III, Memorie, vol. VIII, 1958.
9Leon Battista Alberti, De re aedificatoria, book I, chap. X, written around 1452, published in Florence in 1485. On Alberti's survey of the Constantinian basilica for Nicholas V, see Carroll William Westfall, In This Most Perfect Paradise: Alberti, Nicholas V, and the Invention of Conscious Urban Planning in Rome, 1447-55, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1974, p. 88-95.
11Eugène Müntz, Les Arts à la cour des papes pendant le XVe et le XVIe siècle. Tome I : Martin V — Pie II (1417-1464), Ernest Thorin, Paris, 1878, chapter devoted to Nicholas V, p. 105-106, from the pontifical accounts: "in the Colosseum (in a single year more than 2,500 cartloads were taken from it)". Passage verified on the digitisation of the original edition (archive.org).
12Paris de Grassis, Diarium, manuscript kept at the Vatican Apostolic Library (BAV, Vat. lat. 5635, fol. 184v-185r), passage quoted in full by Anatole de Montaiglon in the French translation Le Diariste pontifical Paris de Grassi, in Archives de l'Art français, series II, vol. III, 1885, p. 75-77. See also Loren Partridge and Randolph Starn, A Renaissance Likeness: Art and Culture in Raphael's Julius II, University of California Press, 1980, p. 17-19.
13Andrea Guarna, Simia Leonis X, Latin satirical dialogue, Milan, Petrus Martyr Mantegatius, 1517. Critical edition and German translation by Eugen Battisti in Renaissance und Manierismus: Aufsätze, DuMont, Cologne, 1989, p. 110-130. On the passage where Bramante refuses to enter paradise, see Christof L. Frommel, "Bramante e l'arte di costruire", in Donato Bramante: l'umanesimo a Roma, Skira, Milan, 2014.
14The nickname "Maestro Ruinante" is attested in Rome as early as 1505-1506, independently of Guarna's Simia. Paris de Grassis reports it in his Diarium (BAV, Vat. lat. 5635, passim). See Christof L. Frommel, "Die Peterskirche unter Papst Julius II. im Licht neuer Dokumente", in Römisches Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, vol. 16, 1976, p. 57-136, which discusses its origin.
15Giorgio Vasari, Le Vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori, Giunti ed., Florence, 1568, Vita di Bramante da Urbino. Modern reference edition: Rosanna Bettarini (text) and Paola Barocchi (commentary), Le Vite, 6 vol. + index, Sansoni then SPES, Florence, 1966-1997. On the Tempietto as manifesto, see Arnaldo Bruschi, Bramante, Laterza, Bari, 1969.
16Christof L. Frommel, "Die Peterskirche unter Papst Julius II. im Licht neuer Dokumente", in Römisches Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, vol. 16, 1976, p. 57-136. Reference study on Bramante's project for Julius II, from the Uffizi drawings (including the Pergamenplan, Uffizi U 1A).
17Giorgio Vasari, Vite, Giunti ed., Florence, 1568, Vita di Bramante, opening. Bettarini-Barocchi edition, vol. IV, p. 67. French transl.: Vies des artistes, ed. André Chastel, Berger-Levrault, Paris, 1981-1989, vol. V.
18Leo X, pontifical brief of 1 August 1514 appointing Raphael capomastro of St Peter's. Latin text kept in the Vatican Archives (ASV, Brevia Lateranensia, vol. 9, fol. 254). English translation in John Shearman, Raphael in Early Modern Sources, 1483-1602, 2 vol., Yale University Press, 2003, ISBN 978-0-300-09918-8, doc. 1514/14.
19Georg Satzinger, Antonio da Sangallo der Jüngere und die Madonna di San Biagio bei Montepulciano, Wasmuth, Tübingen, 1991, p. 217-238 (chapter on the St Peter's model). The model, executed by Antonio Labacco between 1539 and 1546 for 4,184 ducats, is today kept in the Sala dei Modelli of the Fabbrica di San Pietro in the Vatican.
20Michelangelo Buonarroti, letter to Bartolomeo Ferratino, 1557, collected in Giorgio Vasari, Le Vite, Giunti ed., Florence, 1568, Vita di Michelangelo. Modern critical edition in Ettore Camesasca (ed.), Michelangelo: Lettere, Sansoni, Florence, 1965. On the promise of gratuity, see James S. Ackerman, The Architecture of Michelangelo, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1971 ed., ISBN 978-0-14-021184-9, p. 200-203.
21Giorgio Vasari, Vite, Giunti ed., Florence, 1568, Vita di Michelangelo, where Vasari reports Michelangelo's letter; Bettarini-Barocchi edition, vol. VI, p. 76. French transl.: Chastel, Vies, vol. IX.
22James S. Ackerman, The Architecture of Michelangelo, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1971 ed., p. 232-258 (chapter 7, "The dome of St. Peter's"). Classic study on the shift from Michelangelo's hemispherical profile to Della Porta's ovoid profile, and on the proto-Baroque meaning of that change.
23Torgil Magnuson, Rome in the Age of Bernini. Vol. I: From the Election of Sixtus V to the Death of Urban VIII, Almqvist & Wiksell, Stockholm, 1982, ISBN 978-91-7402-112-7, p. 30-44 (chapter on the dome's completion). Cost and number of workmen reconstructed from the registers of the Reverenda Fabbrica di San Pietro.
24Domenico Fontana, Della trasportatione dell'obelisco vaticano et delle fabriche di nostro signore papa Sisto V, Domenico Basa, Rome, 1590, book IV, fol. 84r. Fontana describes, as a direct witness, the organisation of the building site and the pace of the 22 months.
25The phrase "Io farò la sua sorella, più grande, ma non più bella" is attested by 16th-century Florentine oral tradition, with no direct textual citation identified in Vasari's Vite or in the surviving Michelangelo correspondence. It is discussed by Howard Saalman, Filippo Brunelleschi: The Cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore, Zwemmer, London, 1980, p. 254-256, who cautiously discusses its historicity.
26Francesco Milizia, Memorie degli architetti antichi e moderni, 3rd enlarged ed., Stamperia Reale, Parma, 1781, vol. II, p. 137-141 (on Maderno). Milizia, a convinced neo-classicist, was one of the severest critics of the St Peter's facade, judged "heavy, embarrassed and unworthy of Michelangelo's dome".
27The mission of Girolamo Torniello O.F.M. is documented by Nikolaus Paulus, Geschichte des Ablasses am Ausgange des Mittelalters, vol. III, Herder, Paderborn, 1923, p. 169-184. Standard reference on pre-Lutheran indulgences.
28The phrase "Sobald der Pfennig im Kasten klingt, die Seele aus dem Fegefeuer springt" is attributed to Tetzel by Martin Luther in thesis 27 of the 95 Theses. On its actual circulation, see Hartmann Grisar S.J., Luther, vol. I, Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau, 3rd ed. 1924, p. 247-262. See also Heiko A. Oberman, Luther: Man between God and the Devil, Yale University Press, 1989, ISBN 978-0-300-03988-7, p. 188-195.
29Martin Luther, Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum, thesis 86, Wittenberg, 31 October 1517. Latin text in the Weimarer Ausgabe (WA), vol. I, p. 233-238. French edition: Les 95 thèses, in Luther — Œuvres, ed. Marc Lienhard, Labor et Fides, Geneva, 1957.
30Council of Trent, session XXV, Decretum de indulgentiis, 4 December 1563, in Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo et al., Istituto per le Scienze Religiose, Bologna, 3rd ed. 1973, p. 796-797. Parallel Latin text and French translation. See also Hubert Jedin, Geschichte des Konzils von Trient, vol. IV/2, Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1975, p. 209-213.
31The saying "Quod non fecerunt barbari, fecerunt Barberini" is attributed to Carlo Castelli, secretary of Cardinal Ginetti, and first reported by the diarist Giacinto Gigli, Diario di Roma, ed. Manlio Barberito, Colombo, Rome, 1994, for the year 1625. See also Torgil Magnuson, Rome in the Age of Bernini, vol. I, op. cit., p. 286-289.
32On the symbolic calendar of 18 November 1626, see Howard Hibbard, Bernini, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1965, ISBN 978-0-14-013598-5, p. 73-75; and Torgil Magnuson, Rome in the Age of Bernini, vol. I, op. cit., p. 270-278.
33Filippo Baldinucci, Vita del cavaliere Gio. Lorenzo Bernino, Florence, 1682, p. 80. The phrase "le braccia materne della Madre Chiesa" is reported by Baldinucci from direct conversations with Bernini a few months before the sculptor's death (1680). Modern edition: Sergio Samek Ludovici (ed.), Vita di Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Edizioni del Milione, Milan, 1948.
34Leopold von Ranke, Die römischen Päpste, ihre Kirche und ihr Staat im sechzehnten und siebzehnten Jahrhundert, vol. I, Duncker und Humblot, Berlin, 1834-1836, chapter on the building enterprises of Julius II and Sixtus V: "Jenseit begnügte sich Julius nicht mit dem Unternehmen der Peterskirche, die unter ihm mächtig emporstieg: er erneuerte auch den vaticanischen Palast." ("Beyond [the Tiber], Julius was not content with the enterprise of St Peter's church, which rose powerfully under him: he also renovated the Vatican palace" — mächtig, "powerfully", not majestätisch). German text verified on digitisations of the 1838 ed. and the 7th ed. of 1867, p. 308-309 (archive.org); the formula "arose majestically" in Sarah Austin's English translation (1840) is a free rendering of mächtig emporstieg. The previously quoted sentence ("the greatest modern monument of the Roman idea") was found neither in the original nor in this translation and has been removed.
37Gospel according to St Matthew, 7:24-25: the house built on rock. The letter Novo Millennio Ineunte (6 January 2001) concludes for its part on another word: "Duc in altum!" (conclusion, no. 58) — the attribution to John Paul II of the formula "the house on the rock", untraceable in that text as in Tertio Millennio Adveniente (verified on vatican.va), has therefore been removed.
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