Therefore it is
very certain that the members of architecture depend upon the
members of man. Who has not been, or is not a good master of the
figure, and especially of anatomy, cannot understand it.
"MICHAEL ANGELO BUONARROTI."
Vasari tells us "that the Pope approved of Michael Angelo's model, which
reduced the cathedral to smaller dimensions, but also to a more essential
greatness. He discovered that four of the principal piers, erected by
Bramante and left standing by Antonio da Sangallo, which had to bear the
weight of the tribune, were feeble. These he fortified in part,
constructing a winding staircase at the side with gently sloping steps, up
which beasts of burden ascend with building material, and one can ride on
horseback to the level above the arches. He carried the first cornice,
made of travertine, round the arches--a wonderful piece of work, full of
grace, and very different from the others. Nor could anything be better
done in its kind. He began the two great apses of the transept; and
whereas Bramante, Raffaello, and Peruzzi had designed eight tabernacles
toward the Campo Santo, which arrangement Sangallo adhered to, he reduced
them to three, with three chapels inside."
The sect of Sangallo, headed by Nanni di Baccio Bigio, continued to annoy
and conspire against the aged architect, and though Michael Angelo brought
their machinations to the notice of the Superintendent of the Fabric in
1547,(162) he could not get his chief enemy dismissed.
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