thing but his own
bad faith, and was dismissed in disgrace.[93]

This did not prevent Nanni from sending, five months later, just after
the death of Michelangelo, a letter by the Florentine ambassador to
Cosmo de' Medici, asking again to be appointed his successor.

Until his last hour Michelangelo met with this fierce opposition over
the work on St. Peter's, but his faith and his fighting spirit found in
this only another reason for persevering.

While Michelangelo had taken Bramante's design for the church and rested
on his authority, he had in the course of construction introduced many
important modifications into the plan, and stamped the whole monument
with the imprint of his own grandiose and heavy genius.

He kept the Greek cross with equal arms and four apses, at the same time
hiding the apse of the facade in a rectangular mass against which he
wished to put a portico with four gigantic columns. He suppressed the
salient angles and the towers which should have risen at the extremities
of the four arms of the cross. The beautiful clean-cut lines of the
curved ends of these arms, which in Bramante's plan stretched out in the
form of a semicircular tribune, were smothered in a massive, vigorous
envelope which gave the construction the effect of a fortified bastion.

The most beautiful part of the work was the famous dome, where the
influence of Brunelleschi combined with the conception of Bramante.
Michelangelo said once while he was working on S. Lorenzo in Florence
that "it was possible to do differently from Brunelleschi, but not to do
better."

He did not fail to remember the masterly dome of S. Maria de Fiore, for
as soon as he was appointed to St. Peter's he had the exact measures of
this dome from the lantern to the ground, and also the height sent to
him. The dimensions that he chose for St. Peter's seem to have been
inspired by them.[94]

Bramante in his design as shown by Burckhardt and de Geymueller[95] gave
the principal importance to a circular colonnade crowned by statues on
which the dome seemed to rest. Michelangelo concentrated his attention
on the dome itself, subordinating, as ever, grace and harmony to majesty
and force. He accentuated the buttresses of the drum with pairs of
columns and raised the outer dome of the cupola, whose beautiful curve
possesses an impetuous quality which recalls, with less passion and more
freedom, the huge octagonal dome of Brunelleschi, crouching on its base