Bramante used to boast that he meant to raise the Pantheon in the air; and the plan, as preserved for us by Serlio, shows that the cupola would have been constructed after that type.

Competent judges, however, declare that insuperable difficulties must have arisen in carrying out this design, while the piers constructed by Bramante were found in effect to be wholly insufficient for their purpose.

For the aesthetic beauty and the commodiousness of his building we have the strongest evidence in a letter written by Michelangelo, who was by no means a partial witness.
"It cannot be denied," he says, "that Bramante's talent as an architect was equal to that of any one from the times of the ancients until now.

He laid the first plan of S.Peter's, not confused, but clear and simple, full of light and detached from surrounding buildings, so that it interfered with no part of the palace.

It was considered a very fine design, and indeed any one can see with his own eyes now that it is so.