The false windows, repeated pillars, and barefaced aiming at effect, that mark the insincerity of the _barocco_ style, are found here almost for the first time.
What S.Peter's would have been, if Michael Angelo had lived to finish it, can be imagined from his plans and elevations still preserved.

It must always remain a matter of profound regret that his project was so far altered as to sacrifice the effect of the dome from the piazza.

This dome is Michael Angelo's supreme achievement as an architect.

It not only preserves all that is majestic in the cupola of Brunelleschi; but it also avoids the defects of its avowed model, by securing the entrance of abundant light, and dilating the imagination with the sense of space to soar and float in.

It is the dome that makes S.Peter's what it is--the adequate symbol of the Church in an age that had abandoned mediaevalism and produced a new type of civility for the modern nations.