Three great domes - St. Peter's basilica, St. Paul's cathedral, St. Louis des Invalides church

UNESCO Courier, Sept, 1987 by Giulio Carlo Argan

Three great domes

IF Roman Baroque is the representation of a religious and political ideal, French Baroque is the representation of an exclusively political ideal, and English Baroque that of a civic and social ideal. The diversity of the ideological content of French, English and Italian Baroque is strikingly illustrated by a comparison between the three famous domes of St. Peter's in Rome, the church of St. Louis des Invalides in Paris, and St. Paul's cathedral in London. The first is clearly the archetype. In the thinking of its architect, Michelangelo, later followed and given a wide allegorical sweep by Bernini in his conception of the colonade flanking St. Peter's Square, the dome was to be identified with the body of the church, to be the image of the head of Christianity and of the celestial vault which ideally covers the whole ecumene (the world). In Bernini's design, the wings of the colonnade are like the arms of a figure whose head is the dome.

Resting on a double drum, Jules Hardouin Mansart's dome in Paris rises in sovereign isolation above a flat facade divided by columns into geometrical panels: its mass and its ornate decoration dominate the whole building, supported on a perfect architectural arrangement just as the sovereign power was supported by the hierarchical order of the State of which it was the summit.

Christopher Wren's dome in London is related, through the Italian architect Sebastiano Serlio, to Donato Bramante's original plan for St. Peter's. It rests on a vast edific with which it is so little articulated that it requires a cylindrical base. It is like a building incorporated into another building and only distinguished from it by the stylized elegance of the drum and the curvature of the dome. This dome is more of a symbol than an image of power; and its function is purely formal, like that of the sovereign in the English political structure of the late seventeenth century. Without going so far as to see a deliberate political allegory, it must be remembered that the form of a dome traditionally symbolizes authority or power and that such a political intention is surely at the origin of Michelangelo's dome and inspired the domes of Mansart and Wren.

Photo: St. Peter's basilica, Rome, with the colomnade designed by Bernini flanking the square

Photo: St. Paul's cathedral, London

Photo: The church of St. Louis des Invalides, Paris