page_title: History of early modern period domes
section_title: Papal States
hierarchical_section_title: History of early modern period domes / Sixteenth century / Italian Renaissance / Papal States
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Tempietto del Bramante a San Pietro in Montorio, Roma.
context_page_description: Domes built in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries relied primarily on empirical techniques and oral traditions rather than the architectural treatises of the time, but the study of dome structures changed radically due to developments in mathematics and the study of statics. Analytical approaches were developed and the ideal shape for a dome was debated, but these approaches were often considered too theoretical to be used in construction.
  The Gothic ribbed vault was displaced with a combination of dome and barrel vaults in the Renaissance style throughout the sixteenth century. The use of lantern towers, or timburios, which hid dome profiles on the exterior declined in Italy as the use of windowed drums beneath domes increased, which introduced new structural difficulties. The spread of domes in this style outside of Italy began with central Europe, although there was often a stylistic delay of a century or two. Use of the oval dome spread quickly through Italy, Spain, France, and central Europe and would become characteristic of Counter-Reformation architecture in the Baroque style.
context_section_description: The Tempietto in Rome, a small domed building modelled on the Temple of Vesta, was built in 1502 by Bramante in the cloister of San Pietro in Montorio to commemorate the site of St. Peter's martyrdom. It has inspired numerous copies and adaptations since, including Radcliffe Camera, the mausoleum at Castle Howard, and the domes of St. Peter's Basilica, St Paul's Cathedral, the Panthéon, and the U.S. Capitol. Bramante's 1505–6 projects for a wholly new St. Peter's Basilica mark the beginning of the displacement of the Gothic ribbed vault with the combination of dome and barrel vault, which proceeded throughout the sixteenth century. Bramante's studies for new church designs for St. Peter's coincided with Leonardo da Vinci's studies of centrally planned churches while they were both at the court of Ludovico Sforza in Milan and they may have collaborated. Their studies may have influenced many of the centrally planned churches built in the first half of the sixteenth century, such as the church of Santa Maria della Consolazione (started around 1508) and the church of the Madonna di San Biagio at Montepulciano (1518-1545). Although Bramante designed a low dome like that of the Pantheon for the church of Santa Maria della Consolazione in Todi, a building ordered by the ruling Atti family to mark the site of a 1508 miracle, the design changed in 1587 to a dome and drum on pendentives.
caption: The Tempietto in Rome
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