History of early modern period domes

However, many bulbous domes in the larger cities of eastern Europe were replaced during the second half of the eighteenth century in favor of hemispherical or stilted cupolas in the French or Italian styles.

The construction of domes in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries relied primarily on empirical techniques and oral traditions rather than the architectural treatises of the times, which avoided practical details.

Elliptical dome traces were published by Durero (1525), Serlio (1545), and De L'Orme (1561) along with practical methods of achieving the shape using circular arcs, the technique used from the time of the ancient Romans.

[16] A combination of barrel vaults, pendentives, drum, and dome developed as the characteristic structural forms of large Renaissance churches following a period of innovation in the later fifteenth century.

[19] 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.

[34] Michelangelo obtained a decree from Pope Julius III that threatened an interdiction against anyone who altered his design, completed construction of the base for the drum by May 1558, and spent November 1558 to December 1561 creating a detailed wooden model.

Drawings published in carpentry manuals and the prestigious association of onion spires with pilgrimage churches encouraged their adoption in the nearby regions of Bavaria, Southern Germany and the Austrian Empire.

Domes in the Lombard region were traditionally hidden externally by lantern towers called timburios, a technique dating from late Antiquity whose structural behavior was well known, but this began to change starting in the 1560s.

[66] In Lima, churches were built throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth century with stone or brick domes and vaults, even after collapses from seismic activity, due to the concerns of fire and rot in the use of wooden structures.

[82] The dome of a chapel at Château d'Anet by Philibert de l'Orme, built from 1549 to 1552 as part of renovations for King Henry II's mistress, Diane of Poitiers, is regarded as a masterpiece of stereotomy and the architect published a theory of the technique in 1567.

[87] In Milan, proposals for the dome of San Lorenzo (built in 1619) included versions both with and without timburios, although, along with the quincunx plan Church of Sant'Alessandro, the building had the more difficult supporting structure of four main arches between four free-standing pillars.

Quincha was an adaptation of an indigenous wattle and daub technique and consisted of a wooden structural framework filled out with cane or bamboo and covered with plaster and stucco to resemble stone.

The anti-seismic properties of this light and elastic system allowed the 36.9 foot wide double-shell dome of the church, a hemisphere and lantern resting directly on pendentives, to survive for more than three hundred years and it became universally adopted along the Peruvian coast.

[93] The dome of Seville's Church of Santa María de las Nieves [es] (begun 1659) used stucco to create high-relief scrolling foliage patterns like those of Islamic arabesque ornament.

Known to react better than masonry vaulting to earthquakes, this technique was also more expensive due to the need for specialized artisans and the use of white poplar wood in the structure, which unlike traditional wooden formwork could not be re-used and was rare on the island.

[94] The Augsburg Town Hall (1615-1620), designed by Lutheran architect Elias Holl, included two towers topped by onion domes and these became part of the city's civic identity by the later seventeenth century.

[57] In the Church of San Lorenzo (1670–87) in Turin, Guarino Guarini, a Theatine monk and mathematician, used interlacing bands or ribs reminiscent of Islamic domes at Iznik or Cordoba, or the Christian example at Torres Del Río [eu].

[citation needed] However, many bulbous domes in the larger cities of eastern Europe were replaced during the second half of the eighteenth century in favor of hemispherical or stilted cupolas in the French or Italian styles.

[96] Work on the Cathedral of Santa Margherita in Montefiascone, halted at the level of the drum due to lack of funds, was resumed after a 1670 fire destroyed the temporary wooden roof and damaged the interior.

[96] In the Parisian church of Sainte-Anne-la-Royale [it] (1662), Guarino Guarini, a Theatine monk and mathematician, used interlacing bands or ribs reminiscent of Islamic domes at Iznik or Cordoba, or the Christian example at Torres Del Río [eu].

The light weight of these timber domes allowed for thin supporting columns that minimized obstructions to the liturgy for worshipers, as encouraged by the Church of England's emphasis on open plans for its reformed liturgical practice.

[50] London's Great Fire of 1666, following a devastating outbreak of plague in the city that killed a fifth of its population, spurred the commission of Christopher Wren to rebuild St. Paul's Cathedral, which occurred over the course of 35 years.

Unlike St. Paul's, and due to advances in mathematics and engineering, all three shells were built of stone and made a part of a structural system that permitted support by thinner piers and walls.

[157] Although the Thirty Years' War delayed the onset of the Baroque style in the areas of the Holy Roman Empire, rebuilding of the many palaces and churches destroyed had begun by the end of the seventeenth century.

Banz, overseen by Johann Dientzenhofer, has a complex arrangement of overlapping and subdivided transverse oval vaults with wide ribs at their intersections that make it difficult to understand the structural system, like Guarini's earlier church of Santa Maria della Divina Providenza in Lisbon.

[165][166][162] Vittone was familiar with Guarini's work and his dome over the Church of San Bernardino [it] in Chieri (1740-1744), the original of which had collapse in 1740, has been called "a lofty system of arches" due to the openings for light left in the pendentives and in the vaulting of adjacent bays.

[172] The two-shell dome of Saint Blaise Abbey in the Black Forest by French architect Pierre Michel d'Ixnard [fr], with an internal span of 33.7 meters, dates from 1768 and rests on a ring of columns.

[172] Johann Michael Fischer's abbey church at Rott am Inn (1759–63) has a series of three domical vaults over its nave, with the largest in the center over an octagonal space and painted with an illusionistic fresco by Matthias Günther.

The outer stone dome was arched slightly steeper than the inner hemispherical shell, but structural issues required two iron bands to be added at the base for reinforcement immediately upon completion.

[189] Annapolis served as the capital of the country for ten months beginning in 1783, during which time George Washington resigned his military commission and Congress formally approved the Treaty of Paris, ending the American Revolutionary War.