Note 319 — THE PROPHECY OF DANTE.
Reading edition
The Cupola of St. Peter's. [Michel Angelo, then in his seventy-second year, received the appointment of architect of St. Peter's from Pope Paul III. He began the dome on a different plan from that of the first architect, Bramante, "declaring that he would raise the Pantheon in the air." The drum of the dome was constructed in his life-time, but for more than twenty-four years after his death (1563), the cupola remained untouched, and it was not till 1590, in the pontificate of Sixtus V., that the dome itself was completed. The ball and cross were placed on the summit in November, 1593.—Handbook of Rome, p. 239.
Compare Childe Harold, Canto IV. stanza cliii. line i, Poetical Works, 1892, ii. 440, 441, note 2.]