In 1506 Pope Julius 2 embarked on renovating the very dilapidated church of St Peter the Apostle in Rome from its foundations up, as he wrote to King Henry 8 of England and designs for another domed building on a centralized plan were submitted by Bramante and accepted. This time, however, it was to be on a gigantic scale. The design is known from a medal struck when the foundations were laid (11.21). Only one drawing in Bramante’s hand survives, showing only one half of the Greek cross plan (11.22) but his design for the great hemispherical dome on a colonnaded drum was reproduced later in both plan and elevation because it had been such a great revelation to architects, as one of them said. Indeed, so over-whelming was Bramante’s design that none of his successors at St Peter’s not even Michelangelo, could escape its influence. Very little was
ever built and only the great piers supporting the dome survive in Michelangelo’s structure.