sole architect, and went so far as to alter the design of Bramante by substituting the Latin for the Greek cross.  Upon his death, Baldassare Peruzzi continued the work, and supplied a series of new designs, restoring the ground-plan of the church to its original shape.  He was succeeded in the reign of Paul III. by Antonio di S. Gallo, who once more reverted to the Latin cross, and proposed a novel form of cupola with flanking towers for the facade, of bizarre rather than beautiful proportions.  After a short interregnum, during which Giulio Romano superintended the building and did nothing remarkable, Michael Angelo was called in 1535 to undertake the sole charge of the edifice.  He declared that wherever subsequent architects had departed from Bramante’s project, they had erred.  “It is impossible to deny that Bramante was as great in architecture as any man has been since the days of the ancients.  When he first laid the plan of S. Peter’s, he made it not a mass of confusion, but clear and simple, well lighted, and so thoroughly detached that it in no way interfered with any portion of the palace."[50] Having thus pronounced himself in general for Bramante’s scheme, Michael Angelo proceeded to develop it in accordance with his own canons of taste.  He retained the Greek cross; but the dome, as he conceived it, and the details designed for each section of the building, differed essentially from what the earlier master would have sanctioned.  Not the placid and pure taste of Bramante, but the masterful and fiery genius of Buonarroti, is responsible for the colossal scale of the subordinate parts and variously broken lineaments of the existing church.  In spite of all changes of direction, the fabric of S. Peter’s had been steadily advancing.  Michael Angelo was, therefore, able to raise the central structure as far as the drum of the cupola before his death.  His plans and models were carefully preserved, and a special papal ordinance decreed that henceforth there should be no deviation from the scheme he had laid down.  Unhappily this rule was not observed.  Under Pius V., Vignola and Piero Ligorio did indeed continue his tradition; under Gregory XIII., Sixtus V., and Clement VIII., Giacomo della Porta made no substantial alterations; and in 1590 Domenico Fontana finished the dome.  But during the pontificate of Paul V., Carlo Maderno resumed the form of the Latin cross, and completed the nave and vestibule, as they now stand, upon this altered plan (1614).  The consequence is what has been already noted—­at a moderate distance from the church the dome is lost to view; it only takes its true position of predominance when seen from far.  In the year 1626, S. Peter’s was consecrated by Urban VIII., and the mighty work was finished.  It remained for Bernini to add the colonnades of the piazza, no less picturesque in their effect than admirably fitted for the pageantry of world-important ceremonial.  At the end of the eighteenth century it was reckoned that the church had cost but little less than fifty million scudi.