WSJ: A book review

The construction of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome took 120 years and entailed what was surely the largest assemblage of artistic genius on any single project in history. Its titanic cost, and the practice of selling indulgences to pay for it, scandalized Martin Luther and thus helped inspire the Protestant Reformation. Five centuries after Pope Julius II laid the first stone, Catholicism's greatest shrine continues to awe visitors of every persuasion.

In "Basilica," R.A. Scotti offers a sweeping account of the construction, from the razing of the original fourth-century church (built by the Emperor Constantine) to the raising of a bronze cross atop the 450-foot dome in 1593. She extends her narrative to include the modifications by the Baroque master Gianlorenzo Bernini, including his flamboyant canopy over the high altar and the elliptical colonnades around St. Peter's Square.

Ms. Scotti lucidly sketches out the major architectural challenges of the whole project -- above all, the building of a dome of unprecedented height -- but at the heart of her story are the extraordinary men who brought St. Peter's into being. Focusing on the relationships between the architects and their papal clients, the author renders miniature portraits of Raphael (the chief architect for six unproductive years) and his epicurean soul mate, Leo X; of Giacomo della Porta, the "unsung hero of St. Peter's," and the hard-driving Sixtus V, who made della Porta put up the dome in a mere 22 months; and of the "ebullient and worldly" Bernini, who served as the basilica's chief architect for 51 years, more than half of them under the rule of two admiring pontiffs, Urban VIII and Alexander VII.

By far the most dramatic relationship recounted here is that between Julius II, a warrior pope with imperial ambitions for the Holy See, and the indomitable Michelangelo, who painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling in an atmosphere heavy with suspicion of his rival, Donato Bramante, the first of the basilica's several designers. (Michelangelo's turbulent dealings with Julius would eventually inspire the speculations of Sigmund Freud and of Irving Stone's novel "The Agony and the Ecstasy.") Only after a much later pope offered him full authority over the building did Michelangelo himself become chief architect, a position he held for the last 18 of his 89 years.

The author of four novels, Ms. Scotti breaks up her sweeping narrative with memorably drawn scenes, such as one in which the banker Agostino Chigi entertains his jaded dinner guests, among them Pope Leo X, by showing them an unusual way of dealing with dirty dishes: hurling the solid-gold plates into the Tiber River. Her detailed account of the transfer of a 320-ton Egyptian obelisk from the south side of the basilica, where it had been placed by the Emperor Caligula, to its current position in the center of St. Peter's Square is remarkably suspenseful, considering that we know how it turned out.

What astonishes most in this saga of vast egos and talents, struggling and collaborating over the course of nearly two centuries, is the sublime coherence of the final result. Despite the different hands and styles evident in the basilica and its decoration, Ms. Scotti writes, "the visitor experiences unity as solid as dogma."


Mr. Rocca is an American writer in Rome.