History of early modern period domes

Domes built in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries relied primarily on empirical techniques and oral traditions rather than the architectural treatises of the time, but the study of dome structures changed radically due to developments in mathematics and the study of statics. Analytical approaches were developed and the ideal shape for a dome was debated, but these approaches were often considered too theoretical to be used in construction.
The Gothic ribbed vault was displaced with a combination of dome and barrel vaults in the Renaissance style throughout the sixteenth century. The use of lantern towers, or timburios, which hid dome profiles on the exterior declined in Italy as the use of windowed drums beneath domes increased, which introduced new structural difficulties. The spread of domes in this style outside of Italy began with central Europe, although there was often a stylistic delay of a century or two. Use of the oval dome spread quickly through Italy, Spain, France, and central Europe and would become characteristic of Counter-Reformation architecture in the Baroque style.
Multi-story spires with truncated bulbous cupolas supporting smaller cupolas or crowns were used at the top of important sixteenth-century spires, beginning in the Netherlands. Traditional Orthodox church domes were used in hundreds of Orthodox and Uniate wooden churches in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and Tatar wooden mosques in Poland were domed central plan structures with adjacent minarets. The fully developed onion dome was prominent in Prague by the middle of the sixteenth century and appeared widely on royal residences. Bulbous domes became popular in central and southern Germany and in Austria in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and influenced those in Poland and Eastern Europe in the Baroque period. 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.
Only a few examples of domed churches from the 16th century survive from the Spanish colonization of Mexico. An anti-seismic technique for building called quincha was adapted from local Peruvian practice for domes and became universally adopted along the Peruvian coast. A similar lightweight technique was used in eastern Sicily after earthquakes struck in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Although never very popular in domestic settings, domes were used in a number of 18th century homes built in the Neoclassical style. In the United States, small cupolas were used to distinguish public buildings from private residences. After a domed design was chosen for the national capitol, several states added prominent domes to their assembly buildings.
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. This was adequate for domes up to medium size, with diameters in the range of 12 to 20 meters. Materials were considered homogeneous and rigid, with compression taken into account and elasticity ignored. The weight of materials and the size of the dome were the key references. Lateral tensions in a dome were counteracted with horizontal rings of iron, stone, or wood incorporated into the structure. Other techniques used to reduce lateral thrust were to add a buttress at the base, a counterweight above the abutment, or to give the vault a steeper profile. Architects followed authoritative opinions, especially those of ancient authors, and the evidence from ancient and contemporary buildings. The structural behavior of previous domed buildings acted as full-scale models to inform new ones and small scale models of new projects were also relied upon. Traditional geometric rules of proportion for domes were applied by master builders regardless of size, but helped new domes be built in forms known to be safe.
Onion-shaped domes appeared widely on royal residences in the middle of the sixteenth century. In addition to those on the eastern part of Prague Castle, royal residences in Madrid, London, Vienna, and Kraków had them, always as part of Italian classical forms.
The first rotating observatory dome was built in the sixteenth century, in Kassel.
The publication of Sebastiano Serlio's treatise, one of the most popular architectural treatises ever published, was responsible for the spread of the oval in late Renaissance and Baroque architecture. Book I (1545), on geometry, included techniques to create ovals, and Book V (1547), on architecture, included a design for an oval church. Churches with oval plans begin to be built in the middle of the sixteenth century. Churches with oval domes allowed for a synthesis of the two fundamental church types, longitudinal and central plan, and would become characteristic of Baroque architecture and the Counter-Reformation.
Toward the end of the sixteenth century, transepts with domes were popular in several Italian states and were featured in prominent churches such as the Abbey of Santa Giustina in Padua (begun in 1532), Mantua Cathedral (added after 1540), Church of the Gesù in Rome (1568–1580), and San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice (begun in 1566). The domes of the Abbey of Santa Giustina in Padua may have been inspired by those of il Santo. Dome design prior to the seventeenth century relied upon geometrical and proportional construction rules established by the experiences of prior centuries. Principles based on material strengths, the theory of elasticity, and limit analysis had not yet been formulated.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, many Renaissance and Baroque elliptical and oval plan domes were built over rectangular naves, using brick in Italy and stone in Spain. Later German oval domes in the Rococo style used different combinations of geometry. 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. Alonso de Vandelvira published a description of the geometry of oval domes around 1580 with orthogonal projections of meridian and parallel rib curves. Oval domes often incorporated both elliptical and oval or semicircular curves and this ambiguity is reflected in the architectural literature. Builders relied on graphical or empirical solutions to such geometric problems. In 1640, mathematician Paul Guldin established that the "elongated semicircle" of traditional practice is an ellipse.
A treatise by Vincenzo Scamozzi from 1615 gives examples of a typology of vaults and domes, but not a general and thorough theory. Although some recommendations for the profile of a dome can be found in treatises from earlier centuries, the traditional geometric and proportional techniques for masonry domes and lanterns were first detailed in 1694 by Carlo Fontana in his famous treatise Il Tempio Vaticano e sua Origine. Fontana explains the proportions of a dome based on the dome's internal diameter, including the thickness and height of the drum, the internal diameter of the oculus, and the height of the piers. The thickness of the dome at its base is recommended to be three-fourths of the drum's thickness, with the dome's intrados and extrados following different circular curves to become thinner toward the top. The treatise by Guarino Guarini, published posthumously in 1737, included the way to draw various vaults, but not how to build them. Building on Fontana's work, Bernardo Antonio Vittone published Istruzioni elementari dell’architettura civile in 1760, in which he recommended using ogival or ellipsoidal profiles to increase the proportional height of domes and increasing the angle at which they intersected with their lanterns, for both structural and aesthetic reasons. To counter the negative impact this raised profile has on the interior appearance, domes with two or three layers of vaults were built, with openings in the lower levels to admit light.
Over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, developments in mathematics and the study of statics led to a more precise formalization of the ideas of the traditional constructive practices of arches and vaults, and there was a diffusion of studies on what was considered the most stable form for these structures: the catenary curve. In 1704, James Bernoulli wrote that an inverted catenary arch of any thickness will resist its own weight, which likely inspired Pierre Bouguer to conclude in his Mémoire sur le lignes courbes qui sont propres à former les voûtes en dômes (1734) that the optimal dome shape was a rotated inverted semi-catenary. In the late eighteenth century, the ideal shape for a dome was debated by Charles Bossut, Lorenzo Mascheroni, Giuseppe Venturoli [it], and Leonardo Salimbeni [it], among others.
Analytical approaches were also being developed and debated in the eighteenth century, particularly between French and Italian mathematicians and architects, but were considered too theoretical to be used in construction. The study of dome structures changed radically, with domes being considered as a composition of smaller elements, each subject to mathematical and mechanical laws and easier to analyse individually, rather than being considered as whole units unto themselves. In 1734, mathematician Pierre Bouguer (and later others) argued that the dome could be thought of as sliced into a series of independent wedged-shaped segments meeting as arches. Therefore, a dome as a whole was stable if each constituent arch was stable and analysis of a dome could be performed the same way as analysis of an arch. He published his Mémoire in 1736, "the first treatise on the theory of the dome", with possible stable forms for domes when ignoring friction. A. F. Frézier built on this work and used a method of analyzing the thrust of domes as made of a series of masonry arch elements that could then be compared to the known thrust behavior of barrel vaults of the same span.
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. Florence was the first Italian city to develop the new style, followed by Rome, and then Venice. Domes in the renaissance style in Florence are mostly from the early period, in the fifteenth century. Cities within Florence's zone of influence, such as Genoa, Milan, and Turin, mainly produced examples later, from the sixteenth century on.
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. It has inspired numerous copies and adaptations since, including Radcliffe Camera, the mausoleum at Castle Howard, and the domes of St. Peter's Basilica, St Paul's Cathedral, the Panthéon, and the U.S. Capitol.
Bramante's 1505–6 projects for a wholly new St. Peter's Basilica mark the beginning of the displacement of the Gothic ribbed vault with the combination of dome and barrel vault, which proceeded throughout the sixteenth century. Bramante's studies for new church designs for St. Peter's coincided with Leonardo da Vinci's studies of centrally planned churches while they were both at the court of Ludovico Sforza in Milan and they may have collaborated. Their studies may have influenced many of the centrally planned churches built in the first half of the sixteenth century, such as the church of Santa Maria della Consolazione (started around 1508) and the church of the Madonna di San Biagio at Montepulciano (1518-1545). Although Bramante designed a low dome like that of the Pantheon for the church of Santa Maria della Consolazione in Todi, a building ordered by the ruling Atti family to mark the site of a 1508 miracle, the design changed in 1587 to a dome and drum on pendentives.
The first church with an oval dome in the Renaissance period was the Sant'Andrea in Via Flaminia, built from 1550 to 1554 by Vignola. Use of the oval dome subsequently spread quickly through Italy, Spain, France, and central Europe. The church of Sant'Anna dei Palafrenieri (c. 1568–1575), designed by Vignola and completed by his son Giacinto Barozzi, was the first church to have an oval dome over an oval plan.
Many Italian examples of oval domes have semi-circular cross sections, which allowed for easier construction using semi-circular transverse centering. Vignola's oval plan church of Sant'Anna dei Palafrenieri was the first to be built within Rome, and was designed in 1572 with seven windows between the eight ribs in its oval dome. The windows introduced structural complications that Vignola had avoided in his first oval dome over the rectangular plan church of Sant'Andrea in Via Flaminia, but the restrictions of the site necessitated light from above. The oval plan church of San Giacomo degli Incurabili was started in 1592 by a student of Vignola's, Francesco Capriani, and finished by Carlo Maderno. It also has ribs between the six windows in its dome, but they are concealed on the interior. The design of this church would inspire others over the next two centuries, aided by the building activity of the many new religious orders founded between 1524 and 1621.
Bramante's initial design for the rebuilding of St. Peter's Basilica was for a Greek cross plan with a large central hemispherical dome and four smaller domes around it in a quincunx pattern. Work began in 1506 and continued under a succession of builders over the next 120 years. Bramante's project for St. Peter's marks the beginning of the displacement of the Gothic ribbed vault with the combination of dome and barrel vault. Proposed inspirations for Bramante's plan have ranged from some sketches of Leonardo da Vinci to the Byzantine quincunx church and the dome of Milan's Basilica of San Lorenzo. Bramante is said to have likened his design to placing the Pantheon on top of the Basilica of Constantine. He completed the four massive central piers and the arches linking them by 1512, but cracking in the arches was detected between 1514 and 1534, possibly due to settling. The two eastern piers rest on solid marl and clay, while the other two rest upon remains of earlier Roman construction. That the piers and arches were left to stand with incomplete buttressing while construction stopped for over 30 years was also a factor.
Michelangelo inherited the project to design the dome of St. Peter's basilica in 1546. It had previously been in the hands of Bramante (with Giuliano da Sangallo and Fra Giovanni Giocondo) until 1514, Raphael Sanzio (assisted by Giuliano da Sangallo and Fra Giovanni Giocondo) until 1520, and Antonio da Sangallo the Younger (with Baldassare Peruzzi), whose work was disrupted by the sack of Rome in 1527. The dome design had been altered by Giuliano da Sangallo from being hemispherical to being 9 meters taller, segmental, and ribbed, and he had strengthened the piers and completed building the pendentives.
Michelangelo redesigned the dome to have two shells, a mostly brick internal structure, and three iron chains to resist outward pressure. His dome was a lower, hemispherical design. He further strengthened the piers by eliminating niches in them and the internal spiral staircase. 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. Construction of the drum was completed a few months after he died in 1564. Sixteen pairs of columns project out between sixteen windows in the drum to act as buttresses, and are aligned with the sixteen ribs of the dome and the paired columns of the lantern. An artist and sculptor, rather than an engineer, Michelangelo did not create full engineering plans for the dome and his model lacked construction details. The dome of St. Peter's basilica was later built by Giacomo della Porta and Domenico Fontana.
Pope Sixtus V appointed Giacomo della Porta and Domenico Fontana in 1588 to begin construction of the dome of St. Peter's Basilica to Michelangelo's model. They made modifications to his design estimated to have reduced the tensile stresses in the dome by 40%, including thinning the two shells near the top, reducing the thickness and exterior projection of the ribs, raising the springing line by 4.8 meters, and changing the shape of the dome. Giacomo della Porta insisted on a vertically elliptical profile for the dome of St. Peter's Basilica, for structural reasons, and construction began in June 1588. The dome was completed up to the base of the lantern in May 1590, a few months before the death of Pope Sixtus V. The lantern and lead covering for the dome were completed later, with the brass orb and cross being raised in 1592.
The lantern is 17 meters high and the dome is 136.57 meters from the base to the top of the cross. The ogival dome was built with 16 ribs and an inner diameter of 42.7 meters. It begins above the drum and attico (the decorative strip above the drum), which are about 18 meters tall. The two shells of the dome are brick and each about 1.19 meters thick at the base of the dome. Because the shells separate from each other as they rise, the dome is 2.7 meters thick overall. The sixteen ribs connect the two shells together and are made of stone.
Carlo Maderno's extended nave for St. Peter's Basilica, built between 1609 and 1614, included bays covered by oval domes with lanterns.
Cracks in the crossing dome were noticed as early at 1603, when the mosaics covering the dome interior were completed, and additional cracks were recorded after 1631 and in 1742, demonstrating progression. Five more tie rings were added around the dome in 1743-44 by Luigi Vanvitelli. The iron chains included in the design to contain the dome's lateral thrust have had to be replaced ten times since it was constructed. Giovanni Poleni's 1748 report on the state of the dome, written in response to observed cracking, anticipated the safe theorem by stating "explicitly that the stability of a structure can be established unequivocally if it can be shown that the thrust line lies completely within the masonry." His observation of cracks in the outer shell by the ribs has more recently been attributed by computer models to the heavy lantern.
In Venice, there is evident Byzantine influence in the line of three domes over the nave and crossing of the church of San Salvador, built between 1506 and 1534 by Giorgio Pietro Spavento and Tullio Lombardo.
The Villa Capra, also known as "La Rotunda", was built by Andrea Palladio from 1565 to 1569 near Vicenza. Its highly symmetrical square plan centers on a circular room covered by a dome, and it would prove highly influential on the Georgian architects of 18th century England, architects in Russia, and architects in America, Thomas Jefferson among them. Commissioned by count and churchman Paolo Almerico, Palladio designed a dome for the residence because he believed that the Latin meaning of "domus" being "house" indicated that ancient Roman houses were domed.
Palladio's two domed churches in Venice are Il Redentore (1577–92) and San Giorgio Maggiore (1565–1610), the former built in thanksgiving for the end of a bad outbreak of plague in the city. Also attributed to Palladio, the church of Le Zitelle (1579-1586) has a timber dome like those of Il Redentore and San Giorgio Maggiore.
The Medici Chapel in Florence was designed by Michelangelo and built between 1521 and 1534.
In 1569, the dome over the church of Madonna dell'Umiltà in Pistoia was completed by Giorgio Vasari at the behest of Cosimo I de' Medici, over a building designed and built by others. Although clearly referencing Florence Cathedral visually and in the use of two shells, structurally the octagonal dome is similar to the much earlier dome of Florence Baptistery and the hemispherical shape of Michelangelo's design for the dome of St. Peter's Basilica. Cracks discovered shortly after completion necessitated the addition by Vasari of iron chains on the inside and outside, but structural problems have continued and additional chains have been added over the centuries, many outside of the dome. The instability has been attributed to Vasari's design. Vasari urgently ordered the first iron ring before the dome was finished, then a second immediately after the first was installed in 1575. Two additional tie rod rings were placed in 1592, one in 1619, and two in 1966, for a total of seven. The cost of the Renaissance-era tie rods may have been in the same order of magnitude as the cost of the dome itself.
In the 16th century, large five-domed cathedrals were built in Russia in imitation of the Assumption Cathedral in Moscow, such as at Rostov Veliky, Khutyn Monastery, Trinity Makaryev Monastery [ru], Vologda, Danilov Monastery, and Novodevichy Convent.
In the fifteenth century, pilgrimages to and flourishing trade relations with the Near East had exposed the Low Countries of northwest Europe to the use of bulbous domes in the architecture of the Orient and they were adopted in the architecture of the Netherlands. In Ghent, an octagonal staircase tower for the Church of St. Martin d'Ackerghem, built in the beginning of the sixteenth century, had a bulbous cupola similar to a Syrian minaret. These cupolas were made of wood covered with copper, as were the examples over turrets and towers in the Netherlands at the end of the fifteenth century, many of which have been lost. The earliest example from the Netherlands that has survived is the bulbous cupola built in 1511 over the town hall of Middelburg. Multi-story spires with truncated bulbous cupolas supporting smaller cupolas or crowns became popular in the following decades. The onion shape was used at the top of important sixteenth-century spires such as the Onze Lieve Vrouw Kerk in Haarlem, the 1566 Oude Kerk in Amsterdam, and the 1599 cheese market of Alkmaar.
In the early sixteenth century, the lantern of the Italian dome had spread to Germany as a wood and copper cupola called the welsche Haube ("Italian hood") and this structure gradually adopted the bulbous cupola from the Netherlands. The first such example was on the tower of the town hall of Emden (1574–76) and other early examples were on the town halls of Brzeg, Silesia (1570–76), Rothenburg ob der Tauber (1572–78), and Lemgo (c. 1589).
Russian architecture strongly influenced the many bulbous domes of the wooden churches of Bohemia and Silesia, such as the 1506 wooden church tower [pl] in Pniów and the church of St. Anna in Czarnowancz [pl]. This type blended into German rural architecture such that, in Bavaria, bulbous domes less resemble Dutch models than Russian ones. The polygonal domes on the towers of the Frauenkirche in Munich from about 1530 and the hexagonal domes of the town hall of Augsburg from 1615 are examples. Domes like these gained in popularity in central and southern Germany and in Austria in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, particularly in the Baroque style. Dresden in particular has outstanding examples, including the lantern over the large central dome of the Dresden Frauenkirche (1726–39). A château in Dresden with a tower dome from 1535 was remodeled from 1547 to 1557 to have a series of bell-shaped domes, according to a wooden model.
In Prague, the welsche Haube was apparently little used, but the fully developed onion dome was prominent by the middle of the sixteenth century. The development of the onion shape in Prague architecture may have been an effort to blend Gothic forms with those from Italy, and may also indicate influence from the Netherlands. 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. Drawings of the city of Prague from 1562 and 1606 show towers and spires capped with onion domes. They are seen on the Rosenberg Palace, the old town water tower [cs], and the main spire of St. Vitus Cathedral (1561-1563), the design of which had been approved by Emperor Ferdinand in 1560.
Milan, between 1550 and 1650, initiated construction of domes for many important churches. 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. Domes exposed externally, or "extradoxed", were proposed by architect Pellegrino Tibaldi for the church of church of San Fedele (1568–69), the church of San Sebastiano (1578-86), and the Sanctuary of Caravaggio [it] (1571). However, the planned extradoxed dome of San Sebastiano had a timburio added and many domes continued to be planned with timburios from the outset. Examples include the Trivulzio chapel in the church of San Nazaro in Brolo (1547), and the churches of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Santa Maria presso San Celso (started in 1497), Santa Maria della Passione (1549-1550), and San Vittore al Corpo (1568-1573). The use of drums beneath domes began in Milan following the trend in Rome and central Italy. They improved lighting for domes but also introduced additional structural problems.
In Sicily in the second or third decade of the sixteenth century, Giovan Vincenzo Tagliavia [it] commissioned a domed funerary chapel behind the apse of the Church of Santa Maria del Gesù [it] in Castelvetrano, and such domed chapels, although not necessarily funerary, would become a distinctive feature of churches in western Sicily. A large number of domed chapels were built between Palermo and Erice. Domed chapels include the Confrati chapel in Santa Maria de Betlem, Modica (1520s) and the Naselli chapel in the Church of San Francesco all'Immacolata in Comiso [it] (1520s or 1549-1555). The first known hall structure ending in a domed chapel was the Madonna chapel in the church of the Madonna of Trapani, built around 1530, with the domed chapel modeled after the Basilicò chapel in Palermo's church of Santa Maria dello Spasimo.
Domed churches in Sicily include the Church of Sant'Antonio Abate in Palermo (1536) and the Church of San Francesco in Calatafimi, completed in 1556. In Mazara del Vallo after 1550, the Church of Carmine [it] and the former Church of Sant'Egidio [it] were built with sixteen-sided domes next to their apses, above squinches with a shell motif. Between 1540 and 1570 on the southern side of the island, domes were built that rested on shallow arches or lintels instead of corner niches. Examples include the Chapel of the Confrati, integrated into the Santa Maria de Betlem, Modica, the church of Sant'Antonio in Scicli, the church of San Francesco in Comiso [it] (1549-1555), and the church of Sant'Antonio in Militello (1560-1574). The church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli included an octagonal vault built by 1580, supported on four slender columns. Other churches with domes include the Church of San Sebastiano in Palermo [it], Abbey of San Martino delle Scale (1593), San Giorgio dei Genovesi in Palermo, and the Church of the Gesù in Palermo.
The "Murcia Dome" over the Chapel of the Junterones in Murcia Cathedral, built in 1540 by Jerónimo Quijano [es], has a toral geometry achieved by the revolution of a transverse semicircular arch about the oblong plan's short axis.
In Seville, the dome over the sacristy of Seville Cathedral (c. 1542), the dome over the Royal Chapel at Seville Cathedral [es] (1562-1575), and the dome of the Jesuit Church of the Annunciation [es] (1565-1579) are of a type that partially or entirely emerge from a surrounding parallelepiped, or half-tiburium. The domed trellis vault of Parish of Our Lady of the Consolation in Seville, Spain [es] by Hernán Ruiz is dated to the 1560s.
In southern Italy, the Church of Santo Stefano in Molfetta [hu] was built with a dome and an adjacent 12-sided pavilion vault over its two rooms sometime between 1530-1590. The Church of Santa Maria di Porta Santa in Andria, from the middle of the 16th century, similarly has two adjacent bays covered by octagonal cross vaults on pendentives. The dome of the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Campi Salentina [it] was reduced in diameter by a series of lunettes at the base.
Barrel vaults and domes were introduced into the gothic church style of the island of Sardinia in the second half of the 16th century by engineers working for the Spanish Crown and the Society of Jesus. Examples include the hemispherical dome on pendentives of the Cathedral of Sassari (1530s), the hemispherical dome on squinches of the Church of Saint Agostino in Cagliari [it] (1577-1580), and the octagonal dome on pendentives of the Church of Santa Caterina in Sassari [it] (1578-1609). A small dome over one of the side chapels in the church of Valverde in Sassari, Sardinia, may date to the 1530s or later.
In 1564, a dome on a drum was completed over the vestry of the church of San Miguel in Jerez de la Frontera, a rare Spanish example built before those of El Escorial. The domes over the church and towers of El Escorial, built between 1579 and 1582 as extradoxed domes on drums, became a model for subsequent Spanish domes, particularly after Juan de Herrera's publication of the main dome's cross-section in 1589. The main dome over the church is a stone spherical dome and lantern on a cylindrical drum and has an internal diameter of 18.94 meters. Smaller versions with internal diameters of 6.68 meters top the two church towers. The influence of the dome at El Escorial is evident in domes at the church of the College of Nosa Señora da Antiga in Monforte de Lemos (redesigned after 1592 to be extradoxed and have a drum), Real Colegio Seminario del Corpus Christi in Valencia (altered to include a drum between 1595 and 1597), the church of San Pablo and San Justo in Granada (completed in 1622 with a similar drum), and in the domed tower at the Monastery of Irache. The similarities in the dome over Cerralbo Chapel [es] at Ciudad Rodrigo, which does not have a drum, include the proportions of the dome thickness, the lantern diameter, and the use of horizontal stone courses in the lower portion of the dome up to 32 degrees, rather than radial courses.
During the Spanish colonization of the Americas, from the 16th to the 18th centuries, thousands of churches were built in Mexico. The churches vary, but surviving examples from central Mexico are typically on a latin cross plan with a brick dome on a drum at the crossing. Adobe was widely used in early examples but these buildings were often replaced or destroyed by earthquakes. Thick rib cross-vaulting in a dome-like shape was used in the 16th century. Most churches used a bell-gable instead of a bell tower, although stone bell towers were often added in later centuries, typically topped by a small hemispherical dome. Vaults and domes were usually built with brick and, like towers, were particularly vulnerable to earthquakes. Domes developed vertical cracks from the lateral movement and were more vulnerable than vaults because movement in the drums beneath them could increase the damage. A large amount of movement in a single event or the cumulative effect of multiple earthquakes could result in collapse. Only a few examples from the 16th century survive. Domes were used in some of the earliest churches in Mexico and were also used in secular architecture. Early domes were commonly hemispherical and low, springing from the level of the roofline, rather than using an intervening drum. They almost always have an octagonal base and commonly have windows piercing each segment of the dome near the base, which correspond to dormers on the exterior that are treated as if part of a drum. An examples is the dome of the Church of San Hipólito in Mexico City. The Cathedral of Mérida in Yucatán, Mexico, was the first cathedral finished on the American continent and contains a domed trellis vault with a grid of ribs by Juan Miguel de Agüero that is dated to 1598.
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.
Alonso de Vandelvira's [es] Tratado de Arquitectura, from around 1580, is the first Spanish scientific treatise and contains the first recorded definitions of the geometry of meridian and parallel ribs for six kinds of oval domes. It is evidence of the scientific and cultural exchange occurring with Italy in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Early oval domes built in Spain in the second half of the sixteenth century include the crossing dome of the cathedral of Cordoba and the chapter house dome of Seville Cathedral. The dome of San Sebastian in Alcaraz, Spain, was completed in 1592 and is said to have been designed by Andrés de Vandelvira before his death. It uses a lattice vault design with a grid of stone structural ribs. The caissons are filled in with lighter or smaller blocks of stone.
The spread of the Renaissance style dome outside of Italy began with central Europe. Although there was often a stylistic delay of a century or two, Poland has a number of important examples, such as the Polish Sigismund's Chapel in Kraków (1517–1533). As elements likely associated with Roman Catholic church buildings at this time, the use of domed transepts outside Italy may indicate partiality towards Roman Catholicism over Protestantism. Examples include a church in Dąbrowa Zielona (1554), a Jesuit church in Nieśwież (1586–1599), and a Jesuit church in Kraków. Early examples in Gdańsk, such as the tower of the town hall (1561) and the tower of the church of St. Catherine (1634), show Dutch and possibly Russian influence.
In the eastern parts of the Commonwealth, Orthodox and Greek Catholic churches maintained the forms developed during the Middle Ages, such as Greek cross plans or longitudinal plans in three parts with each part covered by a dome, but with updated styling. Examples include the Walachian church of Paulo Dominici (1591-1629), the Church of St. Onufry in Husiatyn [pl] (c. 1600), and the Chapel of the Three Saints [pl] (after 1671).
Stereotomy, custom cutting of stone voussoirs to form a vault, was first used in French non-ribbed domes at the Château de Bournazel [fr] (1545) and the Pendentif de Valence [fr] (1548); the technique would be rare in France until the seventeenth century. 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. The dome consists of thirteen courses of stone voussiors cut to form seven and a half courses of diamond coffers. The eighteen pairs of ribs between the coffers spiral in opposite directions to a lantern-covered oculus and shrink in size as they ascend, producing an illusion of greater height.
The church of Santa Maria Nuova in Cortona, Tuscany, was built with a low parallelepiped, drum, and dome at its crossing, in keeping with Bramante's recommendations in his Opinio.
The two-shell dome of the Royal Chapel of the Treasure of St. Januarius (1608-1618) in Naples was built with a stone lantern that was replaced after an earthquake in 1688. The oculus in the inner dome was closed and a lighter wooden structure replaced the exterior lantern between 1724 and 1726. Iron chains were incorporated into the structure, with the first placed during construction in 1612. Two more chains were added after earthquakes in 1626 and 1627. Further cracking spurred the removal in 1724 of the internal masonry lantern connecting the inner and outer domes, in order to lighten the structure, and the addition of a wooden and iron truss structure between the shells.
In Spain, oval churches of the seventeenth century include the Convent of Las Bernardas in Alcalá de Henares [es], begun in 1617, the church of the Virgen de los Desamparados [es] in Valencia around 1650, and the Oratory of San Filippo Neri in Cádiz at the end of the century. Architect Pedro Sánchez [es] built oval domes over his churches of Saint Hermenegildo [es] in 1616 and San Antonio de los Alemanes in 1624.
In Sardinia, the Church of San Michele in Alghero [it] was built from the second decade to the second half of the 17th century and includes a dome on an octagonal drum. The choir of Oristano Cathedral was covered by a ribbed dome on ribbed trumpet arches (1622).
Giuseppe Nuvolo built the church of San Carlo all'Arena around 1626 in Naples, the first of several oval plan churches that would be built there until the middle of the eighteenth century.
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. A dome for Sant'Alessandro was built in 1626 and demolished in 1627, perhaps due to the use of an inadequate number of iron ties. Although the dome had a timburio, it may also have had a lower and less stable hemispherical form. Autographed drawings from the period indicate it was a ribbed hemispherical dome with a lantern and timburio. Deep cracks in the arches supporting the dome caused the completed dome to be demolished, along with the supporting arches in February 1627. In 1629, the supporting piers were enlarged and the four round arches were strengthened with iron reinforcement and by adding pointed arches above them. An outbreak of disease stopped work in 1630 and the dome was not completed until 1693, with an extrados shape.
Saint Peter's Abbey in Ghent was rebuilt in 1629, having been destroyed in the Protestant uprising that began in the Netherlands in 1568, a part of the Eighty Years' War. The church was rebuilt in an Italian Baroque style with one of the first church domes in the Southern Netherlands, just after the completion of the domed Basilica of Our Lady of Scherpenheuvel, and seems to have been intended to convey a counter-reformation message.
The New Cathedral of Coimbra (begun in 1598) used the same half-tiburium buttressing for its dome as had earlier Spanish churches in Seville and Sassari.
In Lima, the "City of Kings", capital of Spain's Viceroyalty of Peru, frequent earthquakes prompted the use of quincha construction for the vaulting of the church of San Francisco (1657–74) by Constantino de Vasconcelos and Manuel de Escobar. 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. Another 17th century example is the dome of the church of Santo Domingo in Lima (1678–81).
The first dome built in Quito was the high dome over the crossing of the Church of Our Lady of Guápulo [es] (1650-1684), a pilgrimage church made popular by a statue of the Virgin Mary that has miracles attributed to it. The statue, made to imitate that of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Extremadura, was destroyed in a fire in the 1830s.
In Spain, false vaults made of wood or reed and covered with plaster were used in the seventeenth century. The technique, dating from the medieval period, was applied to chapel domes to give the appearance of stone construction. 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.
A lightweight dome made with a wooden frame, woven reeds, and plastered with a gypsum mortar was built over Messina Cathedral in Sicily in 1682. 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. It was used in eastern Sicily after earthquakes struck in 1693 and 1727.
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. Like the town hall, the Lutheran churches of Holy Cross [de] and St. Ulrich [de] have onion domes.
Oval domes can also be found in the Amalienburg pavilion at Schloss Nymphenburg, Munich.
Onion spires are predominant in Bavarian country churches, such as those on the three towers of the 1688 "Kappel" pilgimage church [de] near Waldsassen by Abraham Leuthner and Georg Dientzenhofer, who had both worked in Prague. Onion domes over the Bavarian pilgrimage churches of Maria Birnbaum [de] (1661–1682) and Westerndorf [de] (1670) may also indicate influence from Prague through models in architectural design books, such as one by Abraham Leuthner. In other examples, such as the onion dome on the tower of St. Ulrich's and St. Afra's Abbey (1602), the influences are less clear.
German and Austrian influence resulted in many bulbous cupolas in Poland and Eastern Europe in the Baroque period, and rural church towers in the Austrian and Bavarian Alps still feature them. Onion-shaped spires can be found in rural and pilgrimage churches in southern Germany, northeastern Italy, the former Czechoslovakia, Austria, and some of Poland, Hungary, and the former Yugoslavia.
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]. The four years he spent in Paris may have influenced the emphasis on forced perspective and optical effects in his domes, in contrast to the more formalistic architectural design of Rome at that time. He used form, color, and light to give the illusion of greater height in his centralized domed churches. His dome over the Chapel of the Holy Shroud (1667–90) in Turin is supported by six stacked hexagonal layers of six arches each, arranged such that each layer of arches spring from the peaks of the arches in the layer below them. Although the layers form a cone leading to the base of the dome, each is made progressively smaller to exaggerate the appearance of height. The dome itself is a lighter color than the lower levels of the church, also making it appear even farther away. The ribs in San Lorenzo and Il Sidone were shaped as catenary curves.
The idea of a large oculus in a solid dome revealing a second dome originated with Guarini. He established the oval dome as a reconciliation of the longitudinal plan church favored by the liturgy of the Counter-Reformation and the centralized plan favored by idealists. Guarini's drawings, including isometric intersections of spheres, barrel vaults, and oval domes as well as drawings explaining construction and ceiling patterns, were published posthumously in the Architettura Civile and influenced the designs of Hildebrandt, the Dientzenhofers, and Balthasar Neumann in Central Europe. With the newly developed mathematics of calculus, these experimental designs could be proven and would become the foundation of Rococo spatial arrangements.
Johann Jakob Herkomer [de]'s training in Venice appears to have influenced his thin timber dome over the Chapel of Our Lady of Seven Sorrows [de] (1684-1692), his family chapel at Sameister [de].
Polish examples of churches with domed transepts include a collegiate church in the city of Żółkiew (1606–1618), a Franciscan church in Święta Anna near Przyrów (1609–1617), the burial place of Ligęza in Rzeszów [pl] (1624–1627), the burial place of Opaliński in Sieraków [pl] (1624–1629), and the burial place of Sapieha in Kodeń [pl] (founded in 1631). In Poland, polygonal buildings and earlier medieval towers were often capped with domes in the Renaissance or Baroque styles. The Renaissance domes were generally onion domes stacked on top of one another and separated with so-called lanterns of openwork arcades. An example is the tower at the Basilica of the Holy Trinity in Chełmża. The Baroque domes were characterized by unusual shapes and curves, such as those of Gniezno Cathedral. 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.
In the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Roman Catholic churches with Greek-cross plans and monumental domes designed by Tylman van Gameren became popular in the last quarter of the seventeenth century. Examples include St. Kazimierz Church (1689–95) and the Church of St. Anthony of Padua, Czerniaków (1690–92). The traditional Orthodox church design in three parts, with a dome over each, was used in hundreds of Orthodox and Uniate wooden churches in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. An example of a Polish Roman Catholic wooden dome is on the Church of SS. Margaret and Judith in Kraków [pl] (1680-1690).
Tatar wooden mosques in Poland were domed central plan structures with adjacent minarets. The Tatar mosques of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania used bulbous domes on their minarets, a style apparently influenced by Christian Slavic folk architecture.
The church of Santa Maria del Quartiere in Parma, Italy, was built with a hexagonal dome. The dome has been strengthened with a system of encircling tie rods.
The dome by Carlo Maderno of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini was evidently an early inspiration in the planning of the dome of Sant'Andrea della Valle by Moderno and Borromini, but Sant'Andrea della Valle as built is said to be the first modeled on the dome of St. Peter's Basilica.
Oval plan churches spread outside of Rome following Vignola's innovation with the church of Santa Anna dei Palafrenieri. Giovan Battista Aleotti built both Santa Maria della Celletta [it] in Argenta and San Carlo Borromeo in Ferrara between 1609 and 1621. The oval plans synthesize longitudinal and central plan church layouts, allowing clear views of the altar from all points.
Francesco Borromini's dome of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (1638–41) has a novel oval plan that approximates an ellipse using four circular arcs based on the vertices of two large equilateral triangles; a complex geometrical coffer pattern of crosses, octagons, and lozenges is repeated eight times on the dome's inner surface. Because the dome uses a pattern of coffers that get smaller as they approach the oculus and because it is lit from both above and below, the dome appears lighter and higher than it would otherwise. The church inaugurated the high baroque style in Rome. A copy based on plans provided by Borromini was built as the church of Madonna del Prato in Gubbio.
Borromini's masterpiece is the dome of Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza (1642–50), built for Pope Urban at a University in Rome. The ribbed dome has a unique and complex geometry with a large window in each of it six lobes and stucco ornamentation. The style of using ribs in a dome over a coffered background was first expressed over the small chapel of Filippo Neri in the church of Santa Maria in Vallicella (1647-1651), modified by Pietro da Cortona to have small oval windows at its base. Cortona also revised the dome of Santa Maria della Pace (1656-1659) to have a stepped feature on the exterior, evocative of the Pantheon, and stucco ribs over octagonal coffers on the dome's interior. The domes of Santi Luca e Martina (begun 1634) and San Carlo al Corso (1668), both about 14 meters wide with an oval vertical profile, were entirely designed by Cortona.
The oval plan church of Sant'Andrea al Quirinale (1658–61) by Bernini is unusual in that the entrance is on the minor axis and it is often depicted as unique in this respect, but the later churches of Santi Celso e Giuliano (1735) and Santissimo Nome di Maria (1736) also have this layout. Bernini's Sant'Andrea al Quirinale is known as the oval Pantheon.
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. The stone dome was built by Carlo Fontana with eight ribs connected to each other by horizontal arches to resist outward force. It was completed in 1673 and he defended its proportions in print by both citing the measured proportions of other domes as well as the existing geometrical rules of proportion based on materials and supports.
Galeazzo Alessi's plans for the dome of the Basilica of Saint Mary of the Angels in Assisi (1678) were executed to create a dome on a tall drum, with the drum height being almost twice the amount later recommended by Carlo Fontana in his 1694 book "Il Tempio Vaticano e sua origine" (The Vatican Temple and Its Origins). The dome was built over the transept of the church's Latin cross plan, directly above the Portiuncula, a small church building saved by Francis of Assisi.
The church of San Pietro di Castello was completed in 1621 with a thin timber dome and lantern, built on a masonry drum.
Inspired by Palladio's churches, the two-domed church of Santa Maria della Salute by Baldassare Longhena was built on the edge of Venice's Grand Canal from 1631 to 1681 to celebrate the end of a plague in the city in 1630. The larger dome is 130 feet tall over an octagonal nave for public ceremonies and the smaller dome covers the choir used by the clergy for official celebrations. The architect attributed the shape of the domed church to a crown evoked by the dedication of the church to Mary, Queen of Heaven.
In Paris, the dome of St. Marie de la Visitation was built by François Mansart from 1632 to 1633, who would later design the church of Val-de-Grâce (1645–1710), built to commemorate the birth of Louis XIV. The dome of Val-de-Grâce, however, was designed by Jacques Lemercier after having worked in Rome for seven years. It includes an inscription around the dome relating to the Bourbon kings. Inspired by St. Peter's Basilica, its dome likewise has two shells, but the outer shell is much taller in order to compensate for the foreshortening effect from viewing the exterior dome from nearby on the ground. The inner shell is made of stone and the outer shell is made of wood.
Oval domes can also be found in secular buildings such as the Château de Maisons (1642–6) and the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte (1657).
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 city of Maastricht, jointly ruled by Liège and Brabant since the 13th century, was conquered by Frederik Hendrik in 1632, after which the States General assumed the responsibilities of Brabant. Hendrik's court architect, Pieter Post, built a new Maastricht City Hall in a classicist style between 1659 and 1664, accommodating the unique political requirements with separate rooms for the different governing bodies that were grouped around a central domed hall.
The prosperity of the Dutch Golden Age coincided with a period of large church building in the Netherlands by the Reformed Church, from the 1640s to the middle of the 1670s. A domed octagon garrison church [nl] was built at Willenstad by Maurice, Prince of Orange, from 1597-1607. The brick octagonal church, twenty meters wide, was built at the center of the fortified town. The Calvinist government in Leiden built the Marekerk, a domed octagonal preaching church, in the 1640s. The octagonal plan was associated with the Dome of the Rock, thought to be Solomon's Temple. The Oostkerk in Middelburg was built from 1647-1667 with an octagonal dome and lantern. Begun in 1668, the Lutheran Ronde Lutherse Kerk was built in a classicist style but also was a continuation of the architectural style of the Marekerk and Oostkerk buildings. It was funded by wealthy members of the congregation as well as donations from Germany and Scandinavia, with the dome and lantern covered by copper donated by Charles XI of Sweden.
In the last quarter of the seventeenth century, domes were features of the gardens of distinguished Dutch country houses.
Rebuilding after the 1666 Great Fire of London included a few new churches with single-shell timber domes, covered on the outside with leadwork and on the inside with plaster. 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.
The dome at the church of St Mary-at-Hill was significantly redesigned by James Savage in 1827 as a hemispherical sail vault with a small lantern, but the original design by Christopher Wren was built from 1670-1674 as a 17-foot-wide 16-sided lantern topped with a shallow dome. Beneath the lantern, the intersection of four shallow barrel vaults created small pendentives that supported a shallow plaster dome described at the time merely as a "coveing" under the cupola. The cupola itself was likely supported by cross braces under a normal pitched roof that covered everything up to the base of the lantern.
The church of St Benet Fink (1670-1675) was an elongated 10-sided building with six thin stone columns at its center supporting pendentives under a timber oval dome with a small 12-sided lantern. Although admired at the time as one of Wren's finest designs, it was demolished in the early 1840s.
The church of St Stephen Walbrook in London was built by Christopher Wren from 1672 to 1677 and its dome has been called "the first classical dome in England". Although the dome of St Benet Fink was likely earlier, the dome of St Stephen Walbrook was more ambitious. The timber hemispherical dome spanned more than 13 meters (43 feet) over pendentives and squinches and has been described as "the largest structure of its kind in Europe". It was capped with a cupola and decorated on the interior with plasterwork coffers. It was reconstructed between 1948 and 1952 after being damaged in World War II.
All Saints' Church, Northampton, was rebuilt from 1675-1680 after the 1675 Great Fire of Northampton with a thin timber dome similar in scale to the lantern of St Mary-at-Hill. Although not designed by Christopher Wren, it appears to have been influenced by his designs.
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. Robert Hooke, who first articulated that a thin arch was comparable to an inverted hanging chain, may have advised Wren on how to achieve the crossing dome. Wren may also have been informed of the structural problems of the dome of St. Peter's Basilica by John Evelyn, who had examined it, and did not finalize his design for a dome three-quarters its size until shortly before its construction started in 1705.
When finished, the dome had three layers: an inner dome with an oculus, a decorative outer wooden dome covered in lead roofing, and a structural brick cone in between. The brick cone ends in a small dome that supports the cupola and outer roof and the decorated underside of which can be seen through the inner dome's oculus. The structure rises 365 feet (108 m) to the cross at its summit, but is evocative of the much smaller Tempietto by Bramante. The use of the brick cone, in addition to other innovations, allowed the piers beneath the dome to be reduced in size. The thickness of the brick cone is 450 millimeters. The dome is supported by eight piers with a veneer of Portland stone over a core of rubble infill, which were damaged by the added pressure from the dome's construction and needed repairs in 1709. The dome was completed in 1710. The inner side of the dome was painted by James Thornhill from 1715-1717 with eight scenes of St. Paul from the Acts of the Apostles in a brown stone-like color mandated by the presiding committee. Wren's structural system became the standard for large domes well into the 19th century. The iron chains used to encircle the 34-meter-wide dome have since been replaced by stainless steel girdles. Damage to the outer timber truss dome during World War II resulted in the timber being replaced by reinforced concrete.
Although never very popular in domestic settings, domes were used in a number of 18th century homes built in the Neo-Classical style, including the 1720s Chiswick House, in West London. The Palladian mansion Penicuik House, built by Sir James Clerk, included a stable block with a domed dovecote built as a faithful imitation of the destroyed ancient monument Arthur's O'on. A chapel at Gibside by James Paine has a trefoil plan with a central dome. The domed mausoleum by Nicholas Hawksmoor at Castle Howard was built in 1742 and is similar to Bramante’s Tempietto. Robert Adam referenced the Roman Pantheon dome in his 1767 design of Luton Hoo in Bedfordshire.
The Pantheon on London's Oxford Street was designed by James Wyatt in 1770, becoming a fashionable meeting-place for the aristocracy. Its dome was inspired by the dome of the Roman Pantheon but was destroyed in a fire in 1792.
Domes in English Neoclassical churches are often not visible on the exterior, but were used over octagonal, square, cruciform, and longitudinal plans. The recommendation of octagonal plans as the ideal church shape for preaching by the Methodist Conference of 1770 may explain the popularity of octagon plans, such as the domed octagons of Octagon Chapel in Bath (1767) and Surrey Chapel in Southwark (1782-1783).
St Mary's Chapel in East Lulworth (1786-1787), a Roman Catholic chapel only permitted by King George III to be built if it did not appear to be a church on the exterior, has a plain exterior but uses a quatrefoil plan with a central dome on pendentives.
Shallow domes were used over the alters of some churches, such as John Soane's remodeling of Wardour Chapel in Wiltshire (1788-1790). St Mary on Paddington Green Church (1788-1791) has a shallow interior dome on pendentives at the center of its cruciform plan.
St James' Church in Great Packington (1789-1792), a Greek Cross plan with filled corners, has domes over the corner towers.
St Mary's Church in Banbury (1790-1797) is similar to Wren's earlier St. Stephen Wolbrook design, with a dome on columns.
Adjacent to a hospital and retirement home for injured war veterans, the royal chapel of Les Invalides in Paris, France, was begun in 1679 and completed in 1708. The dome was one of many inspired by that of St. Peter's Basilica and it is an outstanding example of French Baroque architecture. In 1861 the body of Napoleon Bonaparte was moved from St. Helena to the most prominent location under the dome.
Plans for the Church of St. Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris, were approved in 1757 with a dome 275 feet tall over a Greek cross plan. The architect of the church, Jacques-Germain Soufflot, wanted to surpass the dome of London's St. Paul's Cathedral and, like St. Paul's, the dome consisted of three shells. 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. Finished in 1790 by Jean-Baptiste Rondelet, the outward thrust of the domes were restrained by the use of metal rings but issues with the supporting pillars required Napoleon to have Rondelet strengthen the pillars in 1806. Later named the Panthéon, the crossing dome of the building has a span of 65 feet and 8 inches and a height of 47 feet.
The Halle aux blés, a circular wheat market in Paris, was completed in 1763 with a timber dome. It would be rebuilt in the nineteenth century in cast iron.
The Irish Parliament House in Dublin, designed by Edward Lovett Pearce and built from 1729 to 1739, included an octagonal dome over a central chamber for the House of Commons. The location of the space, especially relative to the barrel-vaulted House of Lords, which was off axis on the east side of the building, seemed to symbolize a political dominance by the House of Commons. The dome's outer shell was 31 feet above its inner shell and reminiscent of the Roman Pantheon and the octagonal dome over Lord Burlington's Chiswick House. The dome was the only exterior indication of the interior arrangement, but its location and height were such that it could not be easily seen. It was rebuilt after a fire in 1792 but demolished after the building was sold to the Bank of Ireland in 1803.
Thomas Cooley designed the Royal Exchange in Dublin with a central rotunda. Built from 1769-1779 in the Neoclassical style, the Pantheon-inspired dome is low on the exterior behind axial porticos. On the interior, the coffered dome is 46 feet (14 meters) in diameter, with twelve circular windows at its base and an oculus at the top.
Assuming responsibility from the deceased Thomas Cooley, architect James Gandon built The Custom House (beginning in 1781), and the Four Courts building (assuming responsibility in 1784) along the River Liffey in Dublin, with prominent central domes. His King's Inns building (1795-1800) was delayed due to his having to leave the country during the Irish Rebellion of 1798.
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. Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach studied architecture in Rome before working in Austria. His Church of the Holy Trinity (begun 1694) in Salzburg has clear influences from Borromini in its use of the color white, accentuated windows, and the elliptical dome and oculus. The oval dome of St. Peter's Church in Vienna (1702–33) is almost exactly the same, although it was designed by Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt. The dome of von Erlach's Karlskirche (1716–24) is also very similar, but with round windows in the dome itself in addition to the windows of the drum and with dark trim at both the base of the drum and the base of the dome.
Guarini's plan for the church of S. Maria Ettinga in Prague inspired a group of buildings built in Bohemia between 1698 and 1710. An abbey church at Obořiště, Bohemia, with two transverse oval vaults in the nave intersecting a third circular dome made to look like an oval, was the first church by Christoph Dientzenhofer to show Guarini's influence. His vaulting system of two transverse oval vaults that do not overlap at the Church of Svatá Klará in Cheb [cs] was elaborated two years later in the great abbey church at Banz (1710–18). 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.
The monastery church of St. Mang's Abbey (1701-1717) by Johann Jakob Herkomer includes a thin timber dome similar to those in Venice, where the architect was trained.
Domes by the Asam brothers, such as those of Weingarten Abbey (1715–20) and Weltenburg Abbey (1716-21), blended fresco painting, stucco and, in the case of Weltenburg, indirect lighting to achieve their effects. Another set of brothers, Johann Baptist Zimmermann and Dominikus Zimmermann of Bavaria, emphasized white stuccowork under direct lighting blended with fresco painting at St. Peter and Paul Church [de] at Steinhausen (1728–31) and Wieskirche at Weis (1745–54). In Bohemia and Moravia, Jan Santini Aichel blended styles in what has become known as baroque Gothic, as can be seen in his crossing dome at the Benedictine Monastery [cs] at Kladruby (1712–26) and the five-lobed dome of the Chapel of St. Jan Nepomuk (1719–22). More conventionally baroque is his dome at St. Peter and Paul Benedictine Monastery [cs] in Rajhrad (1722–24).
The Church of Saint Agostino [it] in L'Aquila was built by Giovanni Battista Contini with an oval dome 21.5 meters by 15.5 meters after a 1703 earthquake destroyed the previous church. The oval dome was built directly on its piers, with no intervening drum. The outer octagonal timburio is non-structural but there are eight structural buttresses that support the dome through those walls. An earthquake in 2009 destroyed the lantern above the dome.
The church of Saint Maria delle Grazie (formerly Saint Caterina) in Casale Monferrato was built by Giovanni Battista Scapitta and Giacomo Zanetti with an oval dome 15 meters by 10 meters, on a 7 meter tall drum. It was built in 8 years and finished in 1726.
Appointed by the King of Savoy as First Architect to the King in 1714, Filippo Juvarra built the Basilica of Superga at Turin between 1717 and 1731. The apparent lightness of its dome may be attributed to both even lighting and the unusual lack of pendentives, with the dome on its circular entablature above eight columns instead. Its use of bulbous domes on the lantern and side towers was also unusual in Italy, where bulbous domes remained rare. The basilica was built as the official dynastic mausoleum of the House of Savoy, which had governed Piedmont and southeast France since the 15th century. The original intended site of the mausoleum, begun in 1596, was found to have problems with uneven settlement due to the soil and this led to a halt in construction. After efforts to compensate for the settlement, and despite the mausoleum at Superga already being built, construction was resumed to complete the original building as the Sanctuary of Vicoforte.
The Sanctuary of Vicoforte's oval dome, very close to an ellipse, was completed in 1731 and is the largest masonry dome of its kind in the world. It measures 37.15 meters by 24.8 meters at its base and is pierced by eight oval windows and a central oval oculus with a cupola. Although iron rings were used as part of the original construction at three levels to hold the dome together, cracks developed as the foundation settled further over the centuries. Additional reinforcement was added from 1985 to 1987 to halt their spread. Oval domes are also found in nearby Liguria, such as the church of San Torpete (1730–33) in Genoa, but the use of stone in this region, rather than the brick predominant in the architecture of Piedmont, limited their size. The style of Piedmont spread to Vienna, where Italian architects built oval-plan churches and inspired the building of others.
Many decades after Guarino Guarini's buildings used them, the crossed-arch dome was revived by Bernardo Vittone in projects such as the Sanctuary of Valinotto (1738–39) and the Chapel of San Luigi Gonzaga. 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.
German Baroque architecture resolved the tension between longitudinal and centralized spaces through the use of ovals. Examples include the domes of Johann Michael Fischer's rotunda at Murnau (1725–27), Balthasar Neumann's Hofkirche at Würzburg Residence (1733) and Hofkapelle at Werneck [de] (1733), and Dominikus Zimmermann's church at Steinhausen [de] (1727–33). Neumann's more traditional longitudinal churches had domes over their crossings, such as his churches at Münsterschwarzach Abbey (1727–43), Gössweinstein [de] (1730–39), Etwashausen [de] (1733–45), Gaibach [de] (1742-45), and Neresheim Abbey (1745–92). Neumann replaced barrel vaults in basilical plan churches with series of light intersecting elliptical domes. Considered Neumann's masterpiece, the Basilica of the Fourteen Holy Helpers (1743–72) uses a system of intersecting ovals similar to that at Banz Abbey. Unlike Banz, the bands at the intersection of the vaults are modeled in stucco, rather than being structural. The stone and mortar shells of the domed vaulting are reinforced by iron bars, a technique he also used in the 18 meter span domed vault covering the staircase at the Würzburg Residence. It was built in a rural area of Bavaria as a pilgrimage church, as was the Wieskirche, and both in the rococo style.
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. It has been seen as a "landmark in the transition from Italian to French models in South German architecture" and may have been inspired by the Church of St. Genevieve, although the structural system was controversial. The 15.4 meter wide center of the inner dome dates is a thin membrane structure that dates from 1910-1913.
Because of the imprecision of oval domes in the Rococo period, resting them on drums created problems and the domes instead often rested directly on arches or pendentives. The oval dome of the Trinity church in Bratislava was built between 1717 and 1745. It is very similar to that of St. Peter's Church in Vienna, which the architect, Antonio Galli Bibiena, had briefly worked on, but is decorated instead by painting in the trompe-l'œil technique for which the Bibiena family is known. The dome of Santa Maria Assumpta (c. 1770) in Sabbioneta, also designed by Bibiena, employs a more complex trompe-l'œil effect. A double dome, the inner dome is an open latticework through which the outer dome can be seen, which is painted to appear to be a clear sky.
Empress Maria Theresa commissioned the Gardekirche [de] as part of a relocated crown-sponsored hospital in Vienna and it was built between 1755 and 1763. Its oval dome was decorated in the rococo style popular among the city's elites and it would serve as a model for the church built in the Nadelburg, which was founded by the Habsburgs.
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 dome of the Basilica of Sant'Andrea, Mantua, was added to the 15th century church by Filippo Juvarra between 1733 and 1765.
An example of a Polish Roman Catholic wooden dome can be found on a church in Mnichów built between 1765 and 1770.
A mosque in Dovbuchishki [be] had an unusually large seven-sided wooden dome 11.5 meters high that covered the 7.5 meter width and most of the 11 meter length of the prayer hall. The dome was painted red with a tin crescent and dates on cemetery gravestones indicate it was built around 1767.
During the reign of Catherine the Great, Scottish architect Charles Cameron designed the Pavlovsk Palace (1781-1786) after Palladio's Villa Rotonda.
In Granada, stuccowork was introduced by Francisco Hurtado Izquierdo and used to embellish classical forms in the dome (c. 1702) and sacristy dome (c. 1713–42) of La Cartuja, in contrast to earlier vaults such as that of San Jerónimo (1523–43), which used diagonal ribs in an idiosyncratic way and had apparent Moorish influences.
Resolution of the War of the Spanish Succession allowed work to resume in 1717 on the Sanctuary of St. Ignatius of Loyola, begun in 1689. The dome designed by Carlo Fontana was completed in 1738 by Ignacio Ibero [es]. The 20 meter wide dome was uniquely made of two stone shells about 32 cm apart, connected by eight ribs. 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. The inner stone dome was highly decorated with relief carving by Ibero, who had been an apprentice to the Churriguera and their followers.
The domes in Mexico are single shell constructions with few exceptions. Examples include the Convent of San Francisco, the Temple of San Fernando [es], and La Santísima Church. Domes and lanterns are commonly covered with glazed tiles.
The church at the Mission San Xavier del Bac was built by 1797 in the northwestern frontier of Pimería Alta in New Spain, today Arizona. The cruciform church has a dome at the crossing and a dome over the sacristy, built with fired adobe bricks set in lime mortar. The dome is supported on an octagonal base formed by corbelled triangular panels under squinches. The twelve-inch-thick dome was built about 53 feet over the floor, either with an all-wooden centering or with a wooden structure supporting a layer of earth fill to support the dome during construction. The technique of using earth fill above a timber falsework had been used in Europe to built domes since the Romanesque era, and continued to be used in Mexico into the twentieth century.
The oval dome of the Church of Santa Chiara [it] in Noto, Sicily, was built by Rosario Gagliardi and completed in 1753. It is a false dome 20.5 meters long and 13.2 meters wide and made of a series of parallel wooden arches hidden with planks and stucco on the inside surface. Unlike similar work elsewhere in Italy, it is self-supporting and unconnected to the earlier truss roof above it. The oval domes of the church of the Addolorata at Niscemi was based on designs by Gagliardi and the 1755 vault over the church of San Giuseppe in Syracuse by Carmelo Bonaiuto is also related. The dome over the crossing of four ribs springing from the centers of it supporting arches and is also a self-supporting false vault made of wood covered in plaster.
After the destruction of the 1693 earthquake in the Val di Noto region of Sicily, churches were rebuilt in the Baroque style, often with tall domes. Because of the high costs involved and the priority for the churches being to reopen, the domes were completed up to a century after the start of reconstruction and used the simplified decorative style popular at that time. In Catania, the domes built included those of Badia di Sant'Agata (1759-1767), 16 meters wide on an octagonal drum, San Michele Arcangelo (1771-1787 or 1779), 11 meters wide on a circular drum with iron chains added in 1850, San Nicolò l’Arena (1778-1780), 13.75 meters wide on a circular drum and reinforced pillars, and the Cathedral (1793-1800), which had a dome completed in 1717 that was replaced with a larger dome 12.5 meters in diameter to compete with the dome of Badia di Sant'Agata. In Caltagirone, the dome of Santa Maria del Monte (1774-1780) was built 8 meters wide on a cylindrical drum. In Piazza Armerina, the dome of the Cathedral (1760-1767) was made 13.75 meters wide over a cylindrical drum.
The dome of Iglesia de El Sagrario, Quito (begun 1695), is the highest in Quito and was built both wider and higher than the dome of the earlier Church of Our Lady of Guápulo. The Chapel of the Virgin of the Rosary (1733-1750) in the Church of Santo Domingo in Quito [es] was built with three segments. The first two are capped with high domes and lanterns. The third segment, behind the sanctuary, has a smaller dome and lantern.
Churches with timber vaults were built in Peru under the viceroyalty. St. Jerome Cathedral in Ica, representative of churches built along the Peruvian coast, was built with timber vaults over its nave and transept, small timber domes over its aisles, and a large timber crossing dome, supported on timber-framed pillars. It was severely damaged by the 2007 Peru earthquake.
Quincha domes following the 17th century model of the Church of San Francesco in Lima were built in the capital and elsewhere, such as the dome over the imperial staircase of the Mercedarian main cloister that was rebuilt between 1759 and 1762. Other 18th century examples include the dome of the church of San Francisco in Trujillo (rebuilt after 1759) and the dome of the camarín of the church of La Merced in Lima (1774).
In Quito, Ecuador, La Iglesia de la Compañía de Jesús was built about 100 km away from an active fault line. The dome was built with adobe-concrete and tiles. Although the cruciform arrangement of the church allows it to withstand some horizontal force, the materials used were chosen for their resistance to compression only and the earthquakes it has experienced have required many repairs.
In the United States, most public buildings in the late 18th century were only distinguishable from private residences because they featured cupolas, such as that of the Maryland State House or the smaller, and more typical, example over the Old State House of Delaware. Maryland State House in Annapolis was rebuilt in the 1770s with a pointed octagonal dome designed in 1772, the first over an American state house. The dome was covered with copper sheeting. 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. This dome, which leaked and was criticized as "inadequate, unimpressive, and too small for the building" and constructed "contrary to the rules of architecture", was replaced with the taller present design after 1784. The present dome was made of wood held together with wooden pegs and the exterior was completed by 1788; the interior was completed by 1797. The dome is similar to that of the Schlossturm in Karlsruhe, Germany. It is topped with an original lightning rod to Benjamin Franklin's design, supported by a surrounding copper and gold acorn and pedestal. The Massachusetts State House, built in the decade after the Maryland State House dome, included a dome after it was decided that the national capitol building would have one.
The design for the national capitol building approved by George Washington included a dome modeled on the Pantheon but the design was subsequently revised and construction did not begin until 1822. Several states added prominent domes to their assembly buildings as a result of the choice for the national capitol, and completed them before the national capitol dome was finished. Architect Charles Bulfinch, following a tour of Europe from 1785-1787, designed and built both the Connecticut State House (1793-1796) and the Massachusetts State House (1795-1797) before the national capitol competition concluded. The Connecticut State House appears to have been a simplified version of Liverpool Town Hall (1748-1755). Although Bulfinch designed the Connecticut State House with a dome, a dome was not actually built until 1822 and used a different design possibly based upon that of New York City Hall. Bulfinch took inspiration from London's Somerset House (1776-1784) for the Massachusetts State House exterior and the domed Great Room of James Wyatt's Pantheon (1772) for the Representative's Hall. In Massachusetts, the exterior dome is not visible from the interior of the building. The wooden exterior of the dome was initially painted white, then covered in canvas painted to resemble lead roofing with a gilded pinecone finial. The entire dome was later gilded.
Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, begun in the 1770s, had the first dome to be built on an American home. The octagonal saucer dome with skylight oculus was built with curved wooden ribs made of four layers of short overlapping curved planks joined together with iron nails. Wooden purlins braced the ribs in two horizontal rings. The dome was completed after 1796. The inspiration for Jefferson's dome seems to have been the similar octagonal dome at Wrotham Park designed in 1754 by Isaac Ware, which has since been removed, rather than the octagonal dome at Chiswick House. Wrotham Park's dome was also positioned directly behind a portico, used round windows, and covered a space that did not extend down to the ground floor.