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The model shows Antonio da Sangallo's plan for St. Peter's. He continued the construction of Bramante's whose piers and arches to uphold the dome could not be changed in any essential respect. The model, presented to the pope, shows the huge ambulatory, added by Antonio, a feature Michelangelo particularly disliked. This system of galleries and loggie would have inflated the church to almost double its already gigantic size; the ambulatory would have supported a mezzanine and Ionic second story whose largely open arches had no obvious purpose.
Michelangelo wrote a devastating letter criticising the design as Germanic, then accepted the commission to complete St. Peter's without pay, and developed a new, unified plan.
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