Basilica: The Splendor and the Scandal: Building St. Peter's

First edition, first printing. Hard cover in dust jacket. Published NY: Viking, 2006. 8vo., xx+300pp., illus b/w photos. As new in as new dust jacket. Traces Pope Julius II's controversial early sixteenth-century construction of a new basilica in place of the Emperor Constantine's millennium-old St. Peter's Basilica, documenting how building efforts spanned two centuries and more than two dozen papacies while incorporating the contributions of such master artists as Michelangelo and Raphael.