I now think of the rotunda of that palazzo, when it still had its pagan as well as its Christian images, as a Renaissance effort to make an atom bomb. It cost a great deal of money and employed many of the best minds of the time, and it compressed into a small space and in bizarre combinations the most powerful forces of the Universe as the Universe was understood in the fifteenth century. The Universe has certainly come a long, long way since then. • • •
