Donato Bramante

Donato Bramante (born c. 1444, probably at Monte Asdrualdo, Duchy of Urbino [Italy]—died April 11, 1514, Rome) was an architect who introduced the High Renaissance style in architecture. His early works in Milan included the rectory of Sant’Ambrogio and the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie. In Rome, Bramante served as principal planner of Pope Julius II’s comprehensive project for rebuilding the city. St. Peter’s Basilica, of which he was the chief architect, was begun in 1506. Other major Roman works were the Tempietto at San Pietro in Montorio (1502) and the Belvedere court in the Vatican (begun c. 1505).

Early years and training

Donato Bramante was born of a family of well-to-do farmers. In his childhood, says the 16th-century biographer and artist Giorgio Vasari, “besides reading and writing, he practiced much at the abacus.” His father probably directed him toward painting.

Little is known of Bramante’s life and works before 1477. He probably served as an assistant to Piero della Francesca in Urbino, which, under the nobleman Federico da Montefeltro (died 1482), had become a humanist centre of considerable importance. In 1477 Bramante was working in Bergamo as a painter of illusionistic murals of architecture. He probably derived his training not only from the works of artists active in Urbino but also from those of other artists he may have observed in his travels, such as those of Leon Battista Alberti (in Rimini and Mantua), Andrea Mantegna (in Mantua and Padua), Ercole de’Roberti (in Ferrara), and Filippo Brunelleschi (in Florence).

None of Bramante’s youthful productions has survived, though some historians attribute various architectural perspectives to him. Almost all of them show some characteristics of Bramante’s work, but they appear very different from each other. Before 1477 Bramante may have been primarily a planner, designer, and painter of architectural perspectives that other artists partly modified and inserted into their own paintings or carried out in construction; there are a number of later instances in which he is known to have furnished painters with such architectural perspectives.

Lombard period

By 1477 Bramante had left Urbino for unknown reasons and settled in the northern Italian province of Lombardy. He worked on frescoes for the facade of the Palazzo del Podestà (later altered) in Bergamo showing Classical figures of philosophers in a complex architectural setting. Vasari (though poorly informed on this period) says that Bramante, after working in various cities on “things of no great cost and little value,” went to Milan “to see the cathedral.” The cathedral workshop, in which Italian, German, and French craftsmen worked by turns, constituted an important centre for the exchange of knowledge, planning methods, and techniques. Moreover, Milan was a large and wealthy metropolis, the capital of a state ruled by Ludovico Sforza, called Il Moro, and Renaissance architecture was a commodity to be imported. Thus the city represented an opportunity for a young and up-to-date architect like Bramante.

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Artists, Painters, & Architects

The first architectural work that can be definitely attributed to Bramante is a design: a print made in 1481 by a Milanese engraver, Bernardo Prevedari, from a Bramante drawing representing a ruined temple with human figures. About the same time, Bramante was working on the church of Santa Maria presso San Satiro, the first structure definitely attributed to him. Along with a certain adherence to local taste, this church shows traces of the influence of Alberti, Mantegna, Brunelleschi, and the Urbino school. This last influence is particularly evident in its choir, which was painted in perspective to give an illusion of a much larger space. Perhaps from the same period (c. 1480–85) is Bramante’s decoration of a room in Casa Panigarola in Milan (fragments in the Brera, Milan) that consists of architectural settings and the figures of men at arms rendered by means of illusionistic perspective. Similar experiments, perhaps also in the same years, seem to have been carried out by Bramante on the facades of buildings, such as Casa Fontana, later called Silvestri, in Milan.

In 1488 Bramante, along with a number of other architects, was asked by Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, brother of Ludovico Sforza and bishop of Pavia, to draw up a new plan for the cathedral of Pavia. Bramante went many times to that city during this period, and it was probably under his direction that the crypt and the lower portion of the building were executed.

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Bramante appears to have had close relations with Leonardo da Vinci. In 1482 Leonardo had visited Milan from Florence, and in 1490 both Bramante and Leonardo were occupied with stylistic and structural problems of the tiburio, or crossing tower, of the cathedral of Milan. From 1487 to 1490 a number of mutual exchanges can be documented. The only written evidence of Bramante’s ideas on architecture goes back to this time (1490) and consists of a report on the tiburio problem. Bramante examined various solutions (among them one of his own, a square plan), demonstrating a conception of architecture remarkably like that of Alberti.

Bramante by now enjoyed the favour of both Ludovico and Ascanio Sforza, as well as that of influential courtiers. His modest salary and the irregularity of payment, however, did not allow him to live luxuriously. He came in contact not only with artists but also with humanists and poets of the Sforza court, and he himself wrote verses. Like Leonardo, he was involved in the staging of spectacles at the Sforza court, such as one on the occasion of a baptism in 1492.

Architecture increasingly dominated his interests, but he did not give up painting. Of the many works attributed to him by various 16th-century writers, however, none seems to have been preserved. The only extant easel picture that has ever been attributed to him is the Christ at the Column of the Abbey of Chiaravalle (c. 1490). A fresco in a complex architectural setting (c. 1490–92) in the Castello Sforzesco in Milan is probably his, with the collaboration of his pupil Il Bramantino.

Starting in 1492, Bramante was entrusted by Ludovico and Ascanio Sforza with the reconstruction of the canonica (rectory) of Sant’Ambrogio in Milan. The work was interrupted by the fall of Ludovico, and, though it was resumed in the 16th century, only one side of the building was executed. Though Bramante’s responsibility cannot be proved, the idea for the new tribuna (chancel) for Santa Maria delle Grazie probably originated with him; destined to be the burial mausoleum of the Sforzas, the tribuna was in an overall project of reconstruction, begun in 1492, for the entire church. Bramante also may have planned the painted decoration of the interior, but the execution and the clarification of details, particularly on the exterior, were probably done by Lombard masters.

Bramante’s activities in the 1490s, before he left Milan finally for Rome, are sporadically documented. It has been conjectured that in the summer of 1492 he was in Florence studying the work of Brunelleschi, in view of the emphatic Brunelleschian character of the Sant’Ambrogio canonica. In 1493 he made a report on certain fortifications on the Swiss border for Ludovico.

His last few years in Lombardy were marked by the restless activity that characterized the remainder of his career. He was probably responsible for the designs of the piazza of Vigevano (carried out between 1492 and 1494, partly transformed in the late 17th century), of the painted architectural decoration on the arcaded facades that marked its limits, and for the designs of other structures of the Vigevano complex, as well as the painted decoration (which has disappeared) for the interior of the castle of the same city. His covered passageway (ponticella) for the Castello Sforzesco in Milan must also be from this period, and the facade of the church of Santa Maria Nascente ad Abbiategrasso (near Milan) dates from 1497. Between 1497 and 1498, in addition to a chapel (later altered) of Sant’Ambrogio in Milan, he worked on the Cistercian Monastery being erected in Milan under the auspices of Ascanio Sforza; like his work on the canonica, it was suspended in 1499 and is unfinished.

Endowed with an extremely receptive character, Bramante was by no means immune to the influence of other artists active in Milan. He was also influenced by his study of Lombard monuments dating from the late ancient and Carolingian periods, the memory of which was to be useful to him in Rome. Conversely, Bramante’s presence (together with Leonardo’s) in Milan was of fundamental importance for the later artistic developments in that city.