BRAMANTE, Donato. — Architect and painter, born at Monte Asdrualdo (now Fermignano) near Urbino in 1444, died in Rome on 11 April 1514. Biographical documents are scarce and the scant sources for his activity are not entirely reliable; almost no autograph drawings survive. Nevertheless, although not rigorously proven, it is generally accepted that his training took place in his native region, specifically in Urbino, where he benefited from the teachings—directly or indirectly—provided by the court environment of the Duke of Montefeltro. This court had hosted and employed, in various capacities, L. B. Alberti, Melozzo, Piero della Francesca (fundamental for B.’s cultural formation), and above all Francesco di Giorgio and Francesco Laurana, among a host of lesser artists. Indeed, it is to these last two that Bramante’s architectural taste most closely adheres. In the years of his youth, the construction of the Ducal Palace in Urbino served as a training ground for these artists.
This presumed Urbino period has led to the attribution to Bramante of the little church of S. Bernardino, which, even though modern criticism has removed it from his catalogue of works and assigned it to Francesco di Giorgio, is so close in style to Bramante that it may justly be cited as evidence of his early education. In this building, the simplest cruciform plan tending toward exact centrality represents the nearest anticipation of that sense of space which Bramante would always reveal in his works, characterized precisely by the interplay between large masses of empty and solid spaces, both reduced to their pure essentials. Traces of this typically Bramantesque language can be recognized in other buildings in the Marches and Romagna (the Palazzo Passionei in Urbino, the cathedral of Faenza), where it is reasonable to suppose—if not a direct intervention by the master—at least the rapid formation of a school in his style. Thus, the clarity of his origins, the simplicity of his stylistic traits, and the immediate diffusion of his influence attest in advance both the validity of Bramante’s art in itself and the timeliness of its emergence in the taste of his time; in short, the importance of Bramante in the history of art.
The first certain date in the artist’s biography is 1477, when Bramante frescoed, on behalf of Sebastiano Badoer, the frieze of philosophers in the Palazzo del Podestà in Bergamo. His activity as a painter is documented chiefly by the Uomini d’arme executed later in Milan for the Panigarola family (later Prinetti), a cycle that includes the group of Democritus and Heraclitus, as well as other frescoes (Ustabardato and Il Cantore), works now preserved in the Pinacoteca di Brera. A Christ at the Column painted on panel for the church of Chiaravalle Milanese (now in Brera) and the Argo from the Castello Sforzesco complete the brief catalogue of his paintings, though the attribution to the master leaves some doubts, particularly regarding the difficulty of determining precisely whether and to what extent assistants contributed to these works. What is certain is that these paintings reveal a decided taste for robustly squared forms, a certain solemn balance, and a vigor of composition that suit a personality not so much imitative as freely and positively assimilative—albeit through unspecified mediations—of the art of Piero della Francesca and Melozzo, filtered through Mantegna’s experience. This would be consistent with the hypothesis of an Urbino education matured in a northern environment.
By 1481 Bramante was already in Milan; the following year his architectural personality fully asserted itself in the remodeling of S. Maria presso S. Satiro. This was evident both in the decisive orientation of forms toward pure spatiality, achieved through the most exclusive plasticism, and in the stylistic particularities of the details, which, however, appear in aspects destined for refinement and development. Thus, although the physically available space for the choir was limited, a most ingenious use of “false perspective”—as novel as it was fertile in suggestions for later architects—simulated a depth and breadth that perfectly balanced the lateral backdrops of the crossing. Similarly, the arches defining the space are adorned with those tangent circles that, in his Milanese works, would become typical of his stylistic language. The sacristy of the same church (now a baptistery), while still revealing Lombard reminiscences in the rhythmic frequency of vertical elements and members, and above all in the chromatic-plastic treatment of the surfaces, nonetheless affirms the will to make the purely architectural prevail over what preceding and contemporary taste preferred; so much so that ornament is clearly subordinated to essential form, which for the first time in Lombardy alone constitutes architecture. Likewise, in the exterior parts that Bramante completed himself (the marble façade he designed was never executed), through the clear articulation of strictly architectural elements, the artist decisively favored architectural straightforwardness (the cylindrical base, the projecting cross-shaped volumes, the cubic base of the widely spaced octagonal lantern) over traditional decorative elements.
Bramante, Donato – Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie – Milan.
(Ist. Anderson)
All this is confirmed in the project (1488) for the Pavia cathedral, executed in collaboration with Amadeo and Cristoforo Rocchi and perhaps carried out in the crypt; and it becomes most evident in the tribune of Santa Maria delle Grazie, even though for this work there is no proper documentation and the presence of assistants is more than probable. The lofty tiburio, traditionally Lombard, finds its formal essence in the architectural orders, albeit still dense and superimposed (here the work of collaborators may perhaps predominate); yet the three tall, decisive apses further subordinate the chromaticism of the curtain wall and the increasingly sober candelabra in relief to the plastic presence of the simple fluted interstices, giving rise to solid mass-values in grand equilibrium. The multiple vaulting that divides the interior resolves identically into pure, powerful masses through their essential and firm unity, until space is dominated and composed.
The comparison—perhaps tinged with rhetoric—that is usually drawn between Bramante’s works and Roman architecture, whether of the imperial period or the Byzantine era, must be understood not as a mere exhumation but as the rediscovery of formal aspects, and thus as an affirmation of Bramante’s originality.
Similarly, as a clear and resolute search for pure architectural values against the inertia of local stylistic conventions, must be understood the essence of his other Lombard monuments; for example, the portico of the canonica of Sant’Ambrogio, where without doubt the rapid, accustomed rhythm of the columns of the second order, and the curiosity offered by some of these columns—gnarled and shaped like tree trunks—are artistically surpassed by the theme, itself not new but entirely re-experienced, of the giant central arch.
This theme of a grand arch, expanded in depth and raised to an absolute simplification of spatiality, attains such concreteness as to materialize an entire façade, that of Santa Maria Nascenti of Abbiategrasso (1497); and here Bramante’s ideal is already exhausted, save for a certain slender timidity of the columns that, doubling, are superimposed.
Esteemed as the foremost among architects, worthy of Leonardo’s high regard, Bramante intervened in the works (or rather in the designs) for the tiburio of Milan cathedral, for the castle of Vigevano, and in some part of the Sforza castle.
Finally, in 1499, having left Milan because of the fall of the Moro, he arrived in Rome, his true artistic homeland.
Around Bramante’s name converge unsolved problems concerning the palace of the Roman Apostolic Chancellery (v. CANCELLERIA, palazzo della): some attribute to the master the courtyard and the upper zone of the façade, where the theme of a single order embracing two storeys of the building appears, albeit timidly; a conjecture has also been advanced of a more extensive participation by Bramante in this most important work, which may have occurred during an earlier, highly probable sojourn of the artist in Rome. Among the many Roman palaces of Bramantesque derivation (some of which have been claimed for the master) the Giraud-Torlonia palace is notable, modeled on that of the Chancellery, which, if only because it is not an original work, cannot be attributed to Bramante. If, moreover, the bell tower of Santa Maria dell’Anima is to be credited to Bramante, his work cannot be extended beyond the level of the biforas, which reveal Lombard reminiscences in the tangential eye to the two well-defined arcatures.
A certain work, though executed in two distinct and perhaps distant phases, is the cloister of Santa Maria della Pace, begun, it seems, in 1504. The lower order bears the unmistakable marks both of the now distant Lauranesque experience and of the artist’s progress toward his full maturity, evidenced by the extreme simplification of forms and the maximum enhancement of the pillars in their plasticity, sharply separated from the meagre value of the surface of the very reduced smooth zones above the arches. The upper order still betrays something northern in the frequency of vertical elements, which alternately emphasize the void of the lower arches—something that, according to Vasari, diminished the beauty of the work. Yet even in this compositional theme, drawn from earlier experiences, Bramante impresses a new sense of purity, exalting architectural terms at the expense of ornamental ones more than he did in Milan.
With the accession of Julius II to the papacy
During the fourteen years of his Roman activity, Bramante, one might say, constituted the very face of papal Rome in the High Renaissance, which centralized all Italian art and from which the most enduring architectural schemes radiated, schemes that, in every part of the world and in every age, thereafter traced their Bramantesque origins.
The themes of civil architecture were definitively established by him, both in private buildings and in public ones. The house he built for Raphael (demolished to make way for Bernini’s portico of St Peter’s) resolves itself into the simplest scheme of a strongly rusticated lower zone, a robust pedestal supporting the upper display of a single architectural order.
A scheme for a public building is the Palazzo dei Tribunali in Via Giulia, of which only the plan and the beginning of the basement zone with strong rustic blocks remain. Attached to it was to be a church (S. Biagio della Pagnotta) rigorously centralized, which has been graphically reconstructed.
In Rome Bramante left his greatest work from the point of view of stylistic purity; a work destined to rise to the status of an architectural canon of theoretical value: the Tempietto of S. Pietro in Montorio. It does not seem that it should be assigned, as is usual, to his first Roman period (De Angelis).
Set upon a rigorous central system, everything there is subordinated to the expansion of concentric circles, which might be said to be exhausted and reflected in the projected circular space intended to house II. The columns, of the severest Doric order, form, in elevation, a plane never visible as a surface, but always in foreshortening, as an envelope of rounded mass. The interior inverts these values exactly, the forms (niches and windows) establishing a rigorous and uninterrupted continuity with the exterior. And the drum is identically composed of niches, and is connected with the free atmosphere by a light balustrade above, the exaltation and conclusion of the plasticism, the spherical quality of the dome (the present one does not correspond exactly to Bramante’s design). Even Serlio recognizes in it, through the values that foreshortened vision determines, the full and authentic eurhythmy in which the intimate “symmetry” of the work is manifested to the senses; thus not only do the aesthetic values of the “classical” world live again in this marvelous temple, but from it already emanate the sure meanings of the pictorial and scenographic language of later grandiose compositions. Palladio, following in Serlio’s footsteps, then includes the Bramantean tempietto among the exemplary—and therefore unquestionable—works of the ancients, on account of its intrinsic dignity. And truly this masterpiece merits the attribution of classicism.
But Bramante’s name draws its greatest glory from being linked to the reconstruction of St Peter’s. In 1506 the artist was already engaged in laying the foundations of the main piers; four years later the four great arches destined to support the dome were in place. Never again after him was the plan of the vast edifice modified; and thus, even through the work of Michelangelo (to say nothing of the numerous architects who attended to the venerable fabric), it still fully reveals Bramante’s conception.
Bramante had designed a building (according to the plan of Antonio da Sangallo, the drawings of Serlio, and the medal of Caradosso) exactly central, cruciform, with four grandiose apses projecting from a square determined by four corner towers, rhythmically articulated by powerful niches closed by columns between the towers and the great central crossing; in the voids the motif of the apsed cross was repeated. And this summary description suffices to reveal the absolute essentiality of the architectural theme: the opposition of extreme plastic values (projecting masses and cavities) and pure spatiality, concluded in itself. High above the crossing the dome, which in its drum was to repeat the motif proposed in the Tempietto of S. Pietro in Montorio—that is, the colonnade. The design underwent modifications by Bramante himself, but the scheme, decisive for the stylistic definition of its author, remained unaltered.
This expression of Bramante’s personality is fully consistent with his minor works, among which the most certain is the choir of S. Maria del Popolo. From this Roman activity, too, there sprang forth a flourishing school which—very often with the Master’s direct intervention—produced a series of unmistakable monuments, in Rome and beyond (e.g., the palaces of the Turci, Fieschi, and the Holy Office, the churches of S. Sebastiano in Val Platta in Siena, the Consolazione in Todi, etc.).
In the complex of the Vatican palaces Bramante’s work predominates over that of other architects; not only in the Cortile di S. Damaso, which he conceived with the Roman theme of superimposed orders and completed only on the lower level, leaving the continuation of the work to Raphael and Sangallo; but also and above all in the unfinished yet definitive arrangement of the Belvedere.
Here the theme presented the most suitable conditions for Bramante’s personality: an extensive, uneven terrain to be given architectural form; an occasion, in short, for a full and exact spatial architecture; and Bramante indeed assumed, with grand gesture, free space as the protagonist of his work. The immense enclosure is defined by the continuous rhythm provided by the Roman system of architectural orders enclosing a varied series of arcades; monumental staircases were to transform the planimetric development into an enhancement of masses that, spatially, would be summed up in the powerful niche at the far end (august descendant of the façade of Abbiategrosso). Before this, two concentric hemicycles resolved themselves into the two staircases of opposite curvature, which Michelangelo later wished to replace with the ramps of the courtyard now called the Cortile della Pigna.
Bramante died on 14 April 1514 and was certainly buried in the Vatican Grottoes; but his tomb has never been found.
The environment of Michelangelo—or rather the Vasarian—would be hostile to his memory, with critical proportions sharply polemical; yet no one will deny his supreme merit as an architect, and Michelangelo, even from a severe mental stance, would have words of praise, most sincere, destined to become proverbial: “Whoever departs from Bramante departs from truth.” — See Pl. I.