BRAMANTE, DONATO. - Architect and painter, b. at Monte Asdrualdo (now Fermignano) near Urbino in 1444, d. at Rome on 11 April 1514. Biographical documents are scanty, and the very few sources for his activity are not entirely reliable; autograph drawings are almost entirely lacking. Nevertheless, although it is not rigorously proven, it is usually admitted that his formation took place in his homeland, and specifically at Urbino, profiting from the teachings that directly or indirectly were provided by the court circle of the duke of Montefeltro, where 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 minor artists, had found hospitality and worked in various ways. Indeed, B.'s architectural taste adheres more closely to these last two. The construction of the Ducal Palace of Urbino was the training ground of these artists in the years of B.'s youth.
This supposed Urbino period has led to the attribution to B. of the little church of S. Bernardino, which, even though criticism has now removed it from the catalogue of his works and assigned it to Fr. di Giorgio, is so close to B.'s style that it may rightly be taken as probative evidence of his education in his homeland. Indeed, in it the very simple cruciform scheme tending toward exact centrality constitutes the closest anticipation of that feeling for space that B. would always reveal in his works, characterized precisely by the opposition between great masses of empty spaces and of solids, both reduced to their pure essentiality. Traces of this typically Bramantesque language are recognized in other buildings of the Marches and Romagna (Palazzo Passione in Urbino, cathedral of Faenza) where one may suppose, if not a direct intervention by the master, the very rapid formation of a school of his. So that the clarity of the origins, the simplicity of the stylistic features and the immediate diffusion certify a priori both the validity of B.'s art in itself and the timeliness of its arrival in the taste of his time; that is, in the final analysis, B.'s importance in the history of art.
The first certain date in the artist's biography is 1477; in that year B. frescoed, on behalf of Sebastiano Badoer, the frieze of the philosophers in the Palazzo del Podestà in Bergamo. His activity as a painter is documented principally by the Men-at-arms executed later in Milan for the Panicarola house (later Prinetti), a cycle within which is inserted the group of Democritus and Heraclitus, and by other frescoes (The Halberdier and The Singer), works now preserved in the Brera picture gallery. A Christ at the Column executed on panel for the church of Chiaravalle Milanese (now at Brera) and the Argus from the Castello Sforzesco complete the brief catalogue of his pictorial works, whose attribution to the master nevertheless leaves some doubts, especially because of the difficulty of determining with exactness whether and to what extent the help of collaborators intervened in these same works. What is certain is that these paintings reveal a decided taste for robustly squared forms, for a certain solemn equilibrium, for a vigor of composition that befit a personality not so much imitative as freely and positively assimilative, albeit through unspecified mediations, of the art of Piero della Francesca and of Melozzo, filtered through the Mantegnesque experience: which would be consistent with the hypothesis of an Urbino education matured in a northern environment.
In 1481 B. was already present in Milan; in the following year his personality as an architect had occasion to assert itself fully in the rebuilding of S. Maria presso S. Satiro, both through the decided orientation of the forms toward pure spatiality, attained through the most exclusive plasticism, and through the stylistic peculiarities of the details, these nevertheless manifesting themselves in aspects destined for perfection and development.
Thus, if the space materially available for the choir was scanty, a most skillful play of "false perspective," as new as it was fertile in suggestions for much later architects, simulates a depth and a breadth that fully balance the lateral backgrounds of the crossing; and likewise the great arches that define the space are adorned with those tangent circles that, in the Milanese works, would be typical of his stylistic language. The sacristy of the same church (now the baptistery), while it still reveals Lombard reminiscences in the rhythmic frequency of the vertical elements and of the members, and above all in the fielding of the chromatic-plastic decorations, nevertheless affirms the will to make prevail what is purely architectural over what the preceding and contemporary taste preferred; so that ornament is clearly subordinated to essential form, which therefore for the first time in Lombardy suffices by itself to constitute architecture. In the same way, in the exterior parts that B. completed with his own hand (the marble façade he designed was not executed), through the clear scansion of the strictly architectural elements, the artist decidedly lets architectural plainness prevail (base cylinder, projecting cross-shaped bodies, cubic base of the broadly spatial octagonal lantern) over traditional decorative elements.
(phot. Anderson)
All this is confirmed in the project (1488) for the cathedral of Pavia, carried out in collaboration with Amadeo and with Cristoforo Rocchi and perhaps executed in the crypt; and it becomes most evident in the tribune of S. Maria delle Grazie, even if for this work there exists no true and proper documentation and the presence of assistants is more than probable. The tall tiburio, traditionally Lombard, finds its formal essence in the architectural orders, however still crowded and superimposed (here perhaps the work of the collaborators is predominant); but the three tall and decisive apses subordinate even more clearly the chromatism of the curtain wall and the increasingly sober candelabra in relief to the plastic presence of the simple interposed hollow mouldings, giving rise to solid values of masses in grandiose equilibrium. The multiple cavity into which the interior is divided resolves itself identically in the pure masses, powerful through their essential and firm unity, until the space is dominated and composed. The comparison that, perhaps with some vein of rhetoric, is customarily instituted between the works of B. and Roman architecture, whether of the imperial period or of the Byzantine era, must be understood not as a mere exhumation but as a rediscovery of formal aspects, that is, as an affirmation of the originality of B.
In the same way, that is, as a clear and resolute search for pure architectural values against the inertia of local stylistic conventions, must be understood the essence of the other Lombard monuments; for example, of the portico of the canonica of S. Ambrogio, where without doubt, over the rapid and customary rhythm of the columns of the second order, and over the curiosity offered by some of these columns, "knotted" and modelled like tree trunks, there prevails artistically the theme, also not new, but entirely relived, of the gigantic central arch.
This theme of a grandiose arch, expanded in the sense of depth, risen as an absolute simplification of spatiality, attains such concreteness as to materialize entirely a whole façade, that of S. Maria Nascente at Abbiategrasso (1497); and here the Bramantesque ideal is already exhausted, were it not that a certain slender timidity of the columns still lingers there, which, doubling, superimpose themselves.
Esteemed supreme among architects, worthy of the high regard of Leonardo, B. intervened in the works (or rather in the projects) for the tiburio of the cathedral of Milan, for the castle of Vigevano and in some part of the Castello Sforzesco.
Finally, in 1499, having left Milan because of the fall of the Moro, he arrived in Rome, his true homeland as an artist.
Around the name of B. converge unsolved problems concerning the palace of the Roman Apostolic Cancelleria (v. CANCELLERIA, PALAZZO della): some attribute to the master the courtyard and the highest zone of the façade, where there appears, albeit timidly, the theme of the single order comprising two storeys of the building; the conjecture has also been proposed of a broader participation by B. in this most important work, which occurred during an earlier, highly probable stay of the artist in Rome. Among the many Roman palaces of Bramantesque derivation (which some have wished to ascribe to the master) notable is the Palazzo Giraud-Torlonia, modelled on that of the Cancelleria, which, if for no other reason than that it is not an original work, cannot be attributed to B. If, then, the campanile of S. Maria dell'Anima is due to B., his work cannot be extended beyond the level of the bifore, which reveal Lombard reminiscences in the tangential eye beside the two well-delineated arcatures.
A certain work, although executed in two different and perhaps distant periods, is the cloister of S. Maria della Pace, begun, it seems, in 1504. The lower order bears the unmistakable signs both of the by now remote Laurana experience and of the artist's progress toward his full maturity: proven by the extreme simplification of forms and by the maximum strengthening of the pillars in the sense of their plasticity, clearly separated from the scant surface value of the very reduced smooth zones above the arches. The upper order still has something Nordic in the frequency of the vertical elements, which alternately rest on the void of the lower arches; something that for Vasari diminished the beauty of the work. But even in this compositional theme imported from previous experiences, B. impresses a new sense of purity, exalting, far more than in Milan, the architectural terms at the expense of the ornamental ones.
With the assumption to the pontificate of Julius II the genius of B. begins to unfold in all its fullness.
In the fourteen years of his Roman activity B. constituted, one may well say, the face of papal Rome of the full Renaissance, which centralized all Italian art and from which radiated the most enduring architectural schemes that, in every part of the world and in every epoch, therefore repeated their Bramantesque origins.
The themes of civil architecture were definitively set by him, both in private and in public buildings. The house he built for Raphael (demolished for the construction of the Berninian portico of St. Peter's) resolves itself in the very simple scheme of the strongly rusticated lower zone, a most robust pedestal to the upper ostentation of a single architectural order.
A scheme of public building is the Palazzo dei Tribunali on via Giulia, of which the plan and the beginning of the basement zone with strong rustic bossage have remained to us. Annexed to it was to be a church (S. Biagio della Pagnotta), rigorously central in plan, which it has been possible to reconstruct graphically.
In Rome B. left his greatest work, from the point of view of purity of style; 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 appear that it should be assigned, as is customary, to the first Roman period (De Angelis).
Planted on the rigorous central system, everything there is subordinated to the expansion of concentric circles, which might be said to be exhausted and reflected in the planned, likewise circular, environment destined to surround it. The columns, of the most severe Doric order, form, in elevation, a plane never visible as a surface, but always in foreshortening, as the envelope of a round mass. The interior exactly inverts the values, the forms (niches, windows) identifying themselves, which establish a rigorous and uninterrupted continuity with the exterior. And the drum is identically a context of niches, and is joined to the free atmosphere by a light balustrade, above, exaltation and conclusion of the plasticism, the sphericity of the dome (the present one does not correspond exactly to B.'s design). And Serlio himself recognizes in it, through the values that the foreshortened view determines, the full and authentic eurhythmy, in which the intimate "symmetry" of the work is made manifest to the senses; thus not only do the aesthetic values of the "classical" world live again in the admirable temple, but already sure meanings emanate from it of the pictorial and scenographic language of the later grandiose compositions. Palladio, following in Serlio's footsteps, then includes by intrinsic dignity the Bramantesque tempietto among the exemplary — and therefore indisputable — works of the ancients. And truly to this masterpiece the attribution of classicism is fitting.
But B.'s name draws its greater glory from being linked to the rebuilding of S. Pietro. In 1506, the artist was already engaged in laying the major piers: four years later the four great arches destined to support the dome had been thrown. Never again, after him, was the layout of the grandiose fabric modified; which therefore, even through the work of Michelangelo (not to speak of the very numerous architects who attended to the venerable fabric) still fully reveals the Bramantesque conception.
B. had conceived a building (judging from the plan of Antonio da Sangallo, from Serlio's drawings and from the medal of Caradosso) exactly central, cruciform, with four grandiose apses projecting from a square determined by four corner towers, rhythmized by powerful niches closed by columns; between the towers and the great central crossing, in the empty spaces the motif of the apsidal cross was repeated. And this summary description suffices to make one recognize the absolute essentiality of the architectural theme: opposition of extreme plastic values (projecting masses and cavities) and pure spatiality, concluded in itself. High above the crossing the dome, which in the drum do-
was to repeat the theme proposed in the tempietto of S. Pietro in Montorio, that is, the colonnade. The project underwent modifications, on the part of B. himself, but the scheme, decisive for the stylistic definition of its author, remained unaltered.
This expression of B.'s personality is fully in accord with the minor works, among which the most certain is the choir of S. Maria del Popolo. Also and especially from this Roman activity there sprang flourishing a school of his which - very often with the direct intervention of the Master - generated a series of unmistakable monuments, in Rome and outside it (for example the Palazzo Turci, Palazzo Fieschi and the Palazzo del S. Uffizio, the churches of S. Sebastiano in Val Piatta at Siena, the Consolazione of Todi, etc.).
In the complex of the Vatican palaces the work of B. is pre-eminent over that of the other architects; not only in the courtyard of S. Damaso, which he conceived with the Roman theme of superimposed orders and completed only on the lower storey, leaving the continuation of the work to Raphael and to Sangallo; but also and above all in the unfinished yet defined arrangement of the Belvedere.
Here the theme presented the premises most suited to B.'s personality: uneven ground, vast in extent, to which architectural form was to be given: an occasion, in short, for a full and exact spatial architecture; and B. indeed took up, with a grand manner, free space as the protagonist of his works. The immense enclosure is defined by the continuous rhythm provided by the Roman system of architectural orders including a varied series of arcades; monumental stairways were to transform the planimetric course into an enhancement of masses which, spatially, would have been summed up in the powerful great niche at the end (an august descendant of the façade of Abbiategrasso). In front of these, two concentric hemicycles resolved themselves into the two stairways of opposite curvature, which Michelangelo later wished to replace with the ramps of the courtyard today called della Pigna.
B. died on 14 April 1514, and was certainly buried in the Vatican Grottoes; but his tomb has never been found.
The circle of Michelangelo - or rather of Vasari - would be hostile to his memory, with critical proportions acutely polemical; but no one would fail to acknowledge his supreme merit as an architect, and Michelangelo, even from a severe mental attitude, would have words of praise, most candid, destined to become proverbial: « Chi si discosta da B. si discosta dalla verità ». - See Pl. I.
