Bramantino (Suandi, Bartolomeo)

BRAMANTINO (SUANDI, BARTOLOMEO). - Milanese painter and architect. The year of his birth is not known; from the documents it appears that in 1503 he is called to a consultation for the fabric of the cathedral of Milan, in 1508 he is in Rome to execute paintings in the Vatican, in 1508 he is again in Milan where he designs the Trivulzio chapel at S. Nazaro (whose construction he directs at least until 1520), in 1513 he paints at Chiaravalle for the Cistercians an altarpiece to be sent to S. Saba in Rome, in 1525 he is appointed ducal architect and painter; d. c. 1536.

At first closer to the old tradition of Foppa and Butinone and to the nervous and incisive manner of Mantegna and the Ferrarese, he later drew from Bramante (of whom he was very probably a pupil, as the nickname of B. seems to indicate) and, through him, from Piero della Francesca the taste for the conquests of perspective and for the monumentality of composition. He gave a new sixteenth-century impetus to Lombard painting, succeeding in asserting his own original personality even amid the spreading influence of Leonardo.

Much debated is the chronology of his works; certainly youthful is the Nativity of the Ambrosiana in Milan and the Ecce Homo of the Soranzo house, where setting and images are fantastically distorted and the hard and harsh line has a singular constructive force. A little later, perhaps subsequent to the Roman sojourn which undoubtedly had a strong influence on the artist, are the Legend of Philemon and Baucis in the museum of Cologne and the Adoration of the Magi in the National Gallery in London, more solemn and monumental in their layout; close to these is the very remarkable ceiling of the Carafa chapel in Naples executed in 1511, where perspectival skill never yields to virtuosity and the decorative, but realizes, through the foreshortenings, values of tension and impetus. Subsequently the search for monumentality leads B. to inflate his forms, to weigh down the draperies at the expense of the previous movement and vigor; the line from incisive becomes soft and vaporous and the strong contrasts of light yield to a more diffused luminosity; examples of this manner are the Holy Family of the Brera Gallery, the Triptych of the Ambrosiana and the Lucrezia of the Sola-Busca collection.

Architectural constructions are frequent in the fantastic backgrounds of his paintings, but the only documented work of architecture is the Trivulzio chapel at S. Nazaro; devoid of any ornamental detail, and therefore far from the decorativism of the Lombard architectural tradition, it feels the influence of Bramante in its taste for geometric rigor, which it animates, however, with a vertical impetus perceptible especially in the interior; the hypogeum of S. Maria della Fontana (Mezzanotte) and the old sacristy of S. Maria delle Grazie (Gengaro) have also been attributed to him.

Marta Prandi