Donato Bramante

Donato Bramante
Donato Bramante

Donato Bramante
Birth name Donato di Pascuccio d'Antonio
Born

1444Fermignano, Italy

Died

11 April 1514 (Aged about 70)Rome

Nationality Italian
Field

Architecture, Painting

Movement

High Renaissance

Works

San Pietro in Montorio

Christ at the column

Donato Bramante (1444 11 March 1514) was an Italian architect, who introduced the Early Renaissance style to
Milan and the High Renaissance style to Rome, where his most famous design was St. Peter's Basilica.

Urbino and Milan

Bramante was born in Monte Asdrualdo (now Fermignano), under name Donato di Pascuccio d'Antonio, near
Urbino: here, in 1467 Luciano Laurana was adding to the Palazzo Ducale an arcaded courtyard and other features
that seemed to have the true ring of a reborn antiquity to Federico da Montefeltro's ducal palace.
Bramante's architecture has eclipsed his painting skills: he knew the painters Melozzo da Forl and Piero della
Francesca well, who were interested in the rules of perspective and illusionistic features in Mantegna's painting.
Around 1474, Bramante moved to Milan, a city with a deep Gothic architectural tradition, and built several churches
in the new Antique style. The Duke, Ludovico Sforza, made him virtually his court architect, beginning in 1476,
with commissions that culminated in the famous trompe-l'oeil choir of the church of Santa Maria presso San Satiro
(14821486). Space was limited, and Bramante made a theatrical apse in bas-relief, combining the painterly arts of
perspective with Roman details. There is an octagonal sacristy, surmounted by a dome.
In Milan, Bramante also built the tribune of Santa Maria delle Grazie (149299); other early works include the
cloisters of Sant'Ambrogio, Milan (14971498), and some other constructions in Pavia and possibly Legnano.
However, in 1499, with his Sforza patron driven from Milan by an invading French army, Bramante made his way to
Rome, where he was already known to the powerful Cardinal Riario.

Donato Bramante

Career in Rome
In Rome, he was soon recognized in Cardinal Della Rovere, shortly to become Pope Julius II. For Ferdinand of
Aragon and Isabella of Castile or possibly Julius II, Bramante designed one of the most harmonious buildings of the
Renaissance: the Tempietto (1510) of San Pietro in Montorio on the Janiculum. Despite its small scale, the
construction has all the rigorous proportions and symmetry of Classical structures, surrounded by slender Doric
columns, surmounted by a dome. According to a later engraving by Sebastiano Serlio, Bramante planned to set it
within a colonnaded courtyard. In November 1503, Julius engaged Bramante for the construction of the grandest
European architectural commission of the 16th century, the complete rebuilding of St Peter's Basilica. The
cornerstone of the first of the great piers of the crossing was laid with ceremony on 17 April 1506. Very few
drawings by Bramante survive, though some by his assistants do, demonstrating the extent of the team which had
been assembled. Bramante's vision for St Peter's, a centralized Greek cross plan that symbolized sublime perfection
for him and his generation (compare Santa Maria della Consolazione, Todi, influenced by Bramante's work) was
fundamentally altered by the extension of the nave after his death in 1514. Bramante's plan envisaged four great
chapels filling the corner spaces between the equal transepts, each one capped with a smaller dome surrounding the
great dome over the crossing. So Bramante's original plan was very much more Romano-Byzantine in its forms than
the basilica that was actually built. (See St Peter's Basilica for further details.) Bramante also worked on several
other commissions. Among his earliest works in Rome, before the Basilica's construction was under way, is the
cloister (15001504) of Santa Maria della Pace near Piazza Navona. The handsome proportions give an air of great
simplicity.

A draft for St Peter's superimposed over a plan of the ancient basilica

Bramante's final plan

Donato Bramante

The dome, as planned by Bramante

Principal architectural works

Santa Maria presso San Satiro Milan, ca. 14821486

Santa Maria delle Grazie (cloister and apse); Milan, 14921498
Palazzo Caprini (also called: 'House of Raphael'), Rome, started in 1512 (non-extant)
San Pietro in Montorio (also called the Tempietto); Rome, 1502
Santa Maria della Pace (cloister); Rome, 1504
St. Peter's Basilica, Rome, Design 1503, ground breaking, 1506
Cortile del Belvedere, Vatican City, Rome, 1506.

References

ACKERMAN, James. The Cortile del Belvedere. (London, 1964).

BRUSCHI, Arnaldo. Bramante (London, 1977).
EVANS, Robin. The Projective Cast: Architecture and Its Three Geometries (Cambridge, MA, 1995).
FROMMEL, Christoph Luitpold. Die Romische Palastbau der Hochrenaissance (Tbingen, 1973).
FROMMEL, Christoph Luitpold. The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance (lLondon, 2007).
LOTZ, Wolfgang. Architecture in Italy 1500-1600 (London, 1996).
HEYDENREICH, Ludwig H. Architecture in Italy 1400-1500 (London, 1996)
THOENES, Christof. Sostegno e Adornamento (Milan, 1998).
FORTUNATO, Giuseppe." The role of architectural representation for the analysis of the built. The 3d survey of
San Pietro in Montorio's temple in Rome", atti del "X Congreso Internacional expresin grphica aplicada a la
edificacon, Alicante,Editorial Marfil", S.A., 2010. I.S.B.N.: 978-84-268-1528-6

(http://www.bramantearte.com) (http://www.donatobramante.info)

External links
Donato Bramante Source (http://www.donatobramante.info) Information, Pictures & Documentaries about
Donato.

Article Sources and Contributors

Article Sources and Contributors

Donato Bramante Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=429829482 Contributors: Alessandro57, Amandajm, Angr, Anna Lincoln, Attilios, Ayla, Bhadani, Bill Thayer, Bonifore,
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Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors

File:Donato Bramante.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Donato_Bramante.jpg License: Public Domain Contributors: FoekeNoppert, G.dallorto, Miaow Miaow,
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Image:Sheet with Bramante's first plans.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Sheet_with_Bramante's_first_plans.jpg License: Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike
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Image:SaintPierre.svg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:SaintPierre.svg License: Public Domain Contributors: SaintPierre4.JPG: derivative work: Malyszkz (talk)
Image:Roma S.Pietro in Vaticano (zzf).jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Roma_S.Pietro_in_Vaticano_(zzf).jpg License: Public Domain Contributors: Original
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