# BRAMANTE, Donato [View the canonical artist record]() ## Artist - Lifespan: 1444–1514 - Profession: architect - School: Italian ## Biography Italian 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 \(begun c. 1505\). Donato Bramante was born of a family of well-to-do farmers. 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. None of Bramante's youthful productions has survived. By 1477 Bramante had left Urbino and settled in Lombardy. He worked on frescoes for the façade of the Palazzo del Podestà \(later altered\) in Bergamo showing Classical figures of philosophers in a complex architectural setting. Vasari says that Bramante, after working in various cities 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. The city represented an opportunity for a young and up-to-date architect like Bramante. 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. 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. 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 depicting Argus in a complex architectural setting \(1490-92\) in the Castello Sforzesco in Milan is probably his, with the collaboration of his pupil Il Bramantino. 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. Bramante probably remained in Milan until 1499. He appears to have been active from the first in Rome on a variety of projects. As under-architect of Pope Alexander VI, he probably executed the fountains in Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere and in St. Peter's Square \(later altered\) and served on several architectural councils. It is probable that in these years he had reduced his activity as a designer and was dev… ## Related artworks - [Argus \(detail\)]() - [Argus]() - [Christ at the Column]() - [Exterior view]() - [Exterior view]() - [Exterior view]() - [Exterior view]() - [Exterior view]() - [Exterior view]() - [Exterior view]() - [Exterior view]() - [General view]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()