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Bramante tra reale e virtuale | Aquilano Design Division

Bramante Between Real and Virtual – The Exhibition

The exhibition is set up in a virtual space represented as a drawing, a space where visitors will find themselves physically, should the exhibition be installed in reality, and corresponds to the museum halls and outdoor space of the cloister of Santa Maria della Pace, also a work by Donato Bramante.

Cloister of Santa Maria della Pace, Rome, 1500-1504

The construction of the cloister was commissioned to Bramante by Cardinal Oliviero Carafa. It was integrated into the context of the late-fifteenth-century church of Santa Maria della Pace, commissioned by Pope Sixtus IV and attributed to Baccio Pontelli.

From the street, one entered the cloister at the corner: Bramante envisioned the solution of a floor played on diagonals, carefully resolving the corner with bent masonry. From the entrance, the diagonal, perspective axes guide observation toward the corner pillar, that is, a “solid.” In the design, he addressed two problems: the adoption of classical Orders in a varied composition, particularly in a two-story building of different heights; the search for a proportional system capable of establishing a general order among otherwise diverse elements. The regulating lines of this system have been surveyed and highlighted in a plan, a modular grid of squares in which the four outer perimeter courses were formed by the porticoes, and a series of diagonals reveal the proportions of the facades in ratios of 4:3 and 2:1. Furthermore, the height of the upper floor equaled that of the ground floor reduced by one quarter. Other proportions have been identified in the three modules of the height of the plinth plus pilaster on the ground floor, in the approximately 7 modules of the pilaster, in the 3 modules of the entablature plus the entire upper floor, and in the 6 modules of the upper floor pillar.

The cloister distributed on the ground floor the refectory, kitchens, and meeting rooms, and on the upper floor the cells and library. In the portico pillars, for the first time since antiquity, he used the Tuscan order, with Ionic pilasters on high plinths; on the first floor, instead, composite pillars alternated with slender Corinthian columns, terminating above with cornices supported by brackets, derived from the crown of the Colosseum. Careful observation of the superimposition of the Colosseum’s orders did not translate into imitation, but into a new and modern interpretation.
Bramante thus affirmed that classical Roman language could resolve every problem of architectural composition. For example, the coexistence of four orders articulated in only two floors was unprecedented, along with the famous corner solution with the bent pillar, the “threadlike” pilaster, and the Ionic capital reduced to only two volutes folded like a book. The total absence of decoration found radical accentuation in the choice of the Tuscan order on the ground floor, which did not include triglyphs and metopes in the frieze. The architecture of the Peace cloister proposed the “license” of placing the floor on the void, given that the slender columns of the first floor bear weight at the center of the intercolumniation. The portico below had masonry vaults, while the first floor had a wooden roof, chosen to avoid, with the adoption of cross vaults, a raise that would have led to the addition of an attic or cornice. The cloister, therefore, revealed full expressive maturity and the beginning of the so-called “grand manner” or “High Renaissance.”

Donato Bramante was born in 1444 in a small village in the Duchy of Urbino to a rather prosperous farming family.
It is almost unanimously believed that it was in Urbino that Bramante had the opportunity to come into contact with Piero della Francesca and Leon Battista Alberti, who over time became the principal references for his training.
It was in Urbino, in other words, that Bramante’s apprenticeship took place, and it was here that he was able to assimilate that architectura ficta, which he would later implement in Bergamo, Milan, and Rome.
In 1477-78, Bramante arrived in Bergamo, where he executed, commissioned by magistrates Sebastiano Badoer and Giovanni Moro, large frescoes on the facade of the Palazzo del Podestà. Although the remains of this pictorial work are few and in very poor condition, from them it is possible to discern the subject of the representation: several figures of philosophers in architectural frames, loggias, niches, and pilasters.
It is possible that in Bergamo, Bramante met Amadeo, with whom he would cooperate during the twenty years of his Milanese sojourn.
It is not possible to assert with certainty when Bramante arrived in Milan; for this purpose, one can consider the creation of the design for the Prevedari Engraving, a work signed and dated 1481, the year in which Bramante undoubtedly resided in the Lombard city. In Milan, Bramante met illustrious artists, scientists, and men of letters, but above all, his relationships with sculptor-architect Giovanni Antonio Amadeo and with Leonardo were of notable importance.
Finally, Bramante must have arrived in Rome in the last months of 1499. In Rome too, Bramante continued his activity as a painter, including a fresco executed in San Giovanni in Laterano, now lost. As in Milan, so also in Rome, Bramante maintained associations with artists and men of letters and had prominent patrons, moreover beginning to frequent the Vatican court from 1503, the year in which Giuliano della Rovere became pope with the title Julius II. Tense, however, were his relations with Michelangelo, both over the proposal to place Julius II’s monumental tomb at the center of the new St. Peter’s (then in the design phase), and over the scaffolding built by Bramante to allow the execution of Michelangelo’s frescoes on the vault of the Sistine Chapel, at a height of 20 meters.
The Urbino-born architect died in Rome on April 11, 1514.

Donato Bramante was born in 1444 in a small village in the Duchy of Urbino to a rather prosperous farming family.
It is almost unanimously believed that it was in Urbino that Bramante had the opportunity to come into contact with Piero della Francesca and Leon Battista Alberti, who over time became the principal references for his training.
It was in Urbino, in other words, that Bramante’s apprenticeship took place, and it was here that he was able to assimilate that architectura ficta, which he would later implement in Bergamo, Milan, and Rome.
In 1477-78, Bramante arrived in Bergamo, where he executed, commissioned by magistrates Sebastiano Badoer and Giovanni Moro, large frescoes on the facade of the Palazzo del Podestà. Although the remains of this pictorial work are few and in very poor condition, from them it is possible to discern the subject of the representation: several figures of philosophers in architectural frames, loggias, niches, and pilasters.
It is possible that in Bergamo, Bramante met Amadeo, with whom he would cooperate during the twenty years of his Milanese sojourn.
It is not possible to assert with certainty when Bramante arrived in Milan; for this purpose, one can consider the creation of the design for the Prevedari Engraving, a work signed and dated 1481, the year in which Bramante undoubtedly resided in the Lombard city. In Milan, Bramante met illustrious artists, scientists, and men of letters, but above all, his relationships with sculptor-architect Giovanni Antonio Amadeo and with Leonardo were of notable importance.
Finally, Bramante must have arrived in Rome in the last months of 1499. In Rome too, Bramante continued his activity as a painter, including a fresco executed in San Giovanni in Laterano, now lost. As in Milan, so also in Rome, Bramante maintained associations with artists and men of letters and had prominent patrons, moreover beginning to frequent the Vatican court from 1503, the year in which Giuliano della Rovere became pope with the title Julius II. Tense, however, were his relations with Michelangelo, both over the proposal to place Julius II’s monumental tomb at the center of the new St. Peter’s (then in the design phase), and over the scaffolding built by Bramante to allow the execution of Michelangelo’s frescoes on the vault of the Sistine Chapel, at a height of 20 meters.
The Urbino-born architect died in Rome on April 11, 1514.

Tribune of Santa Maria del Popolo – Rome, 1505/7–1509

Today, a project by Bramante in a church in the center of Rome, Santa Maria del Popolo, is perhaps little known. In fact, the tribune built according to Bramante’s design is now concealed by the altar placed in front of it.

The intention to renew the old choir of the fifteenth-century church is generally understood as part of the grand building program of Pope Julius II, but it is possible that it was already among the intentions of Alexander VI, and that Bramante may have been involved at the very beginning of his Roman career.

The definitive project and the subsequent start of construction must in any case be dated after 1505, the year of the death of Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, whose funerary monument was to be placed in the new choir, together with that of Cardinal Basso della Rovere. The two monuments had been commissioned from Andrea Sansovino, perhaps at Bramante’s suggestion. Bramante’s work and the two funerary monuments were far more visible than they are today, since they were not concealed by the Baroque altar placed at the entrance to the tribune; the earlier altar was instead located further forward, beneath the dome of the church.

Bramante’s tribune demonstrates the full maturity of his design control and the refinement of his proportional, perspectival, and subtle optical adjustments. It appears as a sequence of spaces: a square bay, covered by a sail vault, is preceded and followed by two bays covered with barrel vaults, the last of which features five large coffers, recalling those of the Pantheon. At the end of the tribune is an apse with a shell-shaped semi-dome, a Brunelleschian theme already reinterpreted by Bramante in Milan in the small chapels of Santa Maria presso San Satiro. The apse is illuminated by an open coffered vault, while the area of the funerary monuments is lit by a serliana.

As regards Bramante’s activity as an architect, it should be recalled at once that he was the first to design central-plan structures repeatedly.

In Bramante’s works, the centrally planned layout is a constant feature, evident, for example, in Milan in the sacristy of Santa Maria presso San Satiro, or in Rome in the Tempietto of San Pietro in Montorio and in all the plans for St Peter’s, where the central plan develops as a Greek cross inscribed with five domes arranged in a quincunx pattern. Vasari rightly observed that Bramante always displayed an attitude toward antiquity devoid of any intention of mere replication, as Mariani would later correctly remark: “To make use of antiquity and not to be subservient to it, or to serve antiquity, seems—according to Vasari’s intuition—to have been his guiding principle.”

During his Roman period, Bramante chose monuments and architectures of high quality congenial to him in order to give rise to a new architecture. Thus, with regard to Bramante, one can speak more of emulation than of simple imitation of the ancients.

Although he was not a “Brunelleschian,” Bramante was thoroughly familiar with the works of the Florentine master. The transept of Santa Maria presso San Satiro, for example, can be considered a re-creation of the layout of the Pazzi Chapel.

Santa Maria presso San Satiro

Milan, from 1481

The origins of the church can be traced back to 1477, when, following a miracle attributed to an image of the Virgin located on the site, Duke Gian Galeazzo Sforza decided to erect a new building to house it. Construction must have begun in 1478, while the completion of the most important works can be dated to around 1490.

Bramante intervened once work was already underway, probably from 1482, when an oratory had already been built next to the ancient shrine of San Satiro. Among his certain works here is the celebrated false perspectival choir, described by Duke Sforza as a “mirabili artificio” (a marvelous device), and the sacristy, which drew upon both Late Antique prototypes and Lombard Romanesque baptisteries: a tall octagonal space with a matroneum and corner niches alternating with recessed bays, and, for the first time, Bramante’s solution of pilasters folded “like a book.” Moreover, the sacristy displays Bramante’s characteristic pursuit of zenithal lighting, achieved through eight oculi opened in the dome.

In the choir of Santa Maria presso San Satiro, Bramante, drawing on his experience as a painter of perspective, created a gilded and polychrome bas-relief, thereby extending real space into a space that is merely represented. Within a depth of little more than one meter, Bramante simulated a choir of three bays approximately fourteen meters deep, which could not be built because of the presence of a street (the present-day Via del Falcone).

While the main façade is a nineteenth-century work, the rear façade on Via del Falcone is original and constituted the first example in Milan of a composition entrusted exclusively to the classical orders—pilasters, entablatures, and pediments—thus without the rich ornamental plasticity characteristic of the Lombard tradition of the fifteenth century.

There were three concessions to the local tradition: the pilasters were formed by brick projections, the capitals were stone Corinthian capitals, and the hemispherical dome was enclosed within a cylindrical tiburio topped by a roof, a Lombard element, though here updated with niches and pilasters. At the corner of the central portion of the façade there appeared for the first time Bramante’s solution of paired pilasters placed side by side, while the walls featured geometric elements, frames, and panels, also executed in brick. All of these were absolute novelties for Milanese culture.

As for the hypotheses advanced by scholars regarding the construction of the church, two are particularly significant. The first proposes that the transept was built first and that the three-aisled body was added later. The second maintains that Bramante initially intended to adopt, in a first grand project, a Greek-cross plan—the first example of fully realized concinnitas—a project later scaled down because of the aforementioned constraints. The original design would have consisted of a Greek cross with a single nave, symmetrically flanked by two chapels and four towers, and may have featured an entrance in the form of a triumphal arch, like Alberti’s Sant’Andrea in Mantua.

It is precisely to the contraction of this original project that the solution of the false perspectival choir likely belongs. Moreover, certain remains of exterior decoration and traces of frescoes recently discovered would demonstrate two things: that the Bramantesque structure was laid out starting from the corner piers of an initial square oratory, and that the sacristy of Santa Maria presso San Satiro remained, for a certain period, as an independent building.

Tempietto of San Pietro in Montorio – Rome, ca. 1502–1507

The Tempietto of San Pietro in Montorio was commissioned from Bramante by Isabella and Ferdinand, the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, through the Spanish cardinal Bernardo López de Carvajal. It was built on the Janiculum Hill, on the presumed site of the crucifixion of Saint Peter, as a new martyrium outside the walls of Rome and within the fifteenth-century convent of the Franciscan Order of the Blessed Amadeus. A subterranean crypt probably already existed on the site, an object of devotion and perhaps the principal reason for the interest shown by the Spanish monarchs.

In Bramante’s original project, the Tempietto was probably intended to stand at the center of a circular courtyard, raised on three steps, with an antique-style podium and radial entrances. The result of the combination of the perfect geometric figures of the cylinder and the sphere, symbolically representing the cosmos, the design featured sixteen columns of the Doric order with bases, an entablature with triglyphs and metopes—elements that were almost unprecedented at the time and already rare in ancient Rome.

Bramante’s clear sources of inspiration are to be sought not only in ancient funerary monuments, but also in the Temple of Vesta in Rome and the Temple of Fortuna at Tivoli.

The balustrade, perhaps added at a later date, was itself a new element within the architectural production of Rome in those years.

The Tempietto thus bears witness to the new directions of Bramante’s Roman phase: having moved beyond his Milanese experimentation, the artist sought to rely less on decorative elements and illusionistic effects, and instead to deepen the language in a strictly classical sense, oriented toward a more balanced articulation of volumes.

Indeed, through its perfect composition, the Tempietto immediately came to represent a kind of synthesis of the symbolic and formal ideals of an entire era and an entire culture.

Finally, it should be noted that the Tempietto also embodies a precise numerology recurring in Judeo-Christian and medieval architectural tradition: the numbers 16 (the columns and pilasters along the wall of the cella), 8, associated with the Passion (the niches and windows), 4 (the entrances to the courtyard), 3 (the entrances to the Tempietto), and 48—that is, 3 × 4 × 4 (the metopes in the frieze).

Project for St Peter’s Basilica – Rome, 1506–1514

Donato Bramante’s project envisaged the new St Peter’s as a centrally planned building with four identical façades and four bell towers at the corners, truly isolated within a closed monumental precinct worthy of the greatest Roman baths or imperial fora, and abundantly illuminated by large windows in the perimeter walls. Replacing the most ancient basilica of Christianity, Bramante’s St Peter’s was intended to achieve the highest degree of perfection, while at the same time confronting the challenge of a colossal scale.

The central-plan typology was made more complex by the five domes of the composite Greek-cross plan arranged in a quincunx. In one of the many design hypotheses, featuring apsidal arms and an ambulatory, with massive piers and Roman-style barrel vaults and crowned by a great dome, Bramante sought to emulate the Constantinopolitan church of Hagia Sophia. Reconstructing the history of the building works at St Peter’s during the years of Bramante’s involvement is difficult. As early as his accession to the papal throne in 1503, Julius II della Rovere had begun to concern himself with the radical reconstruction of the ancient basilica.

In 1505, Bramante began to draw up the first plans and to propose various solutions for the pope’s most demanding building program; in the same year, Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to execute his monumental tomb. The commemorative medal of the foundation of the basilica bears the date 18 April 1506, indicating that the search for a definitive design solution had been completed and that the great building site could be opened. Bramante, who in that very year was appointed sole architect in charge of the fabric of St Peter’s, was thus able to begin the immense task of defining the executive project and initiating the works—a commitment that would last seven years, until 1513, when, weary and ill, he relinquished the direction of the works to Giuliano da Sangallo and Raphael.

Thus, between the first projects of 1505 and April 1506 should be placed all of Bramante’s studies, such as the famous Piano della pergamena, later abandoned, in which the quincunx plan achieved its greatest spatial richness through niches and recessed bays, as well as another drawing in which Bramante explored the solution of an “elongated” central plan.

Cortile del Belvedere – Vatican City, ca. 1505–1514

It was Pope Julius II who wished that the more than three hundred meters of hilly terrain separating the Vatican Palace from the Villa of the Belvedere should be arranged by Bramante. Once the major earthworks had begun, reducing the slope of the hill and shaping a small valley into terraces, the grand project soon took form as two building wings, leaving free in the center an ascending space to be organized on three successive levels, each higher than the last, perhaps already conceived as a vast theatrical space and garden. The architect connected the three different ground levels with monumental staircases, establishing in the two long building wings a portico with “Roman” order piers on the lowest level, an intermediate level articulated by windows, pairs of pilasters, and niches, and a third loggia level of reduced height with an architraved system. The focal point of the ensemble, at the summit, was a monumental exedra, which contained a stepped seating area possibly intended for theatrical performances.

Bramante’s exedra was later transformed into a large nicchione by Pirro Ligorio in 1560. The intervention thus aimed to connect the palace and the villa by means of a grand architectural garden, capable of harmonizing two complexes of differing styles. At the architect’s death, the Cortile del Belvedere was still under construction, including within the exedra a spiral access staircase known as the “snail” (scala a lumaca), one of Bramante’s creations that was frequently imitated. The staircase proposed, from bottom to top, the succession of the five architectural orders: Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite. It has been observed that in the project for the Cortile del Belvedere—almost 100 meters wide and 300 meters long—the reference to antiquity could only be direct, since only the ancient Romans had built structures of such vast dimensions and confronted architectural spaces of such immensity.

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