Bramante, Donato

Bramante, Donato ( Donato di Angelo) (b probably Monte Asdrualdo [now Fermignano], nr. Urbino, c.1444; d Rome, 11 Apr. 1514). Italian architect and painter. Bramante was the creator and greatest exponent of the High Renaissance style in architecture, but most of his early career, which is ill documented, seems to have been devoted to painting. He probably trained in Urbino and the first record of him dates from 1477, when he is said to have worked on fresco decorations at the Palazzo del Podestà in Bergamo. In about 1480 he settled in Milan, and in 1481 he produced his earliest surviving dated work, the design of an engraving of an elaborate architectural fantasy (the British Museum, London, possesses one of only two known impressions). At about the same time he began his first building, S. Maria presso S. Satiro, Milan, in which his knowledge of perspective was used to create an illusion of recession in the choir, which is in reality only a few inches deep. Various fresco fragments are attributed to him (mainly in the Brera, Milan), but the best evidence of his skill as a painter is the only panel painting that is generally accepted as his (on the testimony of Lomazzo)—a sombre and poignant Christ at the Column (c.1490, Brera), which shows some influence from his friend Leonardo. In 1499 Bramante left Milan and settled in Rome, where in 1506 he began the rebuilding of St Peter's for Julius II ( Giuliano della Rovere). There is no evidence of any activity as a painter in Rome, but Vasari says that Bramante designed the majestic architectural setting of Raphael's fresco The School of Athens in the Vatican Stanze. Certainly Raphael paid tribute to Bramante by introducing his portrait into this painting as the mathematician Euclid. Bramante had an enormous influence as an architect, and his interest in perspective and trompe-l'œil left a mark on Milanese painting, notably in the work of his follower Bramantino.