drea Mantegna. His first known commis-
sion was a painted frieze for the Palazzo
del Podesta in the city of Bergamo, which
he completed in 1477. By the 1480s, he
was living in Milan and working as the
court architect of Ludovico Sforza. He was
commissioned to decorate the Church of
Santa Maria Presso San Satiro in Milan, in
which he created a trompe l’oeil(trick
of the eye) choir through the use of
deep perspective. Bramante designed the
cloisters (enclosed courtyards) for the
Sant’Ambrogio church, and with Leonardo
da Vinci he also worked on the Church of
Santa Maria delle Grazie. He then traveled
to Pavia, where he assisted in the design of
the city’s cathedral.
In 1499, Bramante fled Milan when a
French army besieged and conquered the
city, overthrowing the Sforza dynasty. He
traveled to Rome, where he made a close
study of the city’s ancient ruins. The
monumental architecture of the classical
city influenced his design for the cloisters
of Santa Maria della Pace, which he com-
pleted in 1504. In 1502 he designed the
Tempietto, a small circular chapel in the
courtyard of the Church of San Pietro in
Montorio. This elegant and simple build-
ing was designed as a monument to Saint
Peter, who was martyred on the spot. Its
careful proportions give it a feeling of se-
renity and balance; the Tempietto has been
studied by architects ever since as a perfect
imitation of the antique style and one of
the most famous buildings of the Renais-
sance.
Under the patronage of the popes,
Rome was becoming a leading center of
Renaissance art. Pope Julius II engaged
Bramante as his official architect and put
him in charge of the rebuilding of
Saint Peter’s Cathedral and working on
the Vatican Palace. Bramante redesigned
the facade of the palace as well as the
Belvedere Court, which was built in a se-
ries of staircases and loggias (covered
passageways) that run along a terraced
hillside. Since the Belvedere was raised,
however, later designs all but destroyed
Bramante’s original composition, and only
a spiral staircase survives to the present
day intact.
In 1505 Bramante prepared a design
for Saint Peter’s, intended to be the great-
est basilica of Christendom and a worthy
successor to the great Pantheon, a still-
intact monument of ancient Rome. Bra-
mante initially created Saint Peter’s in the
shape of a Greek cross, as a tribute to the
fallen city of Constantinople and its Hagia
Sophia cathedral. Work began in the next
year but progressed slowly as the design
was altered. Bramante and Julius became
close companions and the pope bestowed
on his favorite architect the office ofpiom-
batore, the aide responsible for sealing the
pope’s letters and documents. Some time
after 1510 Bramante designed the Palazzo
Caprini in the center of Rome, a building
Bramante designed as his own dwelling
and which was later acquired by the
painter Raphael. The Palazzo Caprini con-
tained a first floor of simple city shops
and higher stories designed as an aristo-
cratic palace. The design of the palace dis-
appeared under later additions and alter-
ations but the building served as a model
for many Roman buildings in the follow-
ing centuries. Bramante died in 1514; at
Saint Peter’s only four columns and arches
meant to support a huge central dome
were in place at the time of his death. The
completion of the work was assigned to
Michelangelo Buonarroti, who completed
the monumental dome that has since be-
come a familiar landmark of the VaticanBramante, Donato