Donato Bramante Biography, Buildings and Best Books

Donato Bramante (1444-1514) was the architect who brought the High Renaissance to Rome. Trained as a painter in Urbino, he worked for two decades in Milan before moving to Rome, where his small Tempietto at San Pietro in Montorio became the model of a perfect classical building, and his plan for the new St Peter’s Basilica set the course for the greatest building project of the age.

Urbino and Milan

Bramante was born near Urbino in 1444 and trained as a painter. In Milan, under the Sforza, he built the church of Santa Maria presso San Satiro, with its famous false choir painted in perspective, and the tribune of Santa Maria delle Grazie, and met Leonardo da Vinci.

Rome and the Tempietto

After the fall of Milan he moved to Rome in 1499. The Tempietto at San Pietro in Montorio, a small circular temple marking the traditional site of St Peter’s martyrdom, revived the ancient Roman temple with perfect proportion.

St Peter’s and the Vatican

For Pope Julius II he designed the Belvedere Courtyard and, from 1506, a new St Peter’s on a Greek cross plan with a great central dome. The work was continued and changed by Raphael, Michelangelo and others after his death in Rome in 1514.