Scientist of the Day - Donato Bramante
Tempietto, marker of the location of the crucifixion of St. Peter, designed by Donato Bramante, cloister of San Pietro in Montorio, Rome, 1502 (Wikimedia commons)
Donato Bramante, an Italian Renaissance architect and painter, died Mar. 11 (or Apr. 11), 1514, at about age 70. He was born near Urbino, moved to Milan when he was 30, then to Rome in 1499, where his architectural skills came to the attention of Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, who was about to become Pope Julius II. Among other grand schemes, such as a sculpture garden between the Vatican and the Villa Belvedere, Julius decided to tear down a dilapidated St. Peter's basilica and replace it with a far grander church (and one that could better accommodate his own tomb). He turned the project over to Bramante in 1506. Bramante did come up with a grand design, a church in the form of a Greek cross, with a large dome like the Pantheon, held up by four massive pillars. But telling the story in this space is impossible, since popes came and went, Bramante died, new architects were brought on board (including Michelangelo), and a century later, a basilica that was not much like Bramantr’s Greek cross was finally completed. It is a very complex story, especially in the assessment of Bramante’s contribution to the final design.
Portrait of Donato Bramante, woodcut, source unknown (Wikimedia commons)
So we are going to tell the story of a different Bramante edifice, a story much less complicated, about a building that was finished in 1502 and has been hailed by many as the finest (and the first) example of High Renaissance architecture in Rome. We speak of the Tempietto, the small rotunda that marks the spot near the Vatican where St. Peter was martyred, in the reign of Nero, by being crucified upside down. The structure was not commissioned by della Rovere, but by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, for the Cloister of San Pietro in Montorio in Rome. It is a tiny thing, more a signpost than a building, but it has such wonderful proportions, and lovely Greek architectural elements, especially the dome and the Tuscan columns. It was the first time Tuscan columns had been used in the Renaissance revival of Vitruvian architecture (the Tuscan order is like the Doric of the Parthenon, but the columns are unfluted). There is an informative short video about the Tempietto on the Khan Academy website which I recommend.
The School of Athens, fresco, by Raphael Sanzio, Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican, 1509-11, Web Gallery of Art (wga.hu)
Bramante and Michelangelo did not get along, but Bramante and Raphael were best friends, so when Raphael chose to use portraits of his colleagues to represent famous Greek scientists in his fresco, The School of Athens (Plato, for example, was represented by Leonardo da Vinci, third image), he did not forget Bramante. Only one portrait of Bramante survives (second image), but it is enough to show that he was bald, and he looks very much like the man wielding the compass in the right foreground of Raphael's fresco, whom we recognize as Euclid of Alexandria (fourth image). It was an inspired choice by Raphael, one great geometer standing in for another. Here is a post on The School of Athens.
Euclid of Alexandia (with a compass and bald head, modelled after Donato Bramante), detail of right foreground of The School of Athens, fresco, by Raphael Sanzio, Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican, 1509-11, Web Gallery of Art (wga.hu)
As a final note, we point out that the Belvedere Sculpture Gaden of Pope Julius II (Cortile del Belvedere), which we mentioned in our first paragraph, was designed by Bramante. We wrote a post about it, once.
William B. Ashworth, Jr., Consultant for the History of Science, Linda Hall Library and Associate Professor emeritus, Department of History, University of Missouri-Kansas City. Comments or corrections are welcome; please direct to ashworthw@umkc.edu.
