Knowra Donato Bramante Donato Bramante Donato Bramante (c. 1444–1514) was an Italian architect whose centrally planned buildings and designs for St. Peter’s Basilica helped define High Renaissance architecture.
Renaissance architecture : European architecture from the 15th and 16th centuries that revived classical forms and principles. Bramante became a leading architect as Renaissance design reached its High Renaissance phase.
Tempietto : A small circular temple in Rome’s San Pietro in Montorio complex, designed by Bramante and completed around 1502. Its compact, centrally planned form is Bramante’s clearest built statement of High Renaissance ideals.
Raphael : An Italian Renaissance painter and architect who succeeded Bramante as architect of St. Peter’s Basilica. After Bramante’s death, Raphael took charge of St. Peter’s and altered the design.
Old St. Peter’s Basilica : The late-antique basilica in Rome that stood on the site of the present St. Peter’s Basilica. Bramante’s reconstruction replaced this longitudinal basilica with a more centralized architectural conception.
Central-plan church : A church organized around a central point, often with a circular, polygonal, or Greek-cross plan. Bramante repeatedly explored centralized geometry, most ambitiously in his initial St. Peter’s design.
Santa Maria presso San Satiro : A church in Milan whose shallow sanctuary uses painted perspective to suggest a deeper apse. Bramante’s forced perspective solved a site constraint while creating an illusion of architectural depth.
Michelangelo : An Italian Renaissance artist and architect who reshaped the design of St. Peter’s Basilica after Bramante. Michelangelo restored a centralized conception while transforming Bramante’s project and its dome.
Bramante plan for St. Peter’s : Bramante’s unbuilt design for a centralized St. Peter’s Basilica, arranged around a large dome and Greek-cross plan. This plan makes his ambitions and the later departures from them especially visible.
Classical architecture : Architecture derived from the building traditions of ancient Greece and Rome, including orders, proportions, and columnar systems. Bramante adapted ancient Roman forms and spatial effects for Christian buildings.
Santa Maria delle Grazie : A church and Dominican convent in Milan, whose eastern tribune was designed by Bramante. Bramante’s tribune extends the church through a monumental dome and centralized spatial scheme.
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