United States or New Caledonia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It is good to think that, after all the distress of those long years of exile and captivity, the unfortunate prince should have been brought back to rest in his own sunny Milanese, under Bramante's cupola, in the tomb where he had wished to lie, at Beatrice's side.
Sangallo's model exists; it is so large that you can walk inside it, and compare your own impressions with the following judgment: "It cannot be denied that Bramante's talent as an architect was equal to that of any one from the times of the ancients until now.
The noble church of S. Maria presso San Celso, which in Burckhardt's opinion combines magnificence and simplicity better than any building of the Renaissance, was the work of Bramante's assistant, Dolcebuono, and owed its erection to the munificence of Lodovico, who laid the first stone in 1491.
But, while we are justified in attributing much to Bramante's intrigues, it must be remembered that the Pope at this time was absorbed in his plans for conquering Bologna. Overwhelmed with business and anxious about money, he could not have had much leisure to converse with sculptors. Michelangelo was still in Rome at the end of January.
Another poetic tourney, in which both the great architect and his friend Visconti were the chief combatants, turned on Bramante's supposed poverty and the complaints with which he filled the air, calling on all the gods in heaven to help him in his misery.
The Pope allowed him to take down Bramante's machinery, and to raise a scaffold after his own design. The rope alone which had been used, and now was wasted, enabled a poor carpenter to dower his daughter. Michelangelo built his own scaffold free from the walls, inventing a method which was afterwards adopted by all architects for vault-building.
The two palaces that seemed to me most deserving of admiration were the Farnese and the Cancellaria, the former Michael Angelo's, the latter Bramante's work, the first a perpetuation in stone of beauty and power, the second, of grace and lightness.
From the moment he passed under the porticus he was overcome by the icy shiver which fell from the old walls, and was quite unable to appreciate the bare, frigid beauty of the palace, Bramante's masterpiece though it be, so purely typical of the Roman Renascence.
Bramante's cupola and sacristy were finished and Beatrice's tomb, with the sleeping form and face, had been exquisitely wrought in marble by the sculptor's hand. Leonardo had completed the Cenacolo to be the wonder of the world in coming ages, and the great equestrian statue was only waiting for better times to be cast in bronze and become a permanent memorial of the proud Sforza race.
He laid the first plan of S. Peter's, not confused, but clear and simple, full of light and detached from surrounding buildings, so that it interfered with no part of the palace. It was considered a very fine design, and indeed any one can see with his own eyes now that it is so. All the architects who departed from Bramante's scheme, as did Antonio da San Gallo, have departed from the truth."
Word Of The Day