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Updated: June 21, 2025
Wherefore it appears to me that the everlasting gratitude which is due to the ancients from the intellects that study their works, is also due from them to the labours of Bramante; for if the Greeks were the inventors of architecture, and the Romans their imitators, Bramante not only imitated what he saw, with new invention, and taught it to us, but also added very great beauty and elaboration to the art, which we see embellished by him at the present day.
This seems to be the foundation for an old story of the Pope's complaining that the Sistine roof looked poor without gilding, and Michael Angelo's reply that the Biblical personages depicted there were but poor people. Bramante, the Pope's architect, did in truth fail to construct the proper scaffolding, whether through inability or jealousy.
A few years before, between 1485 and 1490, he had built the Baptistery of San Satiro, which another of Lodovico's chosen artists, the great Como sculptor, Caradosso, was now engaged in modelling the lovely terra-cotta frieze of children and the medallions bearing, it is said, his own portrait and that of Bramante.
"He is both powerful and exquisite, his verve always ready, his ingenuity invariably awake, his fecundity full of grace and magnificence. As for their Bramante with his masterpiece, that cold, correct Cancelleria, we'll dub him the Michael Angelo and Raffaelle of architecture and say no more about it.
Giuliano, resenting this, for it appeared to him that he had received an affront from the Pope, in view of the faithful service that he had rendered to him when his rank was not so high, and of the promise made to him by the Pope that he should have that building, sought leave to go; and so, notwithstanding that he was appointed companion to Bramante for other edifices that were being erected in Rome, he departed, and returned, with many gifts received from that Pontiff, to Florence.
Wherefore Michelagnolo, on seeing afterwards the work of Raffaello, thought, as was the truth, that Bramante had done him that wrong on purpose in order to bring profit and fame to Raffaello.
While these matters were in progress, and the fame of Antonio was growing and spreading abroad, it happened that old age and various infirmities made Bramante a citizen of the other world; at which three architects were appointed straightway by Pope Leo for the building of S. Pietro Raffaello da Urbino, Giuliano da San Gallo, the uncle of Antonio, and Fra Giocondo of Verona.
"Dearest in place of a brother, after salutations and kind regards:—I inform you how on Saturday evening, when the Pope was at supper, I showed him certain designs that Bramante and I had to examine.
Even now Bramante was engaged in constructing the new cupola, and before long his favourite painter Leonardo was to set to work on his great Cenacolo in the refectory. While Lodovico and Beatrice were pursuing these different objects of their ambition, the unfortunate Duchess Isabella was eating out her heart in the Castello of Pavia.
A ruler of this stamp needed some great outward symbol of his conceptions; Julius found it in the reconstruction of St. Peter's. The plan of it, as Bramante wished to have it, is perhaps the grandest expression of power in unity which can be imagined.
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