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Updated: June 16, 2025
For the aesthetic beauty and the commodiousness of his building we have the strongest evidence in a letter written by Michelangelo, who was by no means a partial witness. "It cannot be denied," he says, "that Bramante's talent as an architect was equal to that of any one from the times of the ancients until now.
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.
During the twenty years that the Moro reigned as Regent and Duke in Milan, the new apse built in Bramante's classical style, the central cupola, and the beautiful cloisters with their slender marble shafts and dark red terra-cotta friezes of angel-heads, all rose into being.
Though Michelangelo gave this unstinted praise to Bramante's genius as a builder, he blamed him severely both for his want of honesty as a man, and also for his vandalism in dealing with the venerable church he had to replace. "Bramante," says Condivi, "was addicted, as everybody knows, to every kind of pleasure.
Martini had soon left again for Milan, after giving the architect of the Duomo, Bramante's pupil Cristoforo Rocchi, the benefit of his advice, and promising to send him a model of the cupola; but Leonardo had remained at Pavia all the summer and autumn, turning over old manuscripts in the library of the Castello, and discussing anatomical problems with the professors and surgeons of the university, until a peremptory summons had reached him from the governor of the Castello at Milan, desiring him to return immediately and assist in decorating the ball-room for the wedding fêtes.
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.
But when he passed before the Cancelleria,* Bramante's masterpiece, the typical monument of the Roman Renascence, his astonishment came back to him and his mind returned to the mansions which he had previously espied, those bare, huge, heavy edifices, those vast cubes of stone-work resembling hospitals or prisons.
During that long space of time he formed a body of architects and workmen who were attached to his person and interested in the execution of his plans. There is good reason to believe that in Sangallo's days, as earlier in Bramante's, much money of the Church had been misappropriated by a gang of fraudulent and mutually indulgent craftsmen.
And the French king and Cæsar Borgia, whose genuine appreciation of fine art was well known, did not fail to admire Bramante's fair chapel and that latest masterpiece of Lombard sculpture, the noble tomb which the Moro had raised to be an eternal memorial of his love and sorrow.
In consequence of this haste, the substructures of the new church proved insecure, and the huge piers raised to support the cupola were imperfect, while the venerable monuments contained in the old church were ruthlessly destroyed. After Bramante's death Giuliano di S. Gallo, Fra Giocondo, and Raphael successively superintended the construction, each for a short period.
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