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# 68 • SEPTEMBER 21 , 2015
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ITALIAN ART:
DONATO BRAMANTE
By Enrico De Iulis
In common belief, it is thought that Donato Bramante was born in Milan or rather in Lombardy, but the truth is that
he was born in 1444 in Fermignano, a
small town near Urbino in the Marche region. In fact, the typical education from
the center part of Italy, especially from
a town of such a high culture as Urbino,
is particularly present in the roots of the
artist, who began his career as a painter.
He arrived in Milan only in 1478, and
established contacts with most of the
artists working in the city, including Leonardo da Vinci, Francesco di Giorgio
Martini and other actors of the golden
age of the Sforza family Milan. Among
all, however, Bramante was certainly the
most incisive, leaving his name strictly
related to the great innovations of the
Milanese Renaissance that the Sforza fa- revolutionary soul: the perspective apse
and the first reuse of a classical order in
mily wanted for the city.
Milan. This proves that the development
The first major work was the construction of the relationship with the old, theoriof the church of Santa Maria sopra San zed by Leon Battista Alberti in the “De
Satiro, in which two elements prelude to re aedificatoria” and then leading to the
the greatness of Bramante’s artistic and architectural Renaissance, was already
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