Bramantino
Encyclopedia
Bartolomeo Suardi, best known as Bramantino (c. 1456 – c. 1530), was an Italian
painter
and architect
, mainly active in his native Milan.
, the son of Alberto Suardi, but his biography remains unclear, and was long complicated by two "Pseudo-Bramantinos". He was trained by Donato Bramante
, adopting a diminutive form of his master's name. This training gave him influences from by the Urbino
quattrocento
tradition of immobile realism, and later he assimilated some elements of the style of Leonardo, after he arrived in Milan, although in other respects he remained faithful to his training in the style of Central Italy.
He is documented in late 1508 as helping in the decoration of the Vatican Stanze
though nothing remains of his work there, and by 1509 he was back in Milan. His style changed considerably during his career, and also shows strongly individual traits. His main influences were the serene and sometimes unnatural quietist classicism of Piero della Francesca
, Leonardo da Vinci
, and Ercole de' Roberti
, but his works also display a sometimes disquieting immobile expressiveness comparable only to the last of these three.
in his biographies of Piero della Francesca
, Il Garofalo
, Girolamo da Carpi
, and Jacopo Sansovino
. The Bramantino of Vasari, if he existed at all, worked for Pope Nicholas V
between 1450 and 1455. If so, then he worked prior to the cited works of Bartolomeo Suardi.
An artist long known as the pseudo-Bramantino was active in Naples
in the early 16th century; he is now usually identified as a Spaniard, called Pedro Fernández, Piero Francione, or various other names.
. Donato Bramante taught Bramantino architecture, and the pupil assisted the master in the execution of the interior of the church of Santa Maria presso San Satiro
, Milan.
In painting, he executed a number portraits of celebrated personages for the Vatican
. His earliest known works are a Nativity (1490s, Brera) and an Ecce Homo (circa 1495, Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection). One of his best known works is somber Adoration of the Magi (1495–98), in the National Gallery
of London. In addition to the impassive, emotion-dry classicism, and the symmetric geometric logic of purity, this figure is notable for the imaginative cut-away of the building revealing a fanciful mountain backdrop.
A Pietà fresco (c. 1505, now in Ambrosiana) is in fragmentary state. Before 1508, he designed the tapestries of the Months for Gian Giacom Trivulzio (now in Castello Sforzesco
). The Saint Michael Altar (or Enthroned Madonna and child with Saint Ambrogio and Saint Michael) at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana
, notable for the foreshortened slain man (representng an Arian
heretic") before a tough-looking Saint Ambrose
and giant dead frog (symbolizing Satan
) with Saint Michael
in the foreground and impassive saints, dates to after 1510. Freedberg sees in this painting a Leonardo-based impulse to circumscribe the painting to a world where near-abstract rigorous geometry, characterized by "looming silhouettes of imagined and unpeopled architecture, constructed with a rule and square, take increasing prominence." The figures, even when trying to betray emotion, appear vacant, distant, "automata" confined as pawns to a geometric exercise, something in common with Piero della Francesca's earlier works. Another masterpiece is the Brera Crucifixion (c. 1510-1520).
In 1525 Bramantino was appointed architect to the court by Duke Francis (II) Sforza
, and his aid as an engineer in the defence of Milan brought him a multitude of rewards.
Italian people
The Italian people are an ethnic group that share a common Italian culture, ancestry and speak the Italian language as a mother tongue. Within Italy, Italians are defined by citizenship, regardless of ancestry or country of residence , and are distinguished from people...
painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
and architect
Architect
An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...
, mainly active in his native Milan.
Biography
He was born in MilanMilan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
, the son of Alberto Suardi, but his biography remains unclear, and was long complicated by two "Pseudo-Bramantinos". He was trained by Donato Bramante
Donato Bramante
Donato Bramante was an Italian architect, who introduced the Early Renaissance style to Milan and the High Renaissance style to Rome, where his most famous design was St...
, adopting a diminutive form of his master's name. This training gave him influences from by the Urbino
Urbino
Urbino is a walled city in the Marche region of Italy, south-west of Pesaro, a World Heritage Site notable for a remarkable historical legacy of independent Renaissance culture, especially under the patronage of Federico da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino from 1444 to 1482...
quattrocento
Quattrocento
The cultural and artistic events of 15th century Italy are collectively referred to as the Quattrocento...
tradition of immobile realism, and later he assimilated some elements of the style of Leonardo, after he arrived in Milan, although in other respects he remained faithful to his training in the style of Central Italy.
He is documented in late 1508 as helping in the decoration of the Vatican Stanze
Raphael Rooms
The four Stanze di Raffaello in the Palace of the Vatican form a suite of reception rooms, the public part of the papal apartments. They are famous for their frescoes, painted by Raphael and his workshop...
though nothing remains of his work there, and by 1509 he was back in Milan. His style changed considerably during his career, and also shows strongly individual traits. His main influences were the serene and sometimes unnatural quietist classicism of Piero della Francesca
Piero della Francesca
Piero della Francesca was a painter of the Early Renaissance. As testified by Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Artists, to contemporaries he was also known as a mathematician and geometer. Nowadays Piero della Francesca is chiefly appreciated for his art. His painting was characterized by its...
, Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...
, and Ercole de' Roberti
Ercole de' Roberti
thumb|240px|Portrait of [[Giovanni II Bentivoglio]] . National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.Ercole de' Roberti , also known as Ercole Ferrarese or Ercole da Ferrara, was an Italian artist of the Early Renaissance and the School of Ferrara...
, but his works also display a sometimes disquieting immobile expressiveness comparable only to the last of these three.
The "Pseudo-Bramantinos"
There is a mention of a Bramantino da Milano by VasariGiorgio Vasari
Giorgio Vasari was an Italian painter, writer, historian, and architect, who is famous today for his biographies of Italian artists, considered the ideological foundation of art-historical writing.-Biography:...
in his biographies of Piero della Francesca
Piero della Francesca
Piero della Francesca was a painter of the Early Renaissance. As testified by Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Artists, to contemporaries he was also known as a mathematician and geometer. Nowadays Piero della Francesca is chiefly appreciated for his art. His painting was characterized by its...
, Il Garofalo
Benvenuto Tisi (il Garofalo)
Benvenuto Tisi was a Late-Renaissance-Mannerist Italian painter of the School of Ferrara. Garofalo's career began attached to the court of the Duke d'Este...
, Girolamo da Carpi
Girolamo da Carpi
Girolamo Da Carpi was an Italian painter and decorator who worked at the Court of the House of Este in Ferrara. He began painting in Ferrara, by report apprenticing to Benvenuto Tisi ; but by age 20, he had moved to Bologna, and is considered a figure of Early Renaissance painting of the local...
, and Jacopo Sansovino
Jacopo Sansovino
Jacopo d'Antonio Sansovino was an Italian sculptor and architect, known best for his works around the Piazza San Marco in Venice. Andrea Palladio, in the Preface to his Quattro Libri was of the opinion that Sansovino's Biblioteca Marciana was the best building erected since Antiquity...
. The Bramantino of Vasari, if he existed at all, worked for Pope Nicholas V
Pope Nicholas V
Pope Nicholas V , born Tommaso Parentucelli, was Pope from March 6, 1447 to his death in 1455.-Biography:He was born at Sarzana, Liguria, where his father was a physician...
between 1450 and 1455. If so, then he worked prior to the cited works of Bartolomeo Suardi.
An artist long known as the pseudo-Bramantino was active in Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
in the early 16th century; he is now usually identified as a Spaniard, called Pedro Fernández, Piero Francione, or various other names.
Mature works
In 1508 he was engaged in RomeRome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
. Donato Bramante taught Bramantino architecture, and the pupil assisted the master in the execution of the interior of the church of Santa Maria presso San Satiro
Santa Maria presso San Satiro
Santa Maria presso San Satiro is a church of Milan.The church lies on the site of a primitive worship place erected by the archbishop Anspertus in 879, dedicated to Saint Satyrus, confessor and brother of Saints Ambrose and Marcellina. The current church was instead built from 1472 to 1482 under...
, Milan.
In painting, he executed a number portraits of celebrated personages for the Vatican
Holy See
The Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome, in which its Bishop is commonly known as the Pope. It is the preeminent episcopal see of the Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church. As such, diplomatically, and in other spheres the Holy See acts and...
. His earliest known works are a Nativity (1490s, Brera) and an Ecce Homo (circa 1495, Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection). One of his best known works is somber Adoration of the Magi (1495–98), in the National Gallery
National Gallery, London
The National Gallery is an art museum on Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The gallery is an exempt charity, and a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media...
of London. In addition to the impassive, emotion-dry classicism, and the symmetric geometric logic of purity, this figure is notable for the imaginative cut-away of the building revealing a fanciful mountain backdrop.
A Pietà fresco (c. 1505, now in Ambrosiana) is in fragmentary state. Before 1508, he designed the tapestries of the Months for Gian Giacom Trivulzio (now in Castello Sforzesco
Castello Sforzesco
Castello Sforzesco is a castle in Milan, Italy, that used to be the seat and residence of the Duchy of Milan and one of the biggest citadels in Europe and now houses several of the city's museums and art collections.-History:...
). The Saint Michael Altar (or Enthroned Madonna and child with Saint Ambrogio and Saint Michael) at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana
Biblioteca Ambrosiana
The Biblioteca Ambrosiana is a historic library in Milan, Italy, also housing the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, the Ambrosian art gallery. Named after Ambrose, the patron saint of Milan, it was founded by Cardinal Federico Borromeo , whose agents scoured Western Europe and even Greece and Syria for books...
, notable for the foreshortened slain man (representng an Arian
Arianism
Arianism is the theological teaching attributed to Arius , a Christian presbyter from Alexandria, Egypt, concerning the relationship of the entities of the Trinity and the precise nature of the Son of God as being a subordinate entity to God the Father...
heretic") before a tough-looking Saint Ambrose
Ambrose
Aurelius Ambrosius, better known in English as Saint Ambrose , was a bishop of Milan who became one of the most influential ecclesiastical figures of the 4th century. He was one of the four original doctors of the Church.-Political career:Ambrose was born into a Roman Christian family between about...
and giant dead frog (symbolizing Satan
Satan
Satan , "the opposer", is the title of various entities, both human and divine, who challenge the faith of humans in the Hebrew Bible...
) with Saint Michael
Michael (archangel)
Michael , Micha'el or Mîkhā'ēl; , Mikhaḗl; or Míchaël; , Mīkhā'īl) is an archangel in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic teachings. Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and Lutherans refer to him as Saint Michael the Archangel and also simply as Saint Michael...
in the foreground and impassive saints, dates to after 1510. Freedberg sees in this painting a Leonardo-based impulse to circumscribe the painting to a world where near-abstract rigorous geometry, characterized by "looming silhouettes of imagined and unpeopled architecture, constructed with a rule and square, take increasing prominence." The figures, even when trying to betray emotion, appear vacant, distant, "automata" confined as pawns to a geometric exercise, something in common with Piero della Francesca's earlier works. Another masterpiece is the Brera Crucifixion (c. 1510-1520).
In 1525 Bramantino was appointed architect to the court by Duke Francis (II) Sforza
Francesco II Sforza
Francesco II Sforza , also known as Francesco Maria Sforza, was the last Duke of Milan from 1521 until his death.He was the son of Ludovico Sforza and Beatrice d'Este...
, and his aid as an engineer in the defence of Milan brought him a multitude of rewards.