LEONARDO DA VINCI AND BRAMANTE

in fact internationally canonic for centuries. Rome's place in the
history of the Renaissance style corresponds exactly to that of Paris
and the cathedrals around Paris in the history of the Gothic style.
We do not know to what part of France the architects of Notre
Dame, Chartres, Rheims and Amiens belonged by birth and up-
bringing, but we do know that Donato Bramante came from Lom-
bardy, Raphael from Umbria and Michelangelo from Tuscany.
These are the three greatest architects of the High Renaissance, and
none of them—again the case we have met before—was an architect
by training. Bramante was originally a painter, Raphael too, and
Michelangelo a sculptor.

Bramante was the oldest of them. He was born in 1444 near
Urbino. There he grew up while Laurana's pakce rose, and the great
Piero della Francesca painted for the duke. Bramante as a youth
must have been greatly impressed by Piero's figures and his Albert-
esque architectural backgrounds. In 1472 he went to Milan. His first
building there, the church of S. Satiro, begun in 1479, presupposes
a knowledge of Alberti's S. Andrea in Mantua, a building only
started a few years before. It looks as if Bramante had carefully
studied the plans. His own church had no space for a chancel, and
so—delighted to make a daring show of his knowledge of linear
perspective—he feigned one in flat relief. If you stand in the right
position, the trick comes off to perfection.

The same church, S. Satiro,
has a sacristy, centrally plan-
ned ; and S. Mariadelle Grazie,
Bramante's next architectural
workin Milan, has an east end
also on a central plan, very
similar incidentally to Alberti's
S. Sebastiano in Mantua. But
when S. Maria delle Grazie
was begun in 1492, another
artist had already lived at
Milan for nine years, the most
universal that ever was, and
one considerably to influence
the slightly older Bramante:
Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo 54. LEONARDO DA VINCI: DESIGN FOR A

1 j xvr-1 • o CHURCH. REDRAWN FROM THE MS. PARIS,

had gone to Milan in 1403 INSTITUT DE FRANCE, BN 2037, FOLIO 56.
B.A.—8 95