Tempietto By Bramante Essay, Research Paper

More than four hundred years ago, in 1570, Andrea Palladio published his Quattro Libri dell Architettura, one of the most influential treatises on architecture ever printed. It contains a number of woodcuts of ancient Roman buildings, as well as two illustrations of a small church by Bramante, known as the Tempietto, the little temple , which is the topic of my paper. It stands, rather awkwardly, in a courtyard apperently one size too small for it, next to the church of San Pietro in Montorio, on the top of the Janiculum Hill in Rome

(plaatje van illustraties in Palladio + plaatje van waar het ligt op de berg.)

Accompanying theses two woodcuts there is a brief explanation by Palladio of the reasons which led him to include a building, then less than 70 years old, among his plates otherwise dedicated to the works of antiquity. He says: VERGROTEN Because the greatness of the Roman Empire began to decline, on account of the continual invasions of the Barbarians, Architectcure like all other Arts and Sciences at that time- fell away from its earlier beauty and classical harmony (venust ), and got worse and worse But because all human things are in a perpetual flux it happened that, in the time of our fathers and grandfathers, Architecture emerged from the shadows in which it had so long been lost .For in the time of Pope Julius ll, that excellent man Bramante, a keen student of ancient buildings, erected some most beautiful buildings in Rome Seeing, then, that Bramante was the first to bring back to the light of day the good and beautiful architecture that had been hidden since the time of the ancients, it seemed to me to be reasonable to put some of his works among those of Antiquity, and that is why I have put in this Book the following temple, built by him on the top of the Janiculum .(foot note van Palladio).

These two plates – the plan and elevation – are hardly to be distinguished from similar plates in Palladio s book of ancient Roman models, presented as exemplars for contemporary architects to imitate. (misschien voor footnote: In book lV, in wich all these buildings are illustrated, is entitled The Fourth Book of Architecture by Andrea Palladio)

After reading Palladio s text above it is reasonable to suppose that Palladio intended to suggest that Bramante s Tempietto was on the same level of achievement as the ancient temples. A few years before the appearance of Palladio s book the Tempietto had been praised by Serlio in his treatise, and it is probably because of the publicity afforded by these two influential authors that the Temppietto became the standard example of High Renaissance architecture in most textbooks. ( foot note Serlio s treatise)

In this paper I have chosen to investigate the Tempietto through one viewpoint, which means that I leave the other ways to investigate the Tempietto out of consideration. I ve chosen to do so because otherwise this paper would be too extended. Thus, I limited my self to the following question: To what extent conforms the present building to Bramante s original intentions? Furthermore, I am going to give a more profound analysis of the cortile as Bramante wanted it to be.

I will begin by giving some basic background information on Bramante and the Tempietto. Bramante was born near Urbino in 1444 and probably trained as a painter by Pierro della Francesca and Mantegna. He was called to Milan in 1480 by Ludovico Sforza. His earliest architectural work in Milan was the remodelling of the ninth-century church of S. Maria presso S. Satiro in 1478. Bramante s next work in Milan was the magnificent domed, centrally-planned chancel of S. Maria delle Grazie, built in 1493 as the Sforza memorial chapel. Bramante s move to Rome in 1499, following the French occupation of Milan and the overthrow of the Sforzas, exercised a profound influence on his style. The popes had been generally absent from Rome in the first half of the fifteenth century and the city had been of little political importance, but after the death of Lorenzo de Medici in Florence and the fall of Ludovico Sforza in Milan in the 1490s, it became a centre of cultural and political influence which culminated in the extraordinary pontificate of Julius ll (1503-13). Julius ll was a soldier who was busy extending the temporal power of the papacy, he was also a patron of rare discernment, giving simultaneous employment to Bramante, Michelangelo and Raphael.

On his arrival in Rome, Bramante set about preparing measured drawings of its antiquities. These attracted the attention of the Cardinal of Naples who invited him to design a new cloister at S. Maria della Pace in 1500. The first work in Rome of such profound neoantique character since the courtyard of the Palazzo Venezia, this cloister was surpassed in importance and influence by the Tempietto he built at S. Pietro in Montorio, a convent of Spanish Franciscans. This was commissioned in 1502 by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain to mark the spot in Rome where St. Peter had traditionally been crucified. Bramante erected – for the first time since Roman days- a domed peripteral rotunda, that is a circular cella completely surrounded by a collonade.

The Tempietto is an attempt at reconciling Christian and humanist ideals, for its small centrally-planned form echoes the Early Christian martyria which had been erected not to serve as parish churches but to mark the place with holy associations. The Tempietto is thus a monument of exceptional artistic gravity and with no practical function, yet charged with a profound Christian significance.

The humanist ideals are fulfilled in the fact that the round peripteral temple was an ancient architectural type whose significance was confirmed by the surviving examples and by Vitruvius. Moreover, as a circular building intended by Bramante to stand in the centre of a circular colonnaded court, to the humanists it became in addition a concrtete symbol of the philosophical idea of god in the centre of a perfect cosmos.

(plaatje kop Bramante door Raphael) blz 176 Bruschi) + plaatje dat symmetrie weergeeft Bruschi 137.

The existing Tempietto is easily described, for it is basically a very small, circular temple surrounded by an evenly-spaced colonnade of sixteen Doric columns, the whole building being raised above the level of the court by three shallow steps and a podium. The open cylinder of the peristyle surrounds the solid cylinder of the cella, the whole being completed by a hemispherical dome. (plaatje)+ (plaatje plan)inPeter Murray)

The proportions are very simple, since the extreme width of the peristyle is exactly equal to the height of the inner cylinder from the ground to the base of the dome (excluding the attic). However, the present dome, or cupola, is known to have been remodelled in the later sixteenth century and. The original was probably a simple hemisphere, perhaps covered with tiles, and without an attic. Letarouilly, in the mid-nineteenth century, made a reconstruction which is probably accurate. (footnote: P. Letarouilly, Edifices de Rome moderne, first published in Paris, 1840-57, especially pls. 103, 104, 105, 323, and text-figure in vol.l.) .(plaatje Letarouilly in rood boek blz 156 155

Letarouilly s measured drawings show several variations from the plates published by Palladio and Serlio, so it is probable that, at least in the upper part, there have been modifications of detail, but these do not affect the basic structure or the beautiful adjustment of balance between the various elements, which is the first thing to strike the spectator on entering the courtyard. ( plaatje dome tempietto)blz 140 BruSChi)+141

For so far, about the actual building of the Tempietto.

Let s continue our analysis by looking at the plan..The plan obviously consists of two concentric circles, although the interior of the cella itself is not circular but quadrilobed, like a rounded-off Greek cross. One apse contains the altar while the one opposite is the main entrance. The two side-apses now also contain entrances, but these cannot be original, since the main entrance has its own flight of steps, while those at the sides have had the mouldings clumsily cut to make room for the doors. Again, the rosettes in the coffering, which runs all the way round beteween the columns of the peristyle and the cella, are paired except over the main entrance ,where there is a single large one. (plaatje Bruschi blz138)

Just below it is an inscription to the effect that Paul lll did some restoration in 1536, more than 20 years after Bramante s death, and another plaque at the base of the dome refers to Philip lll of Spain and is dated 1605. The building is therefore not in its pristine state, but it cannot have been changed very much.

From another plate in Serlio we also learn that Bramante intended to reconstruct the whole of the cortile (plaatje) as a suitable surrounding for his martyrium. Since this reconstruction of the cortile has never been executed, the only evidence for this is Serlio s plate, which is thought to go back to a drawing owned by Peruzzi, and, therefore, to have some connection with Bramante. Bramante imagined an ensemble

made up of three fundamental elements: the Tempietto, the open circular ambulatory zone and the surrounding portico. It thus consists of a tight succession of four concentric zones, strictly proportioned to one another and varied in their design: the cylindrical cella, the peristyle, the open space, and the circular colonnade. (plaatje Bruschi 135)

Such a plan in concentric rings suggests the image of the ideal city as it was conceived by the politicians and architects of humanism. It was a small-scale built landscape , an urban plan in miniature well suited to symbolize the city made perfect and divine through the action of the Church. Bramante s feeling for urban design can be seen in the highly geometrical nature of the planning by which the Tempietto and colonnaded courtyard are fused together: the four main cruciform axes, subdivided into two, give the eight main axes of the building, and then, subdidvided again , the sixteen axes of the structure of the Tempietto and the circular colonnade. There are also four small centrally-planned chapels in the angels of the court. This system of central axes is the system which Renaissance theorists believed that Vitruvius advocated for the organization of a city: starting from the four points of the compass and from the direction of the eight winds and successively dividing by two or three, explaining that this method may be used for planning not only cities and towns but any other sort of building . The four small centrally planned chapels at the angels may allude to the four quarters of the earth.

It is fairly easy to reconstruct the general appearance of this project and in the mid nineteenth century, Letarouilly made a drawing of it ( Ibid, reprint fig.68), and a wooden model was made for the exhibition in Milan in 1970, which gives a convincing idea of the effect intended. The reason why Bramante s plan for the cortile has never been executed is probably because there was hardly room for so complex a scheme in the small courtyard. This lack of space has certainly influenced Bramantes design of the Tempietto: Because it would always be seen only from very close, in a restricted space and from below, Bramante emphasized the height of the building and raised the cupola well above the peristyle.

(plaatje Bruschi 135) It is difficult also to see the point of the small niches in the corners, since they would hardly have been big enough to use as chapels. Bramante must in any case have been interested in the problems of complex central plans, since it can hardly be a coincidence that Leonardo da Vinci began to produce a treatise on architecture the so-called Ms. B, which deals almost exclusively with centrally-planned buildings of such elaboration that they could never have been executed. It was written in Milan in the 1480s and 1490s at a time when both Leonardo and Bramante were employed by the Sforza Duke. (Ms. B als footnote)

To conclude we can say that the Tempietto itself cannot have been changed very much from Bramante s original plan. The main modification of Bramante s original plan is the present cupola. It has been extended with an attic and a decoration on the top. Furthermore, there have been modifications of detail, like the added entrances at the side, the rosettes and the inscriptions, but these do not affect the basic structure or the balance between the various elements, which is the first thing to strike the spectator on entering the courtyard.

However, Bramante s plan of the cortile as a suitable surrounding for his Tempietto has not been executed, due to a lack of space. This is a pity because it would contribute to the meaning of the structure of the Tempietto and enlightens the way of thinking of a Renaissance architect.