of San Satiro are of special interest because they are said to have been designed by Bramante.[1]
The church bears, I think, unmistakable marks of Bramante's authorship, being a reflection on a reduced scale of St. Andrea of Mantua by Alberti, which there is every reason to believe had been studied and admired by Bramante during his travels in the north for improvement in his art, and a foreshadowing of the great scheme which he subsequently prepared for St. Peter's in Rome. Like St. Andrea, it has a barrel-vaulted nave and transept, with a dome on pendentives over the crossing. The aisles have groined vaulting, and the piers are square and are faced with pilasters. The dome is raised on a very low drum moulded in stucco into the form of an entablature, and the vault surfaces are elaborately coffered in stucco. The church has no eastern arm, since a wall with a much-venerated painting of the Virgin is said to have stood so near the site that space for such an arm could not be had without demolishing it ; and as this was not to be thought of, Bramante made a semblance of an eastern arm in the form of a sunk panel with splayed sides, on which he wrought in stucco relief the elaborate perspective which is so noticeable a feature of the interior.
The sacristy (Fig. 79) was built immediately after the church, in the form of an octagon about eight metres in diameter. It is covered with an octagonal dome lighted by a circular opening in each of its sides just above the springing level. The walls of the interior are divided into two stages, the lower one having segmental niches alternating with shallow rectangular recesses, one on each side of the polygon except that of the entrance, while the stage above has a gallery, like a triforium, in the thickness of the wall, with a pair of round-arched openings in each bay. The dome is enclosed within a drum of brick which is covered by a low-pitched timber roof.
- ↑ Cf. Casati, I Capi d’ Arte di Braniante da Urbino nel Milanese, Milan, 1870, p. 24 et seq. That the design of San Satiro was made by Bramante, Casati gives the evidence of a document printed in the year 1500 by the deputies of the church in which it is said, "... Come vi si diede principio dopo P anno 1470 con disegno del celebre Bramante." And he finds further confirmation of Bramante's authorship in a commentary on Vitruvius by Cesare Cesariano, printed in Conio in 1521, where this author states that the church and sacristy of San Satiro were designed by his preceptor, Donate of Urbino, called Bramante.
