useful, and magnificent an edifice, acknowledged by the masters of the profession to be the most perfect in that kind ever seen, should have failed to receive its due completion.[1]
In the first cloister of San Pietro-a-Montorio, Bramante built a round temple constructed entirely of Travertine, than which nothing more perfectly conceived, more graceful, or more beautiful can be imagined, whether as regards arrangement, proportion, or variety:[2] and if the erection of the entire cloister, which is not finished, had been completed after a design by our architect, which may still be seen, the effect of the whole would have been much more noble than it now is.[3] In the Borgo this master gave the design of a palace, which Raphael of Urbino caused to be constructed of brick, with stucco-work cast in moulds, the columns and bosses are in the rustic manner, the order is Doric, the work altogether being a very fine one, and the invention of those castings at that time quite new.[4] The design and arrangements for the decoration of Santa Maria at Loretto, which were afterwards continued by Andrea Sansovino, were also made by this master, who prepared the models for innumerable temples and palaces which are nov/ in Rome, and many other parts of the states of the church.
This admirable artist was of a most enterprising spirit, and among other projects had formed that of entirely restoring and even re-arrranging the palace of the Pope; nay, such was his boldness, seeing as he did the resolution with which the Pope accomplished important undertakings, and finding the desire
- ↑ Of the edifice here alluded to there is now (1759) little or nothing to be seen.— Bottari.
- ↑ Milizia, Memorie degli Architetti, with his accustomed severity, enumerates various defects in this erection, but allows it, nevertheless, to be considered a graceful and well-proportioned little temple; he commends in particular the two flights of stairs by which the subterranean chapel beneath it is gained, declaring them to be managed very judiciously, and well adapted to the narrowness of the space.
- ↑ According to the design of Bramante, the small round temple was to form the centre of a circular colonnade, with four chapels and four entrances; a niche for the reception of a statue was to be placed on each side of the entrances; between them, that is to say, and the chapels. — See Milizia, ut supra, Life of Bramante.
- ↑ This palace, according to Bottari, was on the hither side of the Tiber, on the road leading to St. Peter’s, and was demolished, with other buildings, when the Colonnade of St. Peter’s was constructed.
