Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/450

and received various |)roofs of respect and admiration from different nobles, who were acquainted with his excellencies. He enjoyed very great renown during his life, and this was still further increased and extended after his death, seeing that this event caused the erection of St. Peter’s to be suspended during several years. Branante lived to the age of seventy, and when he died, was borne to his grave with the most honourable solemnities, and attended by the papal court as well as by all the sculptors, architects, and painters at that time in Rome. He was entombed in San Pietro, in the year 1514.^[1]

To Architecture the death of Bramante was an irreparable loss, and the rather, as his continual investigations frequently resulted in the discovery of some useful invention, whereby the art was largely enriched. Among other instances of this was the method of vaulting with gypsum and that of preparing stucco,^[2] both known to the ancients, but the secret of whieh had been lost in their ruin, and had remained concealed even to the time of this master. Wherefore, those who devote themselves to the examination and admeasurement of architectural antiquities, find no less science and excellence of design in the works of Bramante than in those of the ancients themselves, and among artists well acquainted with the profession which he exercised, this master must ever be accounted one of the most exalted minds by whom our age has been illustrated. He left behind him his intimate friend and associate Giuliano Leno, who was much employed in the buildings erected at that period, but more to provide for and superintend the execution of what others had planned and designed, than to erect buildings of his own, although he possessed considerable judgment and very great experience.

In the execution of his works, Bramante employed Ven-

1. He was buried in the subterranean church (the Grotte Vaticane), and was afterwards honoured with the following epitaph:—

   “Magnus Alexander, magnam ut conderet urbem
   Niliacis oris, Dinocratem habuit,
   Sed si Bramantem tellus antiqua tulissit,
   Hic Macedum Regi gratior esset eo.”

2. In the life of Giuliano and Antonio da San Gallo, Vasari again alludes to tliis invention.