Donato Bramante places emphasis on sculptural mass,…
1502 CE
Donato Bramante places emphasis on sculptural mass, rather than on Early Renaissance wall surface or plane.
He bestows a more solid and eminent appearance on his influential Tempietto ("small temple") constructed in 1502 at the church of San Pietro in Montorio, Rome, to mark the traditional site of the supposed martyrdom of Saint Peter.
A circular structure like many earlier Christian memorial buildings (“martyria”), it is the first Renaissance building to imitate precisely the form of the circular ancient temple, with its colonnade bearing an architrave.
The rich and explicitly classical details on the building—the dome, columns, and balustrade—are remarkable for the age.
Bramante intends the Tempietto to be set in a circular cloister of sixteen columns, with niches at the corners to make a square ensemble.
(This is never carried out; the Tempietto now sits in a square courtyard to the side of the church.)
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