King Manuel I of Portugal sends to…
March 1514 CE
King Manuel I of Portugal sends to Pope Leo X on March 1514 a huge and exotic embassy led by Tristão da Cunha, who tours the streets of Rome in an extravagant procession of animals from the colonies and wealth from the Indies that struck Europe.
Albuquerque’s reputation reaches its peak, laying the foundations of the Portuguese Empire in the East.
Bramante, one of the most influential Italian architects of the Renaissance, dies at seventy on March 11, 1514, outliving his patron, the energetic warrior-pope Julius II by little more than a year.
The painter Raphael, now thirty-one, succeeds Bramante as chief architect of Saint Peter's Basilica; Pope Leo X appoints the respected Fra Giovanni Giocondo, now past eighty, to assist him on the partially completed domed church.
With religious conservatism apparently ended by this time, Raphael substitutes a longitudinal plan for Bramante’s central design, although the historical details are complex.
Unfortunately, the deaths of Julius and of Bramante prevent the rebuilding of St. Peter's from progressing much beyond the planning stage.
(Nothing on Raphael’s plan is actually built, but some of his other architectural designs are carried out, including a chapel for Agostino Chigi in Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome; the Vidoni-Caffarelli Palace—now substantially enlarged—and the incomplete Villa Madama, both also in Rome.)
Raphael also designs the Pandolfini Palace in Florence.