Leader of High Renaissance architecture, drafter of new St Peter’s
The most important architect of the Italian High Renaissance, who pushed classical dignity and harmony to their peak. His small chapel in Rome, the Tempietto — modest in size — is acknowledged as the perfect model of High Renaissance architecture: a round, symmetrical, flawlessly proportioned classical temple-form. His grandest work was to draft, at the command of Pope Julius II, the plan to rebuild St Peter’s Basilica: he conceived a magnificent centrally symmetrical layout of a Greek cross with a great dome. Though he did not live to see the church built, and the plan was revised again and again by Raphael, Michelangelo, and others, the grand skeleton of the whole church rests on his conception.
Bramante’s Tempietto is only a small round chapel, a few metres across, yet later architects revered it as the summit of the High Renaissance — because it concentrated everything classical architecture sought: the completeness of the circle, absolute symmetry, flawless proportion, in that tiny volume. It proved that great architecture lies not in size, but in every proportion being just right, beyond adding or taking away.
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.