Bartolomeo Suardi, called Bramantino, Milanese painter and architect, a follower of Bramante, from whom he takes his nickname. He was appointed court painter and architect to Duke Francesco II Sforza in 1525. His style as a painter is complex and eclectic, drawing on Piero della Francesca and Leonardo as well as Bramante.
The most individual characteristic of Bramantino’s style is the use of sombre classical architectural backgrounds, as in this Adoration of the Magi. He may have been influenced in spatial constructions by Mantegna and in colouring by Giovanni Bellini, but if so, these have been assimilated into Bramantino’s personal vision. The painting, whose small size and simple symmetrical composition suggest it was made for private devotion, offers the clarity and serenity typical of this artist.
Giangiacomo Trivulzio (1440-1518), a condottiere who held several military commands during the Italian Wars, commissioned from Bramantino a series of twelve huge tapestries depicting the months of the year. The tapestries were woven throughout 1508 and 1509 by masters under the direction of Master Benedetto who worked into the night so that the hangings could be displayed during the traditionally lavish court festivities at Christmas. Bramantino’s cycle consists of allegories populated by figures in Roman guise.
A huge roundel with Trivulzio’s coat of arms hangs from a heraldic border composed of the arms of the noble houses with which he was allied. Inside this frame, figures stand before reconstructions of Roman porticoes and cityscapes w4earing brilliantly coloured Roman togas and armour. Oversized male orators represent each month, Latin inscriptions at their feet giving words to their gestures of praise and exhortation.
This painting may have come from the church of S. Maria di Brera. At one time it was probably an organ shutter. It was formerly attributed to Bramante.
A late work, this painting reveals Bramantino’s background. His roots were in the art of Ercole de’ Roberti, the most energetically emotional fifteenth- century painter in northern Italy. It is from this source that Bramantino drew his highly dramatic style, which led him to freeze the tragedy of the Crucifixion within a framework of lucid abstraction. At the same time he seized the opportunity to seek out new means of formal expression. The crosses of the two thieves are arranged in terms of a centralized perspective, creating a space almost like an interior, and leading directly to the background where typical Bramantino buildings are silhouetted against an evening sky. (One of the buildings resembles the Trivulzio mausoleum, which was designed by the artist.)
The marked bisymmetry of the painting, with angel and demon, sun and moon, is less structured in the choral rhythm of the foreground. The Madonna’s grief is represented within the circle described by the hands of the saints, while the Magdalene lifts her arms toward the cross as if to raise it up to heaven. A strict intellectual approach dominates the colour scheme, in which subdued olive greens, golden grays and browns predominate.
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Constructed on a series of triangular rhythms heightened by the violent tension of the drapery, which seems to absorb the figures, the composition has a rarefied atmosphere. Every gesture assumes an almost hieratic dignity, and every figure tends to take on an architectonic fixity. The figure of the Christ Child violently escapes from this formal severity. The audacious, almost explosive gesture of his arms seems to introduce the more serene and contemplative effect of the background, in which unreal, almost stage-set buildings stand out against the luminous sky. The buildings recall Bramantino’s work as an architect and architectural theoretician. Of his work in this field, only the mausoleum for the Trivulzio family in Milan has survived.
This painting was originally an altarpiece in San Barnaba, Milan, a church demolished and then rebuilt by Galeazzo Alessi in 1561. It represents an important stage of the late period of Bramantino, the most significant Lombard painter of the Renaissance, also active as an architect.
The Madonna with Child, emerging from ample sky-blue drapes that are extremely full and airy, is the geometric focus of this altar piece. She is sitting upright on steps, under a loggia with Tuscan columns and a panelled ceiling, and is surrounded by eight male figures: those behind her and on her left remain in the shadow of the architectural structure, lit from behind by the brightness of the background, where an architectural backdrop of classical buildings from the Middle Ages and other periods is dominated by a sky as blue as Mary’s robe.
The painting may have arrived at the Trivulzio family, passing through various hands, from the church of the Santissima Annunciata convent in Lacchiarella (Milan), a Franciscan convent of friars from the Amadeiti congregation, known as San Martino. This ownership may help to identify the characters around the Virgin: the young bearded man in the white shirt and ample green tunic, who is looking at the Child may be the artist’s patron, perhaps Giovanni del Conte, member of a family with close ties to the convent, who made a bequest in 1513. The figure with the very long sword, on the right, instead of St Paul, as thought previously, could be St Martin of Tours, joined here by the poor man in the foreground, in the process of adoring the Madonna, his back facing the onlooker. To the left is a kneeling St John the Baptist, who faces the onlooker: a presence that may be a reference to the customer. Behind Mary, on the left is St Ambrose holding his scourge and crozier. To the left of the Child is the white-bearded St Jerome, painted in the act of striking his bare chest with a stone, as a sign of penitence. There is also perhaps a St Joseph, with his hands folded over his chest.
The altar piece is among one of the most successful by this painter, who developed his own very personal style after training in Milan with Urbino architect and painter, Donato Bramante.
The fresco is from the New Court House in Piazza dei Mercanti, Milan. The angel on the left holds a paper with the words “Soli Deo,” one of the mottos used by Marshal Trivulzio, whose funerary chapel was designed by Bramantino.
This work shows, in the relationships between figures and landscape, the innovations that Bramantino brought to Lombard painting. His drive toward “cubist” abstraction is less intense, finding expression only in the base supporting the figures, with its unusual motif of stylised palm leaves and its elegant profile. The serene frontal composition is softened by the undulating rhythm that falls from the Madonna’s hand that is holding the Child’s, through the body of the Infant, to its conclusion in the heavy folds of the drapery. Lighted by a source in front, and set against a predominantly white sky, the figures show an unusually lively range of colours. The angels, seen in penumbra, are dressed in olive green and red, while the Madonna wears a pale blue mantle over her raspberry robe, and has an iridescent kerchief on her head.
The fortified brick town and the misty lake seen in the background of this painting are typical of the landscape around Milan.
Bramantino’s Risen Christ has all the power required for this subject without having to resort to the depiction of violence or blood. The figure’s total pallor, accentuated by the shroud, seems to give out a light which has no obvious source, but comes from within. In the background on the left a nocturnal landscape lit by moonlight counter-balances the emotional tension of the foreground. Emerging from the darkness on the right are some sketchy architectural forms of a classical nature.
