Spogliarsi à guisa de i serpi (Se dépouiller à la manière des serpents)

Those solitary and absorbed wanderings had an immediate effect. Among the ruins of ancient Rome Bramante found the pieces he needed to assemble a much more rigorous system of forms than the one known to him in Milan. His repertoire changed, the solutions typical of the Lombard period were abandoned. This change of style is perhaps the most striking aspect of Bramante’s artistic production and has not failed to attract the attention of historians of architecture. To understand his work, it is necessary to start from right here, from this glarng fact—and a fairly unusual one with respect to the kind of behavior that, after centuries of romantic idolizing of the self, we tend to expect from an artist. The abrupt change that takes place between the cloisters of Sant’Ambrogio and the cloister of Santa Maria della Pace (and then again between that cloister and the Tempietto di San Pietro in Montorio) seems to challenge our preconceptions. And in fact there are many art historians who have not been able to forgive Bramante for not having imparted sufficient “unity” to his “artistic personality,” going so far as to consign his extremely clear formal choices to the realm of the impossible.