Few artists have been the subject of more controversy than BRAMANTE. His architectural works procured him high reputation, for he is associated with the genius of Julius II., and the vast piles of the Vatican: but his name and family have been disputed, as well as the place and province which gave him birth; while his biographers, besides confounding him with an entirely different person, Bramantino of Milan, have aggravated the confusion by conjuring out of these two a third artist, who exists only by their blundering. Bartolomeo Suardi, instead of being master of Bramante, as Orlandi and others have supposed, was a pupil who, from attachment to his instructor, added to his own name the diminutive Bramantino. He chanced, however, to have a scholar, Agostino, who, by also adopting that designation, has further perplexed matters; three persons being thus almost inextricably mixed up. For our purpose it is enough thus to supply a key to these masters, and to observe that their relative merits coincide with their chronology; the first being a bright light of the golden age, the last an obscure painter of the _decadence_, who has left us little beyond the reflected lustre of a borrowed surname. But although the minute diligence of Lazzari and Pungileone seems to have set this matter at rest, their tedious disquisitions supply few important facts or useful criticisms, and a brief notice will suffice for our present purpose. Donato Bramante appears to have been born at Monte Asdrualdo, near Fermignano, in 1444, of parents in comfortable circumstances. As his first efforts were devoted to painting, he would naturally find instructors among the Umbrian artists already noticed; but for his education we have no particulars, beyond a conjecture that he studied under Fra Carnevale.[*198] At his father's death, in 1484, he was already abroad, probably in Lombardy, where most of his pictorial works were produced, and where some frescoes may still be seen, meriting no ordinary meed of approbation, and particularly distinguished by fidelity in portraits and accuracy of architectural perspective; qualities learned, doubtless, from the productions of Melozzo da Forlì and Piero della Francesca. Of these mural paintings, the most interesting remains in the church of the Canepa, at Pavia, and exhibits the artist presenting a model for that building to its founder, Duke Gian Galeazzo Sforza, his Duchess, and his mother. Rosini ascribes to him freedom of design, ease in movement and draperies, grand conceptions, and much ability in perspective. Indeed, whilst the colder genius of ultramontane nations has seldom occupied itself with more than one branch of art, many Italian masters attained to excellence in several; and Bramante's reputation as an architect being established, his engineering talents were called into exercise by Ludovico il Moro, upon the fortifications of Milan. There too he built several churches, and constructed as a sacristy for S.