Cellini in his second treatise denies Bramante the fame of an excellent painter, placing him in the middling class, and at this period he is known by few in lower Italy, where he is never named in collections, though he is very generally met with in the Milanese. Cesariano and Lomazzo had already asserted the same thing, the latter having frequently praised him in his work when giving an account of his pictures both sacred and profane, in distemper and in fresco, as well as of his portraits. His general manner, he observes, much resembles that of Andrea Mantegna. Like him he had employed himself in copying from casts, which led him to throw his lights with too much force on his fleshes. In the same manner also as Mantegna he covered his models with glued canvass, or with pasteboard, in order that in the curves and folds he might correct the ancients. And like him he employed for painting in distemper, a kind of viscous water, an instance of which is adduced by Lomazzo, who repaired one of the specimens. Most of Bramante's pictures in fresco, mentioned by Lomazzo and by Scaramuccia as adorning the public places in Milan, are now destroyed or defaced, if we except those that are preserved in the chambers of the Palazzi Borri and Castiglioni, which are pretty numerous. There is also a chapel in the Certosa at Pavia, said to have been painted by him. His proportions are square, and sometimes have an air of coarseness, his countenances are full, the heads of his old men grand, his colouring is very lively and well relieved from the ground, though not free from some degree of crudity. This character I have remarked in one of his altar-pieces, with various saints, and with fine perspective, in possession of the Cav. Melzi, and the same in a picture at the Incoronata in Lodi, a very beautiful temple erected by Gio. Bataggio, a native of the place, from the design of Bramante. His masterpiece, which is to be seen at Milan, is a S. Sebastiano, in that saint's church, where scarcely a trace of the style of the fourteenth century is perceptible. The Notizia Morelli points out his picture of a Pietà, at S. Pancrazio, in Bergamo, which Pasta had mistaken for one of Lotto, and mentions also his picture of the Philosophers, painted by Bramante in 1486, belonging to the same city.