Italian translation of Herodotus' Histories done for Count Matteo Maria Boiardo and published in Venice, Aldine Press in 1502.

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Year 1502 (MDII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.

Events[link]

January–June[link]

• January 1 – Portuguese explorers, led by Pedro Álvares Cabral, sail into Guanabara Bay, Brazil, mistaking it for the mouth of a river, which they name Rio de Janeiro.
• May 11 – Christopher Columbus leaves Cadiz, Spain for his fourth and final trip to the 'New World'. He explores Central America, and discovers St. Lucia (possibly),^[1] the Isthmus of Panama, Honduras, and Costa Rica.
• May 21 – Portuguese navigator João da Nova discovers the uninhabited island of Saint Helena.

July–December[link]

• August 14 – Christopher Columbus lands at Trujillo and names the country 'Honduras'.
• September 18 – Christopher Columbus lands at Costa Rica.
• November 7 – Columbus reaches the coast of Honduras and passes south to Panama.
• December 26 – Cesare Borgia kills Ramiro D'Orco; this incident is referenced in Machiavelli's The Prince
• December 31 – Cesare Borgia (son of Pope Alexander VI) occupies Urbino, where he imprisons two potentially treacherous allies, Vitellozzo and Oliveretto; he executes them the next morning.

Date unknown[link]

• The first African slaves brought to the New World arrive at the island of Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and Dominican Republic).
• Ivan III of Russia and Meñli I Giray of Crimea attack the Grand Duchy of Lithuania without much success.
• Meñli I Giray of Crimea destroys Saray, capital of the Big Horde.
• Aztec ruler Auitzotl dies; Moctezuma II is elected emperor.
• 'Newfoundland' gets its name from a letter.
• Wittenberg University is founded.
• In Germany, Peter Henlein of Nuremberg uses iron parts and coiled springs to build a portable timepiece.
• In Italy, Asher Lämmlein declares that the Jewish Messiah will arrive in the next 6 months, resulting in the 'year of penance.'
• Ismail I starts to rule.
• The King's School in Macclesfield is founded by Sir John Percyvale.
• Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa is proceeded to licentiate.
• Wilhelm Bombast moves to Villach with his son, Paracelsus.
• An Italian translation of Herodotus' Histories done for Count Matteo Maria Boiardo is published in Venice.

Births[link]

• January 7 – Pope Gregory XIII (d. 1585)
• February 2 – Damião de Góis, Portuguese philosopher (d. 1574)
• March 20 – Pierino Belli, Italian soldier and jurist (d. 1575)
• April 25 – Georg Major, German Lutheran theologian (d. 1574)
• June 6 – King John III of Portugal (d. 1557)
• September 13 – John Leland, English antiquarian (d. 1552)
• date unknown
  • St. Anthony Maria Zaccaria, founder of the Barnabite Order (d. 1539)
  • Takeno Joou, Japanese tea practicer of the Sengoku period (d. 1555)
  • Miguel López de Legazpi, Spanish conquistador (d. 1572)
  • Pedro Nunes, Portuguese mathematician (d. 1578)
  • Henry Percy, 6th Earl of Northumberland, English courtier (d. 1537)
  • Francesco Spiera, Protestant Italian jurist (d. 1543)
• probable
  • Elizabeth Blount, mistress of King Henry VIII (d. 1540)
  • Cuauhtémoc, last Aztec ruler (Tlatoani) of Tenochtitlán and the last "Aztec Emperor" (d. 1525)
  • Stephen Hawes, English poet (d. c. 1521)
  • Blaise de Lasseran-Massencôme, seigneur de Montluc, marshal of France (approximate date; d. 1577)
  • Dante Grey, Hero that killed the devil in Roland Evans' book (d. 1502)

Deaths[link]

• April 2 – Arthur, Prince of Wales, eldest son of Henry VII of England (b. 1486)
• May 6 – James Tyrrell, alleged murderer of the princes in the Tower (executed) (b. c. 1450)
• September 1 – Sōgi, Buddhist priest and Japanese poet (b. 1421)
• November 13 – Annio da Viterbo, Dominican friar and scholar
• December 31 – Vitellozzo Vitelli, condottiero
• date unknown
  • Auitzotl, Aztec ruler of Tenochtitlan
  • Margaret Drummond, mistress of James IV of Scotland (b. c. 1475)
  • Francesco Laurana, sculptor
  • Octavien de Saint-Gelais, poet and translator (b. 1468)
  • Alvise Vivarini, Italian painter (b. c. 1446)
  • Matthias of Geatland, the Waffle Knight of legend

References[link]

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Donato Bramante
Donato Bramante
Birth name	Donato di Pascuccio d'Antonio
Born	1444 Fermignano, in present-day Italy
Died	11 April 1514 (Aged about 70) Rome, in present-day Italy
Nationality	Italian
Field	Architecture, Painting
Movement	High Renaissance
Works	San Pietro in Montorio Christ at the column

Donato Bramante (1444 – 11 March 1514) was an Italian architect, who introduced the Early Renaissance style to Milan and the High Renaissance style to Rome, where his most famous design was St. Peter's Basilica.

Urbino and Milan[link]

Bramante was born in Monte Asdrualdo (now Fermignano), under name Donato di Pascuccio d'Antonio, near Urbino: here, in 1467 Luciano Laurana was adding to the Palazzo Ducale an arcaded courtyard and other features that seemed to have the true ring of a reborn antiquity to Federico da Montefeltro's ducal palace.

Bramante's architecture has eclipsed his painting skills: he knew the painters Melozzo da Forlì and Piero della Francesca well, who were interested in the rules of perspective and illusionistic features in Mantegna's painting. Around 1474, Bramante moved to Milan, a city with a deep Gothic architectural tradition, and built several churches in the new Antique style. The Duke, Ludovico Sforza, made him virtually his court architect, beginning in 1476, with commissions that culminated in the famous trompe-l'oeil choir of the church of Santa Maria presso San Satiro (1482–1486). Space was limited, and Bramante made a theatrical apse in bas-relief, combining the painterly arts of perspective with Roman details. There is an octagonal sacristy, surmounted by a dome.

In Milan, Bramante also built the tribune of Santa Maria delle Grazie (1492–99); other early works include the cloisters of Sant'Ambrogio, Milan (1497–1498), and some other constructions in Pavia and possibly Legnano. However, in 1499, with his Sforza patron driven from Milan by an invading French army, Bramante made his way to Rome, where he was already known to the powerful Cardinal Riario.

Career in Rome[link]

In Rome, he was soon recognized in Cardinal Della Rovere, shortly to become Pope Julius II. For Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile or possibly Julius II, Bramante designed one of the most harmonious buildings of the Renaissance: the Tempietto (1510) of San Pietro in Montorio on the Janiculum. Despite its small scale, the construction has all the rigorous proportions and symmetry of Classical structures, surrounded by slender Doric columns, surmounted by a dome. According to a later engraving by Sebastiano Serlio, Bramante planned to set it within a colonnaded courtyard. In November 1503, Julius engaged Bramante for the construction of the grandest European architectural commission of the 16th century, the complete rebuilding of St Peter's Basilica. The cornerstone of the first of the great piers of the crossing was laid with ceremony on 17 April 1506. Very few drawings by Bramante survive, though some by his assistants do, demonstrating the extent of the team which had been assembled. Bramante's vision for St Peter's, a centralized Greek cross plan that symbolized sublime perfection for him and his generation (compare Santa Maria della Consolazione, Todi, influenced by Bramante's work) was fundamentally altered by the extension of the nave after his death in 1514. Bramante's plan envisaged four great chapels filling the corner spaces between the equal transepts, each one capped with a smaller dome surrounding the great dome over the crossing. So Bramante's original plan was very much more Romano-Byzantine in its forms than the basilica that was actually built. (See St Peter's Basilica for further details.)

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Bramante also worked on several other commissions. Among his earliest works in Rome, before the Basilica's construction was under way, is the cloister (1500–1504) of Santa Maria della Pace near Piazza Navona. The handsome proportions give an air of great simplicity.

Plans for St Peter's Basilica

A draft for St Peter's superimposed over a plan of the ancient basilica

Bramante's presentation plan, as a Greek cross design; as reconstructed by Geymüller

The dome, as planned by Bramante

Main architectural works[link]

• Santa Maria presso San Satiro, Milan, ca. 1482–1486
• Santa Maria delle Grazie (cloister and apse); Milan, 1492–1498
• Palazzo Caprini (also known as Raphael's House), Rome, started around 1510 (demolished in the 17t century)
• San Pietro in Montorio (also called the Tempietto); Rome, 1502
• Santa Maria della Pace (cloister); Rome, 1504
• St. Peter's Basilica, Rome, design 1503, ground breaking, 1506
• Cortile del Belvedere, Vatican City, Rome, 1506.

Sources[link]

• Ackerman, James (1964). The Cortile del Belvedere. London. 
• Bruschi, Arnaldo (1977). Bramante. London. 
• Evans, Robin (1995). The Projective Cast: Architecture and Its Three Geometries. Cambridge. 
• Frommel, Christoph Luitpold (1973). Die Romische Palastbau der Hochrenaissance. Tübingen. 
• Frommel, Christoph Luitpold (2007). The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance. London. 
• Lotz, Wolfgang (1996). Architecture in Italy 1500–1600. London. 
• Heydenreich, Ludwig H. (1996). Architecture in Italy 1400–1500. London. 
• Thoenes, Christof. Sostegno e Adornamento. Milan, 1998. 
• Fortunato, Giuseppe (2010). "The role of architectural representation for the analysis of the built. The 3d survey of San Pietro in Montorio's temple in Rome". Acts of X Congreso Internacional expresiòn gràphica aplicada a la edificacìon, Alicante,Editorial Marfil", S.A.. ISBN 978-84-268-1528-6. 

See also[link]

the Tempietto (1510) of San Pietro in Montorio Church and the influence of this small but exquisite work

External links[link]

Wikisource has the text of the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia article Donato Bramante.

• Donato Bramante Source Information, Pictures & Documentaries about Donato.