F. Bellini

In the last quarter of the fifteenth century, when Bramante arrived at Milan, the city was the major centre in Italy for the research of modern domed buildings. The challenge was to overcome the too strict Sagrestia Vecchia’s cubic type, incapable of clearly expressing the signum Crucis - the symbol of modern faith as opposed to the idolatrous pagan religion. The development of a modern Christian temple, cross-shaped and domed, had already began in the previous decades with Alberti (as an architect, not theorician) and Filarete’s Architettonico libro, for whom the cross was assumed as an iconic mark...