(map) 
No dice. Even for an architect such as Bramante, sometimes bureaucracy just gets in your way. (Bramante is the Renaissance chap who designed this, this, this, and this, among others things).
You’ve been commissioned by Milan’s Duke Sforza to rebuild the church of San Satiro. (Saint Satyrus was the brother and confessor of Saints Marcellina and Ambrose, the latter the patron Saint of Milan.) You’ve gotten the go-ahead from the religious authorities. It’s all systems go, funds in place….
… and then the town council construction board decides to ix-nay permission for the apse. The apse! Of all things, how absurd! How can you have a church without an apse!?
We can imagine Bramante calling on the Duke asking him to exert some pressure on the building permit people. No luck… testimony to the rule-observing, law-abiding Lombards that not even the Duke could get them to budge.
And so it was, no apse. Well, Bramante was certainly not one to back down from even a major mishap, so he decided to apply some of the high-falutin’ jiggery-pokery that was all the rage among intellectuals and mathematicians of the time… perspective.
Thanks to bureaucracy and permits not granted, we can enjoy one of the first instances of perspective trompe l’oeil. You get a visual “depth” of about thirty feet… in barely three feet of space.
So there, paper pushers!
Wow, just, wow. I will have to look this one up.
In Milano, how far is San Satiro from Castaldi Via?
Resourceful and smart. Thanks GB.
Amazing!
Hi Tom, I think Via Castaldi is near porta venezia, so you’re about three or four metro stops from San Satiro, located just a few blocks from the duomo (duomo metro stop). It’s right in the center, basically.
Enjoy!
Obviously, many of the ancestors of the permit grantors, migrated to the USA where they are still practicing the art of stupidity. But look who really won the day.
Amazing! Talk about being given lemons and making lemonade!
Trompe l’oeil is amazing – these artists are so clever.
Good to know Bramante was able to make apses of them all! :-) Interesting story!
Giancarlos aka GB:
What a wonderful story and solution. Auguri. You always provide such fascinating glimpses into this remarkable land of art and architecture.
Suzanne and Ron
I knew you wrote this before I scrolled to the end.
Bravo!
This truly is a sight to behold. If to see anything in Milan, it is this masterpiece and The Last Supper. Bramante’s works are timeless and always refreshing to experience. They welcome and enfold and are done to ‘human scale’, never overwhelming by enormity.
Thank you GB!
Absolutely brilliant! Can’t wait to see this…
Great pick – thanks!
I can imagine the paper-pushers saying, “Well how about if you just PAINT the apse in….?”
Nawwww, they couldn’t have been so visionary!
Reads like a novel!
Funny coincidence: I just wrote about this for an iPhone travel guide on Milan! But, according to my sources, one of the reasons for the lack of an apse was the restricted space … who knows?
You can find my description here: http://bit.ly/haLF8o (Marvelous Milan & More Facebook page).
Amazing once again!