Andrea Palladio · The Fourth Book
Chapter XVII. Of the temple of Bramante
AFTER the grandeur of the Roman empire began to decline, through the continual
inundations of the Barbarians, architecture, as well as all the other arts and sciences, left its first beauty and sequence, and grew gradually worse, till there scarce remained any memory of beautiful proportions, and of the ornamented manner of building, and it was reduced to the lowest pitch that could be.
But, because (all human things being in a perpetual motion) it happens that they at one time rise to the summit of their perfection, and at another fall to the extremity of imperfection; architecture in the times of our fathers and grandfathers, breaking out of the darkness in which it had been for a long time as it were buried, began to shew itself once more to the world.
Therefore under the pontificate of pope Julius, Bramante, a most excellent man, and an observer of antient edifices, made most beautiful fabricks in Rome; and after him followed Michel’ ANGELO Buonaroti, Jacob1 Sansovino, Baldassar Da SIENA, Antonio pa SAN Galro, Michel pa San Michele, Sebastian SERLIO, George Vasari, lacobo Barozzio pa Vignola, and the Cavalier Line; of whom wonderful fabricks are to be seen in Rome, in Florence, in Venice, in Milan, and in other cities of Italy.
Besides which, most of them have been at the same time excellent painters and sculptors, as well as writers; and some of these are still living, together with others whom I do not name, to avoid being tedious. But to return to our subject.
Since Bramante was the first who brought good, and beautiful architecture to light, which from the time of the antients had been hid; for several reasons it seemed to me fit, that his works should have a place among the antients: I have therefore placed the following temple, directed by him, upon the Monte Faniculs, in this book. And because it was made in commemoration of St. PETER the Apostle, who they say was crucified there, it is called St. Pier Montorio.
This temple is of Dorick work, both within and without. The columns are of granate, the bases and the capitals of marble, the remainder is all of pier tiburtina.
I have made two plates of it,
In the first is the plan. Plate In the second is the elevation of both the outside and in, Plate
Public-domain text (London, published by Isaac Ware, 1738). Read from the Internet Archive’s scan (gri_33125011569684) of the copy in the Getty Research Institute, by way of Wikimedia Commons, where it is marked public domain. That scan’s text layer had lost the ends of the lines on every left-hand page, so the pages were read again from the scan’s images, the two readings compared word by word, and the text cleaned: the long s (ſ) is printed s and the ct and st ligatures as plain letters, words broken at the ends of lines are joined, and running heads, page numbers, signatures and catchwords are removed. Ware’s spelling, capitals and punctuation are otherwise kept (shew, publick, antient, compleat). Chapter titles and words the OCR misread were corrected against the page images. Some misreadings will remain, most of them in the italic prefaces and the Latin of Book III. Ware’s dedication, the list of subscribers, his table of terms, the errata and the bookseller’s advertisement are not reproduced. Nor are the 212 engraved plates, their inscriptions, or the keys to the letters on them that Ware prints in the text: where Palladio writes “as in the design” the figure is in the printed book.