Planning Obsolescence: Bramante at St. Peter’s

This paper revisits contemporary responses to Donato Bramante’s strategy of planned obsolescence, specifically the vision of a constantly regenerating building that he adopted in his design for new St. Peter’s. Since the publication of Guarna’s Simia, in 1517, Bramante has been known as the “maestro ruinante,” whose destructive capacity rivaled only his ambitions as a builder, and sources like Condivi’s biography of Michelangelo report the fury with which he demolished the preexisting basilica while envisioning the unprecedented forms of the renovated Vatican complex. The “principle of productive destruction” (Bredekamp 2000) is thus more than a historiographical topos; it is a constant of an evolving project, where the tensions between demolition and radical renovation continued until its completion. Part of Bramante’s vision was to realize within the construction site monumental structures that were simultaneously durable and provisional (Thoenes 1986). The dismantlement of extensive sections such as the Capella Julia or the Tegurio cannot be explained merely in terms of conflicting choices made by the architect and his patron: since their foundation, they were meant to disappear after the completion of the surrounding basilica walls. My paper will explore how architectural cognoscenti either refused or embraced the shocking approach adopted by Bramante. By identifying drawings intentionally produced to respond to the provisional character of his inventions, or even to evoke the ghostly presence of Constantine’s early church, it will consider how a more conscious practice of replacement in the struggle between oblivion and renovation took place at St. Peter’s.