SUARDI, Bartolommeo, usually known as Bramantino from his master Bramante, was a distinguished painter and architect of the Milanese school. He was specially famed for his knowledge of perspective, and Lomazzo (Trott. d. Pitt., iii. 1) praises him highly for the deceptive realism of his painting. The dates of his birth and death are unknown, but he was probably quite young when, about 1495, he visited Rome in company with his master Bramante; there he is said to have been employed as a painter by the pope, and he evidently spent much time in studying the remains of classical buildings in Rome. A number of measured drawings by his hand are still preserved in the Brera library at Milan. Vasari mentions that he had seen a book of drawings by Bramantino of the early Lombardic churches of Northern Italy, such as S. Ambrogio at Milan and S. Pietro in Ciel d’Oro at Pavia,— a remarkable thing at a time when these noble structures were usually despised as being barbarous in style. The greater part of Bramantino’s frescos are now lost, partly because he was specially employed to paint the external façades of houses and public buildings, such as the mint at Milan. One, however, still exists over the doorway of S. Sepolcro, a highly foreshortened figure of Christ, with the Madonna and Saints. He also painted some angels which still exist in the church of S. Eustorgio, also in Milan. In 1513 he received eighty gold crowns for a Pietà and Saints painted in the sacristy for the Cistercian monks of Chiaravalle, near Milan. In 1525 he was appointed architect and painter to Francesco II. of Milan, and he was employed as military engineer to reconstruct the walls of the city, which was then threatened by the army of Charles V. The church of S. Satiro in Milan is usually attributed ...