101 Palazzo Talenti da Fiorenza, Bramante’s Canonica, and the afterlife of Bramantesque architecture in Milan MICHAEL J. WATERS In the late eighteenth century, the historian Venanzio de Pagave described the Milanese home of the Talenti da Fiorenza family – located at the corner of the via Andegari and via Verdi (formerly via San Giuseppe), across from the Teatro della Scala – as a «beautiful and sumptuous palace created by Bramante, perhaps to give an idea, albeit limited, of his immense Canonica of Sant’Ambrogio» 1 . As he goes on to note, this connection was based on the corner columns of the palace courtyard, which like those of Bramante’s Canonica, have shafts in the shape of pruned tree-trunks. While subsequent scholars have acknowl- edged this connection, few since the late nineteenth century have continued to promote this attribution. Rather, this palace has often been cast off as an example of Bramantesque architec- ture or an architectural pastiche 2 . Yet neither of these explana- tions fully account for the presence of tree-trunk columns in the courtyard of the Palazzo Talenti da Fiorenza. Indeed, besides the Canonica of Sant’Ambrogio, only one other structure in Milan, the now destroyed cloister of Santa Maria del Lentasio, is known to have employed similar colonne ad tronconos. This article proposes that the use of this specific type of col- umn at the Palazzo Talenti was intentional and part of a larger ef- fort to create a palace that appeared to have been built two gen- erations earlier. Specifically, through a close examination of the physical and documentary evidence, I argue that the brothers Teodoro and Gerolamo Talenti da Fiorenza, beginning in 1553, undertook the construction of a new palace on land that had pre- viously belonged to the Franciscan friars of the adjacent church of Santa Maria del Giardino. In doing so, they not only con- sciously imitated the earlier style of Bramante by employing columns that resembled those of Sant’Ambrogio, but also reused architectural elements from late fifteenth-century structures. This included purchasing five capitals originally destined for Bra- mante’s unfinished Canonica itself. More than just an assemblage of fragments, surviving evidence thus suggests that the Palazzo Talenti da Fiorenza is a rare example of deliberately archaizing ar- chitecture. As such, this study challenges the traditional teleolog- ical development of Renaissance architecture, exposes how the ar- chitecture of Donato Bramante and his contemporaries remained relevant in mid-sixteenth-century Milan, and demonstrates how one family sought to physically harness this architectural heritage to reaffirm their status within Milanese noble society. The Palazzo Talenti da Fiorenza and its history The Palazzo Talenti da Fiorenza today features a four-sided courtyard with eighteen columns, set on pedestals, and decorat- ed with diverse all’antica capitals displaying the crests of promi- nent Milanese families (figs. 1-3 and Appendix). Excluding the corner columns, the southwest and northeast sides have three columns, while the other two sides have four. The south and east corner columns have shafts carved to imitate pruned tree-trunks, while those of the opposite side are plain. Even from a cursory comparison, it is clear that the northwest portico is unlike the rest of the courtyard. Not only are the architectural elements of this side better preserved, but they are also carved with notably different motifs and in different materials. The pedestals of the northwest side, for example, are produced from a gray stone and display medallions with heads in profile and the crest of the Tal- enti da Fiorenza family set in a strapwork cartouche 3 (fig. 4b). 1 «…questo bellissimo palazzo, e sontuoso fu fabbricato da Bramante, forse per dare una idea, sebbene in ristretto, della immensa Canonica di S. Ambrogio, se l’avesse potuta terminare»; V. DE PAGAVE, Dialogo fra un forestiere ed un pittore, che si incontrano nella basilica di San Francesco in Milano, Milan, Castello Sfor- zesco, Biblioteca d’Arte, ms. D 221, I, f. 220; his attribution to Bramante is reiterated by Guglielmo Della Valle in G. VASARI, Vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architetti, ed. by G. Della Valle, Siena 1791-1794, V, p. 158. 2 On the Palazzo Talenti da Fiorenza, see especially DE PAGAVE, Dialogo…, ff. 219-221; G. FERRARIO, Memorie per servire alla storia dell’architettura milanese dalla decadenza dell’impero romano fino ai nostri giorni, Milano 1843, p. 88; R. PARAVICINI, Le evoluzioni di uno stabile in cinquecento anni, in «Milano» (June 1893), pp. 1-3; D. SANT’AMBROGIO, Nuove notizie archeologiche intorno alla Ba- silica di Sant’Ambrogio, in «Il Politecnico», LIV (1906), pp. 588-593; F. MALA- GUZZI VALERI, La Corte di Lodovico il Moro, II, Bramante e Leonardo da Vinci, Milano 1915, pp. 139-140; G. BASCAPÈ, I palazzi della vecchia Milano. Ambienti, scene, scorci di vita cittadina, Milano 1945, pp. 242-243; E. ARSLAN, L’architettura milanese nella seconda metà del Quattrocento, in Storia di Milano, VII, Milano 1956, p. 685; P. MEZZANOTTE - G. BASCAPÈ, Milano nell’arte e nella storia, Mi- lano 1968, p. 373; L. GRASSI, Trasmutazione linguistica dell’architettura sforzesca. Splendore e presagio al tempo di Ludovico il Moro, in Milano nell’età di Ludovico il Moro, atti del convegno (28 febbraio - 4 marzo 1983) Milano 1983, II, p. 482; L. PATETTA, L’architettura del Quattrocento a Milano, Milano 1987, pp. 333-334. 3 Pedestals 15 and 18 are decorated with medallions, while pedestals 16 and 17 feature the Talenti da Fiorenza family crest.