The beginning of the second period of modern Italian architecture falls during the first twenty years of Leonardo’s life.  However the new impetus given by Leon Battista Alberti either was not generally understood by his contemporaries, or those who appreciated it, had no opportunity of showing that they did so.  It was only when taken up by Bramante and developed by him to the highest rank of modern architecture that this new influence was generally felt.  Now the peculiar feature of Leonardo’s sketches is that, like the works of Bramante, they appear to be the development and continuation of Alberti’s.

But a question here occurs which is difficult to answer.  Did Leonardo, till he quitted Florence, follow the direction given by the dominant school of Brunellesco, which would then have given rise to his “First manner”, or had he, even before he left Florence, felt Alberti’s influence—­either through his works (Palazzo Ruccellai, and the front of Santa Maria Novella) or through personal intercourse?  Or was it not till he went to Milan that Alberti’s work began to impress him through Bramante, who probably had known Alberti at Mantua about 1470 and who not only carried out Alberti’s views and ideas, but, by his designs for St. Peter’s at Rome, proved himself the greatest of modern architects.  When Leonardo went to Milan Bramante had already been living there for many years.  One of his earliest works in Milan was the church of Santa Maria presso San Satiro, Via del Falcone[Footnote 1:  Evidence of this I intend to give later on in a Life of Bramante, which I have in preparation.].

Now we find among Leonardos studies of Cupolas on Plates LXXXIV and LXXXV and in Pl.  LXXX several sketches which seem to me to have been suggested by Bramante’s dome of this church.

The MSS.  B and Ash.  II contain the plans of S. Sepolcro, the pavilion in the garden of the duke of Milan, and two churches, evidently inspired by the church of San Lorenzo at Milan.

MS. B. contains besides two notes relating to Pavia, one of them a design for the sacristy of the Cathedral at Pavia, which cannot be supposed to be dated later than 1492, and it has probably some relation to Leonardo’s call to Pavia June 21, 1490[Footnote 2:  The sketch of the plan of Brunellesco’s church of Santo Spirito at Florence, which occurs in the same Manuscript, may have been done from memory.].  These and other considerations justify us in concluding, that Leonardo made his studies of cupolas at Milan, probably between the years 1487 and 1492 in anticipation of the erection of one of the grandest churches of Italy, the Cathedral of Pavia.  This may explain the decidedly Lombardo-Bramantesque tendency in the style of these studies, among which only a few remind us of the forms of the cupolas of S. Maria del Fiore and of the Baptistery of Florence.  Thus, although when compared with Bramante’s work, several of these sketches plainly reveal that master’s influence, we find, among the sketches of domes, some, which show already Bramante’s classic style, of which the Tempietto of San Pietro in Montorio, his first building executed at Rome, is the foremost example[Footnote 3:  It may be mentioned here, that in 1494 Bramante made a similar design for the lantern of the Cupola of the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie.].