Subject: Sectional study of the Tempietto
Author: Donato Bramante
Date: c. 1502
Location: San Pietro in Montorio, Rome

The Tempietto is often described as an exercise in geometric purity: a peristyle, a drum, a dome.
An almost diagrammatic composition.
Yet, once sectioned and set in rotation, the apparent symmetry reveals a series of calibrated adjustments. Thickness is not neutral; the rhythm of the colonnade does not perfectly coincide with that of the drum; the dome operates less as a simple crowning element than as a device of vertical compression.
What appears as formal clarity is sustained by internal variation. The section discloses what the plan tends to stabilize: order here is constructed through minute shifts rather than rigid correspondence.
Simplicity is an effect.
Complexity is internal.