Bramante acquired his early expertise as a painter and designer in Urbino, where he would have become familiar with the splendid court and flourishing artistic community centred around Count (later Duke) Federigo da Montefeltro. His career as a painter and master of perspective must have been greatly stimulated by the work of Piero della Francesca.
In Milan, the room decorations for the Casa Panigarola-Prinetti (1480s; substantial fragments in Milan, Brera) are attributed to him. This consists of a series of niches that hold standing figures bearing arms, and a panel, formerly above the portal, depicting the philosophers Heraclitus (in tears) and Democritus (laughing). The figure style, especially the linear quality of the drapery, is reminiscent of Mantegna. The most ambitious of Bramante's wall paintings is the so-called Argus (c. 1490-93) in the Cortile della Rocchetta of the Castello Sforzesco, Milan, which was painted for the Duke of Milan. The one panel painting usually thought to be by Bramante is the distinguished half-length Christ at the Column (c. 1490; Milan, Brera), which reveals some familiarity with Venetian art in the clarity and colouristic variation of the skin tones and perhaps also with Ferrarese art in the sinuosity of the contours.