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                          _The Story of Milan_


[Illustration:

  _S^t. Roch._

  _Fresco by Borgognone._
]




                          _The Story of_ Milan


               _by Ella Noyes, Illustrated by Dora Noyes_

[Illustration]

                       _London: J. M. Dent & Co.
                 Aldine House, 29 and 30 Bedford Street
                     Covent Garden, W.C._ * * 1908

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                         _All Rights Reserved_

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 “La cognitione del tempo preterito e del sito della terra è ornamento e
                         cibo delle menti umane.”

                                                      LEONARDO DA VINCI.

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                                CONTENTS


                               CHAPTER I

                                                    PAGE

                _The Ambrosian City_                   1

                               CHAPTER II

                _The Patarini_                        26

                              CHAPTER III

                _The Free City_                       42

                               CHAPTER IV

                _The Reign of Faction_                62

                               CHAPTER V

                _The Visconti_                        86

                               CHAPTER VI

                _From Visconti to Sforza_            116

                              CHAPTER VII

                _The Opening of the Gate_            147

                              CHAPTER VIII

                _The Sorrow of Milan_                189

                               CHAPTER IX

                _Art in Milan_                       208

                               CHAPTER X

                _The Duomo_                          224

                               CHAPTER XI

                _The Basilica of St. Ambrogio_       256

                              CHAPTER XII

                _San Lorenzo. Romanesque Buildings_  278

                              CHAPTER XIII

                _Gothic and Renaissance Buildings_   302

                              CHAPTER XIV

                _The Brera Picture Gallery_          335

                               CHAPTER XV

                _Other Galleries and Museums_        352

                              CHAPTER XVI

                _The Castello_                       368


                _Table of the Visconti_              392

                _Table of the Sforza_                393

                _Appendix_                           395

                _Index_                              397




                             ILLUSTRATIONS


                                                                    PAGE

 _St. Roch, Fresco by Borgognone (Brera)_                 _Frontispiece_

 _The Duomo from Hotel Europe_                                         3

 _Atrium of St. Ambrogio_                                             57

 _Chiaravalle_                                                        70

 _Via del Pesce_                                                      73

 _Tower of S. Gottardo from the Cathedral_                            93

 _The Snake of the Visconti_                                         115

 _Galeazzo Maria Sforza, by Piero Pollaiuolo         _to face page_  138
   (Uffizi, Florence)_

 _Bridge over Naviglio near San Marco_                               141

 _Canal, Via San Marco_                                              155

 _Canonica of St. Ambrogio_                                          157

 _Lodovico il Moro, by Boltraffio (Trivulzio         _to face page_  176
   Collection)_

 _Scopetta of Lodovico il Moro_                                      188

 _Cupola of the Duomo, from the Roof_                                232

 _Within the Duomo_                                                  237

 _Putti, Guglia di Amadeo_                                           249

 _Giant Statues on the Duomo_                                        251

 _Side Aisle of Atrium, St. Ambrogio_                                262

 _Capital in Atrium of St. Ambrogio_                                 263

 _Capital in Atrium of St. Ambrogio_                                 264

 _Ciborium, St. Ambrogio_                                            267

 _Sculpture on Pulpit in St. Ambrogio_                               273

 _Chimney, Canonica of St. Ambrogio_                                 277

 _The Old Porta Ticinese_                                            281

 _Houses on the Naviglio_                                            284

 _Exterior of Portinari Chapel, St. Eustorgio_                       286

 _Interior of St. Eustorgio_                                         288

 _Statue of Oldrado da Tresseno_                                     298

 _Palazzo dei Banchieri_                                             300

 _Doorway of Palazzo Borromeo_                                       303

 _Cortile of Palazzo Borromeo_                                       305

 _Last Supper, by Leonardo. Detail, Figure of        _to face page_  314
   Christ_

 _Last Supper, by Leonardo. Detail, St. John, St.    _to face page_  316
   Peter and Judas_

 _San Satiro_                                                        321

 _Palazzo Visconti di Modrone—Garden on the                          331
   Naviglio_

 _Putto, Fresco by Bramantino (Brera)_               _to face page_  336

 _Madonna, by Mantegna (Poldi-Pezzoli)_              _to face page_  356

 _Portrait of an Unknown, by Ambrogio de Predis, (?) _to face page_  363
   (Ambrosiana)_

 _The Rocchetta, Castello_                                           375




                                PREFACE


Everybody has been in Milan, but who knows Milan? The traveller in
search of the picturesque and mediæval sees nothing to arrest him—except
comfortable hotels—in a city which seems to tell only of yesterday. A
glance at the Cathedral, at St. Ambrogio, at the most famous of the
pictures, and he hurries on. Yet a little longer stay reveals a wealth
of artistic interest in the many fine churches, in the rich galleries
and museums, and much also that is worth learning even in the outward
aspect of the city in the present day. The historic buildings have
mostly fallen, the old crooked ways have given place to broad
thoroughfares, the picturesque life of the past has been smothered by
the sombre bustle of modern commercialism. But her heritage of beauty is
to some extent inalienable. She remains always Italian. Colour and
atmosphere lend an indestructible charm even to her modernity. The warm
brick of the buildings against the limpid blue sky, the gold and grey of
sunshine and shadow, the shining canals that border some of the further
streets with a still and pensive melancholy, make a lovely and
characteristic harmony still, as in the days of the Quattrocentist
artists who painted them in the backgrounds of their Madonnas and San
Roccos. And there are some old streets left, mostly in the heart of the
city, such as the Via del Pesce and the Via Tre Alberghi, long cobbled
alleys ribboned with triple lines of pavement, where the tall houses and
bowed-out balconies of curious ironwork, rusted by age and weather, if
they cannot remember the days of Milan’s earlier glory, must have known
at least something of the sad centuries of bondage which followed,
before they shook to the roar of the Cinque Giornate sixty years ago.

The compass of this small volume has made it impossible to tell
otherwise than summarily of the great past of this city and of her
artistic riches to-day. I have had to pass over, or barely mention, many
noteworthy things. I am especially sorry that I could not include the
places of interest in the immediate neighbourhood. A visit to the
Certosa of Pavia, which sums up all the aims and achievements of Lombard
Renaissance art, is necessary for an appreciation of the Milanese
sculptors and painters, while the associations of the famous building
with Gian Galeazzo Visconte and with the Sforza princes, make it a part
of Milanese story. The old Church of Chiaravalle, with its incomparable
Lombard-Gothic tower and its trecento frescoes, and picturesque Monza,
where that historic emblem and wonder of twelfth century goldsmiths’
art, the Iron Crown of Lombardy, is preserved with other priceless
treasures, ought not to be missed by the traveller.

The main facts of Milanese story are well known, and may be found, not
only in the native chroniclers and historians, but also in many modern
books dealing with Milan and with Italian history generally. Mongeri’s
_L’Arte in Milano_, and the writings of Count Malaguzzi Valeri,
especially his _Milano_ in the series “Italia Illustrata”, have been my
chief help in the topographical and artistic part of this book, and I
have also made use of the works of Signor Luca Beltrami, Mrs. Ady and
others. For the painters and pictures I have depended on Morelli, the
acknowledged authority on Lombard art, and have consulted besides the
writings of Dr. Gustavo Frizzoni, of Mr. Herbert Cook, and other modern
critics.

                                                                   E. N.

 SUTTON VENY, WILTS,
     _November 1907_

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                           The Story of Milan


[Illustration]




                               CHAPTER I
                          _The Ambrosian City_


 “Verenanda est Roma in Apostolo. Sed nec spernendum Mediolanum in
    Ambrosio.”—ARNULPHUS.

Milan is to-day the most modern of Italian cities. Her Risorgimento in
the last century, accomplished with the pouring out of blood and the
efforts of a strenuous virtue, makes for her a mighty and sufficing past
in the near background, and she seems to stand wholly on this side of
it, triumphant and new-create. Neither Nature nor the further centuries
have, you feel, any longer part in her. Who of the numberless travellers
from the North, as they lose the vision of mountain, lake and green
champaign, just traversed, in the bustle and confinement of the crowded
streets, realises that this solid mass of brick and stone, this vast
hive of human beings, is the slow product of that enchanting country, of
its rivers and fertile soil, built up and moulded by human passion and
labour during thousands of years amid the changes and chances of
extraordinarily varied fortunes. Only when his eyes, lifted above the
regular roof-lines of the modern streets, light upon the Gothic
pinnacles of the Duomo, and a further acquaintance with the city
discovers, wedged among the growths of yesterday, the many relics of her
older past—the Castle of the fifteenth century Sforza, Renaissance
palaces and churches, St. Ambrogio and its compeers of the era of
liberty, a rare fragment of the older imperial civilisation—does he
become conscious of the long and painful course of the centuries, and
remember that he stands in the secular capital of Lombardy, on ground as
storied almost as the sacred dust of Rome.

The name alone of Lombardy calls up visions of continuous strife. There
the nations who have made their grave in Italy lie most thickly. The
sunny fruitful plains at the foot of the barren mountains have been
fattened from the beginning by human blood. The _love of figs_—a phrase
which has passed into the language of the Icelanders as an expression
for all passionate appetite—has again and again impelled the peoples of
the grudging North to storm the barrier of snows and seek the delusive
land of promise beyond. Principalities and kingdoms have been founded
there one after another, only to perish in turn, as if the soft land of
morass and meadow were some unstable quicksand created for the engulfing
of men. Etruscans, Insubri, Latins, Visigoths, Lombards, French and
Spaniards, have come and gone, in the midst of an almost incessant
warfare.

Yet through all the changes, a quiet, continuous labour was going on,
restraining and directing the courses of the rivers, draining the
marshes, taming the wild luxuriance of the land to fertile use and
order, and slowly building up out of the confusion of conflicting
elements the solid foundations of the present.

[Illustration: THE DUOMO FROM HOTEL EUROPE]

Seated in the centre of the plain which spreads out at the foot of the
Alps, and commanding the natural gateways between Italy and the
countries to north and west, Milan seems to have held from the first the
chief position among the cities of Lombardy. In the early centuries of
our era it was hardly less important in the North of Italy than Rome was
in the South. The line of the Po, cutting across the peninsula, or
perhaps more correctly, the Apennine chain, originally divided Italy
ethnologically and politically, a division which still endures to some
degree in the character and sentiments of the respective inhabitants on
either side. The Insubri, who drove out the Etruscans and settled in
Lombardy about the sixth century (B.C.), were a race of Gallic origin.
They had no ties of blood with the Romans, who subjugated them later,
and their country—called by the conquerors, Cisalpine Gaul—was as much a
foreign province of the Latin dominion as the Gaul beyond the Alps. On
the other hand their relationship and familiarity with that Gaul was so
close that it has influenced the sympathies of the Milanese people
throughout history, and has left a strong impress on their dialect. When
some centuries later the capital of the Empire was losing its
controlling power, and the bond uniting the members of that immense
artificial system was beginning to relax, Milan assumed an almost
independent position. As the seat of Diocletian and his colleague
Maximian, she could scorn abandoned Rome, looking with compassion from
her magnificent palaces and baths, her populous streets and mighty
walls, to the silent courts and colonnades of the Palatine Hill.
Constantine completed her severance from Rome by dividing Italy into two
separate portions of the Empire, and making Milan the capital of the
northern half, with a government distinct from Rome. The old racial
boundaries were thus restored, and on these lines were built up the many
later schemes for the foundation of a Kingdom of Italy. And on these
lines there rose within the new ecclesiastical empire which was shaping
itself out of the ruins of the old Roman system, an episcopal dominion
extending over all Lombardy, and virtually independent of the Church of
Rome. Many centuries were to pass, and fierce struggles to take place,
before the Church of Milan was brought into subjection to the Papal See.
This work of unification, accomplished chiefly by the potent mind of
Gregory VII. in the eleventh century, in association with a growing
instinct of nationality in the Milanese people themselves, was one of
the most important steps in the process by which the various and alien
elements of the great Lombard city were converted into a component part
of the Italian nation.

We cannot pause to search into the origins of the city in that obscure
antiquity which Italian legend fills with the figures of diluvian and
Trojan heroes, on an equal plane of remoteness, or to inquire closely
into the mystery of her name, _Mediolanum_, as it is in the Latin
tongue, whence by derivation—influenced, doubtless, by the sweet
appellation _Mailand_, Land of May, which her green refreshing aspect
suggested to her Teutonic invaders—it has become Milano. The simplest
and most generally accepted explanation of the name is that it is a
bastard word, between Latin and Teutonic, signifying the Middle Land,
and suggested by the city’s central position in the Plain.

We must take up our story at the beginning of that barbarian inrush
through the yielding barriers of the Empire, which by mingling the
vigour of new blood with the effete products of Roman civilisation,
generated the travail of mediæval Italy, and out of that travail a
nation. Milan had already a great past, closely bound up with the
vicissitudes of the later Empire. From Diocletian and Constantine
downwards she was honoured almost constantly by the presence of
emperors. Julian was proclaimed Cæsar within her walls. Many edicts of
Constantius were published there, Valentinian made his residence in the
city, and there Theodosius spent long periods, and there died and was
buried. The Empress Justina and her young son, Valentinian II., had
their seat in Milan, and the slothful and degenerate Honorius ruled from
its palace the Empire of the West, till frightened out by the Goths. The
wealth and luxury of the city in the fourth century, her culture, her
innumerable fine houses, her magnificent walls, built by Maximian, her
circus, temples, theatres, baths, are celebrated in a famous epigram by
the Latin poet Ausonius, who proclaims her the paragon of Rome.

But at the end of this century the imperial era was rapidly declining
and giving way to a new order of things. A fresh period of irruptions
from the North was at hand, and within the ancient polity itself a new
organisation, the Christian Church, had arisen and was usurping
spiritual authority. Milan had been early conspicuous in the history of
Christianity. Legend names S. Barnabas himself as the founder and first
occupant of her See, and she had testified to the new faith in the days
of persecution by the blood of many martyrs. SS. Gervasio and Protasio,
the youthful warrior pair, SS. Nazaro and Celso, master and faithful
disciple, SS. Felix and Nabor, S. Valeria, San Vittore, and many others,
are recorded with picturesque and touching details in Milanese legends
and art. And in Milan the triumph of Christianity was first proclaimed,
since here Constantine subscribed his edict of toleration in 313. But
Christianity, established soon after as the State religion, had yet to
struggle with the difficulty of conflicting counsels and doctrines
within its own body. The tenets promulgated by the Council of Nicœa in
532 were by no means universally accepted by Christians in the fourth
century, and in North Italy the teachings of Arius were widely followed,
especially by the Gothic subjects of the Empire. Under the Empress
Regent Justina they were the religion of the imperial Court in Milan,
and the whole population was divided into fiercely hostile parties by
the doctrinal question.

It was at this critical point of her political and ecclesiastical
destinies that there appeared in Milan one of those epoch-making
characters who from time to time arise at moments of hesitation in the
history of human communities, and apparently initiate and determine
their subsequent course. The great figure of her Bishop Ambrose, Saint
and Doctor of the Church, scourge of the Arians, subduer of emperors,
stands for Milan at the opening of a new era, to which his dominant mind
gives impress, direction and inspiration. From this time forward, Milan
is no more the imperial, but the Ambrosian city. Throughout her mediæval
existence the consecrating memory of St. Ambrogio, her patron and
protector, set like a spiritual jewel in a hundred exquisite and
devoutly fantastic legends, is present in her government, her struggles
for liberty, her art and peaceful industry, her daily life and the
peculiar ritual of her religious worship.

In 374 Auxentius, Bishop of Milan, died. He had been an Arian. A great
contention arose between the two doctrinal parties over the choice of
his successor. The city was in a state of uproar, and it became
necessary to summon the Prefect of the province to restore peace. A
brilliant young advocate named Ambrosius, of a Roman family of high
standing in the official world, had been lately appointed Prefect. He
came to the capital and convoked a public assembly in the chief church,
to assist at the election of a bishop. It was impossible, however, for
the two parties to agree in a selection; the powerful Court influence of
the Arians being balanced by a preponderance of orthodox Catholics among
the people. Suddenly, above the angry noise of dispute which filled the
church, a clear voice, as of a child, was heard to pronounce distinctly
three times over the words, _Ambrose is Bishop_. The _nolo episcopari_
of the young governor, vigorously expressed, and emphasised, according
to legend, by his flight from the city, nothing availed to save him from
the dignity which the unanimous will of the people now forced upon him,
and Ambrose, as yet unbaptized, was made Bishop of Milan. Whether the
apparent finger of Providence had been directed by some hidden
terrestrial agency, it is ungrateful to inquire. Ambrose, in deserting
the service of the decaying Empire for the government of the
metropolitan See of Lombardy, had undoubtedly found the right field for
his mighty energies. He was a great Christian, a man of profound
doctrine, of pure life and loftiest spiritual qualities. He was also the
most able of statesmen. None knew so well the power of this new polity
of the Christian Church amid the struggling confusion of forces in the
moribund Empire. He became paramount with his pupil, the young Emperor
Gratian, and used his influence to stamp mercilessly upon the last
embers of Paganism, overthrowing with unsparing arguments all the pleas
of the patrician Symmachus and the Conservative party in the Roman
Senate in favour of the preservation of the stately faith and customs of
their forefathers. The doctrinal unity of the Church itself was his next
great task. The Arian heresy was, as we have seen, strongly entrenched
in the palace of the Empress and her son, Valentinian II. Nevertheless,
Ambrose decreed a uniform orthodox worship in all the numerous churches
in the city. Justina protested, and demanded the use of the New Basilica
within the walls—the principal church in fact—for the Arians. This being
refused, she ordered the bishop to give up the Basilica Porciana,
outside the city. Ambrose meekly offered her his life and all his
possessions, everything except what she wanted, the church. “A temple of
God could not be given up by a priest.” Temporal arms were then moved
against him. But all the forces of the Empire together would have been
helpless against the martyr spirit of the Bishop. The Cathedral was his
fortress, and there he entrenched himself in the strength of his
holiness, surrounded by excited multitudes, whose ardour he inflamed by
fiery discourses, in which he likened the Empress to Eve bringing ruin
upon Adam, to Jezebel fighting Elijah, Salome destroying John Baptist,
till they vowed to die with him rather than suffer the temporal
authority to prevail over the spiritual. The very soldiers investing the
church, terrified by the dreadful anathemas pronounced upon them, rushed
in, not to do battle against the faithful, but to pray with them. For
days the people continued in the church with the Bishop, and on this
occasion, St. Augustine says, ‘It was first instituted that after the
manner of the Eastern Churches, hymns and psalms should be sung, lest
the people should faint through the weariness of sorrow’—a famous
evidence of the fact that St. Ambrose was the first to introduce the use
of music into the services of the Western Church.

It is interesting to note in the midst of that vast crowd of now
nameless and forgotten individuals a figure well known to all times
since, the small quiet African mother, Monica, who had followed her son
across the terrible winter seas, resolved in her invincible spirit to
guide his seeking soul into the haven of the true faith. And Augustine
himself, the young professor just appointed to the chair of rhetoric in
Milan, must have been present too, gazing upon the surprising scene of
this persecuted but dauntless pastor and his devoted flock. Every
vestige of the _basilica nova intramurana_, where the great struggle
took place, is now long gone. But its place is still the place of
Milan’s Cathedral, the great Gothic Duomo of later times. And the
episcopal palace of to-day occupies the same site—or near it—of the
dwelling of Ambrose, where Augustine, his heart swelling with eager
questions, would often enter uninvited, as all might freely do, and
watch the holy man in silence, restrained from speaking by the fear of
disturbing him as he sat reading in his moments of leisure and preparing
himself to expound to the people.

But it would be vain to seek to-day even for the place of that
fourth-century house upon the walls—Maximian’s walls—where Augustine
lodged with his mother and the marvellous boy Adeodatus, his son, fated
so early to die. Or for the little garden where he hid himself one day,
even from his faithful follower Alypius, and amid the throes of a
terrible spiritual anguish heard the unseen child’s voice chanting in
pure, untroubled tones, ‘_Take up and read, take up and read_,’ and
opening the volume of the Apostle saw the words which lifted his soul
out of the torture of conflicting desire into the serenity of faith at
last. Nor is any trace left of the original baptistery for males, on the
south side of the Cathedral, where the subsequent baptism of Augustine,
Adeodatus and Alypius, at the hands of Ambrose, was in all probability
performed. The place is occupied now by the Church of San Gottardo.

The conflict between Empress and Bishop was won by Ambrose. Justina’s
efforts to depose him and set up a new bishop were completely frustrated
by his timely discovery of the bodies of the Milanese martyrs, SS.
Gervasio and Protasio, a miraculous event which raised him to an
invincible position in the opinion of all Christendom. The triumph of
the great bishop, though it savours now of bigotry, was of deep and
far-reaching significance. It was the revolt of the new and as yet
hardly tried Church against the ancient imperial authority. It pointed
to the future. It initiated that obstinate and long-continued struggle
between the temporal and spiritual powers which makes the history of the
Middle Ages in Italy. For Milan and for Lombardy it meant more; it was a
protest against the influence of the foreigner, against a strange
domination in thought. The Arian heresy was alien and unnatural to
Italian sentiment; its followers were chiefly among the large population
of Goths settled by this time in Italy. Ambrose, in rallying round him
the masses of the people and conquering the established powers, was in
fact appealing to the elements out of which the Commune of later days
was to develop—to those instincts of liberty and nationality of which
the Mediæval Church was to be the glorious guide and champion.

The later and more famous triumph of Ambrose—when, before the doors of
the same Basilica Nova, he stood, armed only with the insignia of his
sacerdotal office, and barred the entrance of the sanctuary to the
blood-stained Emperor Theodosius, till, awed by his spiritual dignity,
the wearer of the purple sank before the white-robed priest and did
public penance for the massacre of Thessalonica—was another and greater
proof of the ascendency of the ecclesiastical over the imperial power.
But the significance of the scene reaches further, and embraces the
whole sphere of humanity. In standing bishop and kneeling king we see,
not the individuals and their immediate motives, ambitious, despotic,
superstitious, as they may partly have been, not even the struggle of
great transitory interests, but a wider, deeper, more enduring
principle—the recognition of the supremacy of spirit over brute force,
the victory of the Christian ideal of love and pity over the earthly
lusts of blood and revenge, of the religion which adores the helpless
Mother and Child over the deified Force of the ancient creeds.

Ambrose was now the most powerful man in the Empire, ruling the minds of
men by the sheer strength of character and lofty virtue. The Barbarians
in their distant lands testified to the might of his saintliness—this
man who, as a Frankish king asserted with awe, _says to the sun, ‘Stand
still,’ and it stands_. The two young Emperors, Gratian and Valentinian,
were tools in his hands, and Theodosius himself had to acknowledge the
Church in the person of Ambrose as a twin power in the realm. When the
Bishop died in 397, he bequeathed to his successors an episcopal
dominion so strengthened by his powerful personality, and glorified by
the sanctity of his life and doctrine, that it was ever after associated
with his name, and known as the Ambrosian Church. With its numerous and
wealthy dependent bishoprics, its Arch-Pontiff or Pope, its cardinals,
as the chief clergy were called later, and immense hierarchy, its
peculiar liturgy and ritual, this Church was accorded the title of
Holy—_Santa Chiesa_—and acknowledged as self-governing by Gregory the
Great himself.

The Milan of Ambrose and Augustine still belonged in outward aspect to
the imperial past. But a general decay, hastened by exorbitant taxation
and bad administration, was visible at this time throughout North Italy,
where many of the chief towns were, in Ambrose’s own words, _Corpses of
half-ruined cities_. At the opening of the fifth century the simulacrum
of Empire was attacked by the Goths under Alaric (402), and half a
century later (450) Attila, _Flagellum Dei_, passed with his Huns over
the face of Italy, uprooting the useless remains of the ancient world,
as a plough furrows a field for the new sowing. Milan came within his
course, but how deep and extensive was the ruin wrought by him there we
do not know. His was but the first operation in God’s tilling of that
rank soil for the new life it was to bear. In 538 the city suffered a
second and apparently more complete destruction, during the war of
Narses and Belisarius for the recovery of Italy from the Ostrogothic
dynasty established by Theodoric. Milan revolted from the Gothic King
Vitige and allied herself with the Eastern generals. Vitige despatched a
portion of his army, swelled by a host of Burgundians from the
mountains, ancestors, probably, of those Swiss who were to plague the
Milanese in later history. The city was closely invested, and after some
months, deceived in the expectation of succour from Belisarius, she fell
a victim to the revenge of the Goths. The historian Procopius describes
the three hundred thousand slain, the women sold as slaves, the
habitations razed to the ground, and his statement, in spite of obvious
exaggeration, is an indication of the awful havoc and desolation
inflicted upon the still soft, corrupt and luxurious city.

This blow seems to have crushed the vitality of Milan. For centuries she
remained in a weak and depressed condition. During the Lombard
domination, which swept away the brief authority of the Eastern Empire
established by the arms of Narses, her pre-eminence in North Italy was
usurped by Pavia, which Alboin and his successors chose as the capital
of their new realm, now first called _Lombardy_. The broken palaces of
the once imperial metropolis no longer sheltered sovereigns. The Lombard
kings delegated their authority in the city to a governor, whom they
called _Duke_—whence the name _Cordusio_, still used in the centre of
the city, a corruption of Corte Ducis, the palace or judgment-hall of
the Duke—and only approached from time to time to hold a Diet within the
vast melancholy area of her deserted circus. Even the successors of St.
Barnabas and St. Ambrose abandoned her, and transferred the See to
Genoa, where it remained till the next century, diminished in power and
prestige by its exile from the city of the Ambrosian tradition, while
the Roman Pontiffs, throughout the two centuries of Lombard supremacy,
were quietly increasing their influence and making good that claim to
supreme spiritual authority before which the Ambrosian Church was in the
end to succumb.

The return of the episcopal See to Milan indicates some degree of
revival in the city. But two hundred years more were to pass before her
Church resumed its old importance, and Milan her rightful rank in North
Italy. Under Charlemagne, who conquered Desiderio in 774, and created a
so-called Kingdom of Italy, Milan held only the third place among the
metropolitan Sees, yielding precedence after Rome to Ravenna. The
Frankish king, whose great scheme of a restored Roman Empire included a
united Latin Church under the Pope as supreme head, not only exalted the
spiritual authority of Rome over the other Sees, but even endeavoured to
suppress the peculiarities of the Ambrosian liturgy and force Milan into
uniformity with the rest of the Latin Church. He is said to have
descended upon the city and seized all the liturgical books, burning
some and carrying others away into Germany. But even his will was
helpless against the cherished custom of centuries. Some religious men,
so the chronicler declares, succeeded in hiding copies of the books, and
as soon as the Emperor had disappeared, they were unearthed and the old
rites resumed as before.

The political changes of the ninth and tenth centuries favoured the
revival of the Lombard See. With the disruption of Charlemagne’s swollen
empire, and the removal of the temporal support, the spiritual
sovereignty of Rome and the unity of the Church broke down, at least in
practice, and the grand and comprehensive idea of a single rule of
Christendom under the twin sceptres of Emperor and Pope—that inspiration
of great minds in the Middle Ages—failed now, as later, of realisation.
Amid the ungoverned turbulence of the Roman nobles and citizens the
Papacy gradually sank to the lowest depths of corruption and impotence,
and any deference to its authority once paid by the Milanese primates
was soon forgotten.

For a while the Carlovingian kingdom of Italy held together in spite of
constant wars, and under Louis II. Lombardy enjoyed a period of peace
and great prosperity. But after his death in 875, the country, rent by
the struggles of various claimants to the throne, and overrun by Huns
and Saracens, was gradually reduced to a state of chaos, out of which
the power of the feudal barons emerged as the only effective authority.
The Counts and Viscounts, as the imperial ministers were properly
called, lost their authority, or else preserved it as an hereditary and
almost independent right from father to son, fitting themselves as time
went on into the graduated order of the feudal system, which was
extending itself into the whole organisation of society. The one stable
power, that of the Church, based on an inextinguishable tradition,
became paramount in the city, and in virtue of its vast possessions
assumed the temporal as well as the spiritual dominion. By the tenth
century the Archbishops of Milan appear as great feudal princes, the
most powerful in North Italy, and practically independent of the
Emperor. This position was largely due to the spirit and ability of the
two great prelates of the previous century, Angilberto (824-59), and
Ansperto (868-81). Ansperto openly refused the obedience claimed from
him by John VIII. By assembling and presiding over the Diet of the
princes of North Italy at Pavia, which elected Charles the Bald as
successor to Louis II., and afterwards crowning the new monarch, he
arrogated the right of conferring the Crown of Italy independently of
the Papal approval. He appears in this election as a great temporal
prince, leading the North Italian States, and expressing the revolt of
Lombardy against the pretensions of the Pope in the Lateran to the
heritage of the power which once dominated the world from the Capitol.
Throughout the struggles of the next twenty years for the possession of
the throne, Ansperto’s support was always given in opposition to the
Pope. When summoned by John VIII. to a Council at Rome in 879, to answer
for his offences against the Holy See, he shut the door against the
papal legates, so that they were compelled to the undignified proceeding
of shouting the pontiff’s complaint through the keyhole; and he and all
his vast flock, which included, with the suffragan Sees, the whole of
Lombardy, were totally indifferent to the excommunication stammered
against them by the enraged and helpless Pope.

Archbishop Ansperto was the chief restorer of the city as well as of the
Church of Milan. He rebuilt and repaired the broken walls, the buildings
ruined by the barbarians, and by his wise and resolute government gave a
much-needed security to the life and property of the citizens. It was a
greatly increased power which he transmitted to his successors, who
wielded it with the same autocratic spirit. In the confusion of the
Carlovingian break-up, when no one knew who was the rightful sovereign
of the old Lombard kingdom, or who held the prerogative of electing him,
the Archbishops of Milan assumed the part of king-makers, and laid the
Crown, now on the head of an Italian prince, now on that of some heir of
the Carlovingian tradition. The constant aim of the archbishops was to
increase and consolidate their power, and the weakness of the royal
authority gave them their chance. The story of the city in these two
centuries is chiefly composed of the contests of the Primates with the
successive wearers of the Lombard crown, who in their turn endeavoured
to tyrannise over the See by seizing the right to elect its occupant,
and filling it with their own rapacious and arrogant favourites. These
royal appointments were violently opposed by the people, so that the
city was distracted by constant schisms and civil warfare. From 948 to
953 the strife between Adelmano, the choice of the citizens, and
Manasses, an ambitious and intriguing foreign priest, whom Berengarius
had appointed to the See, filled Milan with tumult and bloodshed, during
which the Ambrosian Church was despoiled of much of its treasure. The
election in 953 of a third aspirant, Walperto, to whom the others gave
way, closed at last the miserable war. With the coronation of Otho the
Great (964) in St. Ambrogio, by this archbishop, who had crossed the
Alps in person to summon the German prince to the deliverance of Italy
from the cruel tyranny of Berengarius, a blessed period of peace and
consequent prosperity began for Milan, favourable to the development of
those popular forces in the city—hitherto depressed by constant terror
and insecurity—which were to make her history in the coming centuries.

The peace, however, soon bred in the city a restless vigour which could
find no other vent than war. Under Ariberto d’Intimiano, who was elected
archbishop in 1018, Milan, now restored to undisputed pre-eminence over
her rival Pavia and the rest of the Lombard cities, started upon a
career of conquest. In Ariberto the archiepiscopal pallium cloaked a
potent statesman and warrior, who well knew how to defend that temporal
power which the ecclesiastics of the Middle Ages looked upon as the best
guarantee of their spiritual authority. When the Emperor Henry II., who
followed the Othos, died in 1024, and the uncertainty as to his
successor on the Lombard throne threatened new trouble to Italy,
Ariberto hastened to Germany, and on his sole authority, according to
one chronicler, though others say that he was supported by a party of
Italian magnates, offered the kingdom to Conrad the Salic. Two years
later (1026) he reasserted the right of the Primate of Milan to crown
the King of Italy, by laying the circlet on the new monarch’s brow
within the city itself. At Conrad’s subsequent coronation in Rome as
Emperor, the Archbishop of Milan was the most important of the imposing
company of ecclesiastical princes who attended on the occasion. His
dignified withdrawal from a contest with the Archbishop of Ravenna for
the place of highest honour was followed by a formal recognition of his
primacy in a Papal Bull, while with less self-restraint his vast train
of followers reduced the company of the Ravennese prelate to proper
submission by apostolic blows and knocks in the streets of Rome, amid a
tremendous uproar. Milan’s ecclesiastical superiority to Ravenna and all
other Italian Sees was thus triumphantly settled.

Ariberto’s ambition for the glory and predominance of Milan was well
supported by the people. They followed the militant prelate with
enthusiasm to the subjugation of Pavia, which had refused to acknowledge
Conrad as king (1027), and a little later they made a furious assault
under his command upon the little neighbouring city of Lodi, and forced
its freedom-loving inhabitants to submit to Ariberto’s yoke and accept a
bishop of his choosing. Thus Milan, impelled by the pride and ambition
and necessity of expansion bred of strength and riches, was the first to
provoke that spirit of hatred and revenge among the sister cities of
Lombardy, which could only be expiated by centuries of bloodshed and
sorrow.

But neither leader nor people had any doubt of the righteousness of
their military enterprises, which were indeed invested with a sort of
religious consecration. Ariberto instituted the use of a sacred Car in
times of war, which bore aloft in the midst of the host the tokens of
the Christian Covenant, the Cross and the Altar of Sacrifice, in
sanctifying association with the Vexillum of the city. Round these
emblems of their faith and of their existence as a community the citizen
soldiers would rally, bearing the Car forward to victory with
irresistible enthusiasm in moments of advantage, or defending it with
despairing resolve when defeat threatened. Thus was originated the
_Caroccio_, adopted afterwards by all the Communes of Italy—an exalted
and beautiful idea, which, though often debased by association with
enterprises of greed or revenge, became also the guide and inspiration
of the Lombard peoples in their noble struggle for liberty in the
succeeding centuries.

That struggle was already foreshadowed in Ariberto’s time. The pride of
the Archbishop and the city which he governed soon came into violent
contact with the will of the Emperor. Conrad resented the prelate’s
increasing encroachment upon the royal prerogatives. Besides the
sovereign right of making war, the Archbishop claimed the privilege of
investing the bishops of his jurisdiction and the secular nobles also
with their fiefs. His assumption of autocratic authority provoked a
large party of the lesser nobles, who made an insurrection against him
in 1036, and being defeated and driven out of the city, united with the
aggrieved citizens of Lodi and broke into open warfare. A fierce battle
was fought at Campo Malo, in which Ariberto appears to have been
worsted. The Emperor, regarding the moment as favourable for asserting
his authority, crossed the Alps (1037) to restore peace. But on arriving
in Milan he did not find the humility and submission which he expected,
and offended, or perhaps alarmed, by the haughtiness of the Prince
Prelate and the excited temper of the populace, he retired to Pavia, and
there summoned Ariberto to appear before a Diet, to answer the
accusations of his enemies. The Archbishop obeyed, and without allowing
him time for defence, Conrad commanded his arrest. He was carried to
Piacenza and there kept in captivity. But Conrad had hardly reckoned
with the power which lay behind his great vassal. Instead of accepting
this chastisement with resignation, Milan broke into an uproar of
lamentation at the news of her pastor’s imprisonment. With fastings,
processions and litanies, with oblations, and benefactions to the poor,
the pious citizens hoped to propitiate Heaven on his behalf, while the
more worldly-minded sought to procure his rescue. At last, after two
months, Ariberto himself found a means of escape with the aid of the
Abbess of the great convent of San Sisto in Piacenza. This lady, at the
request of a trusty servant whom the prelate managed to send to her,
despatched to him twenty mules laden with divers kinds of delicate
meats, and ten waggon loads of wine, out of the goodly stores of the
convent. With these provisions Ariberto made a great feast for his
Teuton guards, who soon stupefied themselves with the good wine. The
Milanese chronicler Landolfo describes the scene—‘ ... They became
beyond measure intoxicated—persisting in their potations until the
middle of the night, and each one provoking his neighbour to drink more
and more.... They began to quarrel and threaten one another with rolling
eyes and terrible voices, and then to weep with thick tears pouring down
their faces, and so drunk were they with the wine that they did not know
what they were doing, and their limbs would not serve their office so
that they fell down prostrate. The servants of Ariberto, seeing them in
this plight, were immensely rejoiced, and carrying them away one by one,
laid them out on well prepared couches as if they had been dead men....’
While the Teutons lay thus and ‘snored terribly,’ the prisoner slipped
quietly off to the river Po hard by, where he found a ship, sent by the
Abbess, in readiness for him. Into this he entered, and soon reached
Milan in safety, while his guards, awaking, half stupid from their
drunken slumbers, went seeking for him everywhere with hideous clamour.

The fugitive was soon followed by the irate Emperor, with a great army,
and Milan was closely besieged. Mighty deeds of valour were performed on
either side, according to the Milanese chroniclers. But all the efforts
of the great Emperor and his hosts were unavailing against the city,
defended by its ancient Roman walls and by an enormous population. After
a few months he raised the siege, and endeavoured with equal futility to
overthrow Ariberto by deposing him and setting up another archbishop.
His persecution of Milan provoked, the chroniclers tell us, a signal
manifestation of the Divine wrath, in the person of St. Ambrose himself,
who appeared one day in the midst of terrible thunder and lightning as
the Emperor was listening to the Mass, and caused such consternation
among those present that many fell down dead. Thus, worsted by
supernatural as well as earthly means, Conrad retired to Suabia in 1038,
leaving the Archbishop master of the situation, and to all intents and
purposes potentate of Lombardy.

But this crowning height to which Ariberto had brought the See of Milan
was the brink of a signal downfall. The greatest, he was also the last
of the strong ecclesiastical princes of Milan. Silently, steadily during
these last centuries of revived vigour and prosperity a new force had
been developing in the city, and acquiring conscious existence—the
People. The wars of Ariberto’s reign had endowed this force with the
knowledge of arms and a sense of its own power. It was the nameless,
irresistible will of the masses of the citizens which had carried
Ariberto to victory over the Emperor, and this very victory tended to
the undoing of the Archbishop and his order, by weakening the feudal
system with which the episcopal and aristocratic power of Milan was now
inextricably bound up. It had been the part of the Church of St. Ambrose
to give the consecrating impulse and inspiration to the revolt of the
new world against the decaying order of the Roman Empire, and under its
latest representative to lead the city, as we have just seen, to victory
over the Head of feudalism. But now in its turn this great force for
civilisation and humanity was to be corrupted by temporal power and
possession—to renounce its mission as guide and sanctifier, and assume
instead the part of opposition to the vital and progressive elements of
the community. Ariberto and his clergy were, in fact, the
representatives in Milan of feudalism and aristocracy. The hierarchy of
St. Ambrose was composed of the great nobles of the city, in whose
families the high ecclesiastical offices and benefices had became
hereditary possessions. These arch-Priests, arch-Deacons, Cimiliarchs,
Decumani—the Cardinals or Ordinaries, as the highest orders of the
clergy were called—were great feudal magnates, forming the strongest
class of the Milanese nobility. Ranged beneath them in ecclesiastic and
feudal rank were the lesser clergy, just as the secular aristocracy was
divided into the two degrees of Captains—_Capitani_—and their vassals,
called Vavasours—_Valvassori_. Below these came the undistinguished
masses of the people, merchants, artisans, and peasants, mostly serfs,
and all absolutely subjected to the arbitrary government of the nobles.

The first revolt against this system was that already mentioned, which
resulted in the battle of Campo Malo, and arose within the privileged
class itself, being an attempt of the Valvassori and minor clergy to
shake off the heavy yoke of their feudal superiors. But a much more
fatal discord in the community began in 1042, when the whole populace
joined with the discontented Valvassori, and broke out into fierce
rebellion against the nobles. One Lanzone, a noble who had deserted his
own order, was their leader. A civil war raged for many months, filling
the streets with daily tumult and bloodshed, and at last the Archbishop
and the magnates were forced to abandon the city. Invoking the aid of
the nobles in the neighbouring communities, they returned with a strong
army and invested the city. The struggle was waged with hideous ferocity
on both sides, neither giving mercy to prisoners or wounded. The
besiegers built six great strongholds round the walls, commanding the
principal gates, and effectually shutting out all succour of food or
arms. Two long and terrible years went by, till the plight of the
citizens grew desperate. Pallid and lean from famine and sickness, still
they fought on with invincible souls, in the midst of the deserted
palaces and falling towers of this city which, the chronicler tells us,
no longer seemed, as of yore, the seat of noble kings, but rather a
desolate Babylon. At last Lanzone resolved to go to Germany and seek the
help of Conrad’s successor, Henry III. But the Emperor, mindful of his
father’s experience of Milan, would only grant it on condition that his
army should occupy the city, and that the people should swear fealty to
himself. But the new-born democracy, groping its way to liberty through
a thousand obstacles, instinctively rejected these conditions,
preferring its native tyrants to a foreign yoke. Lanzone skilfully used
the fear of imperial interference to persuade the besiegers to agree to
a reconciliation. Peace was concluded, all mutual wrongs being forgiven,
the nobles restored to their homes and possessions, and a share in the
government secured to the people.

The one sacrifice offered upon the altar of this new covenant between
the classes was the leader Lanzone himself, who, at the first
opportunity, was arrested and put to death by the aristocratic party.
But his work was done, and the foundation of the future Republic had
been laid. Archbishop Ariberto, now ill and aged, had taken refuge
during the troubles at Monza, and returned to his own city, only to die
(1045). His career fitly closes with the first signs of the collapse of
the social order which he embodied.




                               CHAPTER II
                             _The Patarini_


      “Dicetur in posterum subjectum Romæ Mediolanum.”—ARNULPHUS.

The revolt of the Milanese people against the nobles was associated with
the great agitation for the reform of the Catholic Church, initiated and
carried on in the eleventh century by S. Giovanni Gualberto, San
Romualdo and his disciple, Peter Damiano, and by the Cluniac monk,
Hildebrand, afterwards Gregory VII. This movement had its political
aspect. The spiritual supremacy to which these men aimed to restore the
dishonoured and discredited Papacy included domination over the temporal
powers. The first step to be accomplished was unity of government within
the Church’s own body, and the suppression of the virtual independence,
based on feudal dominion, of the great metropolitan Sees, Milan, Ravenna
and others outside Italy. Divining with sure instinct where the power of
the future lay, they allied themselves with those democratic forces to
which the Ambrosian Church was now fatally opposed, in a fierce attack
upon the great Lombard See.

Much laxity of discipline prevailed among the higher clergy of Milan,
whose pride and splendour was famous throughout Europe. They lived like
great feudal barons; armed _cap à pie_, they led their vassals forth to
battle, nor in their domestic manners were they more rigid. They were,
moreover, obstinately attached by long custom to the two practices which
the severer spirits in the Church had condemned and fought against for
centuries, simony and marriage, both closely bound up with their feudal
constitution and polity. They stoutly maintained that the ordination of
married men as priests was sanctioned by St. Ambrose himself in his
writings, nor did they demur to the marriage of those already in Orders,
though the sentence of the great Doctor on this point was more doubtful.
In fact, they married with the same unconsciousness of sin as their
untonsured brethren did. The natural consequence was that the offices
and benefices of the Church were bequeathed from father to son, and
tended to become hereditary in certain favoured families. It followed as
inevitably that bishoprics, abbacies and all offices carrying with them
worldly possessions, came to be trafficked in like any other sort of
estates. The investitures of them were granted by the feudal superior
for fixed and regular fees, graduated according to the value of the
office, a practice resulting from the introduction by Charlemagne of the
system of feudal tenure into the ecclesiastical body politic. Thus there
were few among the dignitaries of St. Ambrose who had not paid,
according to the current price, for their spiritual rank and its
accompanying temporalities, and the possession of ecclesiastical
benefices, either to be held or disposed of at will, had become a form
of wealth which, vitiated though its origin might be, was wound in
inextricably with the complicated existence of Milanese society.

It was natural that the successive decrees of the Popes from Clement II.
(1046-1047) onwards against simony and marriage should have been
disregarded in Milan. The renunciation of the benefices which provided
them with a livelihood, and the putting away of the wives and children
to whom they were bound by the ties of innocent and natural affection,
were sacrifices too hard for men whose vocation was rather worldly than
spiritual. Nothing less than a social revolution could overthrow the
rooted customs of the Ambrosian Church.

Such a revolution, in the heaving and unstable eleventh century, was,
however, easily excited. The discontent of the lower orders with the
aristocracy increased as their lately-won privileges generated the
desire for a further share of power, and their particular animus against
the ecclesiastical nobles was strengthened by a deep and widespread
aspiration for religious purity and truth among many of the humblest
people. The agitation against the real and supposed scandals in the
lives of the clergy was taken up with fury in the poorest parts of the
city.

A revolutionary party grew up, which became known among its opponents by
the opprobrious name of _Patarini_, a term used in Milan to denote
heretics, and derived perhaps from _Patari_, rag-sellers, who with their
customers represented the lowest class of the people. And though the aim
of the revolutionists was a social and moral, not a doctrinal, reform,
there probably prevailed much freedom of thought and religious opinion
among them. The heresy of the Catharists—better known under the name of
Albigenses, by which they were called later in the south of France—was
taking wide hold in North Italy at this time. The strange Manichean
ideas of these sectaries, who believed in a dual principle of good and
evil governing the world, must have found ready acceptance in
pessimistic souls who saw the pride and luxury of the great on one side,
and the misery of the oppressed and enslaved masses on the other. Their
ideal of extreme bodily purity, rising to an asceticism which, by
denying the flesh even the mere satisfaction of its needs aimed at the
liberation of the spirit from its thraldom to the Devil by the
self-extinction of the human race, contrasted their lives sharply with
the luxurious habits of the majority of the orthodox clergy, and by
sanctifying hunger and privation, gave a new dignity and self-respect to
the down-trodden poor. Moreover, their stern rejection of all pleasure
and selfish ambition gave them leisure and courage to devote themselves
to the sick and suffering, so that many joined themselves to their
company from the impulse of gratitude. They led in fact the evangelic
life, though their dark and despairing tenets were utterly alien to the
spirit of Christianity. They clung to their peculiar faith with a lofty
enthusiasm which persecution could not subdue.

The confusion of the Catharists, or Catari, with the Patarini probably
arose from the similarity of the names, and the natural tendency of the
orthodox to confuse the different forms of thought outside their own
dogmatic boundaries. The Patarini sympathised with the Catharists only
in their practice of purity and evangelic simplicity of life. There is
little doubt, however, that the Catharists mingled with the poorer
classes of the city whence the Patarini were recruited, and must have
taken advantage of the confusion of ideas resulting from the revolt
against the old customs and authority to spread their doctrines.

Among the Milanese clergy themselves there was a small party zealous for
reform. The first to raise open protest against simony and ‘concubinage’
was one of these, a noble ecclesiastic called Anselmo da Baggio.
Ariberto’s vacant throne had been filled by the appointment of one
Guido, a creature of the Emperor Henry III., who in securing his
election, had partly recovered that sway over Milan which Ariberto had
wrested from Conrad. Guido was a weak man, with an uneasy conscience
himself about simony, since he had paid the usual fee to the emperor as
his feudal superior for the confirmation of his election. Thinking to
rid himself of the troublesome zeal of Anselmo, he procured his election
to the bishopric of Lucca, and thus endowed him with new power. Anselmo
was one of the principal allies and agents of Hildebrand, by whose
influence he was raised later to the papal throne, where, as Alexander
II., he was able to wield all the arms of Rome against his native
Church. Another leader of a more popular class soon rose up to take his
place in Milan, a certain deacon and student of letters named Arialdo.
This man became the soul of the movement. He was joined by Landolfo da
Cotta, one of the highest order of clergy, like Anselmo da Baggio.
Landolfo was a fiery and eloquent speaker, a zealot whose body was
consumed by disease and his soul by enthusiasm. The two went about
preaching in public places and stirring up the poorer classes, and soon
gathered together a formidable following. Invading the churches, they
drove the clergy from the altars, and pursuing them with contumely and
violence, sacked their houses and forced them to sign an engagement to
consort no more with women. The whole city was in an uproar; all the
sons of disorder rushed to join the rioters. Archbishop Guido summoned a
synod of his clergy at a safe distance from the city, and thence
fulminated an anathema against the ringleaders. Arialdo and Landolfo
immediately hastened to Rome to make their complaint before the throne
of Peter (1057). They returned accompanied by the Bishop of Lucca and
Cardinal Hildebrand himself, sent by Pope Stephen X. to examine into the
accusations laid against the Archbishop and his clergy. Their arrival
raised a new and tremendous uproar. The Milanese, deeply jealous of the
ancient episcopal glory and prerogatives of their city, rallied to the
side of their own clergy at this attempt of the Pope to interfere, and
the legates, having hastily and in secret condemned the Archbishop as
simoniacal, and all his practices as abominable, departed, leaving
matters worse than before.

As soon as the Roman attack had been driven off, and the issue appeared
to be confined within the city, the masses again joined Arialdo. The
clamour of bells and trumpets filled the streets and called the people
to assemble in the great Roman theatre, where Arialdo and Landolfo
inflamed their minds to fury by discourses against the clergy. There
were daily riots in the streets. The clergy were supported by the nobles
and by all the peaceable spirits, who, however, had none of the energy
and zeal of their opponents, and soon wearied of the continual disorders
and tumults. The struggle continued with intermittent uproar, and two
years after the mission of Hildebrand, the Pope made a new attempt at
intervention (1059). This time with the Bishop of Lucca there came
instead of Hildebrand, whose soul contained no balm to pour upon angry
passions, the famous Peter Damian. The contemplative of Fonte Avellana,
fierce ascetic as he was, and inflamed with impatience and contempt for
luxurious priests, nevertheless possessed the gift of persuading and
winning men. The difficulties which had defeated the earlier legation
met him also. The Ambrosian clergy stood out for the ancient freedom of
their Church and Diocese and the independence of its jurisdiction.
Enormous crowds gathered round the episcopal palace, thirsting for the
blood of the new representatives of the papal pretensions, and the
popular fury rose to a height when at a great assembly which Peter
convoked to hear his message he placed the Archbishop of Milan on his
left hand, giving the place of pre-eminence on his right to the Bishop
of Lucca, as delegate of the Pope. But the sound of his voice calmed the
tumult as he rose and eloquently proclaimed the glory of the Ambrosian
Church and of the many martyrs who had sanctified it with their blood,
and so skilfully and with such moving words did he reprove its abuses,
that before long Archbishop, dignitaries and the whole immense throng of
clerics, trembling with emotion and penitence, were prostrate before the
altar, acknowledging their sinful practices and vowing to renounce them
for the future. The success of the preacher was confirmed by the
subsequent visit of Archbishop Guido to Rome, in answer to a summons
from Nicholas II. There for the first time in history the Primate of
Milan was constrained to promise obedience to the Pope of Rome, and to
receive from him the symbolic ring of investiture.

This humiliation of their episcopal prince was a bitter grief to the
noble party in Milan. _Veneranda est Roma in Apostolo._ But Milan is not
to be despised in Ambrose, cries Arnolfo the chronicler. ‘It will be
said in future that Milan is subject to Rome.’ And though Rome had won a
lasting advantage, the moral effect of Peter Damian’s mission soon died
out. The old ecclesiastical system and usage was not so easily
overthrown. Two years later (1061) the conflict was resumed with new
fervour by the Patarini, encouraged by the accession of their ally,
Anselmo of Lucca, to the Papal throne. Moreover, a new champion of
reform had arisen in Erlembaldo, a warrior lately returned from a
pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and brother of the now dying Landolfo. Bold
as a lion, breathing out fire and slaughter against the Ambrosians,
Erlembaldo was a formidable foe for the timid Archbishop and his party,
who were inspired by no confidence in the virtue of their cause. He
appeared in the arena of conflict bearing the standard of the Church,
with which he had been solemnly trusted by Pope Alexander, who did not
hesitate to rekindle the flames of civil war in his native city.

The cruel scenes witnessed before were now renewed in Milan. Blood was
spilt in the streets, churches were invaded and sacked, priests dragged
bodily from the altars, their houses burnt, their wives misused. But
when Arialdo and his lieutenant began to condemn the ceremonial usages
peculiar to the Ambrosian Church, the citizens turned against them, and
finding the opposition too strong, the two missionaries appealed to Rome
and procured the excommunication of the Archbishop. This only aggravated
the wrath of the Milanese. The Patarine leaders were abandoned by all
but a few of their most devoted followers, and when Archbishop Guido
appeared before the altar of the Cathedral Church with the Bull of
excommunication in his hands, the fury of the immense assembly knew no
bounds. The reformers were set upon in the sanctuary itself, and Arialdo
was so badly beaten that he was left for dead. Guido, taking advantage
of the momentary turn of the tide in his favour, laid an interdict upon
the city until it should rid itself of Arialdo. The zealot was forced to
fly, and a little later he fell into a snare which had been laid for
him, and was betrayed into the hands of the Archbishop’s niece, lady of
a castle on Lake Maggiore, by whose command he was carried in a boat to
a lonely island and there cruelly done to death.

The cause of reform was thenceforth glorified by the memory and example
of a martyr. Arialdo was shortly afterwards canonised by Pope Alexander.
His loss inflamed his party to new zeal and drew to it a great access of
adherents. Erlembaldo and a priest called Liprando di San Paolo now led
the crusade, carrying it on with such fury of sword and fire that they
became virtual masters of the city. The Archbishop, wearied out by the
endless strife and the insidious attempts of Rome to depose him,
renounced his See, and the nobles, outnumbered by the rioters, abandoned
the disorderly city and sought peace and safety in their castles and
country palaces.

The contest now centred on the election of a new Archbishop. Neither of
the rival claimants put forward by the two parties succeeded in
establishing himself on the episcopal throne. Chaos prevailed in the
Ambrosian Church. Erlembaldo, strengthened by the accession of
Hildebrand as Pope Gregory VII., usurped the whole authority in the city
and throughout the archdiocese. He swept far and wide like an avenging
sword, driving priests from their benefices, and tearing them from the
altars. Half Lombardy cowered under his rude and noisy tyranny, and his
name became a by-word of terror throughout Italy.

But two appalling conflagrations, which followed one another in 1071 and
1073, and laid waste the city, deprived the people of all heart for the
contest with the aristocrats. Moreover, Erlembaldo’s tyranny was
beginning to produce a reaction. The nobles, regaining courage, leagued
together for a great effort to liberate the city from his authority. By
means of promises and gold, they won a large number of the humble
citizens to their side, and at last they appeared one day in force in
the city, seeking their enemy. The populace, awed by their numbers and
magnificent martial array, were little disposed to face them. Followed
by a few only of the most faithful and zealous of the Patarini,
Erlembaldo, mounted upon his war-horse, and in full armour, upholding
the banner of the Roman Church, flung himself into the midst of his
foes, and fell, pierced by a hundred swords.

With his death the war ended. There was none to take his place. The
city, exhausted by the long strife, was glad to rest. The nobles
returned to their homes and their old place in the city, and in spite of
the persecution which they had suffered for twenty years, the Ambrosian
clergy resumed their old practices to a large extent.

Nevertheless, the design of the great Hildebrand was achieved. The
supremacy of Rome had been proclaimed, and acknowledged in the hearing
of the whole world. The prestige of the greatest of the provincial Sees
had suffered a blow from which it never recovered. So much was the
episcopal power of Milan weakened that Gregory VII. was able to subtract
many of its suffragan Sees and join them instead to other archdioceses;
and before the century was over, the victory of the Pope over the
Emperor Henry IV., in the famous quarrel of investitures, obliged the
Ambrosian See to yield temporal as well as spiritual allegiance to the
successors of St. Peter.

And though the Milanese clergy still clung for a while to their wives,
and benefices continued to be bought and sold, these doubtful practices
fell more and more into disrepute. Simoniac ecclesiastics gradually
disappeared. The accusation of this sin was, however, long used by Rome
as a means of gaining further advantages over the See of Milan, or
driving out a prelate approved perhaps by the Emperor and obnoxious to
the papal interests. It was equally useful to the people in making new
encroachments on the privileges of the aristocratic clergy.

The gradual concentration of authority in Rome was greatly assisted by
the influence of the monastic orders, who belonged as bodies to no
particular diocese, but looked to the Pope as their supreme head, and
were little disposed to be submissive to the prelates in whose
jurisdiction a monastery might chance to be. In 1130, Bernard of
Clairvaux and his white-robed monks—who seemed to the people, we are
told, wonderful as angels from heaven—appeared in Milan, and gave an
immense impulse to the monastic movement there. The rise of the
mendicant orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic a century later brought
a vast increase of strength to the Papacy. In Milan, as everywhere, the
friars gained immense influence among the masses of the people. The See
of Milan was by this time completely subjugated. It was greatly
diminished in wealth and importance. The Pope exercised supreme
jurisdiction in the archdiocese, and his legates constantly interfered
in the government, assuming the highest place and authority with the
acquiescence of the Archbishop. Deeply indeed had the See of St. Ambrose
sunk since the days of the great Ariberto!

But the same movement which had defined the position of Rome, had by the
process of strengthening and raising the walls of the fold, thrust an
enormous number of Christians into the doctrinal wilderness outside, and
the Church was now menaced by the great spread and increase of heresy.
Heresy was, in fact, the fatal legacy of Hildebrand’s policy. While the
Papacy, absorbed in its struggles with the Empire, could spare no energy
to check them, the great sect of the Catharists, unhindered by worldly
ambitions, had been quietly growing in numbers and strength, till in the
twelfth century it was become a fully organised Church, divided into
dioceses and governed by its own bishops. These sectarians were now
generally called Patarini; the name of Hildebrand’s old allies had
become synonymous with the enemies of the Church. The deep gulf between
the Catharists and the orthodox Church was crossed by a chain of
religious associations which had sprung up all over Lombardy, in protest
against the luxury and scandalous manners of both clergy and laity, and
were founded, like the original Patarini, upon moral rather than
doctrinal principles. Many of them hovered indeed in thought upon the
vague borderland between orthodoxy and heresy, and were touched by that
Northern difference of religious sentiment which, after many temporary
ebullitions, produced at last the Protestant revolution. In the
thirteenth century fifteen different sects are enumerated in the
city—the Catharists, the Believers of Milan, the Arnaldists, followers
of Arnald of Brescia, the Poor Men of Lombardy, and others that were
mostly local varieties of the same sects. Poverty and humility were, as
their name denotes, the distinctive attributes of the _Poor Men_, while
their doctrine was suspect enough to forbid their adoption into the
Church. The large embrace of Rome succeeded, however, in enfolding
another association of kindred type, the Umiliati, or Humble Ones, which
was destined to become enormously powerful in Milan.

This order is said to have been founded early in the eleventh century by
some Milanese nobles who had been captives in Germany, and who,
converted to serious thoughts by the weariness of confinement, vowed
that on their return they would live a holy and Christian life. It was a
society of men and women, living in their own homes with their families,
but distinguished from their neighbours by humility, industry and
devoutness. A century later, under the influence of St. Bernard, they
formed themselves into a regular order, with a rule obliging them to
strict moral virtue and to the observance of all religious duties. They
devoted themselves especially to the manufacture of woollen stuffs, one
of Milan’s chief industries. Very soon out of the first order a second
was formed, which adopted a monastic life of greater austerity, the men
and women, including many married couples, living side by side in
separate cloisters, and in course of time a third order arose, composed
of men only, who took sacerdotal orders, and were called Canons. Thus
the association, from a kind of religious guild, tended to develop into
a regular order. But its rule had never been fixed or confirmed by any
papal sanction, and it remained for two hundred years practically
independent of Rome. Nor were its doctrines during this time free from
unorthodox thought; we find the Umiliati included in the condemnation of
heretical sects uttered by successive Popes from time to time in the
intervals of their political cares. They shared the virtue of
simplicity, at least, with the various bodies of Poveri who hovered half
in and half out of the pale of Holy Church.

In the latter part of the twelfth century the order—in obedience perhaps
to that widely diffused evangelical spirit which generated the great
Franciscan movement a little later—had been developing and spreading
very extensively. Its votaries went about preaching repentance in the
squares and open places of the different cities, and persuaded numbers
of noble persons, as well as plebeians, to abandon the sins of the world
and the flesh, and to live according to the pious and simple vows of the
order, either in monasteries or in their own homes. Their efforts were
opposed by the bishops and regular clergy, who were disposed to look
upon all zeal as heretical. But Pope Innocent III., recognising their
virtue and their influence on the people, resolved to secure the
somewhat loose orthodoxy of the brethren, and to direct their fervour
and piety to the service of the Church. He extended his favour to them,
and bestowed upon them the doubtful blessing of a formal rule, which,
with the privileges, included the restrictions and severe discipline of
a regular monastic order. This little pleased the Umiliati, and they
made a touching appeal to Innocent’s successor, Honorius III., to
relieve them from their new obligations, bringing forward an ancient
formula, given them, they declared, by St. Bernard, to the observance of
which they had already bound themselves. But the Pope absolved them
against their will from their old vows of obedience and insisted on the
observance of Innocent’s rule.

Thus the death-blow was dealt to the original spirit of the institution.
After a short period of increased fervour and activity, in which they
became the terror of their old spiritual kinsfolk, the heretics, the
order followed the course of most other monastic bodies. Humility and
poverty were exchanged for papal favours and honours, and for rich
possessions, and before long corruption and laxity crept in among the
brethren. The sacerdotal order became the first and most important,
while those who followed the original rule of simplicity, humility and
purity, living in their own homes, were called the Third Order. The
brethren acquired in time great wealth from the woollen industry, which
they continued to pursue, and later on they were largely employed in the
public offices of the city, and especially in its financial concerns.
Thus they gradually became very powerful, and under the tyrannies of the
Visconti and Sforza, provided Milan with many great statesmen. In the
sixteenth century the vast possessions of the order, in the form of
commendas and prebends, etc., were practically owned by a few great
families, and the actual number of the brethren had fallen to less than
a hundred. Cardinal Carlo Borromeo procured the suppression of the
ancient brotherhood in 1570, on the ground of the vices and luxury of
its members. He risked his life by this step, since the degenerate
brethren were not ashamed to employ assassins to attempt the murder of
their spoliator. The possessions of the order were distributed among
other convents, and their principal House, the Brera, which had belonged
to them since the twelfth century, was handed over to the Jesuits.

The desire to define and purify doctrine, and to strengthen the Church,
produced under a series of determined Popes a fierce outburst of
persecution in the thirteenth century. In Milan, where heterodox
opinions were held by many of the most powerful as well as the lesser
citizens, it was the signal for repeated bouts of civil war and constant
struggles between the Pope and the rulers of the city. The introduction
of the Dominicans into Milan in 1220 gave an enormous advantage to the
cause of orthodoxy. As soon as the people saw the Christ-like virtues of
poverty and humility and evangelising ardour, hitherto associated in
their minds only with the condemned Patarini, displayed by these
approved Catholic orders, they followed the Friars with enthusiasm,
careless indeed of doctrine, but believing and trusting those who lived
as they did themselves and mingled with them freely, understanding their
sorrows and needs. It is doubtful whether St. Dominic himself was ever
in Milan, but his famous disciple, Peter of Verona, was sent there in
1232 by the Pope, with full authority to search out and punish heretics.
Peter carried out his mission with merciless zeal. His name, made
terrible by its unsparing use as authority for the infliction of
torments and fiery death, came to be feared throughout Lombardy. So
bitter a hatred did he rouse by his stern interpretation of the awful
word, _not peace but a sword_, that he himself fell a victim to the
weapon of his predilection. On a morning in 1252, as he was returning on
foot with a single companion from Como to Milan, two assassins sprang
out upon him from an ambush and smote him to death with a sword. The
sword, transfixing his skull, is familiar to us all in mediæval and
Renaissance art as the ornament and emblem of the Saintly Inquisitor.

The murder of Peter Martyr was not inspired by heretical revenge alone.
Motives of worldly policy had a share in the deed. The division of
orthodoxy and heresy virtually followed that between the two great
parties in the State, the aristocracy and the people, and the conflict
between them repeated to some extent the great Patarine struggle two
centuries earlier, though now, in the reversal of issues the Patarini
were associated with the aristocrats against Rome. The murder of Peter
was committed at the instigation of some of the nobles. The Archbishop
himself, Fra Leone da Perego, a Franciscan, a man of notable character
and ambition, who hated Peter, both as the agent of papal arrogance and
usurpation in Milan, and as the exalter of the rival order of the
Dominicans, was possibly not unaware of the plot. But the political
aspect of the doctrinal warfare belongs to an epoch which we have not
yet reached in our story of the city. It is enough to say here that the
murder of Peter of Verona was of the greatest service to the cause of
orthodoxy and the Church. It excited universal execration of the
heretics, and the Dominican, elevated to the ranks of the Martyrs, was
far more powerful with his cloven brow than even when alive. From this
time forward heresy rapidly lost ground, and with the gradual quieting
of party passion, under the domination of a single family in the city,
it lost all political force, and died away in insignificance and
oblivion, till the great reawakening of religious controversy in the
sixteenth century.




                              CHAPTER III
                            _The Free City_


               “... Venne il dì nostro
               O milanesi, e vincere bisogna.”—CARDUCCI.

After the blows and humiliation which the Milanese Church suffered in
the eleventh century from the united attack of Rome and the people, it
was no longer able to stem the popular movement towards freedom.
Throughout the long civil war the incipient Republic had been developing
and gradually limiting, more and more, the domination of the archbishop
and the nobles. This process, which was being repeated everywhere in
Lombardy, was greatly favoured by the weakness of the Empire during the
long minority of Henry IV. The cities, freed from the intervention of a
foreign suzerain, were able to shake off to some extent the rule of
feudalism. The great war waged later by Gregory VII. and his kindred
spirit, the Gran Contessa Matilda, against Henry IV. and the claims of
imperialism, promoted, with the power of the Papacy, the freedom of the
Communes, and showed in these two great elements of the national life
unity of aim, Italy’s best defence against the stranger.

By the end of the eleventh century Milan was, in all its external
relations, practically a free city, owning little more than nominal
allegiance and a ceremonious reverence to the Emperor, and allying
herself now with him, now with his resolute foe Matilda, or defying the
one and the other, as it pleased her best. Within the community itself
the principle of popular freedom and representation was recognised in
the government, and by means of constant insurrections the lower orders
had forced the nobles to recognise their rights. The Commune, whose
birth historians have dated from the great revolution of 1066 when
Lanzone kept Archbishop Ariberto and the nobles in exile for three
years, was now in full being. The institution about this time of
elective magistrates, whose title of _Consuls_ revived the old Latin
tradition of the city, marks the emancipation of the young Republic from
the archiepiscopal despotism. But the share of the ordinary citizens in
the privileges of this Constitution was still much restricted. The
Consuls appear to have been chosen exclusively at first from the higher
class, whose hereditary habit of authority fitted them to govern, and
under a constitutional form these officials tended to repeat the old
aristocratic oligarchy. But the nobles had no longer any legal support
in their attempts to tyrannise, and the whole system of government was
in a state of flux, and subjected to ceaseless modifications and change
by the continual revolts of the people, who, by the simple force of
numbers, made their strength felt, and vindicated their growing
pretensions to a larger part in the affairs of their city.

The same vitality which had won Milan her own freedom impelled her to
the oppression of the weaker communities around her. Her first
fulfilment of this tragic law of progress was the destruction of her
neighbour, Lodi, a strong and flourishing community, whose rivalry was a
constant menace to her own trade and prosperity. There was a
long-standing hatred between the two cities. The times lent abundant
pretext to the Communes to make war upon one another. The quarrel
between Empire and Church entangled them all in its immense web. Each,
in embracing the one or the other cause, was guided by its local
sympathies and antipathies, and reflected the general strife on a
smaller scale in its relations with its neighbours.

In 1111, Milan, ally of the Church, scarcely waiting till Lodi’s
protector, the Emperor Henry V., had turned his back for the time on
Lombardy, attacked the smaller city in full force, and ruined it to the
foundations. The miserable inhabitants, sternly forbidden to rebuild
their old homes, made poor little hamlets in which to shelter themselves
in the vicinity, and there dragged on a poverty-stricken existence under
the oppressive yoke of their conquerors, who jealously deprived them of
every means of recovery. Yet the wonderful vitality which animated these
young Italian communities preserved Lodi from utter despair, and
smouldered in her, ready to burst out in revolt on the first
opportunity.

Milan’s next enterprise was the subjugation of Como, which was fast
developing into a rich and powerful community, strong in the possession
of a lake navy. That city, however, resisted with great vigour,
retaliating with frequent success upon her aggressors, and before she
was finally subdued the war dragged on for ten years. Nearly all the
North Italian cities united with Milan against her, and she was finally
captured and burnt down in 1127, and her inhabitants compelled to swear
fealty to Milan. During the quarrel for the Empire between Lothair and
Conrad, after the death of Henry V., and the preoccupation of each of
those monarchs in turn with the affairs of Germany, the great Lombard
city pursued her sovereign way unchecked. Pavia, the old royal city, and
her chief rival, whose subjugation was to cost Milan yet three centuries
of almost ceaseless warfare, now felt, as often before, the strength of
her arm, and was compelled to bow to her will in the general councils of
Lombardy, and, with powerful Cremona and the rest of North Italy, to
follow her lead.

But the aggressive and tyrannic conduct of the great city was preparing
for her an awful day of retribution. In 1152, the death of the Emperor
Conrad and the election of his nephew, Frederick Barbarossa, opened a
new era for Italy. The young monarch, half barbarian, half Paladin, was
resolved to restore the power of the Empire in Italy. The first step
towards this end was the reduction of the chief vassal, Milan, to the
obedience which she had so long forgotten. Her sins against her
neighbours gave him a pretext. One day, at a Diet at Constance (1153),
two citizens of Lodi, bearing heavy crosses upon their shoulders, to
signify the grievous afflictions which Milan had put upon their
community, entered the hall, and kneeling before the Emperor, besought
his protection and help. Frederick, having listened to their tale, swore
to punish their arrogant and usurping foe. He straightway despatched an
envoy, named Sicherius, to the Milanese, commanding them to cease from
oppressing Lodi. But so little was the distant power of the Empire
feared, in comparison with that of the great Lombard city near at hand,
that when the two Lodigiani, who had undertaken their mission without
the knowledge of their fellow-citizens, returned home, and proclaimed
the benevolent intentions of the new monarch, the people were
inexpressibly dismayed. With woeful countenances they execrated the
‘most stupid men’ who had brought them into this plight, and when
Sicherius appeared shortly after, they entreated him to abandon his
journey, lest he should bring the vengeance of Milan upon them. The
envoy, however, not daring to disobey the imperial mandate, proceeded on
his way, and presented his letters in Milan. The Consuls read them,
flung them on the ground, and stamped them under foot, imperial seal and
all, with fury and contempt. Sicherius himself escaped with difficulty
from their hands. Returning to Lodi, he told his tale, and the unhappy
citizens prepared themselves for immediate ruin.

But Milan, having recovered calmness and begun to contemplate her rash
act with some trepidation, spared them for the time, and awaited the
development of events. This was not slow. Frederick, deeply offended,
descended upon Lombardy in the following year, with an enormous host,
fully resolved to humble the arrogant Milanese. He held a great Diet at
Roncaglia. Hither with the rest of the princes and magnates of Italy
came the Consuls of Milan, and offered all the ceremonial tokens of
submission and reverence. But the impossibility of reconciling the
differences between the monarch and the Republic quickly became evident.
Milan utterly refused to release Lodi and Como from her rule. The
Emperor soon proceeded to open hostility against the city. But he found
his task no light one. Milan’s sister communities were still withheld by
fear from lending aid to her foe, whose glittering show of authority
they held for transitory and insubstantial. Even Lodi was only persuaded
with difficulty to forswear her forced oath of fealty to her oppressor
and give credence to Frederick’s promises of protection. Her diffidence
was well justified. Frederick contented himself with besieging and
destroying Milan’s faithful ally, Tortona, capturing a few outlying
castles and laying waste her territory, and then, intent on compelling
Pope Hadrian to confirm his election by crowning him in Rome, he passed
on southwards (1155). The defiant Milanese immediately proceeded to
rebuild Tortona and to wage fierce war with the Pavesi, who, true to
their traditions, had given enthusiastic obedience to the new
representative of the Empire. Meanwhile Frederick, having received the
imperial diadem, made his way back through the eastern parts of Italy,
translating his heroic aspirations into a reality of fire and blood and
spoliation, and finally, having exhausted his treasury, returned into
Germany. His unlucky protégés of Lodi were abandoned to the mercy of
their enemies. Their villages were surprised and captured by the
Milanese, and the people compelled to flee in the darkness of night.
‘Who, seeing the women stumbling along the way, with their little ones,
some in their arms, some clinging to their garments, some falling behind
wailing—who seeing them fall into the ditches in the darkness and the
rain, would not have been sad and moved to compassion? Who would not
have been melted into tears?’ cries the chronicler Morena. Many died
from the hardships which they suffered, and the rest took refuge in
hamlets and in friendly Cremona. For the second time the Milanese
destroyed their homes and razed their city to the ground.

The other allies of the Emperor also suffered the vengeance of the
arrogant city. Novara and Pavia and other communes had to lament defeat
and devastation. Thus Milan prepared for the new coming of the Emperor,
who, all well knew, was but biding his time and gathering strength for
the work of punishment. In 1158 he crossed the Alps again, followed by a
mighty host of vassals. He proceeded directly against Milan. The
citizens, who had fortified themselves during his absence with an
immense fosse and huge earthworks which enclosed a much wider circuit
than the old walls, calmly awaited his attack. With his company of
tributary kings and princes and archbishops, the Emperor sat down with
all solemn preparation round the city. To each gate was allotted a
prince in command of an army. Seeing the magnificent array and the
determined purpose of the invader, Milan’s fickle allies, one and all,
sent their forces to join him, anxious to propitiate the stronger party,
and not unwilling to strike a blow at their domineering leader. No less
than a hundred thousand fighting-men surrounded the city. Milan was
confronted with the fate which she had pitilessly inflicted on others.
Struck by sudden dismay, or persuaded by treacherous counsels, she had
hardly endured the siege for a month before she surrendered and humbled
herself to acknowledge the supremacy of the Emperor. Satisfied with her
prompt submission, Frederick confined his revenge to the exaction of his
full imperial rights, a penalty grievous enough to a community so long
accustomed to complete freedom. She was compelled to take the oath of
fealty to the Emperor, to restore to him the _regalia_—which consisted
chiefly of the produce of certain taxes—to renounce all pretensions of
sovereignty over Lodi and Como, and to accept an imperial legate as her
supreme magistrate.

Frederick’s victory was, however, little more than a mockery. Milan’s
vitality and spirit of independence were too strong to be so easily
subdued. As soon as the Emperor had passed on to another part of Italy,
she boldly broke the newly-established peace and assaulted the German
garrisons left behind in Lombardy. Her example fired many of the other
cities to violate the obedience which they had sworn to the Emperor, and
the whole of North Italy was soon in arms again. Too rashly, however,
had the Milanese disregarded the nature of him whom they were defying.
Vowing to accomplish his purpose without mercy this time, Frederick
hastened back. Before attacking Milan again, he encamped before her
devoted ally, the small city of Crema, which, after a siege conducted
with barbarous ferocity, he captured and burnt. Still delaying his
vengeance on the chief offender, he spent two years in laying waste the
Milanese territory and capturing her castles, and having effectually
destroyed her sources of supply, he sat down once more (1161) before the
city marked by his implacable will for destruction.

The siege lasted for seven months. No noble deeds of valour and chivalry
distinguished the German Paladin’s emprise; he accomplished his work by
the slow and cruel hand of famine. Every gate was closely blockaded, and
all compassionate bearers of food from outside to the starving people
were almost without exception captured, and either ruthlessly scourged
or maimed of the right hand. Frederick showed the besieged none of the
respect due to gallant foes. He strung up his prisoners on gallows,
nobles and plebeians alike, in the view of their kinsfolk and friends
within, or sent them back sightless into the city. Within the walls,
hunger reached such a pitch that in their madness husbands and wives,
fathers and sons, turned upon one another. The hideous selfishness of
bodily need disfigured the gaunt faces in the streets, while the
spectacle of the mutilated wretches who had passed through the Emperor’s
hands, breathed into all hearts dreadful apprehensions of their future
fate. In their despair the people cried out for surrender, and at last
the Consuls, aware of the inflexibility of the foe, and fearing that to
resist longer was to sacrifice the entire people to the extremity of his
vengeance, threw themselves upon the mercy of the Emperor, and
surrendered the city at discretion (1162).

The scenes which follow paint vividly for us the tragedy of the great
city’s downfall. The magnitude of the punishment which Frederick meted
out to Milan invests him with a kind of sublimity. This was his
opportunity to deliver a blow which should resound to the four corners
of the earth, and accomplish, once for all, by the horror of its mere
narration, the subjugation of the rest of rebellious Lombardy. None knew
better than this mediæval monarch how to surround his revenge with all
those awful aspects and illusions of terror that impress the minds of
men. Day after day, processions of citizens, with bowed heads, and ropes
round their necks, presented themselves before him at his command, as he
sat enthroned in state in rebuilt Lodi, the Empress Beatrice at his
side, his vassal kings and princes on either hand, and still the doom of
the city remained unspoken. The eight Consuls—some of the noblest
patricians of Milan—came, holding their naked swords in their right
hands, and swore to do the will of the Conqueror. Next appeared three
hundred cavaliers, and kissing the Emperor’s foot, delivered up to him
the Milanese standards; while to Mastro Guitelmo, a man much revered by
his fellow-citizens, was committed the bitter charge of laying the keys
at his feet. Still another mark of humiliation was demanded of them, and
a day or two later came the Sacred Car itself, with the banner of the
Cross, and all the most venerable insignia of the Republic, to be
surrendered for the completion of Milan’s shame.

Then at last the voice from the throne spoke, commanding that beside
every gate of the city the fosse should be filled up and the walls
destroyed, so that he might march in in triumph. Milan—who for centuries
had proudly claimed the right of keeping all sovereigns excluded from
the enclosure of her walls—was now herself to lay low her defences to
admit a victorious monarch. A few days later Frederick made his entrance
with his army over the ruined walls, and the dreadful fiat went forth,
dooming the great city to complete destruction. The inhabitants were
ordered to quit their homes, taking with them what they could carry. No
entreaty, no tears, even of his own followers, could move Frederick’s
resolve. The piteous spectacle of the outcast people, huddled in masses
outside the walls in the bitter cold of March, homeless, not knowing
where to go, and uttering loud lamentations, could not change his
inexorable purpose. With an extremity of cruelty he committed the work
of ruin to Milan’s neighbours and bitterest foes—the men of Lodi, Pavia,
Novara, Como, Cremona—all burning to retaliate a thousand wrongs. They
threw themselves with fury upon the doomed buildings, each community
satiating its vengeance on the quarter facing towards its own city. In a
very few days an incredible amount of destruction was wrought. But it
was the work of months to raze to the ground the towers, the fine
palaces and public buildings, many of them surviving from the days of
the Roman Empire, and the crowded habitations of a vast population. The
churches and religious houses alone were spared, and for a while the
campanile of the Cathedral, a tower of admirable beauty and height,
which had not its like, they say, in all Italy, still rose untouched
above the ruins, a beacon of consolation to the despairing people. But
at last, the implacable decree of the conqueror pronounced its sentence,
and that, too, fell. Finally not more than a fifth part of the fair
city, which men called the flower of Italy—the May City—was left
standing.

From the spectacle of burning Milan, which he watched with his own eyes,
the magnanimous Avenger passed on with his Empress to celebrate the
Feast of Olives at Pavia! Frederick was now the dread of all Italy. The
trembling cities of Lombardy crept to his feet and kissed them. The
crown of Italy, hitherto withheld from him and now conceded by fear, was
set upon his head. As for the Milanese, crowded in the poor villages and
suburbs around their ruined city, and barely able to exist, they were
fain to accept any conditions which he imposed.

But the great Emperor’s fortunes had reached the flood, and the turn was
at hand. To have made his triumph enduring he must have exterminated all
Lombardy. While the Milanese people breathed, the Republic lived in
spirit, only awaiting the least relief from the pressure of the
conqueror to take substance once again. And now that its sins and
arrogance had been wiped out by such an awful expiation, the hatred and
jealousy of the sister Communes changed to compassion. The deep roots of
a common nationality began to stir. Moreover, all were enslaved alike,
all groaned together under the intolerable oppression of the imperial
officers who had been substituted for their old system of
self-government. ‘They who had been used to live without restraint at
ease and in liberty, and to dispose of their own affairs according to
their will, held this bondage as the deepest shame, saying among
themselves that it was better to die than to suffer such shame, such
dishonour,’ writes Morena. Ground down with grievous and irregular
taxation, their noblest citizens flung as hostages into the governors’
dungeons, their industry and commerce strangled, they began to regard
war even with the terrible Barbarossa as preferable to this degradation
and slow ruin. Their spirit of revolt was encouraged by that great
counterbalancing power to the Empire, the Papacy, which after a period
of schism and depression was lifting its head once more. In Alexander
III., now completely victorious over the rival Pope Victor, nominated by
Barbarossa, the Communes found that inspiration and direction which it
was Rome’s traditional part to give to the cause of freedom and
nationality. The papal excommunication laid upon their oppressor gave
the consecration of a religious cause to rebellion. Fomented by secret
emissaries from Rome, the movement grew and gathered head. Disturbances
broke out everywhere in North Italy, and culminated in a meeting of
envoys from five Communes—Brescia, Bergamo, Cremona, Mantua,
Ferrara—with the delegates of Milan at a convent near Bergamo (1167),
and the formation of a defensive alliance, which was to become the
famous Lombard League. The first thing resolved on by the allies was the
rebuilding of Milan and the protection of the city from every foe until
she should grow strong enough to defend herself. A week or two later the
unhappy Milanese, huddling together in their wretched hovels, and
momentarily expecting a second destruction from their old enemies of
Pavia, were rejoiced at the sight of the horsemen of Bergamo, with their
banner displayed, riding swiftly to their succour. Troops from the other
friendly cities followed. The Milanese were solemnly conducted into
their ruined city on the 27th April 1167, and the work of restoration
began. With marvellous rapidity new walls and dwellings grew up.
Gathering confidence and strength every day, the League soon broke into
active hostility against those communities which remained faithful to
the Emperor, and the castles occupied by his garrisons. Lodi was
compelled by force to join the new fellowship. Fresh accessions came
continually, and by the end of the following year the League numbered
twenty-three cities, all sworn to resist the usurpations of the emperor
with the sword. Pavia, almost alone, remained aloof, faithful to her
hate of Milan.

Frederick, returning hastily from a campaign against the Pope, found his
castles captured, Milan re-risen defiant from her ashes, and all North
Italy armed against him. The Emperor was not equal to this new
situation. His former triumph had, in fact, only been achieved by the
aid of a part of the cities themselves, and his German levies,
diminished by fighting and pestilence, were powerless to contend with a
vast hostile combination of all together. His army and his very person
were in utmost peril. There was one way only of salvation for
him—retreat. In a manner very different to the majesty of his coming,
with furtive haste, unknown even to his allies, he stole back to Germany
early in 1168.

Six years passed before the Emperor felt himself strong enough to
confront his rebellious vassals again. In his prolonged absence the
Lombard League had acquired mighty strength. Milan had arisen from her
chastening of shame and sorrow stronger and more honourable than before.
Renouncing her old vexatious claims upon her smaller neighbours, she now
contented herself with the dignity of leadership among the Communes. The
League gathered itself together to meet the new onslaught of Barbarossa,
and though he spread terror and desolation throughout the land, his
effort to subdue the steady resistance of the cities was fruitless. His
purpose was contrary to the laws of nature, and the stars in their
courses fought against him. Pavia, Como and the Marquis of Montferrat
supported him alone of all North Italy. In May 1176, impatient to strike
a crushing blow against the rebels, Frederick was marching with new
reinforcements from Germany to join his Lombard allies when, a few miles
from Milan, between Busto Arsizio and Legnano, he encountered the
Milanese army, which had come forth with the Sacred Car in its midst to
stay his progress. A great battle took place. Driven back at first by
the Teuton cavalry, the Republican soldiers, who had taken a desperate
vow to conquer or to die, rallied around the Caroccio, and fought with
such obstinate courage that they beat back every assault of the foe, and
at last, with a sudden rush, utterly routed them and drove them into
flight. The slain, the captives, and the fugitives drowned in the Ticino
could not be numbered. The monarch’s treasure-chest fell into the hands
of the victors, and a more precious booty still, his shield, his banner
and his lance. His very person was missing after the battle, and the
Empress, waiting in the Castle of Baradello, clothed herself in black
and mourned him for dead. He had, however, escaped in safety, and a few
days later made his way to Pavia.

The splendid victory of Legnano decided once and for all the fate of
Lombardy. Frederick realised at last the strength of the despised
citizen forces, and condescended to seek for peace. In the following
year (1177) at Venice was held that famous meeting of Pope, Emperor and
the Consuls of the Lombard Communes, at which legend and art express the
humiliation of the invader and the triumph of Italy, by picturing the
monarch prostrate beneath the foot of the Pope. A truce of six years was
agreed upon at this Congress, and at the end of that period the famous
Peace of Constance (1183) finally confirmed to the cities all the
privileges for which they had so nobly fought. The right of
self-government, of war and peace, the possession of the regalia, with
other minor prerogatives, were secured to them in perpetuity, and the
only dues to be paid by them to the Emperor were a ceremonial fealty, an
annual tribute, certain supplies when he visited the country in person,
and the acceptance of his legate as the ultimate judge in the courts of
judicature.

Thus did Lombardy win freedom. For reborn Milan, her new position and
dignity was signalised in 1186 by the appearance of her late foe and
oppressor in the character of a gracious guest, and the celebration of
the marriage of his son, Henry, King of the Romans, with Constance of
Sicily, in the basilica of St. Ambrogio. But the narrow crooked streets
that had grown hastily up around the churches, and the few surviving
fragments from the destruction of 1162, were no image of the imperial
Milan of the past, nor did the fair words and mutual promises of
friendship which passed between Frederick and the citizens express the
real feelings of either party. When, sick at the failure of his worldly
projects, the yet vigorous warrior turned his ambition to that holier
enterprise, the conquest of the Sepulchre of Christ, and leaping one hot
day into an insignificant stream in Syria, was drowned in its shallow
flow, all Milan broke into rejoicing. Nor was there ever kindness
between the Republic and his descendants. The Milanese consistently
opposed and thwarted the policy of Henry VI., and after his early death
did their utmost to depress the House of Suabia by warmly supporting
Otho IV. against the interests of Henry’s infant son Frederick.

During the reign of Otho, while the political field was divided between
him and the young Suabian prince, the disputed imperial authority had no
power to harm, and Milan was free to resume the interrupted process of
development and expansion. As before, this process was not a peaceful
one. The subsidence of the Teutonic flood had left behind bitter dregs
in Lombardy in the shape of new causes of feud and animosity between
individual Communes. Relieved from the pressure of Frederick’s tyranny,
the cities readjusted themselves on the lines of their former divisions.
The Lombard League broke up into warring elements, and the restless land
fermented with a cruel internecine strife.

[Illustration: ATRIUM OF ST. AMBROGIO]

But when, some years later, Frederick II., grown to manhood, had cast
off the bondage in which the Pope had fettered his youth, and seated on
the imperial throne proved himself indeed _the third blast of Suabia_,
heir in spirit as in blood of his mighty grandsire, the Communes proved
true to one another, and to the newly threatened cause of freedom, and
the great Lombard League, with Milan at its head, sprang to life again
to face the tyrant. During the long and desolating wars which
Frederick’s ambition inflicted upon North Italy, Milan steadfastly
fought against him, even when most of her fellows had been induced by
fear or self-interest to desert the good cause. Late in 1237 her army,
which had marched to the aid of the Brescians, was surprised by the
imperial host at Cortenuova and suffered a crushing defeat. Multitudes
of her soldiers perished, and the Sacred Car itself, stuck fast in
morasses, had to be abandoned in the retreat. Its defenders were able,
however, to save the Cross and Banner, and break the car to pieces.
Frederick’s exultation over these fragments, upon which he bound the
captive Podestà of Milan, Pietro Tiepolo, son of the Doge of Venice, and
dragged him, in imitation of a Roman triumph, through the streets of
Cremona, is a measure of the importance which he attached to his victory
over the Lombard city.

With the defeat of Cortenuova the cause of the Communes seemed lost. All
trembled beneath the heel of the conqueror, save Milan and the ‘lioness’
Brescia, and one or two others. To the Emperor’s summons to surrender at
discretion the Milanese returned messages of defiance. They had the
support of the Pope, whose emissaries, the mendicant friars, mingled
everywhere with the masses of the people, exhorting them to resistance.
In 1239, Gregory proclaimed a crusade against the oppressor, whose
destruction thus became a sacred obligation upon the faithful. The Cross
and the Sceptre, irreconcilable emblems, now confronted each other with
a clear and definite issue.

A year and a half passed after Cortenuova before Frederick actually
invaded the Milanese territory. The Republic, heartened by the
magnificent example of Brescia, whose successful resistance to a nine
months’ siege had delayed the Emperor’s designs against the chief city
and greatly dimmed his military glory, went boldly forth to meet him. A
noble of gigantic stature, named Ottobello da Mandello, towering in his
mail of proof over friends and foes alike, led the citizen knights
undauntedly against Frederick’s Saracen troops from Sicily, whose dark
faces and infidel garb, joined to ferocious courage, made them a name of
terror throughout Italy. With the Milanese fought Gregorio da
Montelungo, papal legate, and the Franciscan Fra Leone da Perego,
afterwards Archbishop of Milan, besides a great number of friars, Minor,
Preaching and Umiliati, _who not only, girding themselves with swords
and putting on helmets, displayed the false image of soldiers_, but also
excited the citizens to the conflict by promising absolution to all who
offended the person of the Emperor or of any of his followers, as
Frederick himself complained in a letter to the King of England. No
regular pitched battle, however, took place. The Republicans fought with
the stratagem of those attacked in their own country, and by cunningly
entangling the enemy amid their streams and canals, opening dams and
loosing the waters upon him, plunging him into hidden pitfalls, and
surprising him with sudden attacks in his most embarrassed moments,
drove him by the aid of sword and flood out of their territory.

Six years later (1245) the Emperor again invaded the Milanese country,
which in the meanwhile had been laid bare by a desolating war of several
years with his ally, Pavia. But fortune was still against him. His son
Enzo, newly created King of Sardinia, encountering a citizen force one
day, ventured himself too boldly in single combat with a Republican
knight, and was overthrown and made prisoner. Frederick, having obtained
his release, withdrew his army, and made no further attempt to subdue
the great Lombard city.

Thus was Milan’s account with the House of Suabia closed for ever. With
the failure of Frederick’s fortunes and his death in 1250 was
extinguished the last appearance of that great mediæval idea—the Holy
Roman Empire—as a dangerous element in Italian politics. The imperial
tradition might linger on and cause a temporary disturbance from time to
time in the peninsula, influencing the vicissitudes of its internal
quarrels, but it had no longer power to revolutionise or molest the
settled constitution of the free Lombard Communes. The mediæval triumph
of Italy over the foreigner was accomplished. In the course of the last
two centuries, Milan, in whose development is mirrored that of all
Lombardy, had completely asserted and defined her nationality. In her
Church, in her constitution, law and sentiment, she was now one at last
with the rest of Italy. It remained for her, leader in the long struggle
now happily determined, to produce in the epoch of Strong Men which was
about to succeed the epoch of the People, the man strong enough to
overthrow all rivals and to weld the many independent cities and States
of the peninsula into a united Italy under an Italian king. How she
tried to do this and failed will be seen later.




                               CHAPTER IV
                         _The Reign of Faction_


        “Factions alone are the cause of our great ills.”—PRATO.

So wrote a Milanese chronicler in the sixteenth century. Had the people
but one mind, he adds, assuredly no city would be more pleasant and
fortunate than theirs. His complaint holds equally good for the
thirteenth century. The presence of a foreign invader did indeed produce
a temporary union of heart and hand, and so far the earlier generations
show a noble contrast to their descendants of three hundred years later.
But even while Frederick II. was still in the land, and in response to
opportunities of selfish advantage offered by alliance with him, there
were constant defections from the League, and we find the whole of North
Italy seething with the warfare of city against city. After his death,
when the mutual rage and hate was no longer checked by any fear of a
general oppressor, the strife was continued with worse fury under _the
diabolical names of Guelf and Ghibelline_, to use the expression of a
contemporary writer, the divisions between city and city being repeated
within each community itself. The Lombard scene dissolves into a
whirling confusion of fratricidal war, in which beneath the
cross-currents and blind purposes of individual passion and greed, we
may distinguish the two steady principles of the Church and democracy on
the one side, and the aristocratic and feudal element, deriving its
right from the Empire, on the other. In Milan the issue, which had long
before defined itself as a struggle between nobles and people, remains
fairly clear. The plebeians had forced their way more and more into the
government. Their right to share in the election of the Consuls had been
long conceded, and some among them had even taken a place in that august
body. In 1198 they had acquired the strength of union and organisation
by forming themselves into an association calling itself the _Credenza
di Saint Ambrogio_, with elective magistrates and officers of its own,
and a certain share in the government and the revenues of the community.
This body consisted of the lesser trades and guilds, but excluded the
mass of poorer artisans and labourers. The merchants, bankers, traders
in wool, etc., had their corporation also; the lesser nobles were banded
in a society called the _Motta_, and the great nobles formed the
_Società dei Gagliardi_, so that no less than four _factions_ existed in
Milan at the opening of the thirteenth century, besides the populace,
which threw its weight on one side or another, with the quick
inconsistency of irresponsibility and impulse. Each faction had its
separate claims and ambitions, but the tendency of the three lower ones
was to unite against the great nobles, who, amid continual uproar and
conflict, were gradually stripped of their exclusive power and
privileges. And in 1258 the last and most sacred enclosure of their
caste was stormed and carried by the Vulgar: a decree of the Republic
threw open the highest offices of the Ambrosian Church to plebeians. The
twelfth and thirteenth centuries were, in fact, the Epoch of the People,
and though all classes, high and low, fought loyally together against
Barbarossa and Frederick II., it was the democratic preponderance in the
city which determined its steady opposition to the imperial pretensions.
The same principle threw Milan on the Guelf side, which she upheld with
ardour in the general Lombard warfare, manifesting her party zeal
especially in a fierce intermittent war with Pavia. That city was as
necessarily Ghibelline, though the party cry on either side was but the
excuse for the efforts of the one to hasten and the other to delay the
inevitable absorption of the lesser by the greater.

With the power of the people was associated as of old the predominance
of papal influence in the city and the depression of the archiepiscopal
See. St. Peter had now completely subjected St. Ambrose. The assumption
of supremacy in temporal as well as spiritual matters on the part of the
Popes, their constant interference by means of legates, the activity of
their innumerable and ubiquitous agents, the friars, had indeed reduced
the seat of Ariberto to comparative insignificance, while the decay of
feudal power and the depression of the aristocracy had robbed it of its
wealth. But even assisted by the Pope, and at the height of their
strength and triumph, the popular forces were impotent to establish any
enduring order in the city. The nobles were still too powerful to submit
peaceably to political inferiority. Moreover, as the offices and honours
once confined to them became open to all, the successful and wealthy
plebeians tended to join the upper class, which began to lose
distinction of race in that of wealth and ability. The aristocracy, thus
continually replenished with new blood, received fresh vigour and life,
and the old divisions gradually merged into two classes, the _milites_,
who fought on horseback and in armour, and the _plebs_, or general mass
of citizens, who, little trained and lightly armed, accompanied the
horsemen into battle on foot. The struggle between these two radical
orders transformed Milan’s short period of republican liberty into a
scene of anarchy and civil warfare, leading to the inevitable end of
faction and strife, the tyranny of an individual.

Already by the end of the twelfth century the struggle of the factions
over the annual election of the Consuls occasioned so much tumult and
bloodshed, that the citizens in despair agreed with one accord to submit
themselves to the government of a Podestà chosen from outside. But this
device for peace ended by aggravating the strife. The faction uppermost
for the time appointed a fierce partisan from another city, perhaps the
leader of an exiled faction, who embroiled Milan with his own Commune,
and exalted his sympathisers within her walls at the expense of the
other party. The general discontent and disorder was reflected in
constant changes in the Constitution. In the absence of any stable
principle of government the power tended to fall into the hands of
individuals. This was the opportunity of the nobles, from whose order
the leaders of men naturally sprang. Taking advantage of the forces
ready to their hands, these put themselves at the head of aristocrats or
plebs, without much regard for principle, and in so doing resumed their
ancient pre-eminence in the community, and initiated the new Epoch of
Great Men, which was to succeed the failing Epoch of the People.

This process, at work throughout Lombardy, is shown in the second half
of the thirteenth century in Milan by the gradual narrowing of the
general party issue into a struggle for predominance between two great
Houses, who represent and sum up in their mutual quarrel the diverse
aims of the factions, and divide the community into two sharply defined
and bitterly hostile bands, which fall inevitably, though by no means
very precisely, into the wide general division of Guelf and Ghibelline.
These were the Houses of the Della Torre, or Torriani, and of the
Visconti.

In the race for supremacy the first far outstripped the second. The
Della Torre were country nobles, who had, however, long been subjects
and citizens of Milan, and though living usually on their estates in the
Valsassina, they often appeared in the city and took part in its
government and politics. They are named among the Capitani—the great
secular nobles of Milan—from early in the twelfth century. They had from
the first aided and protected the cause of the people against their own
order, and it was this sympathy which lifted them to greatness on the
democratic wave of the thirteenth century.

The power of this House in Milan arose first out of the gratitude of the
city for the compassionate succour which Pagano della Torre, head of the
House in 1237, gave to the wounded and starving fugitives from the
disastrous battle of Cortenuova, whom he sheltered and tended in the
Valsassina, and afterwards helped to get back safely to Milan. The
Commune rewarded him with offices and with gifts of houses, and from
that time the Torriani became regular inhabitants of the city and the
principal leaders of the people’s faction.

Pagano _the Good_ himself died in 1241, but left a numerous kindred to
inherit his popularity. In this year Frate Leone da Perego was elected
Archbishop of Milan. The new Primate secretly aspired to raise his See
to its old power and importance, and to shake off the tutelage of the
Pope, and though but a year or two before he had fought loyally, as we
have seen, beside the papal legate in the ranks marshalled against
Frederick II., he now put himself at the head of the aristocratic party,
and even invoked, it may be suspected, the aid of the powerful forces of
heresy. But against the nobles was ranged Martino della Torre, nephew of
Pagano, as leader of the people, who, in 1249, elected him their head
with the title of _Anziano_,—Ancient—of the Credenza, and the Franciscan
Leone was more than matched by the Dominican Pietro da Verona, whose
zeal, sanctity, and awful inquisitorial powers were the strongest
support of the Papacy in Milan. The murder of the Inquisitor in 1252 was
almost certainly prompted by partisan motives. But it failed signally in
its political as in its sectarian purpose, and for Papacy, people, and
the Dominican Order alike, the bloody crown of the Martyr became an
emblem of united strength and triumph. His death was followed by
insurrections of the people. After a few years of comparative peace
under the strong Podestà Manfredo Lancia, the feud between the two
parties broke out afresh, and the Archbishop and nobles were driven out
of the city. The following year a reconciliation took place (1257), and
was solemnly confirmed in a treaty called the ‘Peace of St. Ambrose.’ In
this the privileges already won by the popular party were formally
conceded to them. All dignities and offices in the Commune, from the
highest minister down to the town-trumpeter, were to be equally divided
between the nobles and the Plebeians. Both sides swore to observe the
peace in perpetuity. Yet two months later it was broken, and the nobles
once more banished by the all-powerful Della Torre. They united with the
Ghibellines of the other cities, and even treated with the terrible
Ezzelino da Romano, whom the trembling populations of North Italy
believed to be the son of the Devil. They promised him the Lordship of
Milan if he would aid them, and in 1259, the last desperate year of his
evil course, the Trevisan chief, issuing forth from Brescia, made a
sudden stealthy dash with his famous horsemen upon the city. Martino
della Torre, deceived as to the invader’s movements, had led the
Milanese to meet him in another direction, and the city was undefended
for the moment, and must have fallen into Ezzelino’s hands had not
warning reached Martino just in time for him to hasten home and man the
walls, thus defeating Ezzelino’s purpose.

The growing power of the Della Torre began before long to rouse
suspicion and distrust in Rome, in spite of their steady championship of
the popular cause. The hold of the Papacy upon Milan was in fact
somewhat uncertain. The people still remembered with pride the ancient
tradition of their Church, and were inclined at times to resent the
constant interference of the Pope and his inquisitorial friars. In this
feeling lay the possibility of a union between the Archbishop and the
democratic party, which it was the policy of Rome to avert, even at the
cost of prolonging and aggravating the miserable state of civil war in
Milan. On the death of Frate Leone in 1257, the Della Torre sought to
raise Raimondo, a son of Pagano the Good, to the archiepiscopal throne.
Their intention was defeated by the opposition of the nobles, secretly
instigated by Urban IV., and after some years of controversy over the
vacant seat, Urban, thinking to hold the balance of parties in his own
hands, appointed to it Otto Visconte (1263). The paradoxical spectacle
of the Pope raising a Ghibelline noble to power, and the noble accepting
it from the Pope—one of those strange eddies constantly occurring in the
political current of the day—was completed by the alliance of the Della
Torre with the celebrated Captain, Oberto da Pellavicino, protector of
heretics, close comrade once of Ezzelino and the Ghibellines, and mortal
foe of the Church. Into the hands of this typical figure of the North
Italian drama, Martino, pressed by the hostility of the nobles and the
secret machinations of the Pope, had in 1259 surrendered the Lordship of
Milan for five years. Under his leadership the Torriani oppressed the
friars, drove out the papal legate, Cardinal Ottaviano da Ubaldino, and
on the elevation of Otto Visconte to the See, seized upon all the
episcopal territories and revenues, and kept the new prelate for years
out of his ecclesiastical capital. Pope Urban retaliated with spiritual
thunders, and Milan lay long under the heavy spell of the papal
interdict.

The Visconti and the Torriani were already deadly foes. The House of the
Snake, which in Archbishop Otto, was now about to begin its great
ascent, to the overthrow and destruction of the Tower of its rivals,
probably derived its origin and name from one of the Viscounts of the
Carlovingian rule, who had succeeded in converting the territory
entrusted to his administration into an hereditary appanage. It was, in
any case, of great antiquity in the city. The famous cognizance which
its later career invested with a peculiar terror, is said to have been
won by a noble crusader of the House, also an Otto, in single combat
with a Saracen, who carried a shield emblazoned with the device of a
seven-coiled serpent devouring a child. Otto slew the Saracen and
adopted the device, which he transmitted to his descendants, and with it
who knows what mysterious and persistent curse of guile and cruelty?

It is with Archbishop Otto, however, that the real fortunes of the House
begin. Strong, crafty and determined, with a power of biding his time
observable in a singular degree in all the notable members of his race,
Otto was the right man to foster and direct the gradually reviving power
of the nobles in Milan and lead them to victory over the Della Torre and
the people. But for fifteen years he fought and intrigued in vain,
leading his fellow-exiles and the forlorn hope of the Ghibelline party
in Lombardy against the swelling tide of Guelf success, which the death
of Ezzelino da Romano, the overthrow of the House of Suabia in Manfred
and Corradino, and the ascendency of Anjou in the South, had brought to
the full. The domination of the Torriani seemed to become every day more
assured. Heads of the Lombard League, Martino and his family were
all-powerful in North Italy. They drove the Ghibellines out of the
surrounding cities, and established their own sympathisers in power
everywhere. Many of the Communes accepted the actual sway of the great
House. Martino died in 1263, and was buried in the Monastery of
Chiaravalle. He was succeeded by his brother Filippo, on whose death,
two years later, Napo, a son of the good Pagano, assumed the
chieftainship.

[Illustration: CHIARAVALLE]

Meanwhile the capital itself, spared, under the protection of these
great lords, the bloody succession of sieges and captures which laid
waste its neighbours, where the more evenly balanced parties caused
revolutions with bewildering frequency, increased rapidly in wealth and
luxury. The narrow, tortuous streets overflowed with the full,
rich-coloured, sharply chequered life of the thirteenth century. Some
terrible scene of Ghibelline prisoners slaughtered in the market-place,
and dragged, mangled and bleeding, at the tails of horses through the
streets, with yelling crowds of children after them, is succeeded by a
May-Day holiday, when the most illustrious youths and maidens of the
city, splendidly adorned, ‘weave joyful dances’ beneath pavilions spread
in all the open spaces. And the blue sky roofing the sunny squares is
suddenly darkened by the smoke ascending from the death-pyre of a
heretic, while lean mendicant Brothers look on with triumph, certain
that the cry which comes from that breaking chrysalis is the voice of
the Devil discomfited. Now troops, knights and men-at-arms in clanking
armour, with tattered banners held high, trample in over the drawbridge,
returning from some exploit against the Ghibellines. Or it is a
multitude of moaning Flagellants, in white shrouds stained with blood,
whose self-inflicted lashes can scarcely fall fast enough to keep time
with the pangs of their guilty consciences, as they hurl themselves
against the gates, which the stout captains of the city keep shut,
judging that fifteen different sects within their walls are enough,
without admitting these crazy penitents to upset the unsteady minds of
the people.

The narrow streets were filled with the hum of busy industries. Fine
palaces and comfortable dwellings abounded, with wells and mills and all
the necessaries of a prosperous existence. But wealth and its pleasant
habits were causing the Milanese to forget the liberty for which they
had once made all sacrifice. That word of sinister omen—_Signore_—was
heard without protest among them. They had granted the title voluntarily
to Martino della Torre, and both he and Filippo called themselves
Perpetual Lords of Milan. The people preferred a domination which at
least secured them peace, to the loss and suffering caused by continual
civil struggles. Moreover, absorbed in trade and in peaceful industry,
they had no time or inclination for the rapidly developing art of war,
and a class of highly trained professional soldiers, fully equipped with
weapons and armour, who engaged themselves for hire to any Commune, were
superseding more and more the old city militia, composed of all the
able-bodied men. These mercenaries, who owned no allegiance except to
the master who paid them, lent enormous power to the ruler of a city,
who, by means of them, was able to overawe discontent in the people.
Thus, aided by the conditions of the times, the Torriani gradually
established a virtual despotism over Milan, though careful not to alarm
the popular mind by any grander sounding titles. It was not long,
however, before they abandoned even this degree of caution, and in 1273
Napo persuaded the Emperor Rudolph to grant him the title of Imperial
Vicar of Milan, thus obtaining a legal sanction for his usurpation.

[Illustration: VIA DEL PESCE]

Napo was a wise and prudent man, but in this step he went too far. The
Della Torre fortune was even then on the wane. The Milanese might
rejoice in the peace which despotism bestowed, but they loudly resented
being called upon to pay for it by new and heavy taxation, and all the
lovers of liberty feared the novel and arrogant title of Imperial Vicar.
Among the supporters of the ruling House themselves, the long course of
power enjoyed by the Torriani had bred envy and enmity. Dissensions
arose, and the discontented were punished by spoliation and banishment.
Numbers abandoned the party and joined Otto Visconte. Tumults shook the
city once more, and sedition secretly gathered head. Napo, feeling his
power slipping from him, used the cruel and tyrannous measures of
despair to save himself and his House. Otto and the exiles, on the other
hand, braced by adversity and clinging together in a determined band,
were daily gaining strength. They were aided by the other Ghibellines of
Lombardy, especially by the Pavesi, and with continual attacks and raids
upon the Milanese territory they strove to vex and weaken the party in
power. Nevertheless, for some years still their cause seemed hopeless.
The Della Torre, who had cast off Oberto da Pellavicino when they were
strong enough to do without him, had reconciled themselves with the
Papacy in 1274, and their great prestige was apparently strong enough to
defy defections and subdue discontent.

But time and circumstance were steadily undermining the great House, and
with a sudden crash it fell. On a certain January night in 1277, the
wife of Matteo Visconte was delivered, we are told, of her first son,
who, because he was born _ad cantu galli_, as the cocks were
crowing—heralding a false dawn, as their habit is in winter
midnights—was named _Galeazzo_, first of the many of that name who were
to crow over Milan. It was at this very moment that Otto Visconte—who,
with his great-nephew, father of the new-born babe, and the rest of his
kinsmen, had been making desperate attacks upon various points in the
Milanese country, with little success so far—was creeping stealthily in
the darkness, at the head of a strong body of fighting men, towards
Desio, a village ten miles from Milan, where the Della Torre, disdainful
of their oft-beaten foe, were sleeping encamped, with but a small force
and under a careless watch. Awakened by the noise of attack, these
latter rushed to arms; but too late. The enemy was in their midst.
Francesco della Torre, son of Napo, fell pierced with wounds. The chief
himself, overthrown in his weighty armour, lay grieving helplessly upon
the ground, and with a crowd of sons and kinsmen was made captive. All
was over. Otto Visconte rode victorious at last into Milan, where the
citizens, who had heard of the discomfiture of their lords as they were
starting with the Caroccio to the rescue, suited their faith to the
occasion, and with immense applause and jubilee proclaimed the prelate
Lord of Milan.

Thus, by the hazard of a moment’s battle, the long supremacy of the
Torriani was overthrown. Napo was imprisoned in the terrible Tower of
Baradello, whose ruins still crest a hill a mile or two on the Milanese
side of Como. Here, within the bars of a cage, the once mighty chief
languished for a year and a half till he died.

Meanwhile, the change of ruler had brought the city none of the relief
from war and its burdensome cost, which the people had fondly expected.
The kinsmen and adherents of the exiled family in the city were very
numerous and strong, and the whole Guelf party in Lombardy was anxious
to bring about the restoration of the Torriani. The new Lord of Milan
was attacked with fury, and could only maintain himself by the energetic
use of the sword, and by those same methods of proscription and
banishment with which his predecessors had made themselves odious.

Otto was now, however, an old man, and worn out by the ceaseless
struggles of his life. His mind was beset with the fears and suspicions
of one who, under the stress of ambition, had himself practised overmuch
deceit and treachery, and some years before his death, in 1295, he had
surrendered the chieftainship to the young and ambitious Matteo. With
extraordinary prudence and sagacity, Matteo steered his way amid the
rocks and stormy waves of his course, beating back the open attacks of
his enemies, matching their plots and snares with an invincible
subtlety, and so ingratiating himself with the citizens by a show of
moderation, piety and benevolence, that in a few years his somewhat
unstable authority had transmuted itself, in accordance with the
apparent will of the people, into virtual sovereignty. By force of craft
rather than arms he had made himself master in Como, Alexandria, Novara
and the Montferrat territory, and his conciliatory policy towards the
opposite party won for him enormous influence as arbitrator in the
disputes which ever racked Lombardy. He even propitiated Pope Boniface
VIII. by politic concessions, which in no way lessened his own power. In
1294 his gifts and flattery prevailed upon the Emperor Adolfo to grant
him the potent title of Imperial Vicar of Lombardy.

But the stealthy march of the Visconte’s ambition did not go unchecked.
His pretensions roused the Guelf party to new efforts against him, and
the impetuosity and recklessness of his sons as they grew up wrecked his
careful plans, and excited once more to fiery heat those party passions
which it was his aim to smooth and allay. His love for the splendid
Galeazzo, born at the cock-crow of the Viscontean day, was the father’s
undoing. In pursuance of his policy of tranquillising the party strife
which forbade all stable and settled government in North Italy, Matteo
made a marriage for this son with Beatrice d’Este, widow of Nino
Visconte, Judge of Gallura, and sister of the Marquis of Ferrara,
recognised chief of the Guelf party in Lombardy. The marriage was of
evil omen for the Visconti. We all know those sad words on the little
durability of woman’s love which fall from the ghost of the forgotten
husband in the _Purgatorio_.[1]

Footnote 1:

  Canto viii., vv. 73-81.

The foreboding of disaster which they contain was justified; for though
in the end the Viper was able to give Beatrice as fine a sepulture as
the Cock of Gallura could have done, yet the events which soon fell out
might well have made her regret the _bende bianche_ which she had
exchanged for the bridal garland. The marriage, far from reconciling the
two political parties, had only thrown together a pair of extremely hot
and indiscreet heads in Galeazzo and Azzo VIII. of Ferrara. The vast
ambitions which both were suspected of nourishing roused the fear of
Guelfs and Ghibellines alike. Appointed Captain of the Milanese people,
Galeazzo only succeeded in alienating the citizens and strengthening his
enemies by his injudicious and unfortunate military enterprises. The
Torriani and their partisans, who had long suffered eclipse, had begun
to regain influence and allies, and a formidable league was formed in
Lombardy to overthrow the Visconti. A long struggle followed, and day by
day Matteo’s power waned in the city. The people, whose inveterate
distrust of the nobles his sagacity and conciliatory measures had been
unable to overcome, grew more and more discontented. Jealousy of the
Visconte’s power, and resentment at his policy towards the Guelfs, had
alienated many of the nobles themselves. The day came when Matteo
perceived that his position was no longer tenable. Without waiting for a
catastrophe which might have ruined his House for ever, he quietly
abandoned the city to his foes and took his departure (1302).

The Guelf supporters of the Della Torre now entered Milan, and were
received with a great outburst of popular joy. A short period of anarchy
followed, caused by the nobles, who had helped to drive out the
Visconti, but had no desire to see the Della Torre in their place. After
a few months, however, the sons of Napo succeeded by the favour of the
lower classes, to whom their name was still dear, in restoring
themselves to power, while in all the surrounding cities, whose fortunes
were always bound up with Milan’s, their partisans drove out the
Ghibellines and reinstated the Guelfs.

Mosca, Guido, and Enrico della Torre now ruled the city, at first with a
show of deference to the will of the Republic, but after a few years
with a sovereignty fuller than that which the Visconti had enjoyed. The
people were, in fact, accustoming themselves to a single rule. In 1307
Mosca died, and Guido assumed sole authority. Meanwhile the Visconti
were dispersed in various directions. Galeazzo and his wife Beatrice had
taken refuge with her kindred at Ferrara, and the other sons of Matteo
had found places of safety where the powerful alliances of the family
secured them from pursuit by the Della Torre. The shrewd chief himself,
after vainly attempting to reverse the fortune of war, had withdrawn to
a remote country villa on the Lake of Garda, and having apparently
renounced all public activity, was passing his time in the innocent
pastimes of fishing and thinking. But his keen eye watched every
movement on the field of politics. He had spies and agents everywhere,
and was but waiting the moment for a spring upon his foes. With cynical
satisfaction he noted the inevitable course of the new tyranny in Milan;
the jealousy and suspicion awaking within the city itself, and in the
subjects and allied communities around at the growth of Guido’s
despotism, the disloyalty of his near kindred and dependants, greedy for
a share of power, and all the embarrassments of a chief in whom a noble
and generous temper was not seconded by the sagacity and self-control
which distinguished the observer himself. An oft-told story relates that
Guido, at the height of his prosperity, sent a messenger to his fallen
rival to ask him derisively how he fared, and when he hoped to see Milan
again. Matteo was wandering beside the lake, discoursing with a
companion. ‘You see how I live,’ he said to the envoy, ‘suiting myself
to my fortunes. Tell your Lord that I am waiting till the sins of the
Torriani have reached the measure of mine to return to my country.’ The
expectation of the philosopher was justified as time went on, and Guido
began to resort to cruel and oppressive means of preserving his power.
In 1309 he imprisoned his cousin Cassone, Archbishop of Milan, and his
nephews, the sons of Mosca, on suspicion of plotting against him, and
was only withheld from further revenge by the protests of his own
friends. The subsequent banishment of these kinsmen, who thenceforth
sought his ruin, helped to prepare the disasters which were soon to fall
upon his House.

The Guelf party was indeed fast losing its hold once more on Lombardy,
owing to the hostile feeling in the cities towards King Robert of
Naples, who, as champion of the Church and head of the Guelfs, was
seeking to establish his sovereignty over North Italy. At the same time
a new turn of the wheel was preparing in Germany, where, in 1310, Henry
of Luxemburg was elected Emperor, and immediately manifested his
intention of descending into Italy to exercise the imperial authority
for the purpose of restoring order and peace in the factious Communes.

Matteo Visconte in his hut of exile saw that his moment was come. With
characteristic insight he gauged the noble soul of the new Emperor, with
its lofty ideals and conviction of a divine mission as peacemaker. His
agent, Francesco Garbagnate, made his way to the imperial Court, where
he insinuated himself into Henry’s favour, and ever at his ear whispered
of the woes of Lombardy, and of Milan, the splendid city, groaning under
a despotic oppressor; of thousands of exiles languishing in poverty; of
their chief, patiently enduring his evil fortunes without attempting
retaliation or revenge.

The anticipation of the Emperor’s coming was by no means so pleasing to
Guido della Torre and his friends. The mere thought of this spectre of
imperialism, which, when men believed it was well laid at last, ever
rose to disturb the settlement of the turbid elements of Italian life,
seems to have stirred the Republican chief to uncontrollable
indignation. ‘What have I to do with Henry of Luxemburg?’ he cried,
stamping furiously, in a great assembly of his party convoked to deal
with the situation. To his experienced and unillusioned mind the
Emperor’s purpose was simply the exaltation of the Ghibellines and the
destruction of the Guelfs. With passionate entreaties and prophecies of
impending peril, he sought to raise a league against Henry, but nearly
all his former supporters and allies, tired of his ascendency and afraid
of the King of Naples, had pledged themselves to welcome the new-comer.

In November 1310 the Emperor arrived at Asti, whither almost all the
magnates of North Italy, both Guelf and Ghibelline, hastened to do him
homage. One day there entered the Court a man who, by the simplicity of
his attire and following, appeared a person of little consequence.
Throwing off his hood and cloak, he ran and knelt before the Emperor,
and kissing his feet, saluted him as the longed-for peacemaker and
consolation of the exiles, and implored his compassion. The suppliant
was Matteo Visconte, who, for fear of his enemies, had come thus
disguised and secretly. Henry welcomed him with the greatest kindness,
and having listened earnestly to his recital of the wrongs which he and
his had suffered, promised to give them speedy relief. Matteo then
turned to some of the Guelf nobles present, his fiercest enemies, and
with the most admirable display of a meek and forgiving spirit, offered
to embrace them. But they, knowing well the perfidy of his fair seeming,
repulsed him with scorn and heaped revilements upon him. To all of which
the Visconte replied with perfect mildness and goodwill, pointing to the
Emperor—‘Here is our king, who is come to give us peace; the end of all
our woes is at hand.’ His foes, perceiving how completely he had put
them in the wrong and won the Emperor’s confidence by his show of
magnanimity, began to misdoubt them of the future and wish that they had
heeded Guido della Torre’s warnings. The game was now, in fact, despite
Henry’s good intentions, in the hands of the wily Ghibelline chief.
Besides all the barons and magnates of his own faction, the exiled
Archbishop Cassone della Torre and a number of other Milanese Guelfs,
whom Guido had offended by his tyranny, ranged themselves under Matteo’s
leadership, and by the advice of this greatly preponderating section of
his Italian vassals, Henry was persuaded to turn his steps early towards
Milan.

He sent officers before him to prepare for his reception in the ruler’s
palace, which as sovereign he expected to occupy. But he had forgotten
Milan’s traditional privilege of keeping the Emperor outside her gates.
Relying upon this, Guido della Torre refused to give up the palace.
Nevertheless Henry proceeded on his way, and as he neared the city, the
Milanese, who had heard the rumour of his great goodness, came forth in
multitudes to meet him. At his right hand rode Matteo Visconte. The
obsequious bearing of the Ghibelline chief contrasted strangely with the
grudging welcome offered by the Lord of the city, who appeared last of
all to greet the monarch, and forgot to lower his standard before the
Imperial Eagles. This omission was roughly remedied by some of the
German soldiers, who seized the defiant banner and flung it in the mud.
His pride met only a mild rebuke from the Emperor, who, having entered
in state with his queen, took up his abode in the archiepiscopal palace.
At first all went well. The Archbishop and all the other exiles were
restored to their homes and possessions, and Henry made the Visconti and
Torriani swear perpetual peace. The reconciliation was celebrated in the
eyes of all the people by a ceremony in the Piazza of St. Ambrogio,
where the Emperor appeared seated on a great throne, with the members of
the two rival Houses placed side by side at his feet. An Imperial Vicar
was appointed to keep peace in the city, and the factions in the
neighbouring Communes having been pacified in like manner, Henry was
crowned in Milan by Archbishop Cassone, amid extraordinary joy and
festivity.

Not for long, however, did the lion and the lamb thus couch together.
Even while the Emperor still lingered in Milan, suspicion and discontent
began to seethe among the citizens. The old fear and hatred of the
Empire, which still lived in the descendants of Barbarossa’s victims,
was fanned by the heavy exactions of the imperial officers, who demanded
an enormous sum as a coronation gift from the already exhausted
citizens. The German troops were also a continual vexation to the
people. The Torriani did all they could to foster the growing spirit of
revolt. Guido and his cousin the Archbishop forgot their feud in their
common desire to get rid of the Emperor, and the Visconti themselves
were found ready to sympathise with the general discontent. It was
rumoured in the imperial palace that Galeazzo Visconte and Francesco
della Torre had been seen joining hands in sign of amity at a meeting
outside the gates. But whatever the other members of his House might be
doing, the Head of the Visconti sat aloof, peacefully unconscious,
apparently, of what was going forward.

Henry and his ministers grew uneasy, as the hostility of the city became
ever more visible and menacing. At last, on a day in February, the storm
burst. The whole of Milan rose suddenly in wild tumult, crowding and
clamouring round their old leaders, the Torriani, who appeared with all
their followers in full armour in the market-place. Before long Galeazzo
Visconte also arrived upon the scene, mounted on his war-horse and
arrayed for battle. But to the surprise and dismay of the conspirators
he ranged himself with the imperial troops, who came charging down upon
the Torriani and their disorderly host. Meanwhile, at the first sound of
tumult, the Emperor, suspecting treachery, had despatched officers to
arrest Matteo Visconte. They found that veteran sitting in the quiet
loggia of his palace, most innocently occupied in reading a book.
Hastening with them to the Court, he cast himself down before the
Emperor, protesting his perfect loyalty and innocence of all offence,
and offered his best services to aid in subduing the rebellion. The
adherence of the Visconti was the Emperor’s salvation. By the powerful
assistance of Galeazzo and his followers, the Germans, after a brief,
fierce battle, completely overcame the rebels. The Torriani perceived
too late that they had been outwitted and ruined by the cunning of the
rival House, on whose help they had been led to depend. Simone and
Francesco, Guido’s sons, fled at a gallop out of the city, while the old
chief himself rose with difficulty from a bed of sickness and crept over
a garden wall into the precincts of a nunnery, whence he was able after
a while to escape into safety. Their adherents were put to the sword,
and their houses were sacked and utterly destroyed by the Germans, who
with vindictive fury, swept through the streets, slaying and spoiling
without mercy.

Thus was the power of the Della Torre in Milan for ever overthrown. The
Visconti, having cleverly disposed of their rivals, had now to rid
themselves of the Emperor, in order to regain their old sovereignty.
Henry, vexed at the bloodshed which had already stained his fair white
banner of peace, and beginning to realise the secret strength of the
spirit of faction, sent Matteo and Galeazzo into exile, lest he should
appear to have favoured the Ghibellines in the late affair. But the fall
of the Torriani had filled the Guelfs with distrust and fear of him. He
passed on his way, to find the cities of Lombardy arming against him and
his task of peace-making growing more and more difficult of
accomplishment. Hardly was he gone from Milan before the Visconti
returned, and in a very short time Matteo succeeded in making himself
once more all-powerful. A year later the wisdom of the Milanese Serpent
appeared to have completely charmed the Imperial Eagle, when in return
for a timely supply of gold to support the Emperor’s enterprise, Matteo
won the legal confirmation of his authority over the city, with the
title of Imperial Vicar of Milan.




                               CHAPTER V
                             _The Visconti_


          “Maudire la puissance, c’est blasphémer l’humanité.”

The Visconti had now firmly established their dominion in Milan, a
dominion destined, in the story of the unstable mediæval governments of
Italy, to be equalled by few in duration, and by none in extent. For
good or for evil the great city, with her command of the chief passes of
the Alps for war and commerce, her wealth as the capital of the vast
alluvial plain of Lombardy, was delivered into the hands of a race
singularly fitted to use these natural advantages for the creation of a
mighty State. The Visconti, as a family, were characterised by
exceptional ability and tenacity, and above all, by a subtlety of brain
and suppleness of conscience which, under the stress of ambition or
necessity, induced a perfidy so quiet and so effectual that the Snake
upon their shields became for all Italy a symbol of their political
methods, and an object of horror and fear. The vices and weaknesses
which ruined other Italian dynasties seemed to have little power over
these Milanese princes. Hot and rash of blood in the earlier
generations, they rarely allowed passion to override prudence; those of
them who did were quickly rooted out. Even that most fruitful disorder
in a reigning House, the jealous rivalry of its own members, could not
avail to overcome their political coolness or sagacity, or sunder their
union against a common enemy. With time this self-control became a habit
of cold and passionless judgment, all-powerful in the management of men
and States. Even the fatal weakness of remorse and superstitious fear,
to which they were all prone, could not undermine them; they were able
to parry their consciences, and delay repentance until their successors
were old enough to carry on their unscrupulous policy. Nor did the
arrogance and cruelty which tyranny bred in this sovereign race prove
their overthrow. In spite of its record of crime, no retributive
catastrophe ended the dynasty. It died out of itself, and we shall see
the last of the Visconti sink into the grave under the burden of an
empire greater almost than any other in Italy.

_Il Gran Matteo_, as posterity named the founder of the dynasty, was the
prototype in character of all the great sovereigns who were to follow
him. He ruled from the cabinet rather than from the saddle. Statecraft
was his victorious weapon, and his calculating and passionless nature
had its complement in a humanity remarkable for his time. But it needed
not only his incomparable prudence and foresight, but also the strong
arms of his three elder sons, Galeazzo, Marco, and Luchino, to assure
his dominion and restore it to its old extent. The remaining years of
the chief, as head of the Ghibelline party in North Italy, were spent in
a constant warfare with the Guelfs and their allies, King Robert of
Naples, and the Church. The awful papal ban fell again and again upon
the Visconte and his subjects. Nevertheless Piacenza, Bergamo, Lodi,
Como, Cremona, Alexandria, Tortona, Pavia, Vercelli, and Novara were
brought one by one beneath his sway by the victory of diplomacy or arms.
His success was embittered, however, by estrangement from his beloved
first-born, Galeazzo, who coveted his father’s supremacy, and jealously
resented the rivalry of his brother Marco. But Galeazzo’s hot temper had
been chastened by exile and time, and in spite of their mutual anger, he
supported his father’s policy with a wise loyalty.

The fortunes of the Guelf party sank low before the rapid growth of the
Viscontean power. Its hereditary leaders in North Italy, the Marquises
of Este, were entangled in an unnatural struggle with the Papacy, which
was itself enfeebled by the exile of Avignon, and by the operations of
its own selfish greed. But in 1319 the party gathered itself together
once more for a mighty effort to overthrow the Ghibelline domination in
Milan. The Cardinal Legate, Beltrando del Poggetto, in the name of Pope
John XXII., formed a great league of the Guelfs against the Visconti,
and hurled at them afresh the spiritual weapons of the Church. Matteo
was summoned repeatedly to answer for his sins at the feet of the Pope.
In 1322 he was cited finally before a tribunal of the Inquisition at
Alexandria. Instead of him, his son Marco appeared there at the head of
an army with banners spread. The Inquisitors hastily retreated to
Valenza, where in security they solemnly cursed Matteo for twenty and
five different crimes and heresies, and invoked every conceivable
penalty upon him and his House, even to the fourth generation. Full
remission of sins was offered to all who took arms against them.

The old Ghibelline chief, weakened by age and bodily infirmity, quailed
before this onslaught. Many of his own adherents and kinsmen were
deserting him. Milan, trembling under the ban of the Church and excited
by the papal agents, was verging on revolt. Matteo summoned the
offending Galeazzo, forgave him, and resigned to him the chieftainship.
Retiring to a village at a little distance from the city, he died
shortly after, full of years and sorrow.

Galeazzo and his brother Marco, bitter rivals, forgot for the time their
mutual wrongs, and with the other sons of Matteo stood up in manful
union against their foes. For fourteen days they concealed their
father’s death from the Milanese, while Galeazzo calmed the city by
conciliatory measures, and assumed the supreme power. The storm broke
heavily upon them now. Immense numbers from all North Italy joined the
standard of the Legate, which, impiously displaying the Cross in a
worldly quarrel was carried towards Milan, with the avowed purpose of
overthrowing the Visconti and restoring the Torriani. Monza and Piacenza
fell (1323), and the capital itself was attacked, the suburbs sacked,
and the walls closely blockaded. The straits of the Visconti appeared
desperate. But the brothers fought with invincible spirit, and they were
supported by the Emperor, Louis of Bavaria, who sent succour from
Germany. The papal army itself began to dissolve through rivalries and
dissensions, and sickness. The siege was soon raised, and early in the
following year (1324) the Visconti took the offensive and inflicted a
signal defeat upon the allies at Vaprio. Their fortunes now revived.
Within the next few years they recovered many of the lost cities of
their father’s State, and the Pope, realising the impossibility of
overthrowing them, began to listen to emissaries from Galeazzo with
suggestions for peace and reconciliation.

But the desire of the Visconte for a settlement of the long and
exhausting strife was baffled by his own party and his own household.
The other Ghibelline chiefs, especially the great Can Grande della
Scala, viewed unwillingly the increase of the Milanese power. Marco
Visconte, a splendid warrior, more skilled and daring in arms than any
other Lombard of his day, but unlike the rest of his House none too
wise—_savio non fu troppo_, says Villani—could not brook his elder
brother’s supremacy. Their kinsman Lodrisio fiercely resented his own
subordinate position. The citizens groaned under the heavy taxes exacted
to pay Galeazzo’s great army of German mercenaries. Complaints of the
Visconte’s arrogance, and information of his negotiations with the Pope,
were carried by intriguers to the Emperor.

Louis descended into Italy early in 1327, at the general call of the
Ghibellines. Galeazzo Visconte alone was silent, foreseeing that the
Emperor’s appearance would inflame anew the partisan strife. Louis
appeared shortly in Milan, followed by the Ghibelline lords of North
Italy, chief among them Can Grande. He was received with great homage
and ceremony and crowned in St. Ambrogio by two schismatic bishops, who
alone dared to anoint his excommunicated head. The Visconti appeared to
enjoy his full favour, and as vassals of the Empire were confirmed by
him in various honours and privileges. But intrigue was busy at work,
and the fair seeming was suddenly broken by a tragic event, if the
chroniclers tell us true. Stefano, the youngest of Galeazzo’s brothers,
as he was offering the cup to the Emperor at the banquet one night, was
called upon by the suspicious monarch to taste the wine. Having put his
lips tremblingly to it, he was struck with mortal sickness, and died
shortly after. This evidence of intended treachery naturally inflamed
Louis’ resentment against his hosts. The next day he summoned Galeazzo
to a council, and seizing as a pretext the refusal of the prince to
demand an enormous coronation gift from the almost revolting citizens,
he arrested him, with his son Azzo and his brothers, all except Marco.
The Visconti, surprised, could make no defence, and were carried off to
Monza and thrown into the dungeons of the Castle there which Galeazzo
himself had lately built.

Thus did the Visconti once more lose Milan. A governor, appointed by
Louis, reigned in their stead. Marco, if he owed his escape to
disloyalty, soon rued his mistake. The ruin of his house involved him
too, and he wandered in poverty and exile. Louis’ high-handed act was,
however, displeasing to many of his Ghibelline supporters, and he found
it prudent to release Galeazzo at the end of a year, at the request of
Castruccio, Lord of Lucca, the most powerful member of the Ghibelline
party at that time. The Visconte, broken by his sufferings in prison,
and unable to recover his State, joined his friend Castruccio, and died
a few months later. His son and brothers succeeded soon after, through
the intervention of Castruccio, in making their peace with the Emperor.
For the promise of sixty thousand golden florins, Louis granted to Azzo,
the dead prince’s heir, the title of Imperial Vicar of Milan, and the
Visconti once more took possession of the city with the full approval of
the people (1329).

Once restored to power, they were at little pains to pay the stipulated
sum to the Emperor, who by this time was fast losing prestige in Italy.
They reconciled themselves with the Church instead, and when the enraged
Louis presented himself with an army beneath the walls of Milan, he was
received with derision and jeers. The Emperor, enfeebled by the contempt
and desertion of nearly all his partisans, was helpless against the
renewed strength of the great Milanese House. He was glad to compound
with Azzo and to reconfirm him in the position of Imperial Vicar.

From this moment began the unbroken prosperity of Matteo Visconte’s sons
and of the great city which they ruled. Secure in the weakness of both
Empire and Church from further interference, Azzo was able to devote
himself to the expansion and development of his State. The short reign
of this prince, who had won great fame for his prowess in the Tuscan
wars with Castruccio, was wholly fortunate. The menace offered to its
prosperity by the rebellious attempts of his uncle Marco was overcome by
the death of that turbulent warrior, who was killed in 1329 apparently
by a fall from a window in his nephew’s palace, though it was generally
believed that he had been first strangled and then flung out by order of
his kinsmen. The other enemy within the House, Lodrisio Visconte, was
not so easily disposed of. Abandoning Milan, he allied himself with the
Scaligeri of Verona, with whom the Visconti had come into inevitable
collision, now that the weakness of their common Guelf foe had left the
field of North Italy open to the rival ambition of these two great
Ghibelline powers. In 1339 Lodrisio, with forces supplied by Martino
della Scala, invaded the Milanese territory, and approaching the
capital, spread terror and desolation everywhere. At Parabiago they
encountered the Milanese, under Luchino Visconte, who, after a
tremendous struggle, won a complete victory. Lodrisio was captured with
his two sons, and imprisoned in a strong castle. A few months later Azzo
died of gout, at the age of thirty-seven. In the brief years of his
reign he had completely restored the power and prestige of his House. He
left Milan fortified by new walls, beautified by new palaces, churches
and towers, a city fairer and greater than that ruined by Barbarossa,
and full of a rich, industrious and joyous life.

Azzo had no heir. He was succeeded by his uncles, Luchino, and the
ecclesiastic Giovanni, who was now Archbishop of Milan. The two brothers
thus held the whole dominion, spiritual as well as temporal. They worked
together with rare unanimity for the aggrandisement of their House and
State. Luchino pressed with his arms energetically against the
Scaligeri, whose empire was fast receding before the attacks of the rest
of the Ghibelline powers of North Italy, who in uniting with the
Visconti to crush this predominant member of the party, were but
smoothing the way for the rise of a State destined to be far greater
than Verona ever was. The Milanese prince added many cities to the
dominion of his House, and was the first to carry the fear of the
Visconti across the Apennines into Tuscany, where he had almost acquired
Pisa when recalled to Lombardy by the outbreak of war there.

[Illustration: TOWER OF S. GOTTARDO FROM THE CATHEDRAL]

Luchino was a careful ruler, thoughtful for the welfare and progress of
his subjects, and just towards the lower classes. He promulgated new
laws for the protection of the poor and weak, and for the encouragement
of industry, and refrained from excessive taxation. Nevertheless, he had
the same violent temper as his elder brothers, Galeazzo and Marco, and
soon developed the characteristic vices of tyranny—lust, cruelty and
suspicion. In Giovanni, on the contrary, all the rarer qualities of the
Visconti appeared, the subtle brain, the self-control and power of
biding their time, combined with a benignity which was never disturbed
except to good purpose, so that while steadily pursuing ends as vast and
ambitious as his brothers’, he still kept the respect and love of the
people. He well knew how to influence the course of events without
falling foul of his suspicious brother.

The younger princes of the House, however, the three sons of the dead
Stefano, were less cautious, and soon incurred the wrath of their
despotic uncle. He discovered, or perhaps invented, a conspiracy on
their part to oust him from power, and drove them mercilessly into exile
and poverty. The eldest, Matteo, took refuge with his wife’s family, the
powerful Gonzaga of Mantua, but Bernabò and Galeazzo had to fly to
France to escape from the tyrant’s snares. A confederate in their plot,
Francesco della Pusterla, head of one of the great Milanese Houses,
whose wealth and influence were necessarily a menace to the power of the
Visconti, was betrayed into Luchino’s hands and beheaded, with his sons
and his beautiful wife Margherita, who, according to the chroniclers,
had rejected the unlawful love of the tyrant.

Luchino is said to have come himself to an unnatural death in his old
age, through poison administered to him by his third wife, the young and
lively Elisabetta della Fiesca, in whose hearing the suspicious husband,
enraged by a report of light conduct on her part, had declared that he
would light a fine fire and do the greatest act of justice which he had
ever done in Milan. The accusations against this lady may, however, have
been trumped up to justify the persecution which she and her son,
Luchino Novello, and all the dead tyrant’s children, who had grown too
arrogant for the peace of the State, had to suffer from the Archbishop
after their father’s death. Giovanni imprisoned or banished them all.
Towards his other nephews, the banished sons of Stefano, whom misfortune
had chastened, Giovanni used a different policy. He won their loyalty
and obedience by recalling them from exile, granting them lands and
honours and making them his heirs, and about this time he obtained a
solemn act from the General Council of the people, still nominally the
ultimate authority in the community, recognising him and his nephews
after him as the true, legitimate and natural Lords of the city,
district, diocese and jurisdiction of Milan. Thus was the hereditary
dominion of the Visconti—already an established fact—formally legalised
by the will of the Commune.

Under the able rule of the Archbishop the power of the Visconti advanced
steadily, but more by the gentle pressure of a scheming and cunning
statesmanship than by the brute force of arms. His apparently peaceful
temper had lulled the jealousy and fear of the other powers, when in
1350 they were thunderstruck by his secret acquisition of Bologna—the
great object of contention between the two parties in North Italy—which
Giovanni de’ Pepoli sold to him for a large sum. Corio, the fifteenth
century historian, relates that Clement VI. sent a legate to the
Visconte to demand its restoration to the Holy See, and to bid him
renounce either the spiritual or temporal jurisdiction of Milan, since
his exercise of both together was a scandal to Christians. The
high-hearted Archbishop for answer unsheathed his sword in the midst of
the Cathedral, and raising the Cross in his other hand, cried—_This is
my spiritual weapon, and with this sword will I defend my temporal
empire undiminished_. Summoned to defend his contumacy before the Pope,
he sent his people to Avignon to provide lodgings and victuals for
twelve thousand horsemen and six thousand foot soldiers. But when
Clement heard of these preparations he called the envoys, and hastily
reimbursing them with their charges, sent them back with a message to
Giovanni excusing him from coming. Later historians throw doubt upon
this circumstantial tale. And certainly it seems strange that the Pope
should condemn the union of spiritual and temporal dominion. There is no
doubt, however, that the Papacy was powerless to check Giovanni’s
ambition, and was glad to confirm him in possession of Bologna for a
price.

Giovanni’s method was to inflame by unseen agencies the party spirit in
the cities which he coveted, and when both factions were exhausted, to
step in with his money-bags and quietly establish his own dominion. Thus
by a skilful manipulation of the vast wealth with which Milan supplied
him he succeeded with little expenditure of blood in embracing more and
more territory within his coil. In 1353 Genoa was yielded to him, and
Milan for a short time became a naval power, defying the fleets of
Venice. The importance of securing maritime outlets for a commercial
community turned the Archbishop’s attention on the seaport of Pisa also.
But here Florence interposed a barrier against both fraud and force, and
though he plagued the Tuscan Republic grievously by invading her
territories, raising the Barons of the Apennines against her and
intriguing with her foes in Pisa and Lucca, she successfully prevented
him from gaining a footing in Tuscany.

While the Visconti were thus extending their dominion far and wide and
creating a sovereignty more powerful than any in Italy, the capital
itself was making corresponding strides in wealth and civilisation. The
strong and single government, though involving so much cruel sacrifice
of rival interests and pride, and carried on by crafty and often
iniquitous means, was for the general advantage of the people. The
citizens lacked only freedom, and this very lack saved them from the
awful faction struggles which hindered the progress of the neighbouring
Communes. Under Azzo, Luchino and Giovanni Visconte, the city enjoyed an
unexampled length of peace. No hostile banner was seen from the walls,
no blood was spilt in fratricidal strife within. The Visconti employed
foreign and professional troops in their wars, thus weaning their
subjects from the habit of arms, dangerous to a tyrannic supremacy, and
sparing them for more profitable work. All classes, noble and plebeian,
engaged in commerce and industrial arts, and produced an ever increasing
flow of wealth, wherewith these princes were able to pay handsomely for
the hired support of their tyranny. Finding no opportunities of sedition
or turbulence, the more restless spirits abandoned the city, and,
joining the bands of military adventurers which roamed the country, they
fought for any prince or community that chose to hire them. The general
security of life and property in the Milanese State was assured by the
severe and, on the whole, impartial justice of Luchino and his brother,
and the wise statutes which they formed aided the development of trade
and industry. Safe from depredating troops and robber bands, the fertile
territory was brought to high cultivation, and wildernesses, untilled
before, now submitted to the husbandman. The engineering art was
actively practised in draining and irrigating the country and connecting
the city by canals with the great river waterways.

One of the chief sources of Milanese wealth was the breeding of
war-horses in the rich and well-watered pastures round the city. At the
same time the Milanese merchants were travelling all over England,
France and Flanders, buying fine wool, ‘with which in this city,’ says
the fourteenth century chronicler Fiamma, ‘very fine and beautiful
clothes are woven in great quantities and dyed with every different
colour and sent to all parts of Italy.’ Silk was also manufactured here
after 1314, when the silk-weavers of Lucca, disturbed by the invasions
of Uguccione da Faggiuola and of Castruccio, abandoned their city for
Milan. The constant wars abroad encouraged the armourer’s craft, of
which Milan became one of the greatest centres in Europe. With wealth, a
love of luxury and the soft pleasures of life grew in the people. Fiamma
notes with disapproval the changes in the antique costume, the
superfluous embroideries, the gold and silver and pearls, and the broad
fringes used in dress, the richness of the meats, and the esteem in
which masters of the culinary art were held, things conducive, according
to him, of the soul’s damnation.

Both Luchino and Giovanni lived much in the sight of their subjects,
keeping open Court and sharing in the public feasts and pleasures. The
benevolent Archbishop was much beloved. One of his first acts of
undivided sovereignty had been to release Lodrisio Visconte from the
dungeon in which he had dwelt ever since Parabiago, a resounding
generosity which covered many quiet deeds of harshness and oppression.
He died in 1354, leaving his dominions to Matteo, Bernabò and Galeazzo
II., to the entire exclusion of Luchino’s sons.

The new sovereigns had much ado at first to preserve their great
heritage. Many cities, patient under the Archbishop’s yoke, rebelled
against his successors, including Bologna. The Guelf enemies of Milan
tried to enlist the new Emperor Charles of Bohemia against the Visconti;
but that monarch preferred the large sum which they offered him for his
sanction of their rule as Imperial Vicars, rather than the hostility of
princes who could assemble six thousand men-at-arms and numberless foot
soldiers beneath his window as a spectacle for his entertainment when he
visited them in Milan. The Gonzaga of Mantua, once their allies and now
their bitterest foes, leagued, however, with the Church and the
hereditary foes of the Visconti and dealt them some heavy blows. The
German company which the Mantuan princes employed invaded the Milanese
territories under the formidable Count Lando, and penetrated nearly to
the capital. But the citizens, in spite of their softness and lack of
military practice, went forth with the courage of despair and defeated
and drove away the Count, who was greatly surprised, since he _nothing
esteemed the Milanese_. In other directions the Visconti suffered great
losses. Genoa revolted in 1356, and to secure peace they were compelled
to surrender Parma and Asti two years later.

The eldest brother, Matteo, had died in 1355. Weak, injudicious and a
glutton, he was only a hindrance to the progress of his House. General
report laid his death to his brothers’ charge. Bernabò and Galeazzo made
a fresh division of the State, and Milan itself was split up between
them. They worked together, however, with a single aim, in spite of
mutual hatred and jealousy, to repair the losses of their State. Pavia
had set up a free government, headed by the friar, Giacomo de’
Bussolari, who, an earlier Savonarola, sought to purge his city from
tyranny and sin at once. Steadfastly beset by Galeazzo’s army, it had to
yield at last to famine and sickness. Further afield Bernabò spent years
in a desperate struggle to recover Bologna, under a tempest of papal
anathemas, and though baffled himself, he prepared the way for his
successor. He was constantly in fierce conflict with the Marquises of
Este, whose rebel kinsmen he sheltered while they employed Luchino’s
disinherited sons against him. Galeazzo on his side had to sustain the
assaults of Savoy and Montferrat, which came near to ruining him.

But multitudinous and determined as their enemies were, the inimitable
statecraft which was the Viscontean heritage, backed by their vast
resources, enabled them to restore their power and to make Milan feared
and respected everywhere abroad. These princes rarely took the field
themselves, but entrusted their enterprises to the foreign companies by
whom the Italian wars were now chiefly waged. These bands of hardy and
unscrupulous adventurers, who were proof against the enervation which
wealth and civilisation had induced in the Italians, were become
powerful factors in the politics of the country. Most formidable of all
was the company of Sir John Hawkwood. These English mercenaries, says
Azario, were more excellent robbers than any of the other plunderers of
the Lombards. By day they mostly slept and waked by night. And so
diligent and skilful were they in capturing towns that their like had
never been seen. After suffering much from Hawkwood’s zeal against him
in the service of the Pope, Bernabò bribed him to his own side; but
after a few years the great captain, faithful only to caprice, suddenly
deserted the Visconte, with disastrous results to the latter. Later on,
Bernabò tempted him again by the gift of one of his own daughters in
marriage, with a large dowry. Nevertheless, the later part of Hawkwood’s
career was spent in the pay of Milan’s inveterate foe, Florence.

Milan, unaffected by the quarrels of her sovereigns, was now the
richest, most populous and luxurious city of Italy. The capitals of the
great European kingdoms had no such splendid palaces, such comely-paved
streets, such fair-fountained gardens and pleasaunces trodden by
beautiful exotic beasts and birds, as this seat of citizen princes. The
Visconti assumed the dignity and state of royalty. Galeazzo was himself
married to a princess of the ancient House of Savoy, and both brothers
pursued the sagacious policy of making alliances for their children with
the sovereign Houses of Europe. Bernabò made statesmanlike use of his
ten daughters and five sons by his wife Regina della Scala, and his
score or so of illegitimate children, wedding them, according to the
conditions of their birth, to royal princes and great Italian
potentates, or to lesser nobles and successful soldiers, such as
Hawkwood and Count Lando. Galeazzo married his one son and daughter with
even greater splendour, and endowed them so lavishly that it was almost
the ruin of his State. For his heir, Gian Galeazzo, he obtained the hand
of Isabella de Valois, for a sum of five hundred thousand florins. The
maiden Violante he gave to Lionel, Duke of Clarence, son of Edward III.,
with two hundred thousand florins and many fair lands and castles in
Piedmont.

This last marriage was celebrated in 1368, with unexampled magnificence.
The bridegroom arrived in Milan accompanied by the Sire le Despencer and
a train of two thousand Englishmen. A splendid cavalcade went forth to
meet him. First came Galeazzo himself, who was said to be more beautiful
in person than any other man in Italy, wearing, as his custom was, a
wreath of roses on his flowing golden hair, and attended by his greatest
vassals. With him was his wife, Bianca of Savoy, and his
daughter-in-law, the young French Isabella, and other noble ladies,
followed by eighty damsels apparelled in scarlet, with sleeves of white
cloth embroidered with trefoils, and girdles so richly worked that their
worth was eighty florins each. Gian Galeazzo, a boy of fifteen, came
next, leading a company of knights on steeds caparisoned as if for a
joust, and after these followed the officers of State and of the
household with their pages, all gorgeously arrayed. At the marriage
feast the very meats were gilded, and with each of the sixteen courses
splendid gifts were offered to the guests—highly-bred hounds with velvet
and silken collars and leashes of silk; falcons with chains of gold and
hoods of velvet, and silver buttons enamelled with the Snake; richly
ornamented saddles and other horse furniture; suits of armour fashioned
by the famous Milanese smiths; brocades of gold and richest silk, silver
flagons worked with enamel, silver-gilt basins, mantles and doublets
thickly sewn with pearls for the prince, and seventy-six splendid
coursers and war-horses, each more generous, beautiful, and gorgeously
caparisoned than the one before; and last of all twelve fat oxen.
Galeazzo and the bridegroom sat at one table with the noblest of the
guests, among whom was Messer Francesco Petrarca the poet, in the most
honourable place. At another were placed Regina della Scala and a number
of ladies. Such scenes as these are dimly pictured for us in primitive
frescoes here and there, in which we see assemblages of ladies in
jewelled robes and lofty peaked head-dresses, and gentlemen
correspondingly fine stiffly seated at narrow boards, or pacing with
slow and stately step through the dance within some spacious pillared
hall.

Though extravagantly lavish for State purposes, the Visconti did not
keep open Court like their predecessors. No tables were set out in the
streets for the common people on holidays, no oxen roasted whole or
wine-vats broached for all who liked to drink. The chroniclers complain
of the avarice of their Lords. The taxes were continually increased.
Pressed by the huge cost of their wars and their alliances, the Visconti
were in fact always in need of money, and so assured was their supremacy
in Milan, that they no longer feared the discontent of the citizens.
With the development of their despotism the social gulf between the
Visconti and the rest of the community had grown wide. Both brothers
were proud, suspicious and cruel. But the severity of the silent
Bernabò, and his terrible fits of rage and strange capricious temper,
made him the most feared. He was laudably resolved to maintain justice
and order, so that a man might go unarmed through any part of his
dominions, and to suppress the old faction hatreds, but his methods were
intolerably harsh. No one was allowed to call himself Guelf or
Ghibelline on pain of having his tongue cut out. To be found abroad in
the city at night, for any reason whatever, was to lose a foot, and so
forth. Moreover, on mere suspicion people were put to cruel death or
torment. This arbitrary severity was, however, of little avail, and
crime was far more rife in the city than before Bernabò’s time. The
tyrant’s passion for dogs was as extravagant as his disregard for human
suffering. He had five thousand hounds, which his subjects were
compelled to keep and tend for him, and if one were found to be either
too fat or too lean for the chase, or to have come to any harm, woe to
its guardian. Every sort of game was sacred to the prince’s sport, and
the peasants who slew wild boars or other forest creatures for food
during a severe famine, were hanged or blinded. Two Franciscan brothers,
who dared to expostulate with the prince for his harshness, were burnt
as heretics, an act something ironical on the part of one who himself
spent nearly all his life under the ban of the Church. There was a
certain grim humour in some of Bernabò’s fierce deeds, as in his
treatment of two dignified Benedictine abbots, who were sent to treat
with him by the Pope. The prince met them on a bridge over the Lambro,
where, with due reverence, they presented to him the pontifical Bulls.
Bernabò read them, and looking up, eyed the legates grimly, and asked
them whether they would prefer food or drink. Perceiving a sinister
meaning in the question, the trembling clerics glanced at the deep river
flowing beneath, and said that they would rather eat. Whereupon the
papal missives, parchment, seals, silk cord and all, were crammed down
their throats.

Galeazzo was not so capriciously cruel as his brother, but his rule was
equally oppressive. To add to the afflictions of the people, the country
was devastated by the foreign Companies, who robbed friends and foes
alike; and years of famine and pestilence came, which their Lords took
no more thoughtful measure to relieve than hanging some of the chief
ministers. To both brothers clings the horrible reproach of a decree,
condemning prisoners of State to the so-called Quaresima, a series of
tortures lasting forty days. Yet Galeazzo was conspicuous for domestic
virtues, and both princes were very devout, and founded many churches
and convents, and gave largely in alms. One has to remember in judging
these sovereigns that the Florentine chroniclers, who have always held
the ear of the world, hated them as the enemies of their city. They
depict them as barbarous and ignorant tyrants, sunk in gross vice. Yet
Petrarca, the recognised sovereign of thought and letters in fourteenth
century Italy, spent several years at Milan, in the service first of
Archbishop Giovanni, and afterwards of Galeazzo, and speaks of the city
and its Lords with great affection and respect. The high honour which
the Visconti paid to the poet shows their regard for the things of the
spirit. Their capture of Petrarca was felt to be as great a triumph as
the conquest of a province. Boccaccio and other Tuscan writers inveigh
fiercely against their countryman for his adherence to the Visconti,
pretending that he who loved freedom had been deluded by the vulgar
worship of riches and luxury, and had become a slave. But Petrarca,
whose close acquaintance could judge better of his hosts, probably
appreciated the large and far-reaching political ideas which were the
heritage of the Visconti, and perhaps saw in Milan a hope for Italy,
outside the conception of the Florentines, the possibility of a larger
freedom in national union, which should restore the successors of the
Romans to their lost glory.

The Visconti, moreover, took great pains to advance learning and culture
in their dominions. They founded the University of Pavia, the once
celebrated school of jurisprudence there having long decayed, and richly
endowed its chairs, and it was Galeazzo who started the famous library
at Pavia, to which all students were allowed access. Bernabò was
something of a scholar himself, and had studied the Decretals in his
youth; but the anxiety of constant wars and the cares of State hindered
him from doing all that he would willingly have done for the
intellectual welfare of the capital.

The bitter jealousy which prevailed between the two brothers divided
them much in later years, though it could not disunite them in the face
of their foes, and Galeazzo had left Milan and removed his Court to
Pavia, though still keeping his share of the government of the capital.
He died in 1378. His son, Gian Galeazzo, was delicate of constitution,
of retiring habits, and much given to study. The gentleness with which
he began to rule, remitting taxes and seeking to propitiate his
subjects, excited the scorn of the grim Bernabò, who readily accepted
the proposal of the young widower—Isabella de Valois having died—for the
hand of his daughter Caterina, thinking thus to get an extra hold upon
him. Little did the veteran prince suspect that this mild recluse, who
was hardly ever seen out of his palace at Pavia, was the very
quintessence of that subtlety, tenacity and ambition which had made the
House of the Visconti the most dreaded in Italy. Gian Galeazzo’s genius
for statecraft had been carefully trained by his father. While Bernabò
regarded him as of little account, he was strengthening his position
both at home and abroad by quiet diplomacy, and evolving mighty schemes
in his mind, while he patiently waited the ripe moment for their
accomplishment.

There is nothing more dramatic in all the sensational story of mediæval
Italy than Gian Galeazzo Visconte’s sudden spring to power. Seven years
had passed since his father’s death, and Bernabò’s tyranny had grown
ever more oppressive, in sharp contrast to his fellow-ruler’s. One day
in 1385 Gian Galeazzo set forth from Pavia for Milan, escorted by four
hundred men-at-arms, having announced his intention of visiting a holy
shrine near Varese and his desire of embracing his honoured uncle on his
way. He had arranged not to enter the capital, but to skirt the walls
till he reached the castle beside Porta Giovia, recently built by his
father. Laughing at the young man’s caution and his pusillanimity in
bringing so large an escort, the elder Visconte sent two of his sons on
ahead, and swinging himself into the saddle, galloped off, with two or
three servants only, to meet his nephew. The two Sovereigns had but
exchanged greetings when, Gian Galeazzo signed to the captain of his
escort, Jacopo dal Verme, who laid his hand upon Bernabò’s shoulder, and
in a moment the tyrant found himself a prisoner. With his sons he was
hurried into the Castle of Porta Giovia. Gian Galeazzo entered the city
and was received with immense joy. Not vainly had he counted upon the
terror and hatred which his uncle had excited. The people, rushing to
the houses of the fallen tyrant and his sons, sacked them from end to
end, fired and tore them down, and razed them to the ground. In a
General Council of the citizens the sole and absolute dominion of Milan
was unanimously conferred upon Gian Galeazzo and upon his male heirs.

Bernabò was removed soon after to the Castle of Trezzo, and died seven
months later, of poison, it was said. His sons, except the two captured,
had fled in all directions, and were doing their utmost to raise help
against the usurper. But so perfectly had Gian Galeazzo conceived and
accomplished his great stroke, and with the exercise of such consummate
diplomacy and such victorious arms did he secure himself afterwards,
that not one of Bernabò’s children, in spite of their princely
alliances, were able, with all their constant efforts, to overthrow him
or recover any part of their heritage.

The usurper’s one excuse for his treachery was that his uncle and
cousins had been openly intriguing against him. Immediately after the
capture of Bernabò he drew up a solemn indictment against him, charging
him with a catalogue of appalling crimes, and with insidious designs
against his, Gian Galeazzo’s, life, and sent it to all the Courts of
Europe. This characteristic attempt to give legal justification to his
action deceived nobody. Italy at large regarded the young ruler with an
admiration and dread which events soon proved well-founded. The brain
which had shown such sovereign dissimulation cherished ambitions before
which whole cities and states were to fall. It was not long before his
schemes began to be fulfilled. The story of Gian Galeazzo’s military
enterprises is one of almost unbroken conquest. He was no soldier
himself, but he knew how to choose his generals, and he got the best out
of them by interfering with them little and rewarding them very
generously. The chaotic state of Italy at the time gave him his chance.
So extraordinary was his success, that he was regarded as something
almost diabolical. It seemed to his terrified enemies that he fascinated
those whom he marked for destruction, so that they fell with eyes open
into his snares. Francesco da Carrara, Lord of Padua, was persuaded to
aid him to overthrow the Scaligeri of Verona. That city having been
conquered in 1387, Gian Galeazzo picked a quarrel with his ally,
besieged and captured Padua (1389), and sent Francesco to die in the
dungeons of Monza. Master now of Verona and Padua, the Visconte had
touched the Adriatic shore. Meanwhile Mantua and Venice looked on
stupidly and awaited their own destruction as if paralysed. General fear
possessed Italy at the rapid progress of the conqueror, who, unseen
himself, directed his instruments with such unfailing insight to his
desired ends. The Visconte’s policy was to strike at the weak first and
gradually prepare the way for greater enterprises. The Church was at
this time in the throes of the Great Schism, and Gian Galeazzo,
protesting conscientious difficulties in deciding to which Pope he owed
spiritual obedience, played them against one another, while he seized
the papal fiefs in the Romagna. His armies climbed the mountains and
poured into Umbria and Tuscany. Aroused at last by the example and
exhortations of Florence, Italy shook off her stupor, and a general
effort was made to stem the advance of the Visconte. Yet still he crept
on, remedying the checks to his arms by his stealthy diplomacy. The King
of France, in answer to the appeal of Florence, sent an army to invade
his States, but it was routed by Jacopo dal Verme, and Charles VI. was
himself converted into an ally by the Visconte’s flatteries and
promises. In 1399 he triumphed over Florence again by acquiring Pisa,
without a blow, from Gerardo d’Appiano, while Perugia, Siena and Assisi
submitted to his generals.

Already in 1395 Gian Galeazzo’s great increase of power and prestige had
been marked by his elevation to a new dignity. His untiring
negotiations, backed by the offer of an enormous sum, persuaded the
Emperor Wenceslaus to constitute the Milanese State, including a number
of conquered cities, into a Duchy, and to invest the Visconte and his
male heirs with it in perpetuity. The ceremony of investiture took place
in the Piazza of St. Ambrogio, where upon a great throne the imperial
legate robed and crowned the new duke in the sight of all the people, in
the midst of every pompous circumstance, while in the basilica
afterwards the Bishop of Novara, destined to become Pope Alexander V.,
preached the sermon and lauded the subject of his oration for his
illustrious blood, his conspicuous beauty of person and the virtuous
tranquillity of his mind.

Gian Galeazzo was as great an administrator as statesman and conqueror.
By wisdom, economy, careful distribution of taxation and supervision of
finances, he relieved the people from the cruel and ill-considered
burdens imposed by the bad management of his predecessors, while
increasing his own resources enormously. He was the very genius of
order. He saw that the law was properly and effectively carried out,
justice done to all, and perfect rule maintained throughout the State.
It was by his generous, just, and wise government of the cities which he
conquered that he consolidated his vast dominions.

In these favourable conditions Milan flourished exceedingly, and could
contribute without overwhelming distress her share of the duke’s annual
revenue of twelve hundred thousand florins, and of the extra levies for
special purposes, amounting sometimes to eight hundred thousand florins
in one year—sums far exceeding those commanded by any other Italian
prince.

Gian Galeazzo’s rule, though sometimes oppressive, was not carried on by
the harsh methods of his predecessors. Violence and wanton cruelty were
probably repugnant to his sensitive physical temperament and despicable
to his unimpassioned mind. He was never bloody, except for a purpose, as
in the awful sack of Verona after her revolt and recapture in 1390. But
for a refined and ingenious cruelty which exercised itself in long
worming plots ending far off in some unexpected catastrophe, Gian
Galeazzo seems to have had an artistic predilection. It was he, men
said, who by Iago-like suggestions drove Francesco Gonzaga of Mantua to
slay his wife Agnese, one of Bernabò Visconte’s daughters, in a frenzy
of jealousy, that he himself might be first and loudest afterwards in
proclaiming the innocence of the lady and exciting general execration of
the murderer. The beheading of young Obizzo d’Este at Ferrara has been
also attributed to evil suspicions which the Milanese prince instilled
into the Marquis Alberto for political ends. The Visconte’s influence is
plainer still in the hideous treachery and ingratitude of Jacopo
d’Appiano, who, with a kiss of peace, slew his protector and friend, the
noble Pietro Gambacorti, and made himself Lord of Pisa for Gian
Galeazzo’s benefit, as very shortly appeared.

The Duke’s piety was as marked as his less estimable characteristics. He
did not doubt his own righteousness or hesitate to invoke the aid of
Heaven for all his enterprises. He was assiduous in his devotion to the
Saints and observance of the Church’s rites and ceremonies. The
Cathedral of Milan, the vast Certosa of Pavia, and many other great
buildings, were planned and founded by this prince. These works were not
done solely for a spiritual reward, but also to proclaim his own glory
to the world and to encourage art and industry. All Gian Galeazzo’s
greatness of spirit showed in his buildings. His engineering schemes
were as mighty and daring in conception as undaunted and patient in
accomplishment. To subdue Padua and Mantua he undertook the gigantic
task of diverting the Brenta and Mincio. But here he measured himself
too audaciously against natural forces. One night the Mincio, ‘in
piena,’ hurled its waters at the huge dam and swept away the work which
had cost untold labour and gold.

With all his occupations of war and statesmanship, Gian Galeazzo found
time to continue his father’s patronage of Letters. He had as a youth
studied deeply himself in the University of Pavia. An early fresco at
Pavia, now long lost, represented him as a child standing in a crowd of
nobles and distinguished men in his father’s palace, and in answer to
the question, who was the greatest man present, pointing to the poet
Petrarca. This allegory recorded the honour which he paid all his life
to intellect and learning. He called the greatest scholars to the Chairs
of the University, including Emanuel Chrysoloras, who thus brought to
Milan the newly reviving knowledge of Greek. He made these men his
councillors and familiar associates. They read poetry to him and
discussed the new discoveries of antiquity, so that his castle has been
called a temple of wisdom. Architecture, sculpture, painting were
equally fostered by him. There was no sort of human activity which he
did not seek to stimulate for the advantage and glory of his State.

Though its operations meant destruction to lesser powers, Gian
Galeazzo’s brain was essentially kingly and creative. This was the
moment in Italy of the formation of great States. The old faction
struggles of the era of freedom had come to an end with the
establishment of tyrannies, and of these the lesser were now being
swallowed up by the greater. In this process Milan under the Visconti
was the leader. Its natural outcome seemed to be the foundation of a
great settled kingdom in the peninsula, like France and England in the
North. The patriotic spirits of the time dreamed of such a kingdom as
the redemption of Italy from her woes of constant dissension and
warfare. The idea took practical shape in the mind of the great Matteo’s
descendant and heir, in whom character and circumstance united to carry
the large political thought and ambition of the Visconti nearest to its
supreme fulfilment. And it was to Gian Galeazzo that the dreamers looked
for the realisation of their desire, as perhaps Petrarca had looked to
the earlier generation. Fazio degli Uberti, the fourteenth century
Florentine poet and exile, who lived long at the Viscontean Court, in
one of his canzoni makes Rome cry—

                ‘O figliuol mio, da quanta crudel guerra
                Tutti insieme verremo a dolcie pace
                Se Italia soggiace
                A un solo re....’[2]

Footnote 2:

                ‘Oh my son, from what cruel warfare
                Should we come all together to sweet peace
                Could Italy be subject
                To one sole king....’

To such a single crown Gian Galeazzo undoubtedly aspired. And though he
was defeated in the end, it was by no mortal means. All the efforts of
the hostile league of Florence, Venice, the Pope, and the lesser Italian
Princes, could not hinder his advance. His dominions at the beginning of
the fifteenth century embraced nearly the whole of Lombardy and the
Romagna. The Umbrian cities Perugia and Assisi were his. Lucca, Pisa and
Siena obeyed him. The tide of his success crept on. He foresaw and
discomfited every move of his opponents. In 1401 Bologna, long an
obstacle in his path, was surrendered to him by the Bentivogli. His
bravest and most obstinate foe, Florence, lay virtually at his mercy. On
every side of her he was supreme. Cut off from all help she waited his
deadly attack. The moment of his triumph was at hand.

In July 1402 the Duke instructed his armies to close round the city of
the Arno. Retiring from Milan, where the plague had appeared, to his
villa at Melegnano, he had the mantle, sceptre and diadem prepared for
his coronation as King of Italy. He had nothing to fear now from mortal
enemies. There was one power only which his arms and calculations could
not defy. On the 10th of August he was seized with the deadly contagion,
and a few days later he died, at the age of 49.

Who can tell the thoughts of the man as he lay on his death-bed, in his
hands at last all that he had laboured for day and night without
ceasing, and they powerless to close upon it. Who can measure the
passion of that defeated brain? His death caused infinite joy in
Florence, and in Italy generally. Yet there were many who, with an
anonymous poet of the time, wept for the loss which had deprived

                             ‘questo emisfero
                     de quel che col pensiero
                     Sanar volia l’italico payese.’

Their lament was justified. The direct result of the tyrant’s death was
the release of all the elements of disorder and reaction in Italy, the
revival of angry faction, the break-up of a great organised State among
a host of greedy and warring pretenders, and the terrorism of military
adventurers over the whole country, ending in the establishment of a
dynasty in Milan destined to sell Italy to her final shame and ruin.
What if Gian Galeazzo had lived a few years longer? Florence would
probably have fallen before him, Florence whose incurable spirit of
individualism had been the one barrier between him and his ambition. But
was that single little torch of liberty, which itself was soon to waver
and be spent, worth the sacrifice of a united and peaceful Italy, strong
enough to resist all outside foes, forward enough to lead all Europe in
the path of progress?

Yet if that noble fruition of art and civilisation which glorifies the
fifteenth century in Florence was conditional on her independence, then
Italy through all the tears of her after centuries of sorrow and
humiliation might well answer Yes.

[Illustration: THE SNAKE OF THE VISCONTI]




                               CHAPTER VI
                       _From Visconti to Sforza_


 “Una città corrotta che vive sotto un principe ... mai non si può
    ridurre libera.”—MACCHIAVELLI.

Gian Galeazzo’s three sons by Isabella of Valois had died in infancy,
leaving him with one daughter only, Valentina, whom in 1387 he had
married to the Duke of Orleans, brother of Charles VI. of France, an
alliance of immense immediate advantage to the Visconti, but of fatal
issue for Milan and Italy generally, in days beyond even his far vision.
After some years of marriage, his second wife, Caterina Visconte, had
borne him a son, whom he had named Giovanni Maria, decreeing that every
one of his descendants should thenceforth bear the name of Maria, as a
token of his gratitude to the Virgin, to whose intercession he
attributed the birth of his heir. A second son, Filippo Maria, was born
later. At the time of the Duke’s death the elder was only fourteen, and
the younger ten. In addition to their youth, they had the enduring
disadvantage of issuing from parents both of the same stock, which
already, in the ferocity and capriciousness of Bernabò and the physical
timidity and weakness of Gian Galeazzo himself, had shown signs of
vitiation. This taint in the blood became in Giovanni Maria a moral
disease, amounting to mania, and in his brother an exaggerated
misanthropy and timidity.

Giovanni Maria succeeded to the dukedom, and Filippo became by his
father’s will Count of Pavia, which had been erected into an appanage of
the sovereign House. The charge of the young Duke’s person and state
immediately became the object of a wild scramble among the different
parties in the city. The dead man’s will, appointing his widow regent,
was utterly disregarded, and she and her adviser, Francesco Barbavara,
were driven out by Estorre and Carlo Visconte, two of Bernabò’s sons,
who now reappeared after long exile, hoping to recover their heritage.
The Duchess died in 1404, poisoned, it was believed, by her son. But
this unhappy lady, who had seen her father entrapped and murdered and
her whole family ruined by her husband, and whose sons were now helpless
in the hands of robbers and foes—who had been driven hither and thither
in the whirl of faction and was already paralytic—might well sink
beneath her sorrows, without the help of this unnatural crime, which
there seems to have been no better reason than his general wickedness
for laying to the young Duke’s charge.

Meanwhile Bernabò’s sons were swept away by other faction leaders, to
return and be again overthrown, as the fortunes of the struggle surged
backwards and forwards. One after another of Gian Galeazzo’s great
captains snatched and held the city for a time. Now Ottobuono Terzo—now
Carlo Malatesta—now Facino Cane, the most famous of them all, ruled in
the name of the utterly incapable Prince, while out of the ruins of Gian
Galeazzo’s vast State, which Venice, Florence and the Church had
hastened to dismember, each faithless governor seized some remaining
fragment wherewith to create a small independent dominion for himself.
Thus while the great Duke’s conquests, further off, were quickly lost,
cities close to the capital and long subject to the Visconti fell to
these lesser depredators. Pavia and other towns were captured by Facino
Cane, who kept the young Filippo a virtual prisoner, and Monza became
the stronghold of Estorre Visconte and his spirited sister Valentina.

The confusion and struggle in Milan continued throughout the ten years
of Giovanmaria’s reign. The condition of the city was lamentable. Peace
and order were destroyed, and the names of Guelf and Ghibelline were
heard again in the streets, inflaming household against household and
awakening the horrors of civil war. The Duke made no attempt to rule for
himself. His only share in the government was the execution of State
prisoners, whom he caused to be torn to pieces, under his own eyes, by
dogs trained for the purpose. The extraordinary passion for dogs,
together with the hatred of humankind, visible in Bernabò and others of
the Visconti, had become an extravagant ferocity in this degenerate
member of the race. The story of Milan during his reign is like some
dreadful dream, in which, when sleep has fallen on the incessant riots
and fighting, through the darkness of the night stalk the awful figures
of the maniac Prince, gloating in his sport, and his huntsman, Squarcia
Giramo, beside him, with their terrible hounds in leash, on the scent of
human blood.

The Duke’s appetite for blood was rewarded with Dantesque fitness. He
died in 1412, suffocated in his own blood in the precincts of the
palace, under the daggers of three Milanese nobles, who had sworn to rid
the world of a monster, and his body, lying in its blood in the
Cathedral, whither it had been carried and left alone by the general
horror, had for its only pall blood-red roses strewn upon it by a
harlot.

At the moment of Giovanmaria’s murder, Facino Cane, who for some years
had dominated Milan, lay on his death-bed. Filippo Maria Visconte, whose
youth had passed in confinement at Pavia, now found himself at one
stroke free, and in nominal possession at least of the Dukedom. He was
twenty years old. The astute young man’s first step was to marry
Beatrice Tenda, Facino’s widow, through whom he became at once master of
Pavia and the State which the Condottiere had conquered for himself, and
of Facino’s fine army and immense treasure. He then led his troops to
Milan, where his entry was opposed by Estorre Visconte and a strong
faction. The great stronghold of Porta Giovia was, however, held for the
legitimate prince by the Castellan, Vincenzo Marliano, who roused the
citizens against Estorre. That brave soldier, the Hector of his race,
was overthrown, and he and his nephew Giovanni Carlo, with all their
supporters, were compelled to fly after a few days. The young Duke
marched in without opposition and was received with enthusiasm by the
people.

The city felt at once the presence of a master. Order was restored,
factions calmed, peaceful industry protected, and punishment inflicted
on Giovanmaria’s murderers. Filippo proceeded to engage the most
successful Condottieri of the day to defend and restore his State,
seconding their valour and generalship in the field by the most careful
and industrious diplomacy in every Court of Italy and the principal
European kingdoms. The rebel Visconti were subdued by the death of
Estorre and the surrender of Monza (1412), which the brave Valentina
relinquished, making honourable terms for herself and the remaining
descendants of Bernabò. Lodi, Como, Piacenza and Brescia were recovered
in the course of a few years, and in 1422 Genoa was won. Filippo’s rapid
progress awakened the old terror of the Snake once again in Italy. The
third Duke of Milan had indeed many of the successful qualities of his
race, the craft, the patience, the untiring industry. But they were
vitiated by his timidity of mind and body, which made him both
suspicious and superstitious. Supremely perfidious himself, he dared
trust no man, and constantly laid snares for his own agents, and ended
by falling into them himself. Thus in 1424, fearful of the glory of his
great general, Carmagnola, who had been the chief means of restoring his
fortunes, he offended and alienated the Condottiere, with disastrous
consequences. In his fear and dislike of all men he shut himself up in
the innermost recesses of the Castle of Porta Giovia, and maintained as
many precautions as if he dwelt in a city of traitors. He tolerated few
persons around him, except his astrologers, who ruled him through his
fears. He dared take no step without consulting them. He was never seen
by his subjects except upon some rare State occasion, surrounded by
guards, or when some peasant, working in the solitary fields, spied him
slipping hastily in his barge along the canals between Milan and his
favourite country palace of Abbiategrasso.

This dark habit of life made him odious to the sunny-tempered Milanese.
They shuddered at this pale fat man, who increased their horror by
condemning his own wife to death in 1418. To Beatrice Tenda and her vast
dowry Filippo owed almost entirely his possession of the Dukedom. Her
years much exceeded her second husband’s, though the Duke, like his
father, had never been young. Because he was tired of her, or because
she was cross and avaricious, as the chroniclers variously aver, or more
probably because she had served her purpose and was no longer of any use
to him, Filippo accused her of infidelity. She was arrested and carried
to the Castle of Binasco, together with her supposed lover, a handsome
young knight, Michele Orombello, who had solaced her dreary existence
with his skill upon the lute, and after having resisted torture
inflicted to make her confess herself guilty, she was beheaded.
Orombello and two of her ladies shared her fate. Ten years later the
Duke married, for political reasons, the Princess Maria of Savoy. This
poor lady was hardly less to be pitied than Beatrice. The Duke neglected
her himself, yet jealously kept her secluded from all but her own women,
allowing no man to appear in her presence. Meanwhile Agnese del Maino,
the lady who had secured the tyrant’s affections, reigned in the Castle
as his wife in all but name. Filippo’s love for Agnese, a woman of
spirit and culture, and his devotion to the daughter she bore him, his
only child, Bianca Maria, were human traits in his otherwise unamiable
character. Though no lover of learning, Filippo continued, as much as
circumstances allowed, the Viscontean patronage of culture and letters,
the tradition that had descended from his ancestors, the hosts of
Petrarca. He kept up the University of Pavia and called great scholars
to its chairs. The celebrated humanist, Pier Candido Decembrio, was for
many years his secretary. He employed artists of renown, including
Brunelleschi and Pisanello, in various works. To his daughter the Duke
was careful to give the scholarly training which with the revival of
learning had become a necessary ornament for the women as well as the
men of the great Italian Houses, and Bianca Maria added the
accomplishments of Latin and Greek to the beauty and spirit with which
nature had endowed her.

But the Duke had neither means nor leisure amid the struggles of his
ambition and the pressure of his fears for much attention to the
peaceful arts. He was entirely occupied in redeeming his heritage and
preserving it from the greed of Venice, the inveterate hate of Florence,
the envy of the smaller States, and, from what he feared most of all,
the ambition and intrigues of the Condottieri in his own employ. The
fortunes of Italy were now, in fact, in the hands of the great military
adventurers. After a century and a half of physical lassitude, during
which her wars had been carried on by foreign mercenaries, she had bred
a race of warriors who had learnt their craft so well in the camps of
the German and English Condottieri that they had now superseded the
foreigners. With hosts of trained and disciplined soldiers at their
command, who knew no faith except to their leader, they took service now
with one sovereign, now with another, and with their fickle arms and
policy made and unmade States at their will. Facino Cane and Jacopo dal
Verme had already played their parts, to the disruption of the Milanese
State. Carmagnolo, after serving Duke Filippo for many years, went over
to Venice, and for long balanced the two States one against the other,
by his crafty conduct of the war, till he fell a victim to the superior
cunning of the Doge and his councillors in 1432. And now, in the midst
of the noise of battle and the ferment of intrigue, in which all the
years of Duke Filippo were wrapped, the great name of Sforza is first
heard in Milanese story.

With the first Sforza and his son Francesco on the one side, and Braccio
Montone and Niccolò Piccinino on the other, the age of the Condottieri
culminated. The whole of Italy was plunged into strife by these great
leaders, in whom the old faction divisions of the country were revived,
and cities and States split up once again into hostile parties, Guelfs
and Ghibellines reappearing under the new names of Sforzeschi and
Bracceschi. These rival forces were at once the salvation and the
torment of Duke Filippo. The hope of succeeding to the heirless man’s
dominions—an elevation not beyond the attainment of an obscurely born
individual, in an age and country in which men made themselves, and
everything was possible to strength and ability—was a bait which drew
them to his service; and with all his cunning and perfidious diplomacy
he manipulated them for his own advantage, pitting them against each
other, now encouraging one, now compassing his downfall by means of
another. But they, too, were cunning. It was a game of wits, and Filippo
often found himself outdone. Yet to the very end, though plagued,
cajoled and defeated on all sides, he succeeded in circumventing all the
efforts of either party to seat itself securely in Milan, preferring,
with his strange spite towards mankind, to leave his kingdom to anarchy
rather than adopt an heir.

In spite of him, however, destiny had raised up in a rustic race hailing
from Cotignola, in the Romagna, a regenerator for the worn-out tyranny
of the Visconti. Muzio Attendolo, the founder of the Sforza family, is
pictured by legend as a peasant boy, who, when twelve years old, flung
his woodman’s axe into a tree, and ran away to the wars. He appears to
have been really the son of a small landowner, rich only in the
possession of a progeny mighty in number and in strength. The name of
Sforza is said to have attached itself to him, in consequence of some
signal effort of his extraordinary strength and will. These qualities,
joined to his great energy, raised him to the highest military fame. His
life was chiefly spent in the wars of Naples and the Church, but he had
just accepted service with the Duke of Milan, when one day he plunged
into a swollen river, under the arrows of the enemy, to save a drowning
boy, and sank beneath the weight of his armour (1424).

His son, Francesco, though only twenty-two, took command of his army,
and soon showed equal valour and much greater ability. Engaged, in 1425,
by Duke Filippo, he rapidly became a power in Milan, where he struggled
with the rival Condottiere, Niccolò Piccinino, for supremacy in the
councils of the Prince, and in the favour of the people. In 1432,
Filippo gave him the highest mark of favour by promising him the hand of
Bianca Maria, and with all solemnity the little girl of eight years old
was betrothed to the great general. But no sooner had the Duke thus
exalted Sforza, than he hastened to depress and humiliate him in every
way. Niccolò Piccinino was given the chief command of the Visconte’s
forces, and Francesco was fain at the time to abandon Milan, and his
hopes of eventually possessing the Dukedom in his promised wife’s right,
and to accept the standard of Pope Eugenius IV., Filippo’s bitter enemy.
For many years the brilliant genius of Piccinino and the subtlety of the
Duke were victorious over all enemies, and baffled every effort of
Sforza to obtain his little princess and regain his footing in Milan.
The climax of Filippo’s success came in 1435, when his Genoese fleet
defeated the Neapolitans at Gaeta, and brought back captive the Kings of
Naples and Navarre and a great company of lords and gentlemen. The Duke
on this occasion completely belied his usual character and astonished
the whole world by his kingly spirit. He received the two monarchs with
the utmost honour, and immediately granted them their freedom. Moreover,
he entertained them and their trains for a whole month, with great
splendour and a joyous festivity, rare indeed in Milan during his reign.
His generosity was doubtless calculated; in Alfonso of Naples he
disarmed an enemy and made a lasting friend, and by cunningly rousing in
that monarch a hope of succeeding to the Milanese state, he raised up an
aspirant who might be useful as a weapon against the conflicting
pretensions of Piccinino and Sforza.

Before long, however, fortune turned against the Duke. Sforza, at the
head of the League of Venice, Florence and the Church, routed his
generals and captured his provinces and cities. In this predicament,
Filippo appealed to the great Condottiere’s ambition, and allured him
once more by offering him his bride at last with a rich dowry of
territory and gold. Francesco thereupon ceased to press the attack upon
him, and the war became little more than a languid pretence. Having thus
nonplussed his foes, who were completely dependent on the caprice of
their general, the Duke, with his interminable negotiations, continually
delayed the accomplishment of his promise, and meanwhile secretly
endeavoured in every way to entangle and overthrow Francesco. In this he
was only baffled by the almost equal craft and caution of his would-be
son-in-law.

But as time went on, the Duke began to grow old and to weary of the
eternal struggle. He was oppressed with languor and excessive fat. The
fear of total blindness came upon him. Nearly all Italy was armed
against him. The parties in the State grew ever more clamorous, his
captains more unmanageable. Each of the latter seized upon one of his
cities and domineered over it as its Lord. Disasters accumulated upon
him in the field. Piccinino’s daring raid into Florentine territory, in
1439-40, ended in the great defeat of Anghiari, and Sforza, enraged by
the Duke’s duplicity, was capturing his cities for the League and
devastating his territories far and wide. Meanwhile, the peace which all
Italy sighed for was delayed by the great Condottiere, who, having
triumphed over all his rivals, would not sheath his sword till he had
secured Bianca Maria and the enormous dowry which he demanded with her.
At last, yielding to the persuasion of his only friend, Niccolò III. of
Ferrara, the general peacemaker, Filippo agreed to the marriage, and the
maiden of seventeen was conducted to the city of Cremona, which was to
be her rich portion, by the fatherly Marquis Niccolò, and there wedded
to her mature bridegroom.

Sforza’s purpose was, however, only half accomplished. Though the lady
was won, the Dukedom remained to be secured. But he had to reckon with
his father-in-law’s antipathy, doubtless originating in a deep-seated
pride of race, and also with the hostile party—led by Niccolò Piccinino
and his sons—which was all-powerful in Milan and virtually ruled the now
decrepit Filippo. The Milanese armies before long moved once more
against Sforza, who retaliated by accepting the command of the Venetian
forces and carrying fire and sword right up to the walls of Milan. The
terrified Filippo was compelled to seek reconciliation with his offended
son-in-law, and to the chagrin of Venice, Sforza abandoned her side in
the hour of success and rapidly won back for the Visconte the Milanese
territories which he had just conquered for the Republic. At this
juncture the Duke, plagued by the irreconcilable importunities of the
two parties, used the only resource left to him wherewith to baffle them
both. Without confirming his promises to Sforza he fell sick, and,
obstinately refusing all remedies, let himself die (1447), reiterating
with his last breath a wish that after his death everything might fall
to ruin.

And so it did. The city was immediately plunged into confusion and
uproar. Pretenders sprang up on every side, and the old faction trouble
threatened to overwhelm all order. The cities subject to Milan rebelled,
and once more the great State of the Visconti broke up into independent
fragments. Meanwhile, in the midst of the tumult in the capital itself,
the beautiful word Liberty, still remembered from the glorious days of
Milan’s Republican freedom, was breathed by a few noble and
disinterested citizens. It was acclaimed by the people, who thought it
meant relief from taxation, and was accepted by the various factions,
each hoping to make profit out of it. Amid enormous enthusiasm the
Golden Republic of St. Ambrogio was constituted, and the supreme
authority delegated to a few leading men, who were called Captains and
Defenders of the Liberty of Milan.

The first act of the Republic was to sweep away the Castle of Porta
Giovia, stronghold and symbol of hated tyranny. The people exulted to
see it fall, but many thoughtful men, remembering the predatories who
coveted the rich city, were dismayed. Nor did the new Constitution
prosper. The Milanese had lost all capacity for self-government under
the long-continued despotism of the Visconti. ‘Nothing could make Milan
free,’ pronounced Macchiavelli later, ‘being altogether corrupt, as was
seen after the death of Filippo Visconte, when desiring to establish
liberty she neither was able, nor knew how, to maintain it.’ The tyranny
of hostile factions triumphed over the best intentions of the
Republicans, and the thoughtless people arrayed themselves one against
another, behind leaders whose only aim was to subjugate them. Those who
had really pure motives were drawn hopelessly into the whirlpool, and
the Defenders of Liberty oppressed each other, and the citizens
generally, with every cruelty and injustice.

Meanwhile the Duchy was claimed by the Guelf party for Alfonso of
Aragon, on the strength of a will which his supporters had extracted
from the dying Filippo. A pretension—first threat of the misfortune that
was to fall later on Milan—was also advanced by the Duke of Orleans, son
of Filippo’s sister, Valentina Visconte. The Emperor claimed the Duchy
as a vacant fief. More dangerous than any of these pretenders was
Venice, greedy to extend her empire. But strongest of all was the
resolution of Francesco Sforza, who mended the flaw of illegitimacy in
his wife’s claim by the strength of his good sword. General of the
Milanese armies at Filippo’s death, he used his power to defend the
State from the attacks of Venice, and to subdue it gradually to his own
sway. But his enemies were strong. The Piccinini, Francesco and Jacopo,
warred against him with arms and intrigue, in alliance with the old
Guelf faction. They held Milan against him, but their councils were
confused by passion and divisions, and the great general drew steadily
nearer to the city. He defeated the Piccinini in the field, and
outwitted their perfidious diplomacy with an equal craft. He leagued
with Venice and Florence against the new Republic, defeated the Duke of
Savoy, whom Filippo’s widow, Maria of Savoy, had enlisted against him,
and cutting Milan off from all friends or help, laid siege to the
capital itself.

Yet still the citizens clung to their illusion of liberty, and
obstinately refused to submit to a new master. Amid fierce tumult they
appointed fresh magistrates from the lowest ranks, persecuted and
proscribed the nobles, and put an enormous price on the head of the
‘perfidious’ Francesco Sforza, decreeing death to any who breathed his
name without a curse. But their resolution was useless. For some time
they kept the invader at bay with great spirit, aided by his party foes;
but the death of Francesco Piccinino at this juncture was a serious blow
to the defence. All trade was stopped by the siege, and general ruin
threatened this community, long used to wealth and ease. The city was
now reduced to grievous straits by famine. The desperate struggles of
the democratic leaders, Gio. Ossona and Gio. da Appiano, to maintain
their rule by blood and torture in the face of the growing discontent
and the ceaseless intrigues of Sforza’s partisans, made them odious to
all. Tumults broke out, and everywhere, says Corio, were heard
lamentations, weeping and cries. The Captains of Liberty were no longer
feared or obeyed. When in desperation they began to parley with Venice,
the citizens unanimously agreed that submission to Sforza was a lesser
evil than falling into the jaws of San Marco, and a rising of
Ghibellines and friends of the Condottiere succeeded in sweeping away
the Republic of St. Ambrogio, and opening the gates at last to the
victorious Francesco, and to a new era of peace, prosperity and
servitude (1450).

Amid the wild applause of countless thousands, the great warrior rode
in, followed by his soldiers, whose necks and shoulders were hung round
with loaves of bread. _It was a fine thing to see_—in Corio’s
words—_with what eagerness the people snatched off the bread, and with
what voracity they devoured it_. So enormous was the throng, all
shouting Sforza and Duca, that the conqueror and his horse were
literally lifted up and carried on men’s shoulders. But even yet one or
two, among them the high-hearted Ambrogio Trivulzio, opposed his
entrance, demanding of him guarantees for the liberty of the city. They
were overpowered, however, by the multitudes, and Francesco Sforza was
proclaimed Duke by general consent of the citizens.

Milan had immediate consolation for her lost liberty. By the wise
provision of the conqueror, such generous abundance flowed in after the
herald loaves of the soldiers, that in three days it seemed as if there
had been no siege at all. Order was restored with a firm and kindly
hand, and the splendid feasts and tournaments, continuing for nine days,
and drowning the memory of past afflictions, hid no cruel deeds of
vengeance upon the Duke’s political opponents.

Italian historians generally agree in a favourable estimate of Francesco
Sforza. Corio, the historian, whose father was a gentleman in the
service of the Sforza, and he himself from his youth up, attached to the
ducal household, describes the first Duke as _liberalissimo_, full of
kindness, a lover of justice and religion, and declares that none
observed faith better than he. This last, in fifteenth century Italy,
was not saying much. More impartial writers, while praising his courage,
ability and general humanity, recognise that his triumph was due as much
to perfidy and political suppleness as to valour. He was a man of his
time, and his moral standard was that expressed by Macchiavelli later,
who, writing of the Sforza, excuses him on the ground that great men are
ashamed to lose, not to gain, by deception.

As Duke of Milan, Francesco still resorted to the same practices. The
long tyranny of the Visconti, the strange cruelties and mysterious
misanthropic habits of the later princes, the intercourse of the last
Duke with astrologers and necromancers, which had wrapped him in a sort
of diabolical atmosphere, made the idea of a despot repulsive and awful
to the people, apart from their fear of oppression. But the brave,
robust presence, the frank and genial manner of this lord of the
battlefield and camp, _who nothing esteemed astrologers_, did much to
overcome their prejudices, and his rejection of the gorgeous symbols of
sovereignty prepared for his entry as _superstitioni dei Re_, and unfit
for a simple soldier, was carefully calculated to win their confidence.
But he dared not trust them. No sooner was he seated on the throne than
with false assurances that his only motive was the safety and
embellishment of the city, he began to rebuild the castle of Porta
Giovia, and to fortify it with enormous walls, and with two huge round
towers commanding the habitations of his subjects themselves, an ever
visible warning against rebellion. The Milanese, however, made no
attempt to shake off the yoke. The bulk of the people resumed with joy
their industrial occupations, too content with relief from immediate
afflictions to question of the future. They might well, too, recognise
that submission to the successful soldier was Milan’s only hope of
salvation as an independent State.

In Italy, as a whole, the elevation of Francesco Sforza meant the boon
of peace. It enrolled on the side of order and stability the chief
element of disturbance in the country. For more than a century continual
strife had been kept up by the Condottieri in their own interests. But
now that the greatest of them all had attained a solid throne, the era
of their irresponsible energies was over. The splendid title and wealth
of the Visconti, and the immense resources of the Lombard capital,
united with the military skill and renown of the Sforza, could
consolidate and safeguard once again that great empire of the Snake,
whose decrepitude had been the chief opportunity of the Condottieri, and
the provocation of the late wars. On the part chosen by Milan depended
largely the fate of the whole peninsula. The far-eyed ambition of the
Visconti had chosen war. The new dynasty, on the contrary, preferred to
develop the vast wealth of the State which it had won rather than
increase its bounds, and was content to relinquish for the sake of peace
all pretensions to the cities once belonging to the Visconti, and now
usurped by Venice. Neither Francesco nor his successor sought the
aggrandisement of their dominions. And where the Visconti, aggressive
though they were, had studied the peace of Italy in the larger sense,
they were nobly followed by the two first Sforza. Gian Galeazzo’s
national policy—Italy for the Italians—his care to keep those Alpine
gates, whose keys had been committed to Milan’s charge, locked against a
possible invader, was adopted and carried on by the Sforza, through
nearly half a century; and when it was reversed, and the flood of
disaster and ruin let loose upon the country by Francesco’s younger son,
the brilliant prince to whom Fate had denied no gift except just those
two qualities which had made the Visconti great—judgment and knowledge
of men—there is reason to believe that fear rather than ambition was the
motive.

During the last century of the Viscontean domination, Milan, which had
suffered little herself from the wars of Gian Galeazzo and Filippo
Maria, and had never been taxed beyond her strength by those able
tyrants, had grown into an enormous centre of trade. The rich produce of
the East, transmitted from Venice and the other Italian ports, and the
exports of the country itself, passed through the Milanese warehouses to
the marts of the North. The Milanese woollen fabrics clothed all
well-to-do Europe, and her smiths forged the panoply of the knights and
men-at-arms on every battlefield and in every jousting-list of
Christendom and of civilised Heathenesse as well. So great were the
workshops of the master armourers that two of them alone are said to
have armed on one occasion four thousand horsemen and two thousand foot
soldiers for Duke Filippo in the space of a few days. The abundant
products of the fertile plains around flowed into the capital, and with
increasing population and wealth new industries arose, adding to the
general prosperity, so that this city could with ease keep up an army
which would have beggared Venice or Florence. In her almost
inexhaustible resources lay the secret of her power in Italy, and of her
great influence even in the Councils of Europe.

The new Duke laboured to breed, by all the arts of peace, yet greater
wealth, and to secure its full advantage for the State. Especially he
desired that Milan should have a due share in that splendid patrimony of
light and learning which Italy was now inheriting across the chasm of
the Middle Ages from her rediscovered Past. This man of war, bred up
from childhood in the camp, entertained all the liberal ideals of the
day. He particularly honoured virtuous and learned men, Corio tells us,
and to his encouragement of art the city owed many beautiful buildings.
In his patronage of the humanities, as in all his affairs, the Duke was
nobly supported by his wife, Bianca Maria Visconte. This lady—_donna
d’animo virile_—had been from their marriage-day the prop of his
ambition and resolve. Her invincible spirit had never allowed him to
flinch a moment from his task of conquest, had restored his courage
under misfortune, and had even inspired him by donning helmet and
cuirass, and herself leading troops to his succour on the battlefield.
Aided by her clever mother, Agnese del Maino, Bianca Maria had acted for
him in critical moments in his absence, with invariable constancy and
promptitude, so that he was wont to declare that he had more confidence
in her than in his whole army. In the acquisition of Milan she was his
chief councillor, and now that the throne of her ancestors was won, she
claimed her full share of it. One may suspect that this conqueror of
men—not alone in history—was somewhat mastered by the young woman at his
side. Bianca Maria is celebrated by the chroniclers for her goodness.
‘This lady,’ says Cagnola, ‘in piety, compassion, charity, and beauty of
person, as well as every other virtue, surpassed all the women of our
age, and was the splendour and mirror of all Italian women.’

Francesco left the government of his sons entirely to this notable lady.
She herself superintended their Greek and Latin studies. But instruction
in the art of ruling was the chief feature of her training, and that
famous pedant, Filelfo, the Florentine, who was one of their tutors, had
to remember that his task was to form princes, not merely men of
letters. She was careful to have them taught chivalrous exercises,
habits of courtesy, and the good manners proper to princes; and so
rigorous was her discipline that no boys were ever better behaved than
the ‘fantastick’ of after days, Galeazzo Maria, and he who was to betray
Italy, Lodovico il Moro.

With the change from the worn-out domination of the Visconti, rooted in
the Middle Ages, to the rule of the soldier of fortune, who owed his
success to personal genius and character, the Renaissance era, that
opportunity of individual talent, may be said to have opened in Milan.
The aspect of the city soon showed the operation of a new vitality and
enthusiasm, in the splendid buildings which now arose, and in the
activity of all artistic and industrial employments. But Duke
Francesco’s designs for the improvement of his State were hampered by
the last convulsive struggles of the long-continued wars of North Italy.
It was some years before Venice, Savoy, and the rest of Milan’s enemies
were quieted and propitiated by the arms and the prudent diplomacy of
the new ruler, who with time found means of overcoming all the dangers
which threatened him. An alliance with Louis XI. of France protected the
Duke from the pretensions of Orleans. With Cosimo de’ Medici he
maintained a loyal friendship, and thus disarmed Florence, and with
Naples he concluded a treaty of peace, which was sealed by the marriage
of his daughter Ippolita to King Ferdinand’s son, Alfonso of Calabria.
Francesco was well aware, however, of the secret hostility harboured
against him by a strong party in the city, and was ever on his guard.
The death of Jacopo Piccinino, in 1465, rid him of the last survivor of
the great family of Condottieri, who had been his most formidable foes
and rivals. Historians have charged Francesco with a share in the horrid
deception by which this brilliant captain was decoyed to his destruction
at the hands of Ferdinand of Naples.

A year later (1466), when the Duke himself died, his dynasty seemed to
be securely founded in Milan. Yet, in the absence of the heir, the
Duchess and her councillors hastened to put the Castle into a state of
defence, and to take every precaution against rebellion. Galeazzo Maria,
was hurriedly summoned from France, where he was fighting for Louis XI.
in the Barons’ War. His return was accomplished with the utmost speed
and secrecy, and the story of his passage through the dominions of
Savoy, disguised as the servant of a travelling merchant, the attempt to
capture him as he passed by a certain castle in the mountains, his
escape into sanctuary, and thence, after three days’ concealment, into
the fastnesses of the hills, where by difficult ways he was conducted
into his own territory, strikes at once that note of romance and
extravagance which accompanies the strange personality of Galeazzo Maria
Sforza throughout his short course to the grave.

Once in his own dominions the new duke had nothing to fear. The habit of
servitude had become only too confirmed in the Milanese, and they sealed
their submission to the House of Sforza by accepting Francesco’s son
without protest as their Lord. Galeazzo, born too late to remember aught
but the triumphant days of his House, or to have known any interruption
in the flattery, servility and fear which waited on princes in the
fifteenth century, found himself at twenty-two monarch of a great State
and vast riches, lord of the lives and destinies of large populations,
and master, in all the vigour and freshness of his youth and of the
unexhausted Sforza blood, of that incomparable treasure of delight and
varied human experience which the Renaissance of learning, of knowledge,
of beauty, had added to the heritage of power bequeathed to the Italian
tyrants by their immediate ancestors. Is it a wonder that the princes of
that bright new day, in all the pride of the restored faith in human
greatness and possibility, should have believed themselves more than
men, and like the old Roman emperors, whose histories they read and
whose heirs they considered themselves, should have assumed the proud
appellation of _Divi_—Gods? These favourites of Time and Fortune lacked,
however, one thing: that discipline of the will—more rigorous than the
self-mortification of the apostles of asceticism—which the religion of
beauty and joy requires in its followers.

In Galeazzo Maria Sforza the characters of a Renaissance tyrant appear
in an exaggerated light. A strain of the bizarre, inherited from his
Visconte ancestors, working in the strong new blood of the Sforza,
produced in him an extravagance of temperament which ruled all his
thoughts and acts. He had been instructed in the new learning by Filelfo
and other humanists of repute; but from the classic example and precept
thus set before him by men who themselves often abused the ideals which
they taught his unbalanced nature had learnt only licence. His hot
passions, romantically shown in youth by his love for Lucrezia
Landriani, and his adoration of the child she bore him, that famous
Caterina, afterwards Lady of Forlì, developed rapidly into unbridled
lust. His vanity was nothing less than preposterous, and his care for
his tall and splendid person, and in especial for his beautiful white
hands, was a sort of idolatry. His insatiable appetite for gorgeous
surroundings and rich display glutted itself with an orgy of colour and
ornamentation, rioted in costly fabrics and priceless gems and gaudy
equipages. Never before in Italy had such pomp been seen as accompanied
his journey, in 1471, to visit Lorenzo de’ Medici, who, as head of the
Florentine Republic, had been entertained a short time before in Milan.
With him went his consort, the beautiful Bona of Savoy, the princess who
was to have married Edward IV. of England, had not her fickle suitor
fallen in love with Elisabeth Woodville instead. Bona became Galeazzo’s
wife in 1467.

Besides his Duchess, all the great feudatories and ministers of State,
arrayed in cloth of gold and silver, accompanied the Duke, himself a
magnificent figure in royal crimson. The courtiers wore velvet and
finest silk, the dresses of the chamberlains and pages were exquisite
with needlework, the lackeys were in silk and cloth of silver, and the
very cooks and scullions in velvet and satin. An immense train of
horses, with trappings of silver and gold, carried grooms in silken
liveries of the Sforza colours, purple and white. Mules, with housings
of white and purple damask embroidered with the devices of the Sforza in
silver, bore litters hung with gorgeous stuffs, and containing beds of
cloth of gold. Huntsmen leading five hundred couple of dogs, falconers
with highly trained hawks upon their wrists followed, and a host of
trumpeters, pipers, musicians and jesters played their lively part in
the procession. The description of this gallant train, winding out in
all its fresh new bravery into the green Lombard plain from the serrated
walls and gates of the mediæval city, in the radiance of a May morning,
suggests something of what Milan once was and of the lost beauty of
Renaissance pageantry. The luxury and extravagance of the Milanese
visitors greatly impressed the Florentines, and, according to
Macchiavelli, helped to corrupt them and induce them to abandon their
sober habits for pleasures and vanities.

Galeazzo’s love of decoration vented itself in the adornment of his
palaces with paintings and works of art. He employed a host of artists,
and in his impatience and excitement demanded miracles of them. He would
have marble palaces and painted chambers rise as at the stroke of a
magician’s wand; and an oft-told tale relates how he commanded a certain
artist to decorate a whole wall with portraits of the ducal family in a
single night. And woe to those who displeased him. The glittering, gaudy
figure of this prince, with the great black eyes and hawk nose, and the
white effeminate hands, dressed in the motley parti-coloured dress, red
and white, used by the Dukes of Milan, moves through the pages of
history in an alternation of black shadow and garish light. He was
pointed out in whispers as the murderer of his own mother. It is true
that his imperious temper had quickly resented Bianca Maria’s attempt to
share in the government and to retain the power which her influence on
her husband had given her. A short struggle had ensued between the
mother and son, and ended by the defeated Duchess resolving to withdraw
to her dower city of Cremona and there exercise her lawful authority.
But neither did this division of the State suit the new Duke, and he
detained her in the Castle of Melegnano, where, devoured by anger and
grief, she fell sick after a few months and died, poisoned, according to
common belief. But the accusation appears to rest only on Galeazzo’s
general reputation for wickedness, and the ingratitude and want of
filial piety which he had already shown himself capable of towards his
mother. He is not a singular instance, however, of a young sovereign
disagreeing with a dominant queen-mother. With as scant evidence, the
death of his first betrothed, Dorotea Gonzaga, which freed him to make
the more advantageous alliance with Bona, is laid to Galeazzo’s charge.

[Illustration:

  GALEAZZO MARIA SFORZA, BY PIERO POLLAIUOLO (UFFIZI, FLORENCE)

  _To face p. 138_]      [_Alinari, Florence_
]

To such a personality as this prince’s, so conspicuous and so frenzied,
legend readily clings, even in his own lifetime, and the imaginations
which peered into the secrets of his dungeons carried, perhaps, some of
their morbid visions with them. We must, however, believe the
contemporary writers, who record hideous deeds committed by the Duke
even in the light of day, grim pranks of punishment and devices of
cruelty inflicted upon offenders, under his own eyes. There was a
strange touch of imagination in his adjustment of torments to offences,
and often a kind of wild justice and sympathy for the oppressed,
horribly manifested, as when he punished a priest, who had refused the
funeral rites to a poor man, by burying him alive in the same grave as
the corpse. Galeazzo Sforza was in fact an embodied paradox—a monster of
vices and virtues, as he has been called, or better still, in his
daughter Caterina’s word, a ‘Fantastick.’ This mad, bad prince had the
theoretic admiration of his age for virtue, and was possessed with a
very rage for cultivating it in his subjects. Abuses, such as bribery of
magistrates, corruption in the public administration, oppressive
restrictions on trade and commerce, were vigorously put down. He allowed
none but himself to take money from petitioners, or to seize other
people’s property. His passion for justice and good government had
planted so many gallows in his realm, that when his young bride came to
Milan she trembled at the spectacle and fell on her knees, imploring
pardon for prisoners and offenders, a boon immediately granted to her
compassionate beauty. Though greedy of treasure and guilty of robbing
his rich subjects, Galeazzo was punctual and exact in paying his
servants—a rare virtue in an Italian prince. So trustworthy was his word
as a sovereign that men regarded it as if it had been money. He had
great personal attractions, was merry, affable and familiar with those
around him, and willingly gave audience to his subjects. The courage
which the populace expect of a prince was conspicuous in him—_a man who
never knew fear_, as his fearless daughter Caterina proudly describes
him.

Better still, Galeazzo Sforza knew men. No one of proved worth and
activity had to fear his caprices. Cecco Simonetta, his father’s
faithful minister, was retained in the highest offices throughout his
reign; and his chief engineer and architect, Bartolommeo Gadio, kept
undisturbed command of the great works of the Castello. Nor did the
Duke’s heated temper affect his political judgment. He reconciled
himself with Savoy, and with Lorenzo de’ Medici and Ferdinand of Naples
formed that triple alliance which gave Italy her most splendid period of
peace. In the cordial relations which he maintained with France he never
forgot Milan’s appointed task of guarding the gate of Italy. Within his
own dominions he held party passions in check, and followed his father’s
prudent policy of employing in the important offices of State foreigners
like the Sicilian Simonetta, and men who owed everything to the House of
Sforza, and of diminishing the influence of the great nobles.

[Illustration: BRIDGE OVER NAVIGLIO NEAR SAN MARCO]

With peace without and order within, the tide of prosperity rose ever
higher in the populous city. The vast lands of the Duchy were everywhere
being brought to full fertility by irrigation works and the draining of
wastes. Palaces surrounded by beautiful gardens and fruitful orchards
and vineyards were springing up where before had been wilderness. Great
schemes for new waterways between the different cities of the State were
in hand, and all the immense increase of the country’s resources,
resulting from improved agriculture and greater facilities of traffic,
flowed by a thousand streams into the coffers of the capital. An
extraordinary vitality seemed to possess all classes in this morning of
the Renaissance. The larger horizons revealed to the spirit by the
revival of ancient literature and thought, the multiplicity of new
interests created by increased knowledge, the joy of the release from
the mediæval sense of guilt and sorrow, gave to this age the vigour and
enthusiasm of a regenerated world. Milan was one vast hive of vivacious
energies, busy in commerce, in art and all kinds of handiwork, in
learning, poetry, music. The Duke’s excited spirit was eager for all
intellectual and artistic novelties. His Court was thronged with
scholars and philosophers. Not content with the magnificent library of
Pavia, he formed a fine collection of books in Milan, and
printing-presses were set up in the city at this time. But above all
else Galeazzo loved music. Milan had been from early times the resort of
troubadours, minstrels and those skilled in ‘divers musicks,’ but never
before had such beautiful singers been heard there as the Duke summoned
from Flanders and all parts of Europe to compose the choir of the ducal
chapel in the Castello. Music and the chase were Galeazzo’s favourite
diversions; and the vast hunting-grounds and deep forests of the Duchy,
full of wild boars and stags and all sorts of beasts and birds, the wide
meres and watery channels crowded with waterfowl, were continually
visited by gallant hunting and hawking trains. The picturesque interest
of that far-off princely life, rich in all the adornments of rarest art,
and fresh with the springing joy of that hopeful age, is enhanced for us
by its dimness. It has all the poetic charm of a half-obliterated
fresco. These historic figures appear to our vision in that stiffness
and innocence and decorative grace, that mingling of mediæval romance
and Renaissance beauty with which they were doubtless represented by the
primitive painters who covered the walls of Galeazzo’s palaces in Milan
and Pavia with scenes of the ducal life—frescoes, alas! long perished.

The picture of the city at this time would be bright indeed but for the
plague-spots of vice and cruelty in the ruler, and of corruption in the
people. Acquiescence in tyranny, and the new luxury of life, had bred
effeminacy and servility in the citizens. But there were some among them
who could not forget their shame. This motley prince, himself an early
and crude product of the still undisciplined spirit of the Renaissance,
was destined to perish by the operation of that same spirit. The very
arrogance of blood and brain which drove him to excess swelled the
indignation of the youths who assembled in the school of the humanist
Cola Montana, and followed the finger of their preceptor as he pointed
with scorn to the spectacle of the Duke passing with extravagant pomp
across the Piazza dell’ Arengo, and to the obsequious train of nobles
and magistrates in gorgeous attire attending him, and contrasted the
degradation and pusillanimity of these courtiers with the noble
simplicity of the Carthaginian and Roman patriots who had won immortal
fame by giving their lives for their country. Cola, who was himself
secretly envenomed against the Duke on account of personal wrongs, never
ceased to hold up before his pupils the example of Brutus and the lofty
ideal of virtue and self-sacrifice which inspired their classic
ancestors. Inflamed by his eloquence and by a mingling of pedantic pride
and youthful enthusiasm, these sons of fathers who remembered the brief
hope of the Ambrosian Republic formed a resolution to rid the State of
the monstrous tyranny which oppressed it. Girolamo Olgiati, Gio. Ant.
Lampugnano and Carlo Visconte were the chief conspirators. The lofty
indignation of the two latter was aggravated by personal grievances, but
the motives of Olgiati, whose sensitive mind had been moulded for years
by Cola Montana, seems to have been pure of all egoism except a
beautiful self-conceit. They communicated their plot to a few trusty
comrades, and went about the city secretly stirring up discontent. In
spite of the general prosperity poverty existed, and it happened that
the season had been bad and scarcity threatened. The populace could not
see beyond this immediate evil, and all groaned together under the
taxation which they supposed went only to provide for the limitless
luxury of the Court. Many citizens were hereditary Guelfs and foes of
the Sforza. The idea of rebellion was familiar enough in every North
Italian city, and the conspirators received so much sympathy and so many
promises of adherence that the excited vision of young Olgiati pictured
the whole city awaiting the signal of the great deed to rise and set him
and his fellows at the head of a Republic as noble as those of
antiquity. Day and night Lampugnano’s house was crowded with enthusiasts
for liberty. All preparations were made for the rising, deputies were
appointed to ensure the safety of the city in the confusion which was
sure to follow the overthrow of the government, and the day and the
particulars of the great act of judgment on the tyrant were carefully
arranged.

On St. Thomas Day (1476), Duke Galeazzo entered early in the morning
into his capital, after a short victorious campaign against the
encroachments of Burgundy in the mountains of Savoy. Let it be
remembered of him that his last deed was thus to beat back invaders of
Italy. As he rode to Milan from his Castle of Abbiategrasso, in the
bitter cold which had numbed the streams and fogged the air, three
ravens slowly rose and flew across his path, one after the other,
uttering hoarse croaks. The Duke seized a gun and fired at these evil
augurs, and was half-minded to turn back. He went forward, however, but
a heavy presentiment of ill had fallen on his soul. As he rode in,
welcomed by the nobles who had thronged the city to do him homage, the
conspirators noted his heavy countenance, and knew that the hour was at
hand. Instead of mirth he carried gloom into the Castle, all prepared
for his coming, and though it was the season of joy, he ordered the
ornaments of the chapel to be draped in black, and bade the Flemish
priest, Cordiero and his thirty fellow-singers from beyond the
mountains, chant every day in the Mass a verse from the Office of the
Dead. Nevertheless the great Christmas festivities took place as usual,
and the tall figure of the Prince, robed to the feet in crimson damask,
and accompanied by the fair Duchess and a crowd of nobles, stalked
gesticulating though the splendid chambers of the Castello, vaunting, in
the midst of a strange and mournful oppression, his own magnificence,
and the glory and enduring strength of his House.

The next day was the Feast of St. Stephen. Very early in the morning,
Gio. Antonio Lampugnano and Girolamo Olgiati knelt and heard Mass
together, like knights entering into battle. A great crowd gathered in
S. Stefano, where the Duke was to attend Mass later. Some of the
conspirators mingled with the people, while the three leaders waited in
a house close by. The slow moments passed. At last the appointed hour
arrived and the procession was at hand. Girolamo, in his confession,
tells the rest in breathless words. _Soon a noise; it is the Prince. We
hide our daggers, and in an instant stand in the church. The Duke
passes, I transfix him, he falls and expires._

Corio, who was one of the Duke’s chamberlains and was present in the
church, describes how Galeazzo entered between the Ferrarese and Pisan
Envoys, preceded by a pompous train of guards and servants. The writer
saw the daggers flash from the little group of conspirators and bury
themselves in the gaudy body of the Prince, and heard his one cry, _O
Nostra Donna!_ as he fell back in a pool of blood. In the uproar which
immediately arose, Lampugnano was killed as he fled through the press of
shrieking women; but Girolamo and Carlo Visconte, with their
accomplices, succeeded in escaping from the church. The mangled body of
the tyrant was carried into the adjoining Canonica, and its gory dress
was exchanged for a robe of white cloth of gold, and all the ducal
ornaments and insignia set upon it. Meanwhile Girolamo, hounded by the
rage and terror of his father out of his home, whither he had fled, took
refuge with a priest and waited in violent agitation, his exalted brain
seething with hopes and fears. The people must be even now rushing to
arms. His friends must be coming to find him and place themselves under
his command. They would sack the palaces of Cecco Simonetta and the
hated ministers, seize the gates, abolish the taxes, proclaim a glorious
Republic. The hours went by and nothing happened. Hearing a great noise,
he looked eagerly out and saw the lacerated remains of his comrade
Lampugnano being dragged along by yelling children with every hideous
insult.

Hope began to desert him. He was sought, not by friends and admirers,
but by officers of justice, and fleeing miserably from one refuge to
another, was soon captured. In his dungeon, the mind of the young man—he
was twenty-three—maintained its exaltation, though it was a wonder, says
Corio, that amid such torments as he underwent, the afflicted spirit did
not abandon the agonised body. He managed to compose a long relation in
Latin of all the circumstances of the plot, a document of poignant human
interest which shows the effect of the prevailing enthusiasm for
antiquity upon a serious and lofty soul. Even at the last frightful
moment, when the iron of the executioner was at his breast, the fainting
youth had courage to animate himself in the tongue of Brutus and Cato
with the words—_Collect thyself, Hieronimo. The memory of thy deed shall
live long. Mors acerba, fama perpetua!_




                              CHAPTER VII
                       _The Opening of the Gate_


 “Il Duca perse lo Stato e la roba e la libertà, e nessuna sua opera si
    finì per lui.”—LEONARDO DA VINCI.

If the great movements of history could ever be said to turn on the
existence of an individual, one might regard as the paradoxical result
of Galeazzo Maria’s death the loss of Italy’s freedom. The young
Milanese Brutus, in his noble rage against tyranny, little foresaw the
three centuries of dark and hopeless servitude which by the
unimpassioned workings of fate his blow would indirectly bring upon his
country. The exclamation of the cynical Sixtus IV. at the news of the
murder—_To-day is the peace of Italy dead_,—showed a clearer vision. The
scheming Pope saw and gauged the unstable elements in the situation—the
ambition of Naples and Venice, the helplessness of Duke Galeazzo’s
ten-year-old successor, the contagion of disorder throughout Italy;
remembered the aggressive Turk in the east, the adventurous Frank in the
north, and forthwith set to work to precipitate the inevitable upheaval
in the interests of his own family.

The trouble ahead was, however, as yet hidden. Milan kept calm. The
air-bubble expectations of the conspirators had perished at the touch of
reality. There was no attempt at a rising. The widowed Duchess assumed
without opposition the supreme authority as regent for her son, the
child Gian Galeazzo, with Cecco Simonetta as her chief minister. The
dead Duke’s brothers, Sforza, Duke of Bari, and Lodovico il Moro, were
absent in France, Ascanio the priest in Rome. But the situation was
pregnant with danger, as Simonetta well knew. He suspended all Galeazzo
Maria’s works of embellishment in the city, set the engineers and
builders to construct new defences, threw a strong garrison into the
Castle, and adopted every precaution against revolt. The chief menace
came from the nobles of the old Ghibelline party. They hated Simonetta,
who was a Sicilian and the creature of Francesco Sforza, with no
interest apart from his master’s House, which he strengthened by
depressing the great feudatories. The veteran minister was unpopular
with the people too, because he was a foreigner, and because of the
heavy taxes. Sforza and Lodovico, hurrying back from France, and joined
by Ascanio, found a powerful party, headed by the fiery and restless
soldier, Roberto di San Severino, ready to support them in overthrowing
the government. But Simonetta was on the watch. He seized one of the
chiefs of the disaffected party, and filled the city with troops. San
Severino promptly fled to Naples, and the three princes retreated to a
little distance, ready to escape. Their youngest brother, Ottaviano, a
youth of eighteen, who was involved in their plot, also rode hastily out
of the city, and finding himself pursued, leapt into the swollen Adda,
and was washed off his horse and drowned. A formal decree banishing the
elder princes was issued, and for the moment the danger was over and
Simonetta triumphed.

Naples, however, ambitious for a foothold in Milan, embraced the cause
of the exiles, and sent San Severino with an army to worry the ducal
territories. The brothers themselves, from their different places of
refuge, kept up communications with their partisans in the city, and
intrigued against the government. Simonetta’s power depended upon the
will of the Duchess Bona, a lady ‘of little good-sense,’ according to
Commines. Though she left the guidance of affairs entirely to the
minister, his influence could not compete with the charms of her
handsome Ferrarese secretary, Antonio Tassino, to whom she could deny
nothing. The inordinate presumption of this favourite soon conflicted
with Simonetta’s authority. Lodovico Sforza, who far away had eyes and
ears everywhere, was quick to profit by the dissension between these two
powers at Court. The death, in 1479, of the elder brother Sforza—from
excessive fat—helped to clear the path for the ambition of the Moro, who
was now created Duke of Bari by the King of Naples, in succession to
Sforza. To him the rebellious spirits in Milan looked henceforth as
their leader. A number of the great nobles, the Borromei, the Da
Pusterla—those old foes of the Dukes of Milan—the Marliani and others,
aided the upstart Tassino to turn the Duchess against her husband’s
faithful old servant. Beatrice da Este, wife of Lodovico’s half-brother
Tristan, and other ladies in her intimacy, plied her with complaints of
Simonetta, and entreated her to dismiss him and recall the banished
Moro, who with the mercenaries of Naples was now preying on her
territories. Tassino whispered the same persuasions between the
endearments which she permitted from him. At last, one day Lodovico
himself knelt before her, having at great risk returned to the city and
made his way secretly through the gardens into the Castello. Heedless of
his disobedience to her decree of banishment, the thoughtless woman
received him with the utmost joy, and the whole city burst into a frenzy
of welcome. Simonetta’s clear vision read the future. _Most illustrious
Duchess_, said he, _I shall lose my head, you your State_. Deaf to his
warning, Bona committed the government to her brother-in-law. Three days
later Simonetta was arrested and carried to the Castle of Pavia, where,
after he had lain a whole year in captivity, he was brought to trial,
before one of the most vindictive of his personal enemies, on a charge
of enormous crimes against the ducal House. He was tortured, and finally
beheaded in the Castle yard. For putting him to so merciful an end, Bona
took much credit to herself in an official notification of his trial and
death sent to the various Courts of Italy.

The minister disposed of, the turn of the favourite came. From being
Lodovico’s ally and tool, Tassino was now become a serious hindrance to
Lodovico. His arrogance was overweening. He had boundless power over
Bona, and was rapidly making himself absolute master in the palace. The
crisis arrived in a struggle over the Rocchetta, the inner Keep of the
Castle of Milan, which, with its strong garrison and impregnable
defences, gave its commander virtual dominion of the whole city. Tassino
persuaded the Duchess to appoint his father as Castellan, in the place
of Filippo Eustachio, who had been put in charge of it by Duke Galeazzo.
But Filippo, a staunch adherent of Lodovico’s, disobeyed her repeated
commands to give up the keys, and sturdily resisted all her efforts to
remove him, defying her threats and sentences, until the Moro had
prepared a swift and sudden stroke. One day, at Lodovico’s bidding,
Filippo and Gio. Francesco Pallavicino entered the apartments of the
little Duke, at an hour when most of his attendants were out of the way,
and snatching up the child, carried him across the narrow bridge which
led from the Corte Ducale into the Rocchetta, and delivered him into the
custody of his uncle. With the person of the sovereign in his
possession, behind the defence of drawbridges, portcullises and
artillery, and a strong body of soldiers faithful to himself, the Moro
could dictate terms to the Duchess. She had no alternative but to
surrender to him the regency and the guardianship of her son. As for
Tassino, seeing himself overreached, he fled incontinently, to escape a
worse fate, and stripped of everything but his perfumes and ivory combs,
which were bundled after him, he disappears ignobly out of history.
Bereft at once of lover, son and sovereignty, Bona was a piteous figure
of helpless rage and grief. She declared she would abandon the Duchy,
even if she had to climb out of the windows and cross the moat at the
risk of her life. Lodovico, however, gently detained her in the Castle
of Abbiategrasso, a virtual prisoner, until the subsidence of her
shallow passion enabled her to submit to the new order of things and
settle down, without power or authority, to a quiet life with her
children, in the Castello of Milan again.

Thus, by a series of successful palace intrigues, Lodovico Sforza made
himself supreme in Milan. He had still, however, to cope with the
resentment of the nobles who had helped him to power, and now found
themselves denied any share in it. Like all usurpers, Lodovico found
ingratitude necessary to self-preservation, and from the first he
studied to depress his more powerful subjects, choosing foreigners and
men of modest degree as his ministers and advisers. Roberto di San
Severino with many other nobles now took up arms against him. But they
were completely defeated by Constanzo Sforza, an able general and a
kinsman of the reigning House, and the turbulent San Severino,
transformed into the Moro’s bitterest foe, quitted the Duchy, and went
off to serve Venice in the war against Ferrara.

The masterly craft by which Lodovico Sforza had achieved his triumph,
roused the admiration and fear of all Italy, which increased as, with
the progress of time, he became the most conspicuous figure in Italian
politics. About the enigmatic personality of this prince, history has
confused our minds with contrary judgments, which romance has translated
into a various caricature. His peculiar association with Italy’s
greatest glory and greatest shame has thrown an exaggerated light and
shade upon his memory. The Italian historians of this period make him
the scapegoat for that calamity of Italy, which no one man, but the
ancient and inherent sin of the whole nation, brought about.
Guicciardini, while recording his many virtues of mind and heart, is
glad to believe him guilty of the worst crimes of ambition and perfidy,
and to discover in him a fatal self-conceit. Paolo Giovio speaks of him
as _born for the undoing of Italy_. Modern inquirers have modified the
traditional view of the Moro, by showing the baselessness of some of the
worse charges against him, and by a diligent prying into all the details
of his domestic existence, they have at once humanised and belittled the
old picture of the man. Yet still the real Lodovico seems dark to us. It
is not for nothing that the name of _il Moro_—the Moor—given to the
dark-skinned boy in his childhood, has clung to him through history; it
shows the conviction of his contemporaries and of posterity that it
fitted not only his bodily appearance, but the complexion of his soul.

By his actions he must be judged. In the Italy of the Quattrocento, to
do evil that good might come was excellent morality. The best men
practised it, and differed only from the worst in the ends they pursued.
Lodovico’s usurpation of power had its immediate justification in the
salvation of the State. The prestige of his name, and his fine
statesmanship, could alone avert the civil war and anarchy which Bona’s
government was leading to, and oppose a barrier to the greed of Venice
and Naples for Lombardy. The deposition of a weak woman by a strong and
able man was an act unsingular in a country where beneath all law and
convention reigned the tacit conviction that character was the true
legitimacy. Once in power, he found that internal peace necessitated the
sacrifice of the turbulent elements of which he had served himself to
climb, and personal ingratitude became a public virtue. Freed from the
prepotence of these restless spirits, the citizens could pursue their
occupations undisturbed, and the prince could devote himself to his
great schemes for the improvement of agriculture, the facilitation of
commerce and the humanising of the people. It is these things—in which
he carried on the noblest tradition of the Sforza domination—which are
the Moro’s apology for much wrong-doing; it is these and not his
ceaseless political activity, and immense prestige as a statesman, which
make the story of Milan great during his reign, a period brilliant,
joyous and prosperous beyond compare.

Though in title only regent for the young Duke, Lodovico was absolute
sovereign. His extraordinary activity, resource and subtlety, backed by
the boundless wealth of Milan, soon made his influence felt abroad. For
the first year or two his cares at home kept him from interfering much
in general affairs. The balance of power in Italy, deprived of the
weight of Milan, wavered in consequence, and Sixtus IV., Naples and
Venice did their utmost to swallow up Florence. The safety of the great
Tuscan Republic, secured partly by the courage and address of Lorenzo
de’ Medici, but more by the timely knock of the Turk at the door of
Italy, at Otranto, was further assured by the fast-rising power of the
new ruler of Milan, who by uniting his State in 1484, in a fresh
alliance with Florence and Naples, restored to Italy that equilibrium
which had been first established by his great father, Francesco.

The eleven years that followed the Peace of Bagnolo (1484-95) were the
most splendid in the history of mediæval Italy. They were the
culmination of a great ascent, preceding as great a downfall. Pressing
upwards through the continual struggles, amid the phantoms and shadows
of the earlier centuries, the chosen spirits of humanity had at last
emerged upon a height, where, as in the light of unclouded morning, the
whole world seemed spread out before and behind them, heaven itself
within their reach, the gods themselves their fellows. In the general
material prosperity out of which the fine flower of Italian civilisation
in the Quattrocento had sprung, as in the cultured and artistic joy of
life which was its highest expression, Milan, led by Lodovico Sforza,
held a foremost place. Whatever may have been his secret motives, this
prince exerted himself ceaselessly to conceive and carry out projects of
enduring benefit to the country. Summoning the greatest brains in Italy
to his service, he set on foot immense hydraulic works, by means of
which wildernesses were converted into fruitful tracts, and new ways
opened for the passage of merchandise and general traffic. He widened
his father’s famous canal, the Naviglio Martesana, and the Naviglio
encircling the city, employing the inventive genius of Leonardo da
Vinci, to overcome the difficulty of the different levels by a system of
locks, still existing in Milan to this day. He joined these canals with
the ancient channel between Milan and Pavia, thus forming a navigable
waterway between the Adda and the Ticino. Large districts hitherto
unfertile owed their after prosperity to this enlightened ruler. He
fostered agriculture, founding model farms and introducing improved
breeds of cattle and horses. His pleasaunces and orchards round the
Castello at Milan, and his country palaces and villas were so beautiful
and fruitful that they were called earthly paradises. After a brief half
century of the Sforza rule, the Duchy of Milan was become a vast garden,
supporting an enormous population of hardworking peasants. Commerce
flourished more than ever, every way being opened to it by wise and
considerate measures. In the higher branches of industry the Moro’s
vitalising interest and enthusiasm was as effective. His splendid
patronage of art and letters made this city of prosperous traders the
richest centre in Italy of the æsthetic culture of the Renaissance.
Attracted by his liberality and large ideas, the rarest genius of the
age was at his command. Bramante of Urbino spent many years at Milan,
building cupolaed temples and colonnaded palaces, and transforming the
old mediæval city of the Visconti into the fair Renaissance vision of
the Moro’s desire. For Lodovico and for Milan, Leonardo da Vinci did his
greatest works. Perugino painted for the Moro the splendid Madonna with
the Archangels, now in the National Gallery, and in the stimulating
atmosphere a number of native artists of considerable distinction sprang
up. Lodovico equally favoured men of letters and scientific inquirers.
He invited them to Milan, and gave them great rewards, and did his
utmost by grants and personal care to raise the University of Pavia and
the schools founded at Milan by Galeazzo to a flourishing condition.

[Illustration: CANAL, VIA SAN MARCO]

But the merits of the Moro’s government were obscured to the people by
his tyrannic methods. The peasants, groaning under the oppression of
forced labour and of heavy and unjustly distributed taxation, were too
preoccupied by their immediate grievances to care for the rich harvest
which would ensue some day from the sacrifice of their sweat and their
scanty gains. In their belief the Prince sought only self-glorification
and the increase of the already fabulous ducal treasure. Their simple
lamentations sound in the pages of the chroniclers like a dull
threatening undertone in that wonderful symphony of rich and various
instruments which the life of the Milanese Court was at this time.

[Illustration: CANONICA OF ST. AMBROGIO]

One of the worst characteristics of a tyrant was, however, conspicuously
absent in Lodovico Sforza. He was not cruel. Galeazzo’s horrible ways of
enforcing the law no longer prevailed. The gallows vanished; fragments
of quartered traitors adorned the gates no more, and such pains as
justice or policy necessitated were administered out of the sight and,
if possible, knowledge of the Moro. Even Guicciardini describes the Moro
as _mild and merciful_. The sight of bodily suffering hurt his
fastidious delicacy, his love of fair and seemly appearance, his fine
sensibilities. His shrinking from blood was perhaps a sign of what may
explain much that seems dark in his history—fear; of the decadence which
fatally awaits races risen too swiftly to greatness. However that may
be, his mildness did not win the hearts of the people for a sovereign
who addressed them from behind the protection of iron bars and never
admitted them to free and friendly audience. An ever-widening gulf
divided their lives of elemental want and passion from the exquisite
existence of subtle and various delight within the impassable walls of
the Castello. It was for the Moro, we remember, that Leonardo sketched
the plans of an ideal city, with an upper system of streets in which the
sovereign and his chosen society of nobles and courtiers might pass,
uncontaminated by the breath and odour of the multitudes below.

To the princes of the Quattrocento the people were but the necessary
foundation of existence, ‘the mud on which proud man is built.’ And how
incomparable was the fair fabric, so based, and composed of all the
rarest elements of life. The story of the Moro’s Court is well-known to
English readers. The joyous figures that peopled it are familiar to us,
and the gorgeous pageants, the processions of princes and potentates and
fair ladies, the stupendous display of wealth and beauty, the tourneys,
feasts and dances, are tales oft told in biography and romance. In 1489
the long arranged marriage of the young Duke with Isabella of Aragon,
granddaughter of King Ferrante of Naples, was celebrated with
extraordinary pomp, and two years later the festivities were renewed for
the double nuptials of the Regent himself with Beatrice da Este,
daughter of the Duke of Ferrara, and of her brother Alfonso,
heir-apparent of Ferrara, with Anna Sforza, sister of Gian Galeazzo. All
these splendours were far overpassed, however, in 1493, when the Moro’s
diplomacy was rewarded by an imperial alliance for the House of Sforza,
and Bianca Maria, the Duke’s remaining sister, rode forth from the
Castello in a chariot of gold to her marriage with the Emperor
Maximilian. The imagination reels with the descriptions of the rich
robes and jewels, the pavilions and triumphal arches, the garlands, the
blazoned hangings, the allegorical masques, the noise of music and of
applauding crowds on these occasions. One would feel that Milan must
have suffered an intolerable surfeit of colour and delight, did we not
know that the gorgeous riot was shaped into symmetry and order by the
supreme decorative taste of the Italian Quattrocento. All the beautiful
neo-pagan conceits, the new vision of the gods of Olympus granted to
that age, inspired these brief spectacles. Leonardo—Bramante—fashioned
those gorgeous edifices of an hour, built up that wonderful seeming,
ephemeral as the glories which it celebrated, and stayed those passing
moments for ever in the history of the world.

Though it was the desire to outdo every other princely Mæcenas which
impelled Lodovico to bid highest for the services of great artists and
scholars, it was not merely his liberality which held such a man as
Leonardo at Milan, but rather his large appreciation, his sympathy with
great and original ideas, his rare wisdom in leaving genius free to work
in its own way. He had this, moreover, in common with that unique among
the sons of the Italian Renaissance, that he, too, was a far seeker and
the designer of things never to be finished. Leonardo came to Milan
about 1483. There exists a copy, apparently in his own handwriting, of a
letter recommending himself to the Moro, in which he enumerates all his
qualifications for employment, beginning with his skill in the invention
of military engines, and ending with his capacity to carry out any work
in sculpture or painting _as well as any other man, be he who he may_.
Vasari tells us that on his arrival in Milan he offered Lodovico a
silver lute which he had fashioned himself in the form of a horse’s
head, and in such a manner that in beauty and sonority of tone it
surpassed every other instrument at the Court, and that the prince
quickly became enamoured of his admirable gifts and conversation. The
more intimate knowledge of the man revealed in his own notebooks has,
however, changed the traditional picture of Leonardo as a fine courtier
and brilliant wit and conversationalist, the centre of attraction at the
Court, enjoying great revenues from the Moro and dissipating them in
splendid living. We see him, instead, secluded with his pupils in the
pleasant home which Lodovico gave him on the outskirts of the city,
beside the Castello gardens, poring over some problem of construction or
hydrostatics, striving to create a flying-machine or other novel engine.
Or passing rapidly, according to his mood, from modelling the great
horse to his painting in the refectory of Sta. Maria della Grazie, or
tracing the exquisite contours of those beautiful favourites of the
Moro, Cecilia Gallerani and her successor, Lucrezia Crivelli, mocked and
allured in each shadowy face by that inscrutable smile of woman in which
the secret of life seemed to hide itself. He evidently cared little to
mingle with the social life of the Court, where perhaps he was neither
able nor willing to express to a circle, alive to intellectual interests
but enslaved by pedantry and charlatanism, those occult thoughts which
even in his writings he hid in left-handed hieroglyphics. Yet he must
have been a familiar presence in the palace, where he was constantly
summoned for some work which to us seems strangely disproportioned to
his genius—the arrangement of the water-supply for the Duchess’s bath,
the designing of triumphal arches for a wedding pageant, or the costumes
and accessories of some spectacular joust. Whatever it was, he did it
with the interest of one for whom there is no great nor small, and for
whom a moment as much as countless centuries holds eternity, and little
things and big manifest alike the divine law of necessity.

Leonardo’s figure overshadows for us all others of Lodovico il Moro’s
Milan. There were many others besides him, however, of highest
reputation at the time in the chosen circle of the Court. The Moro, in
his care for the intellectual improvement of his subjects, imported
poets from Tuscany to teach them the art of composing sonnets. Ancient
prejudice against all things Lombard withheld many of Leonardo’s
countrymen from accepting the Sforza’s offers of honours and emoluments.
But the sunshine of Court favour, come whence it might, was greedily
accepted by the Florentine Bernardo Bellincione, whose gift for
stringing together appropriate and flattering verses secured him the
position of Court poet for many years at Milan. Nor could any small
local passion restrain that bare-boned vagabond genius, Antonio
Camelli—called il Pistoia after his native city—from quenching his
perennial famine at the ducal table. But though he played the fool to
amuse his patrons, il Pistoia was of much rarer stuff than Bellincione.
Behind his cloak of buffoonery the tragedy of a serious and prophetic
spirit hid itself, and a fine satire inspired the sallies of his
fantastic muse. An irrepressible sonneteer, he poured forth streams of
verse at Milan. A number of his sonnets allude to the politics of the
day, and are of great interest.

These professors of poesy were very successful in propagating their art
in Milan. Francesco Tanzi, one of the many versifiers at Court, declared
that after the example of Bellincione, Milan was full of sonnets, and
all the rivers and canals ran with the water of Parnassus. The poetic
frenzy had invaded the whole of society, so that every young knight who
desired the favour of ladies and princes had needs be skilled in making
rhymes and improvising to the music of his lute. A flourishing school of
poetry rewarded the Moro’s patronage and encouragement, and its most
distinguished graduates were young nobles of the first rank—Gaspare
Visconte, of the same stock as the old ducal House, and Antonio di Campo
Fregoso, of a famous Genoese House. A singer of older and still higher
repute in the ducal circle was that mirror of the graceful and cultured
chivalry of the day, Niccolò da Correggio, who as the son of Beatrice da
Este, wife of Tristan Sforza, was constantly at Milan, in devoted
attendance upon his cousin, the younger Beatrice da Este. Marchesino
Stanza, Girolamo Tuttavilla, Galeazzo di San Severino, Galeotto di
Caretto, a lettered noble and chronicler of Montferrato, all swelled the
tuneful choir. The Moro himself is said to have included sonnet-making
among his myriad activities. Around these distinguished figures hovered
a host of lyrists of various rank and accomplishment, both natives and
pilgrims attracted from afar to this now famous shrine of the Muses. Men
of other occupations added their voices in moments of leisure. Among
these was Bramante, who, in the intervals of his labours as architect,
engineer, painter and master of revels, competed eagerly for the laurel
wreath.

The chief theme of their song, and the object of the gallant adoration
and service of all, was the younger Beatrice da Este, who at fifteen
came to Milan to be the Moro’s bride. To this child of tuneful Ferrara,
trained from childhood upwards in all the æsthetic traditions of its
famous Court, an atmosphere of poetry, music and art was as natural as
the air she breathed. With that full and eager vitality which she shared
with her father, Duke Ercole, and her sister, Isabella of Mantua, she
sought all beautiful and joyous things. In the Court of her rich and
indulgent lord she could satisfy every desire. For the rich equipment of
her person and her surroundings she had the rarest talent at her
command. Leonardo da Vinci devised curious girdles for her. That finest
of goldsmiths, Caradosso, carved the beautiful gems which she wore, and
spent his most delicate workmanship on pax or reliquary for her oratory.
To create her presentment in marble she could choose a Gian Cristoforo
Romano, most cultured and graceful of young sculptors. Her love of sweet
melody was fed by the crowd of skilled musicians who frequented this
Court, where their art was traditionally welcome. Besides the Flemish
priest Cordier, and the other ultramontane singers of Duke Galeazzo’s
celebrated choir, there were here the viol player, Jacopo di San
Secondo—the Apollo of Raphael’s Parnassus—whose strains were able to
soothe the Moro in moments of fever and pain, Atalante Migliorotti, the
friend and companion of Leonardo, and others numberless, nameless to us
now. An incomparable craftsman, Lorenzo di Pavia, made instruments for
her of purest tone, in cases of ivory and ebony most exquisitely worked.
She played herself upon these, and had a sweet voice. Many a time with
her devoted knight, Galeazzo di San Severino, model of all fashionable
graces, and himself an accomplished singer, and her favourite Daino,
most musical and delightful of fools, she and her ladies would make
harmonious concert. As became a daughter of Este, Beatrice extended a
princely patronage to scholarship and serious literature. Her secretary,
the learned Vincenzo Calmeta, tells us that she engaged men suitably
gifted to read aloud to her the _Divina Commedia_ and the works of other
Italian poets. She would give serious attention to literary debates,
such as the lively poetic contention we read of between Bramante and
Gaspare Visconte, on the respective merits of Dante and Petrarca.

Such encounters of sharp-sworded wit, so much in vogue at that time,
were conducted at Milan with less pedantry and self-conceit than in
Courts ruled by more strictly humanistic traditions. A freedom, gaiety
and freshness animated the intellectual atmosphere here. The Moro’s
extraordinary activity of mind and wide interests, Beatrice’s ardour,
and capacity for enjoyment, fired all around them. The Duchess’s
eagerness for culture was tempered by her love of sport and outdoor
life. Her hawks and her hounds were a primary passion in this Ferrarese
princess, and many a fair morning was passed in adventurous chase of the
wild creatures in her husband’s vast hunting demesnes. She was a
splendid horsewoman, and had unbounded courage. The lively sports in
which she indulged with her ladies and cavaliers were not always of a
refined order. The gaiety of the fifteenth century was ministered to by
jests and practical jokes of incredible coarseness, and by all the
obscenities of the allowed fools and monstrosities of nature who capered
in grotesquely brilliant garb round every Renaissance princess. Yet into
this full life the Duchess herself carried a redeeming innocence. In
spite of her free intercourse with the young nobles, no lightest shadow
ever rested on her fair fame.

The society in which she passed her bright, pure existence had, however,
but lately had Galeazzo Maria for leader and example, and had forgotten
all moral restrictions. When Beatrice came first to Milan she found her
husband’s mistress, the beautiful poetess Cecilia Gallerani, installed
in the palace itself. The whole of Milan was rotten beneath its fine
vestures and its art and learning. Wealth and luxury had encouraged the
love of pleasure natural in the people, and the ideal of freedom in
thought and manners, the search for novel experience and sensation, the
worship of the new old gods, born of the revived knowledge of antiquity,
had induced immorality and corruption more than elsewhere in this city
where voluptuous tastes were not restrained, as in the Florentines, by
natural temperance. Everywhere in the midst of the joyous revels lust
and evil passions were heaping up sins ready for the retribution to
come. Corio, an eyewitness of these times, preludes his story of the
great catastrophe by a vivid picture, adorned by the fashionable pagan
conceits, of Milanese life during these years before the fatal 1495,
when it seemed to the city and its Lord that everything was more firmly
established in peace than ever before. No one thought of other than
accumulating riches. Pomps and pleasures ruled the hours. _The Court of
our princes was splendid exceedingly, full of new fashions, dresses and
delights. Nevertheless, at this time virtue was so much lauded on every
side that Minerva had set up great rivalry with Venus, and each sought
to make her school the most brilliant. To that of Cupid came the most
beautiful youths. Fathers yielded to it their daughters, husbands their
wives, brothers their sisters, and so thoughtlessly did they thus flock
to the amorous hall that it was reckoned a stupendous thing by those who
had understanding. Minerva, she too, sought with all her might to adorn
her gentle Academy. Wherefore that glorious and most illustrious Prince
Lodovico Sforza had called into his pay—as far as from the uttermost
parts of Europe—men most excellent in knowledge and art. Here was the
learning of Greece, here Latin verse and prose flourished resplendently,
here were the poetic Muses; hither the masters of the sculptor’s art and
those foremost in painting had gathered from distant countries, and here
songs and sweet sounds of every kind and such dulcet harmonies were
heard, that they seemed to have descended from Heaven itself upon this
excelling Court._

We who know the after days of Milan watch the golden hours gliding by
towards the darkness ahead, and the glory centring round the two doomed
figures of Lodovico and Beatrice is pregnant for us with tragedy and
grief. Corio continues with a description of these princes, _in this so
vain felicity_, passing their time in divers pleasures, and speaks of
the magnificent jousts and tournaments and military shows, and of the
homage paid by the poets to the Moro as Lord both of war and peace. Yet,
he adds, with all this glory, pomp and wealth, which seemed as though
nothing could be added to it, Lodovico, not content, or unaware of his
felicity, must needs reach higher still, that his fall might be the
greater. And the chronicler, preparing himself to compose the cruel and
unheard-of tale, fears that compassion will not suffer him to arrive at
the piteous end without tears.

The Moro’s power was in fact unstably based. His was the right of
natural ability to rule. But beside him the lawful sovereign had grown
to manhood during these years. Gian Galeazzo Sforza—the engaging little
boy reading Cicero in Bramantino’s fresco, now in the Wallace
Collection—showed with advancing years little desire or capacity to
govern. Amiable, weakly, and self-indulgent, he was perfectly content to
leave the power to his uncle, for whom he had a love and admiration
which are a touching element in the relationship of the two men—usurper
and legitimate prince. Had they only been concerned, the Moro’s peculiar
difficulties might never have arisen. He seems to have regarded himself
sincerely at first as the vicegerent of his nephew. _Dum vivis tutus et
laetus vivo. Gaude, fili, protector tuus ero semper._ These words, in
the mouth of nephew and uncle, are the motto on a miniatured page in the
_History of Francesco Sforza_, by Gio. Simonetta, printed in 1490. The
picture shows Lodovico and Gian Galeazzo kneeling on the edge of a lake;
in the midst of the water a ship with a youth in it and a Moor at the
helm, and in the background a mulberry-tree (_moro_) spreading wide
branches. This allegory—one of many such that we read of—may have
expressed some real affection as well as self-exaltation in Lodovico,
though after-events give it a strange irony.

But the respective marriages of the two princes introduced another
element into the situation. Beatrice da Este was not only the joyous
spirit of festival and sport and all artistic delight, but a woman of
strong character and intelligence. She quickly gained influence over her
husband, and asserted herself in State affairs. The very narrowness of
her youth and sex gave her power over the complex and wide-minded Moro,
who adored her spirit and courage, and yielded to her as his great sire
Francesco had yielded to Bianca Maria. Beatrice wanted the semblance as
well as the substance of sovereignty, and the birth of her son, in 1492,
added the new ambition of a mother to her desire. Isabella of Aragon, on
her side, had a royal spirit; her soul swelled with rage and offended
pride when the regent showed no intention of relinquishing the
government to her husband. In vain she urged Gian Galeazzo to assume his
rights; her exhortations only passed straight from the confiding boy
into Lodovico’s ears. Her sense of wrong was further exasperated by
Beatrice, who usurped the homage and consequence which should have been
Isabella’s as consort of the sovereign. The rivalry between the
princesses began very soon after Beatrice’s appearance on the scene, and
that playful boxing-match of which we read, in which the Duchess of Bari
knocked down her of Milan, was the symbol of a contest which involved
fatal issues reaching far beyond the two women themselves.

Influenced by his wife’s ambition, and the birth of his son—also perhaps
by the impossibility, when the hour came, of relinquishing the sweets of
power and sacrificing his vast projects and the fruits of his past
incessant labours to the claim of mere primogeniture represented by the
feeble and already failing Gian Galeazzo—Lodovico was evidently
scheming, after 1490, to make himself Duke of Milan. From the time of
the Moro’s marriage the ceremonial homage which had been paid till then
to the young Duke was gradually lessened. The tutelage which had been
proper in his boyhood was now used to emphasize his incapacity. No
single office or dignity was at his disposal. Ministers of State,
captains of fortresses, generals and magistrates, all were appointed by
Lodovico. At no point did his subjects come into contact with their real
sovereign. He was dependent for all supplies upon the Moro, who kept
absolute control of the immense Sforza treasure. The birth of his heir
was but scantily celebrated, while that of Lodovico’s a little later was
made the occasion of the most pompous rejoicings. The halls of the
sovereigns in the Corte Ducale were gradually deserted, while Lodovico
and Beatrice’s apartments in the Rocchetta were thronged. The
self-seeking courtiers knew well where their devotion was most
profitably placed. Besides, it was melancholy in the chambers of a
sickly prince and a sad princess ever brooding over her wrongs. The two
appeared less and less in public, and finally retired altogether to the
Castle of Pavia, and their pathetic figures were almost forgotten on the
joyous stage of Milanese life.

But they existed—a constant menace to the Moro, a weapon for his
thousand enemies in the State, and for jealous Italy outside. Isabella’s
piteous complaints to her grandfather, whom she implored to right her
husband, inflamed the long-standing Aragonese hatred of the Sforza. The
other powers—Venice, baulked in her greed of conquest by the strong hand
of the Moro, and ever nervous for the cities which she had wrested from
Milan in Filippo Maria’s time; Pope Alexander VI., who allowed no
gratitude to the Sforza, although through Cardinal Ascanio they had been
the means of his election, to interfere with his schemes for a new
Borgian Italy; Florence, politically and commercially jealous of the
Lombard State—all would have gladly seen the Moro overthrown and Milan
depressed.

During these years of peace and of expansion for Milan, the suspicious
fear with which the disproportionate prosperity of one power was always
regarded by the rest of Italy had concentrated itself upon Lodovico
Sforza. His extraordinary success and untiring activity, his powers of
intrigue, his ability and resource, were the theme of every tongue. The
extravagant adulations of his Court poets were repeated and unwillingly
credited throughout Italy. With the vast wealth of Milan at his command
what might he not do? Fear of Milan was an old habit. Was it she that
should give Italy a master after all? Was this dark prince, mysteriously
potent, to be the destroyer of her liberty at last?

Had men looked more closely into the monster of their imagination, they
might have perceived that it was not Lodovico’s ambition that was most
to be apprehended. The fatal situation which now developed seems to have
been the product of two opposing fears. The Moro’s faith in himself and
in his good fortune was a superstition which supported itself upon the
lying prophecies of the astrologer ever at his side, and was at the
mercy of every ill omen. His intrigues were often the devices of a man
on the defensive, rather than the confident moves of a conqueror. To
give a colour of justification to his now almost complete usurpation, he
set casuists to work and evolved a specious doctrine, pronouncing
himself lawful successor of his father, as the first son born to
Francesco after he became Duke of Milan. By means of this argument, and
the better persuasion of an enormous gift of gold, he obtained from the
Emperor Maximilian the promise of the investiture of the Duchy, an
obsolete legality which neither Francesco or Galeazzo had troubled to
obtain in confirmation of the right won by the sword. These devices,
however, aroused only derision and scandal in his own country, nor could
they quiet his own uneasy mind. He felt Italy against him and was
afraid. His particular dread of the House of Aragon never slept. Though
old King Ferrante urged with pathetic sincerity the maintenance of the
league which had preserved the peace of Italy for so many fortunate
years, he might at any moment be succeeded by Alfonso of Calabria, who
did not disguise his hatred of the Moro and his longing to right his
daughter and son-in-law. Lorenzo de’ Medici had died in 1491, and peace
was already threatened by the injudicious policy of his son Piero. The
covetousness of Venice, the faithless selfishness of the Pope, completed
a situation of general peril, which might easily beget a great
combination to crush Lodovico and reinstate Gian Galeazzo, to be
followed by a scramble for the States which all knew the young Duke
incapable of governing.

The Moro resolved to anticipate the blow. With fatal confidence in his
power to control the force which he was evoking, he opened the gate
which it was Milan’s sacred duty to keep shut against the foreigner. He
invited Charles VIII. of France to lead an army into Italy against the
Princes of Aragon, and to recover the Kingdom of Naples for the House of
Anjou.

Lodovico’s act did not perhaps at the time wear the magnitude of guilt
which subsequent events gave it. Italy was so disunited, so lacking in
any general principle of patriotism that her various tyrants had not
scrupled to appeal at times to France or the Empire in their needs. Men
were used to sporadic attempts of the Princes of Anjou to overthrow the
Aragonese dynasty in Naples. But now that the Angevin claims were vested
in the King of France, such attempts must be more perilous for Italy.
Naples was not the only State to which France had pretensions. Louis of
Orleans—next in succession to the throne of France after the sickly
Charles and his infant son—claimed the Duchy of Milan itself through his
ancestress Valentina Visconte. The success of the French enterprise in
Naples could scarcely fail to be followed by a vindication of this other
claim. Nothing but that strange and fatal belief in himself, which not
only inspired Lodovico but had infected his contemporaries, could have
blinded the Moro to the madness of his proceedings and induced Venice,
Florence and the Pope to abet his projects at first by forming a new
league with him and abandoning Naples to its fate. There was some
strange glamour about this remarkable man which deluded his own
generation. The Renaissance spirit felt itself represented and fulfilled
in him. Its boundless confidence in human possibilities was exemplified
by the reputation of almost superhuman powers with which it invested
Lodovico Sforza. _God in Heaven and the Moro on earth_, so dared il
Pistoia to sing, and the prince to hear. The tragic fall which awaited
this exaltation is a part of the inward as well as outward history of an
age when pride built so high, only to be smitten with incompleteness.
Strangest of all, perhaps, was the self-deception of Lodovico himself,
shown by the persistence in him, throughout his hopeless captivity, of
this superstitious faith, after it had utterly failed him in the crisis
of his life, so that in his last moments, in his prison at Loches, he
could attribute his overthrow to nothing less than the direct
intervention of God, to punish him for his sins, _since only the sudden
might of destiny, he said, could have subverted the counsels of human
wisdom_.

In inviting Charles, Lodovico doubtless thought to produce a temporary
diversion, which should weaken Naples and produce a political upheaval,
amid which he should be able to secure the ducal throne, and once seated
in it, readjust by adroit diplomacy, the balance of power in the
peninsula after the retirement of the invader in due course. But he had
left out of account the respective conditions of France and Italy—the
pent-up military fury in the noble classes in the first country, which
raged for an outlet, the fatal weakness of disunion in the second, and
the enervation which peace and unparalleled prosperity had produced in
its people. He may have hoped to achieve his ends by the mere threat of
French invasion, and counted on the indecision of the young king and his
own subtle craft to keep the matter from going any further. Charles,
however, whose weak head swam with the flatteries of venal councillors,
and with romantic ideas imbibed from the tales of the Paladins, was
easily persuaded to undertake the conquest of Naples as a preliminary
step to the redemption of Christendom from the Turk.

But the preparations for the expedition were very dilatory, and more
than two years passed before they were completed. During this time of
suspense Italy was full of doubts and fears. Lodovico’s allies began to
hesitate, and there were daily shiftings of policy in the various
States, now in favour of Naples, now of France, all actuated by
self-interest, which guided them finally in this crisis of their
country’s fate to a despicable neutrality, waiting upon events. The
Moro’s own policy was shifting and tortuous, even displaying at times an
anxiety—little credited by his neighbours—to save Naples from the
catastrophe which he himself was bringing upon her. Already he was
working for a reaction against the French in the event of their success
in Italy. But his advances to the opposite party won for him only the
distrust of his friends, and in France many warned Charles of the folly
of relying upon this man, _homme sans foy, s’il voyoit son profit pour
la rompre_, as Commines pronounces him.

Meanwhile, careless apparently of the future, Italy continued her wild
dance of pleasure. In Milan, gaiety and licence reigned supreme. Yet
there are many signs that a sense of sin and of a reckoning at hand had
begun to awaken. The sonnets of il Pistoia grew grave with prophecies to
laughing Italy of the much weeping which time would soon draw from her,
and of the shortness of the hours between her and her immense,
irreparable sorrow. The superstitious Moro himself must have been shaken
by the blind friar who is said to have appeared in the Piazza of Milan
at the time of his negotiations with the French King, crying—_Prince,
show him not the way, else thou wilt repent it_. From Florence came the
echo of Savonarola’s annunciation, _Gladius Domini super terram cito et
velociter_. More poignant still to ears that could hear was the
tremulous voice of the octogenarian King of Naples, warning Pope and
Moro, again and again, of the peril clear to the terrible prevision of
the dying—_He who will may begin a war, but stop it, no!_

But the voices cried in the wilderness. King Ferrante’s was spent by
death early in 1494, and in the following autumn Charles appeared at
last at the head of a splendid host, and was welcomed with immense pomp
and revelry by Lodovico and Beatrice at Pavia. There in the Castle the
young Duke lay dying. The King visited him, and the piteous spectacle
roused the sympathy of the monarch and his followers, for whom the
person of legitimate sovereignty had a sacredness unfelt by the
Italians. Charles was, however, much embarrassed by the Duchess
Isabella, who besought him to have mercy on her father, the King of
Naples. _She had better have prayed for herself, who was still a young
and fair lady_, observes Commines.

The invaders passed on, finding their path cleared before them, and
their progress already an assured triumph. Their cruelty when they had
first entered the country had terrified all inclination to oppose them
out of the Italians. Piero de’ Medici’s shameful surrender, Florence’s
welcome, the inactivity of the Pope, the speedy fall of Naples, all the
details of the pitiful story are well-known. Charles had not gone far
when Gian Galeazzo died. The cruel report at once arose, and was widely
believed by both French and Italians, that Lodovico had had him
poisoned, and the Moro’s memory has come down to our day loaded with
this detestable sin. Modern inquiry has, however, shown how little
foundation there is for the charge, disproving the preliminary
accusations against Lodovico of starving and ill-treating the ducal
couple, and making it clear that Gian Galeazzo was surrounded by
physicians and carefully tended. It is evident that Lodovico’s
temperament was incapable of such a crime—that he would have been
repelled by the mere idea of murdering this nephew whom he had brought
up, and who loved him with a pathetic fidelity to the last. Gian
Galeazzo’s longing on his death-bed for the uncle, who was far away,
riding in splendour beside the French King, his touching questions to
one of Lodovico’s gentlemen whether he thought his Excellency the Moro
_li volesse bene_—loved him, Gian Galeazzo—and whether he seemed sorry
that he was ill, go far to dissipate the cruel suspicion. Nevertheless,
the young Duke’s death relieved Lodovico’s conscience of its last
scruple with regard to the Dukedom. He hastened back to Milan and had
himself invested with the ducal mantle, cap and sceptre, in the midst of
a stupendous pomp.

Meanwhile, the success of the French was producing the result
anticipated by the Moro. Venice, awaking to the danger which the
terrible prestige of the conqueror’s arms meant for all Italy, was ready
to listen to Lodovico’s proposals for a remedy. The invaders were now to
add to their experience of Italian pusillanimity an acquaintance with
the craft which had superseded brute courage in this advanced nation.
Scarcely had the French King turned his back on Lombardy, when the
Venetian ambassadors were treating with the new Duke of Milan for an
alliance against him. A few months later, Charles and his knights, sick
with the Southern delights of their newly-conquered realm, and longing
like homesick children for France, found their return barred by a
powerful coalition of their late ally with Venice, the Emperor, the King
of Spain, and nearly all the minor States of Italy. The story of their
homeward march, more like a flight, need not be repeated here. At the
approach of the French to his dominions, the faithless Lodovico trembled
in his palace, in spite of the mighty host of allies which was awaiting
them, while his people, beside themselves with fear of the cruel
Northerners, and exasperated by the grievous taxation imposed upon them
to oppose this evil which the Moro had himself provoked, murmured
against him as the murderer of Gian Galeazzo, and the oppressor of the
widowed Duchess and her son. Lodovico well knew that he could not lean
upon his subjects in adversity. But the battle of Fornuovo (1495)
relieved Lombardy of all fear of the French for the time, though the
Italians let slip their chance of annihilating the hungry and enfeebled
enemy, and crushing the Northern terror for ever. The irresistible
conqueror of a year back, having with miraculous good fortune escaped
with the best part of his troops to Asti, was compelled to negotiate for
peace with Milan and Venice. At the meetings of the Duke and the
Venetian Ambassadors with the representatives of Charles, Lodovico was
accompanied by his young wife, who took part in all the discussions, and
astonished everybody by her intelligence and wisdom. All through this
critical period of the French invasion, Beatrice was the true helpmeet
of her husband, sustaining by her courage and will his more sensitive
temperament under the fears and doubts which assailed it.

Peace at last concluded, the French finally made their way home, leaving
so weak a hold on Naples that the Aragonese quickly reinstated
themselves. In the universal joy at the disappearance of the invaders it
appeared to all that the Moro had saved Italy. His prestige, of late
clouded, was now more brilliant than ever. Securely seated on the ducal
throne, strong in the new alliance in which his initiative had bound
Italy, he seemed indeed to have succeeded in all his calculations and
schemes. Those seeds of future danger—the fatal knowledge of Italy’s
weakness, which the French had acquired, the declaration of the Duke of
Orleans, that he should return to conquer his rightful heritage of
Milan—were unheeded. In his new exaltation the Moro vaunted himself the
child of fortune, and believed himself to be, as astrologers, poets,
courtiers, ambassadors told him, arbiter of the destinies of Italy, and
incarnation of almost divine wisdom and prudence. He put his trust more
and more in destiny, and prompted by his venal astrologer, Ambrogio da
Rosate, thought to read in the stars his triumph. As if blinded by the
gods in preparation for the sacrifice, he passed all bounds in his
arrogance. The old jealousy and distrust of his fellow-sovereigns now
revived with new force. His jester’s vainglorious trumpeting—_the Pope
is my chaplain, Venice my treasurer, the Emperor my chamberlain, and the
King of France my courier_, was repeated in every city of Europe, as if
Lodovico himself had seriously spoken it. The many guests at the
Castello of Milan told everywhere of the painting on the walls there,
depicting Italy as a queen, and the Moro, with a _scoppetta_—his
personal emblem—brushing the dust from her robes, whereon were inscribed
the different Italian cities. These boasts of exaggerated
self-confidence rankled in his contemporaries. But while they hated him,
they feared him too. More than ever now all Italy waited upon his
motions.

[Illustration:

  LODOVICO IL MORO, BY BOLTRAFFIO (TRIVULZIO COLLECTION)

  _To face p._ 176.]      [_Anderson, Rome_
]

The months that followed the conclusion of peace with Charles were
joyous beyond compare. In the summer of this year (1496) the Duke and
Duchess had a meeting with the Emperor, and returned loaded with
honours, which added a new lustre to Lodovico’s fame.

Suddenly, at the height of his fortune, Fate struck her first blow at
the Moro. Beatrice died (1497).

The golden days of Milan changed all at once to gloom. Silence shut down
upon the dancing and sweet music. The Duke, to whom even his children
and State seemed no longer worth living for, sat for nine days in a
darkened chamber alone, refusing all comfort, while in Sta. Maria delle
Grazie the monks chanted incessant masses for Beatrice’s soul. The Moro
was overwhelmed. _He who had ever lived happy, now began to feel great
anguish_, says the Venetian Sanuti. The fabric of his dreams had crashed
upon him. What were kingdoms to him without that clear-sighted and
dauntless spirit at his side? Not only was his strong affection rent,
but his profound faith in his good fortune was awfully shaken. As if the
evil augury had to declare itself unmistakably, on the night of
Beatrice’s death a large part of the walls of the vast pleasaunce which
he had created round the Castello fell with a great crash, ruined by no
storm or wind, or agency perceptible to human sense. From this moment,
so much is man’s destiny affected by his own spirits, all Lodovico’s
misfortunes began. He entered on that downward course which was to drag
so much to ruin with it—and to the husband’s loss of the blessing of
this Beatrice, the poet of the Italian Renaissance ascribes not only the
fall of Moro, Sforza, and Visconte Snake together, but the captivity of
Italy.

                ‘Beatrice bea, vivendo, il suo consorte,
                E lo lascia infelice alla sua morte.
                Anzi tutta Italia, che con lei
                Fia trionfante e senza lei, captiva.’[3]

Footnote 3:

  Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, canto xlii.

The gate which the Moro had thought to shut so easily upon the departed
stranger was once more ajar. A second French expedition threatened
Italy, and Milan in particular. Early in 1497, the great captain Gian
Giacomo Trivulzio, head of the party in Milan hostile to the Sforza, and
a bitter personal foe of the Moro, who had abandoned his country and was
high in the French service, made a raid into the ducal dominions. At the
same time his partisans stirred up the discontent of the people, and
inspired their volatile minds with desire for a change of masters. And
soon the League began to show its internal weakness. The interests of
the two chief parties in it were fatally opposed. Venice found her
designs on Pisa thwarted by Lodovico and in her rage began to ponder the
advantages of making friends with the French. Out of the struggle for
Naples now renewed between the French garrison and the Aragonese she
might by a prudent policy, when both combatants were exhausted, secure
the sea-kingdom of the South, and might not a second descent of the
French King, lasting long enough to overthrow the Sforza and no more,
put rich Lombardy at last within her reach? With such hopes the grave
senators flattered their ambition and forgot their faith to Italy. The
Pope, for his own interests, had turned his back on the Sforza, and was
parleying with the common foe, while in Florence the Frate and the
people still looked to Charles for the establishment of the Kingdom of
God on earth and the restitution of Pisa.

The King, however, swayed by opposite counsels, let the months go by,
and the Moro, with desperate trust in his own statesmanship, still hoped
to save his Dukedom. In spite of his anxieties and embarrassments, his
unconquerable instinct of order maintained the fair aspect of his
dominions. But on the great artistic projects of his triumphant days an
arresting spell was laid. The resources of the State were exhausted in
war and defensive preparations. The people were already taxed to
rebellion, and no supplies were forthcoming for his painters and
sculptors. Leonardo asked in vain for the bronze for casting the statue
of Francesco Sforza. The clay model, raised in front of the Castello in
1493, on the occasion of Bianca Maria’s marriage with Maximilian, had
remained there since, and it seemed more and more likely that this high
thought of prince and artist combined would never take on any but an
ephemeral form.

The brief, uneasy quiet was broken by a stroke of fate. Charles VIII.
died suddenly (1498), and was succeeded by the Duke of Orleans. Louis
XII. had no sooner ascended the throne than he announced his immediate
intention of invading Milan.

Once more put to the trial, Italy proved again unfaithful to herself.
And the pity of it was that the fault lay in her long-rooted political
conditions, not in the will of the people. The sentiment of patriotism
was strong in the country, and _bon italiano_ was the current expression
for one who hated and opposed the French. Yet it could not avail to
overcome the conflict of interests among the different States, which
was, after all, the blind continuous struggle of the national instinct,
whether represented for the moment by Republic, hereditary tyrant or
military usurper, towards the creation of a single and united kingdom.
This time Venice was the arbiter of the situation. Answering the Moro’s
piteous and self-humiliating appeals for help and protection only by
cruel taunts of perfidy, the Republic concluded an alliance with the
French (1498).

The Moro’s old disloyalties were now repaid to him tenfold. He looked
round him in vain for a friend. The reward of usurpers and short
tyrannic dynasties based on force, not love, met him in an alienated
people, who refused to endure hardship or make sacrifices to save him,
but looked instead to any change of government as desirable. His armies,
composed chiefly of foreigners, were undisciplined and rebellious,
serving only for pay. They were badly generaled by the Duke’s
favourites. Lodovico, with all his ability, had little judgment in his
choice of servants. He was led by his affections, which betrayed him.
Chief among his trusted officers were the San Severini brothers—the
Conte di Caiazzo, Galeazzo, famous champion of the tourney-lists, and
the Moro’s son-in-law, and the gruff Gaspare, better known as Fracasso.
They were the sons of Roberto di San Severino, but Lodovico had kept
them always beside him and heaped honours and places upon them.
Galeazzo, the prime favourite, had the chief command of his army.
Francesco Bernardino Visconte, Antonio Maria Pallavicino, Antonio
Trivulzio and the rest, all were alike unprepared in heart to sacrifice
themselves for the sovereign in whose sunshine they had warmed
themselves. The slight tie that bound together the various elements of
the State could not endure against fear, ambition, greed and hereditary
hate. The situation was further aggravated by the arrogance and
exactions of the ducal favourites which excited the rage of the people
and increased Lodovico’s unpopularity.

Events moved rapidly. In March 1499 the treaty between France, Venice
and the Pope was publicly proclaimed. Louis was to conquer Milan, and
Venice, as the price of assistance, was to share the spoils. Florence
was nominally the Moro’s ally, but had neither means nor will to help
him now. Naples was too weak to count, and Lodovico’s one friend, the
unstable and spendthrift Maximilian, gave only empty promises. The Duke
was left to make his desperate defence alone. In spite of his energetic
preparations the presage of doom lay heavy on his soul, and affected all
around him. He believed that Fortune, once his friend, was now contrary,
and that God was angry with him.

In June the French army arrived in Asti, and immediately invaded the
ducal territories. Every obstacle fell before them. Treachery and fear
delivered castles and cities one after another into their hands. The
Conte di Caiazzo made secret terms with them, and withdrew his troops
from action. The rapid progress of the invaders brought them soon to the
strong city of Alessandria, in which Galeazzo di San Severino and the
main Milanese army lay to check their advance upon the capital itself.
Here they met a promise of resistance, but the place had not been
besieged many days when for some extraordinary and unexplained reason it
was delivered to them. Some say that Galeazzo was seized with despair,
others that he was deceived by a forged order to retire. Anyhow, one
morning before daybreak he stole out with a few other nobles and
galloped to Milan, and his army, when they found their general gone,
incontinently fled in all directions.

No obstacle now remained between the enemy and Milan. With the same
fatal spirit of despair which had undermined the whole defence, Lodovico
gave himself up for lost. Though his great Castle at Milan was the
strongest fortress in Europe, its garrison nearly three thousand, its
artillery enormous in number and size, its munitions of war and all
necessaries infinite, he could see no salvation except in abandoning the
city and seeking aid in person from the Emperor. There may have been
something of the instinct of bending before the storm in his decision.
He knew that he could not hold the city, where the insurgent mob was
already sacking the palaces of his favourites. If the citadel only stood
firm, however, there was every chance of some revolution of the
political wheel carrying him back before long. But blinded again by
affection, he made a fatal mistake in his choice of a Castellan. In
spite of many warnings he confided the entire command of the castle to
one Bernardino da Corte, whom he had brought up from childhood and
loaded with favours, charging him to guard it faithfully against the
enemy, and promising to relieve him before three months were past.

Lodovico Sforza’s departure from the city which his father had won and
he himself had ruled gloriously for many years; the tears and kisses
with which he parted from his little motherless sons, sending them
before him into Germany; his last visit, attended by weeping monks, to
the tomb of his wife in Sta. Maria delle Grazie; his rapid ride out of
the city next morning, after a night of fever and anguish, accompanied
by a very few friends and followers, while the people’s cry changed from
‘Moro, Moro’ to ‘Franza, Franza,’ even as he passed—these things are all
recorded with deep compassion by Corio, whose chronicle sadly concludes
with this downfall of the House which he had served from boyhood.

Behind Lodovico’s back, amid the flames and smoke of the burning
palaces, the streets and squares broke out into a garish splendour of
decoration to welcome his conqueror. Four days later Gian Giacomo
Trivulzio rode in at the head of the French, amid the wild enthusiasm of
the mob. The General, elated at his triumphant return to his native
city, promised them anything and everything in the name of their rich,
powerful, and all benign new master, the King of France. They believed
that the millennium was come.

They soon learnt their mistake. Meanwhile, Fate had dealt the decisive
blow to the domination of the Sforza. The rock of their fortunes, the
impregnable Castello, provided by the extreme care and thought of the
Moro with every necessary for a lengthy siege, was after a few days
basely sold to the enemy by the traitor Castellan. On reception of the
news in his distant retreat Lodovico is said to have remained as if
mute, and to have finally uttered these words only—_Since Judas was
there never a greater traitor than Bernardino Curzio_.

This condemnation was echoed by the whole world, and with especial
emphasis by the French themselves, who were amazed at such treachery and
cowardice. But the Castellan was not the only traitor. Bernardino Fr.
Visconte and others of Lodovico’s great ministers were his accomplices,
and partakers of the spoil. Hardly was the old master gone, ere they
bent before the new. Louis XII. followed his army in person to Milan,
and entered in great state, wearing the ducal beretta, and greeted by
the same artistic demonstrations of joy and loyalty as had so often
celebrated the pompous occasions of the Moro’s rule. After a short stay
he departed to France, leaving Trivulzio as governor, an imprudent
choice, which inflamed the old faction spirit. Most of the nobles were
Trivulzio’s hereditary enemies. They began at once to scheme his
overthrow, aided by the French guards, who could not bear to see Gian
Giacomo preferred before them to such high place. In the populace
discontent soon reawakened. They found themselves in worse case than
before. Their master was different, but the taxes remained the same, and
in addition they had to endure the cruelties and excesses of the French
troops. The partisans of the Sforza worked insidiously upon their minds
and excited them to cries of ‘Moro, Moro,’ once again. The city seethed
with intrigue and sedition. Every day tumults arose, and the brave
Trivulzio, beset with snares and embarrassments, tried vainly with his
frank methods and simple soldier’s choler to rule this mass of
conflicting passions, greeds, sufferings and cunning ambitions.

While the way was thus being prepared in Milan for his restoration,
Lodovico, in his exile at Innsbrück, was using every means to accomplish
it, even to the desperate expedient of inciting the Turk to attack the
Venetian State. At the same time he gathered together a strong body of
Swiss and German mercenaries, and prepared to start for Italy as soon as
he learnt from his friends in Milan that the moment was come. The French
strength in the Duchy had been greatly diminished by the departure of
large detachments for Naples and the Romagna, when the report ran
through Milan that the Moro was come back and had retaken Como (1500).
The whole city was immediately in an uproar, and the mob surged round
the palace of the governor, who, after vainly endeavouring to quiet
them, was forced to hide from their insults and threats. A few days
later he left Milan. Immediately after, Lodovico’s forerunners, Cardinal
Ascanio and two of the San Severini, rode in at the head of four
thousand Swiss. Messer Galeazzo, flowering once more in the sunshine of
his Lord’s success, had arrayed himself all in white, with a great
feather on his head, and a pair of shoes on his feet much more fitted
for the service of Venus than of Mars, as a sarcastic chronicler
observes. The Duke himself followed a day later and re-entered his
capital in state. But his triumph was only apparent. The Castello was
now the bulwark of his enemy. It stood with its huge bastions and vast
squares of parapets furnished with a thousand engines of war, frowning
over the defenceless city. Even as the Moro paced in stately procession
through the streets the bells rang out, and a terrified cry arose that
the French had sallied from the fortress. The Duke was not strong enough
to attempt its reduction, and unwilling to face the constant peril of
its presence, he left the city, which he was never to see again, and
removed to Pavia.

The same sickness of doubt, indecision and fear, the same presentiment
of failure which had attended the Moro for so long, now seemed to attack
this great adventure for the redemption of his fortunes. He neglected to
strike a decisive blow at the French before they could be reinforced,
and contented himself with retaking a few cities with as little shedding
of blood as possible. In vain Fracasso and his bolder captains exhorted
him to more energetic steps. His fierce Swiss mercenaries, to whom he
refused the satisfaction of sacking the conquered towns, grew violent
and rebellious. His treasury was exhausted, nor could all the expedients
of Cardinal Ascanio in Milan, even the appropriation of the treasure of
the Duomo and the other great churches, raise enough money to content
the voracious Swiss, of whom new hosts were continually swarming into
the city on their way to the camp, clamouring for employment and pay.
The citizens, terrified by these rude allies, squeezed of every penny to
supply the Duke’s necessities, found their plight worse than ever.
Hearing of the great reinforcements even now pouring down from the
mountains to swell the French army, they trembled with fear of the
consequences of their rebellion against Louis XII. In Novara, where the
Moro now lay, despair and confusion prevailed among the leaders, while
the temper of the Swiss mercenaries grew daily more ominous.

The French army, gradually increasing in number and strength, was
encamped at Mortara, a few miles away, and constantly made bold dashes
up to the very walls of Novara. A battle could no longer be avoided. On
the 4th of April the enemy advanced to within a mile of Novara and
challenged the Italians to the combat. Lodovico’s army issued forth in
noble array, but it was nothing more than hollow show. The whole of the
Swiss, who formed its greater part, refused to fight, on the pretext
that they could not shed the blood of their fellow-countrymen engaged in
the French ranks. Their leaders had in fact secretly treated with the
enemy. Returning into Novara, followed in wild confusion and panic by
the rest of the army, they proceeded to arrange terms of capitulation
with De Ligny, the French commander. The promises, entreaties, tears
even of the unhappy Moro, could not move them from their purpose. All he
could obtain was a promise that they would carry him into safety
disguised in the midst of their ranks when they abandoned Novara. And
even this small mercy was a sham and a treachery. Someone among them
warned the French generals of the arrangement, and a careful scrutiny of
the troops, as in accordance with the agreement with the French they
marched out unmolested, soon detected the Duke by his well-known
features and complexion and the undisguisable height and majesty of his
person. With him were captured also Galeazzo di San Severino and one or
two other nobles.

Thus unbloodily, as if by the decree of Fate, fell Lodovico Sforza. We
watch his dark and mournful figure—more dignified in adversity than when
tossed amid the rude and difficult circumstances of active war—as it
passes slowly out of Italy in its vesture of tragedy, conducted with
respectful compassion by the chivalrous French, taunted and reviled by
his own countrymen. It bears a significance reaching far beyond the
immediate event and the immediate victim. So much was passing away with
it. Italy, that fair queen whose robes the too-aspiring Prince had
desired to brush free from every stain, was a captive with him, befouled
and bloodied by the ignorant barbarian, and all the joy and exaltation
of her wonderful Quattrocento was to fail, and her new-found strength
and hope, with its sky-aspiring projects but half realised, to be bound
down in the sad fetters of disillusion, despair, and a new spiritual
tyranny, while the grand ideal of the Renaissance was to travel away
with her freedom and find its perfect fulfilment elsewhere.

As Lodovico Sforza was the first to utter the fatal invitation to the
French, he was fitly the first scapegoat. But, not alone in his sin, he
was not alone in the punishment. If we condemn him for starting the ruin
of his country by delivering Naples to Charles, what shall we say of
Venice, Florence and the Pope, who each for their own selfish interests
completed it by selling Milan to Louis? The inexorable retribution did
not fail to fall upon them also. The first years of the sixteenth
century are its history. Alexander, dying, dragged down that son and
that earthly dominion for which he had given his soul. Venice, shaken
nigh to destruction in her turn, by an iniquitous combination, had to
forget her wide dreams of empire and be content with a narrow liberty,
passing into stagnation and decay. Julius, continuer of Alexander’s
worldly policy, may well have seen with prophetic eye, when death called
him too, his unaccomplished scheme of a renovated Church,—Papacy and
Empire in one, head of a new heaven on earth, which should lay the sword
of temporal and spiritual victory at the feet of the purified Venus,
Madonna with her Son upon her knee, shrink to the monastic ideals and
the rigid excluding tyranny of the Catholic reaction. Last of all,
Florence, most constant of the lovers of liberty, with her most
melancholy fall filled up the cup of expiation and sealed the final
subjugation of the country.

[Illustration: SCOPETTA OF LODOVICO IL MORO]




                              CHAPTER VIII
                         _The Sorrow of Milan_


      “Il povero Milano cridava, pensando di poter cridare, ma fu
      una mala cosa per Milano.”—BURIGOZZO.

At Novara, Milan lost her independence for ever. The restoration of the
Sforza, witnessed twice over in the first thirty years of the sixteenth
century, was a mere puppet-show, barely concealing the hand of greater
Powers behind. The Gascon archers, who from the Castello walls amused
themselves by shooting to fragments the great clay model of ‘the Horse,’
had ruined as effectively the fair social fabric, as unique, as fragile,
and as incomplete, which Leonardo’s work symbolised in the person of its
founder, Francesco Sforza.

With the captivity of Lodovico began in fact that long foreign
subjugation of Milan which was to endure into modern times. Her
vicissitudes during the short period that still comes within the scope
of our mediæval story are too sad to linger over. Reoccupied by the
French after Novara, the city was mulcted in an enormous sum as the
penalty of rebellion, and instead of the comparatively mild régime under
a native governor, first instituted by Louis, she had to suffer the iron
rule of a foreign viceroy, whose aim was to stamp out every spark of
free and patriotic aspiration in the people.

But for several years Milan enjoyed at least outward peace, under the
triumphant Lilies, governed in succession by the Cardinal de Rohan, the
Sieur du Benin, and Charles d’Amboise, Sieur de Chaumont, the last of
whom ruled from 1505 to his death in 1511. In 1509 domination of the
French was shaken by a sudden reversal of policy on the part of Pope
Julius, who, having used their aid to humble Venice, suddenly made
friends with that Republic, and loudly roared to all Europe his
intention of driving the French out of Italy. The immediate result for
Milan was a great inroad of Swiss allies of the Pope, under that
terrible peasant priest, the Cardinal de Sion, and the devastation of
the fair Lombard provinces. The French, whose forces were weakened by
dispersion in various directions and could ill resist this furious
onslaught, endeavoured to dismay their adversary by raising a so-called
General Council for the reform of the Church, in the shape of a few
partisan cardinals, who sat solemnly in the Duomo at Milan and
pronounced futile sentences of excommunication and deposition against
the bellicose Pontiff.

But Julius, strong in alliance with the Emperor and the King of Spain,
laughed at the feeble thunders of his rebellious sons. The French found
better aid in the military genius of Gaston de Foix, the King’s nephew,
who succeeded Chaumont as Governor of Milan and commander of the army in
1511. With a stern and silent rapidity which amazed all Italy, the young
general of twenty-two swept through Lombardy, retaking lost cities,
relieving those beleaguered, and carrying his arms against the Papalists
and Imperialists right up to Ravenna, where he routed them utterly in
the famous battle of Easter Day, 1512. The victory, however, issued
fatally for the winners. The hero of it was borne dead from the field in
slow and mournful procession back to Milan, followed soon after by his
paralysed army in retreat before the renewed hosts which the inactivity
of the new French commander, Palissy, had allowed the dauntless Pope to
collect. Pressed on all sides in the Duchy by the Swiss, Palissy was
unable to maintain his position there either, and continuing their
retreat the French passed away over the Alps, abandoning all their
conquests in Lombardy, except the fortresses of Milan and Cremona.

And now once more a Sforza was proclaimed Lord of Milan, amid the
thunderous rejoicings of the people. But the son of Lodovico and
Beatrice, Massimiliano, whom the Pope and the Cardinal de Sion, for
their own political purposes, lifted to the throne of his ancestors at
this juncture, was nothing but the feeble tool of those two potentates,
a helpless and rotten bark tossed amid the storms of those contentious
times. For the little authority which he wielded, he was utterly unfit.
Bred up in exile at the Emperor’s Court, he had no affection for his
country, and regarded his new sovereignty merely as an opportunity for
extravagant pleasure and dissipation. The maintenance of his luxurious
Court, and of the huge army necessary to defend the State, demanded
enormous sums, to raise which he recklessly alienated the ducal
revenues, and continually imposed unexpected taxes on his subjects. To
satisfy rapacious allies and favourites, he flung away his fiefs,
seeming, as a chronicler says, to follow the proverb—_The fewer
possessions, the fewer cares._ While the light-minded youth forgot all
duties and cares of State, in feasting, jousting and the dance, the
resentment of the people was rising against him, his ministers and
captains were intriguing with his foes, and the roar of the great guns
at intervals from the Castello might have reminded him that the key of
Milan was still held by the enemy, and that Louis in France was quickly
preparing an expedition to reconquer Lombardy.

The first attempt of the French in 1513, under Louis de la Tremouille
and Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, met, however, with an unexpected and signal
defeat from the Swiss at Novara, which drove them back over the Alps.
This was followed by the capitulation of the French garrison in the
Castello of Milan, and Massimiliano seemed now firmly established in his
seat. But Julius II. was dead, and the whole political scene had shifted
once again. The Venetians were now ranged with France against the Papal
League, and the accession of Francis I. to the French throne, early in
1515, raised up against the Sforza a young and enthusiastic foe, who was
undaunted by the sad experiences of his two predecessors in their
Italian ventures. The King hastened to raise an enormous army, with
which he crossed the mountains in person, and, skilfully guided by
Trivulzio, surprised and made captive Prospero Colonna, general of the
ducal forces, who was awaiting him in a strong position. Advancing
unopposed, almost up to Milan, Francis seemed about to complete a
bloodless conquest, when a sudden rising of the Milanese themselves, and
the arrival of a great force of Swiss to the aid of the Duke, checked
his progress. And now at Marignano (Melegnano) outside Milan was fought
that mighty battle (14th September 1515), not of men, but of giants—as
the veteran Trivulzio affirmed—in which the fierce and stubborn Swiss
and the gallant French contended all one evening and again the next day,
till seven thousand of the mountaineers lay dead upon the field, and
their brave comrades, utterly exhausted, were forced to give way and fly
into Milan.

At news of the defeat Massimiliano retired into the Castello, abandoning
the city to the enemy. Here he might have held out awhile, but his
spirit was too small, and by the advice of Girolamo Morone, one of the
most astute statesmen of that day, and the chief stay of this generation
of the House of Sforza—who counted on the existence of a more promising
younger brother, Francesco—the incompetent prince renounced his Duchy to
the French King for a large pension. Retiring to France, this elder son
of the Moro disappears ingloriously out of the story of Milan.

The Duchy remained for the next six years in French possession, and was
ruled with comparative justice and beneficence by the Constable de
Bourbon, till the just, generous, and propitiatory impulses of the new
sovereign yielded to indifference and forgetfulness, and it was
abandoned to the cruel and arbitrary government of the Sieur de Lautrec,
brother of the King’s mistress, the Comtesse de Châteaubriant. His
tyranny helped to provoke another revolution in 1521, when the young
Emperor Charles V. united with Pope Leo X. in a new _Holy_ League, and
proclaiming his right to Milan as an imperial fief, sent an army to
invade the Duchy. Lautrec, having executed some of the noblest citizens
on suspicion of intriguing with the Imperialists, abandoned the city,
leaving the Castello garrisoned, and took up his stand four miles from
the city, at the Bicocca, where he suffered a tremendous defeat, which
lost Milan again to France. This turn of the tide carried Francesco,
Lodovico’s second son, to the ducal throne. The wild joy with which the
oppressed and suffering Milanese greeted this new Sforza, in whose name
they trusted with touching hopefulness for a return of the old glory of
their city, was not wholly misplaced. Duke Francesco II. has left a
memory of good repute. The misfortunes of his reign were not due to his
faults or weaknesses, but to the political circumstances of the time,
which deprived him of all real power, and made him a mere pawn in the
great game played between Charles V. and Francis I. with Italy for
stake. Milan was, in fact, dominated by the Spaniard, and the presence
of a great army of these foreigners was a crushing burden upon prince
and people. Though there to defend the city, they wrought little less
destruction and cruelty than the French, when the latter returned as
enemies in 1523, and advancing close to the capital, spread havoc and
desolation all around. Though unable to take Milan, they established
themselves in some of the neighbouring towns, and the approach of
Francis himself with a large army in the following year (1524) drove the
Duke into flight. The city, bereft of half its population and garrison
by a terrible pestilence, was utterly unable to make any defence against
the French monarch. Francis, having entered Milan in triumph, passed on
to besiege Pavia, which kept him heroically at bay through many months.

Meanwhile the Emperor was rapidly gathering force for the relief of his
vassal State. From Naples came Lanoy with the garrison of that province;
from Germany the ferocious giant Fründsberg, leading twelve thousand
lanzknechts; while mercenaries from every part swarmed to the camps of
Charles’ other commanders, the Constable de Bourbon and the Marquis of
Pescara. This horde of hungry and rapacious villains, whom the Emperor
left to gather supplies and pay out of the unfortunate country which it
passed through, swooped down upon the gallant army of the King, which,
falsely secure in its vainglory and sense of personal valour, allowed
itself to be entrapped in the Park of Pavia, and on 24th February 1525,
that vast and exquisite pleasaunce, created for the summer dalliance and
the gay winter sports of the Dukes of Milan, became an awful red-mown
field of all the chivalry of France. Never, perhaps, was such an
oblation of knightly grace and virtue poured out to Death as on that
day. One after another the gentlemen of France fell around their King.
The famous veterans of the Italian wars died together with the youngest
scions of their Houses, new come to this fatal Italy. Among many
Milanese nobles who also fought in the King’s ranks and fell was
Galeazzo di San Severino, who, after mourning for his friend and lord,
the Moro, through several years of exile, had taken service with the
conqueror and risen to the position of Grand Ecuyer of France.

_Madame, tout est perdu sauf l’honneur_, wrote Francis to his mother.
Among other things the Duchy of Milan, but just retaken, was lost again,
and this time for ever. Monseigneur le Roy being a prisoner at
Pizzighettone, his army destroyed and the survivors of his gentlemen
confined in different fortresses, Duke Francesco returned again under
the imperial protection to his capital. But though he was beloved by his
people, his restoration meant a renewal of the intolerable Spanish
tyranny, and fresh exactions for the benefit of the Emperor’s treasury,
worse than any the city had ever suffered before. The Duke himself
groaned under a slavery for which the empty title and insignia of
sovereignty little compensated him.

And now at the very height of Charles’ success, there seemed to come a
hope of freedom for his oppressed vassal. Italy and the whole European
world had been startled by the overwhelming victory of Pavia, and began
to fear the further advance of a conqueror whose triumph was a menace to
all. Pope Clement VII., whose projects for the aggrandisement of the
Medici were hampered by Charles’ predominance in the peninsula, seized
the opportunity to draw the Queen-Mother of France, Henry VIII. of
England, Venice and the smaller Italian States into a vast alliance
against the Emperor. This seemed the moment for Milan to throw off the
yoke of Spain, and Francesco, or rather his chancellor, the able and
faithful Morone, entered into secret relations with the League. He was,
however, betrayed by the Marquis of Pescara, whom he had endeavoured to
seduce from allegiance to Charles. Morone came near to losing his head,
and the Duke himself was denounced for high treason to his feudal Lord,
and was forced to take refuge in the Castello, where he was closely
blockaded by Pescara and De Leyva; while the miserable citizens, who had
found the Spanish troops intolerable enough as their allies and
defenders, had now to suffer unspeakable things from them in the
character of conquerors.

For many months the Duke held out in the hope of the relief promised by
the League, till provisions grew short and famine appeared at hand.
Meanwhile the city, driven to frenzy by its oppressors, rose again and
again in desperate tumults, which were quelled each time by the Spanish
generals with treacherous promises to relieve the general misery, and
followed by severities and outrages more dreadful than ever, till the
fair city became a very hell of slaughter, lust and rapine. In vain the
forces of the League, under the brilliant young Giovanni de’ Medici,
approached to the Duke’s succour. They were driven back by the
Imperialists, and Francesco was at last forced by extremity of want to
surrender the castle and abandon the city altogether (1526).

But the League was daily growing in strength and soon returned to the
attack. The Imperialists were closely besieged in their turn in Milan,
till the descent of Fründsberg with fresh hordes of mercenaries
compelled the assailants to retire and concentrate themselves on the
defensive against the once again overwhelming Imperialists. Lombardy was
now become the complete prey of the occupying armies. The ferocious and
undisciplined hosts that nominally served the Emperor no longer heeded
the commands of a master who gave them no pay, and was himself far away
in Spain. They were practically an independent robber horde, following
whom, and going where, they pleased, supporting and enriching themselves
on plunder, torturing and murdering peasants and citizens without
distinction, to squeeze from them their last possession. It meant
nothing to the soldiers that Charles was entering into negotiations for
peace with the League. Nor could their captains control them. The
Constable de Bourbon, who became Governor of Milan for the Emperor in
1526, promised the afflicted people to move the army from their midst,
but even if he had been sincere, he could not have kept his word. Yet
the army loved him above all their other leaders, this rebel and exiled
prince of France, who was an adventurer like themselves.

Before long Milan and the country round was changed into a bare desert,
out of which even Spanish cruelty could no longer extract a subsistence.
The thought of the unvisited regions farther on began to spread and
agitate among the famished hordes; the names of Florence and Rome,
cities of untold riches, were breathed from one to another, and as one
man they rose at the offer of the Constable de Bourbon to lead them
southwards. As a swarm of locusts lifts from a devastated plain, they
swept suddenly away on the awful, irresistible course which ended in
that final catastrophe of the Middle Ages, the Sack of Rome.

This tragic event, though hardly a part of the pious Emperor’s plans,
made the last link in the chain which Spain was forging round Italy.
Neither the Pope, nor Francis I., who had regained his liberty early in
1526, were able to offer any further serious resistance to the
conqueror, though for some years yet the French continued to make
desperate efforts to regain Milan, and the city had to endure both the
tyranny of the Spanish governor, De Leyva, and the horrors of blockade.
The Treaty of Barcelona between the Pope and the Emperor, and the peace
signed by Charles and Francis at Cambrai—that _Paix des Dames_, arranged
by the most famous ladies of France and Italy—followed by the Congress
and Coronation of the Emperor at Bologna in 1530, secured peace at last
for the tormented country by laying the destinies of Italy finally in
the conqueror’s hands. Francesco Sforza, who threw himself on the
Emperor’s mercy, was graciously pardoned and reinstated in his Dukedom.
The return of this amiable prince inspired a faint joy in the exhausted
people, and gradually, in spite of the enormous subsidies exacted by the
Emperor, and the burdens imposed to drive off the attacks of the
independent condottieri and pirates who ranged the disordered country, a
certain amount of life and activity crept back into the cruelly-wronged
city.

Such consolation and remedy for her wounds as his fettered powers and
grave embarrassments allowed, Francesco administered, introducing order
into the wild confusion of the government, and reviving trade and
industry by careful regulations. But what a changed Milan from that in
which his father and mother had reigned gloriously, in beautiful
stainless palaces, surrounded by the finest productions of art, was this
wrecked, defiled and devastated city, in whose deserted streets and
suburbs nettles grew rankly, and wolves, grown used to feed on human
flesh, roamed at will, attacking armed men, and snatching children from
their mothers’ arms! ‘What an incredible evidence of the change of
fortune,’ writes Guicciardini, ‘to those who had seen her not long
before overflowing with inhabitants, and not only full of all gaiety and
delight from the natural inclination of her inhabitants to feasting and
pleasure, but because of the wealth of her citizens, the infinite number
of her shops and industries, the delicacy and abundance of all the
things which form man’s food, the superb apparel and equipages and
sumptuous adornments of both her women and her men, more flourishing and
happy than any other city of Italy.’

There is an interesting record of these years of tribulation in the
chronicle of a Milanese mercer named Burigozzo, who, sitting in his
dark-browed shop, set down from day to day, as they passed before his
eyes, the vicissitudes of _el povero Milano_. His quaint simplicity and
patriotic grief make his tale very moving. It is a picture of confusion,
tumult and misery, relieved at first by brilliant gleams, such as the
hollow pomps and glories of the entries of kings and conquerors, but
darkening ever to a more tragic gloom and terror and despair as it
passes from the milder sufferings of the period of French occupation to
the unspeakable horrors—_cose da non dire_—committed by the Spaniards
and lanzknechts of Pescara and De Leyva. All the great events of the
time are made vivid to us in his pages. We hear the ceaseless noise of
battle outside, the guns of the Castello, often directed upon the
terror-stricken city itself, roaring continually and answered by the
great bell of the Duomo sounding _a martello_, to summon the citizens to
arms. These, maddened by exactions and cruelty, or inspired by hope of
driving out oppressors, or excluding assailants, gather in thousands at
the call. Suffering has made them merciless, and they attack and butcher
parties of mercenaries in the streets. Once they make a holocaust of the
old wooden Campanile of the Duomo, with a whole company of Spaniards
within it. And through the streets, crowded with blaspheming and bestial
soldiery, we see endless processions pass, white-robed children, men and
women with bare feet and clad in sackcloth, monks, friars, all the
hierarchy of the Cathedral, filling the air with penitential wailings
and cries of _misericordia_, as they wind from the Duomo to St. Ambrogio
to implore the help of the great patron saint of the once fortunate
Milan. Churches crowded with suppliants; the excited populace pressing
round some upstart prophet—some fierce bearded monk who drives the timid
priests from altar and pulpit, and calls upon the people in the name of
Christ to slaughter the French. In street and temple alike confusion and
foulness, where so shortly before the genius of order had presided. Then
upon the uproar falls the sick and heavy silence of the pestilence, and
the mercer’s tale moves as with a hushed step, while, imprisoned for a
whole month within his house, he watches his children die, himself by
the grace of God untouched and well—while no sound is heard but the
carts going by laden with the sick, and the ceaseless _campana del
corpo_—while the graveyards spread and double in extent round the
numberless churches. A hundred thousand persons perished, he tells us,
during the summer months of 1524.

As the picture unrolls itself before us we are fain to turn away from
the spectacle of anguish and all abomination during the hideous years of
the Spanish occupation after 1525. The city preyed upon by the fiendish
mercenaries, the people outraged, pillaged, and tortured till they
yielded up their last mite of buried treasure. Multitudes flying from
their homes to avoid worse things and sheltering in the country round,
though that was infested by human beasts and wild ones only less cruel,
or worse, stopped and bound, little children and all, by their ruthless
tormentors, to prevent their escape. And withal siege, starvation; _such
a leanness of men from hunger as was an anguish to witness_, the little
bread which they possessed seized by the governor, the dying poor driven
into so-called refuges, whence every days scores were carried out dead.

But the story of these thirty years is not entirely of gloom. If we turn
from the people to the great Milanese nobility, we see a different
aspect of life, no less tragic in a sense, but brilliant enough and
glorified by the fine culture and rare artistic taste of the age. Within
their sumptuous palaces and wide secluded gardens, defended by great
names and powerful interests from the intrusions of marauding soldiery,
or in pleasant country villas beside the lakes and placid rivers of
Lombardy, whither they retired when pestilence or famine held sway in
the city, they created for themselves that unreal world of ladies and
cavaliers, arms and love, of which Ariosto sings. It was during these
years that the courtly Dominican friar, Matteo Bandello, was Prior of
the Convent of Sta. Maria delle Grazie, and was collecting in the most
elect circles those gay and scandalous tales, which, retold by his witty
pen with introductions describing the circumstances in which he heard
them, give a vivid picture of the incomparable cinquecento society of
Milan, with its fine literary accomplishment, vivacious wit and over
liberal manners—a society presided over by such gracious figures as
Ippolita Sforza, the lady of Bandello’s own particular adoration, and
Cecilia Gallerani, the Moro’s old favourite. Ippolita, a granddaughter
of Duke Galeazzo Maria, was married to Alessandro Bentivoglio, a son of
the deposed Lord of Bologna. She and Cecilia, now the Contessa
Bergamini, and Camilla Scarampi made up a trio of Milanese poetesses and
literary connoisseurs of finest discrimination and judgment and of wide
renown. Apparently careless of the woes of their country, these ladies
and others of their rank, with the graceful cavaliers and dilettante
ecclesiastics who made their court, occupied themselves in romantic
vanities, in amorous intrigues, and in learned and philosophic
dalliance. Close relations united them with the other courts and
aristocracies of North Italy, and the famous Marchioness of Mantua,
Isabella da Este, was often the centre and queen of those elegant
gatherings of beauty and wit and gallantry described by Bandello.
History shows us that most typical lady of Italian society dancing with
the King of France at the great ball which the usurping monarch gave in
1507, in the Castello of Milan, in the very halls where her sister and
brother-in-law had once reigned—a spectacle significant of fallen Italy.
Like the princes of the neighbouring States, the great nobles of Milan,
once powerful in the story of their city, had lost all patriotic and
independent spirit. The severe repression of party-passion, that
unfailing symptom of vigorous life in an Italian community, by the
French conquerors in 1500, reduced them to idleness and political
nullity. They made friends with the new powers and entered their
service, but they had no longer any real influence on affairs. The
revolutions which placed the Sforza princes on the ducal throne in turn
afforded the nobles opportunities of intrigue and brought home to them
the terrible realities of foreign subjugation. In 1521, for example,
those who had embraced the side of the old dynasty suffered the
reprisals of the savage Lautrec, and on mere suspicion Milan was
desolated of its noblest inhabitants by summary executions, banishment
and forfeiture. These families were, however, restored to their old
position by the elevation of Francesco Sforza to the Dukedom, and they
made no attempt to rebel against the Imperial Eagle, which was their
real master. When the intolerable persecution inflicted by the Spanish
and German mercenaries from 1525 to 1529 maddened the people to repeated
insurrection, not one of the nobles came forward to give them courage
and to organise and direct their undisciplined efforts to effective
action. A certain Pietro della Pusterla, of a House which through all
the story of Milan had been distinguished as leaders of popular
movements, seems to have assumed some authority over them, but even he
abandoned them in the hour of need and danger.

These futile attempts exhausted the last remains of aspiration for
liberty and self-government in the broken-spirited Milanese. They made
no attempt to rebel against the settlement of 1530, which resigned them
finally into the Emperor’s hands. Though utterly dismayed—_tutto
smarrito_, says Burigozzo—by the heavy fine inflicted by Charles as a
penalty for the rebellion of the Duchy, they resigned themselves to
_patientia_ and hope for better days to come.

Much _patientia_ was necessary before those days came. The country round
was depopulated, and it was long before the old abundance flowed again
into the city. There were times when bread lacked and the people
murmured against the helpless Duke. Prices remained very high and there
was little trade. A visit, however, from Charles V. in 1533, expected
with fear and dismay by the citizens, to whom his name was only
associated with ravaging lanzknechts and Spaniards, brought them, to
their joyful surprise, good luck—a great influx of custom and rich
payment for their goods, instead of robbery.

In 1534 a brief reflection of its old glory brightened the city on the
arrival of a bride for the Duke, the sixteen-year-old Cristina of
Sweden, whose portrait by Holbein is in the National Gallery. The
streets and squares were magnificently decked for her reception. The
young princess, whose countenance, says the chronicler, was more divine
than human, rode in under a golden baldaquin, surrounded by twelve of
the noblest gentlemen of the city, so splendidly arrayed that each
appeared an Emperor, and with such great white plumes in their caps that
her Excellency seemed to move in the midst of a forest. The joy with
which she was greeted was, however, shallow enough, and changed quickly
to groans when the money for the Duchess’ maintenance had to be squeezed
out of the people by a special tax.

The fine bridal feast was soon followed by a still more pompous, but
lugubrious pageant, when eighteen months later (1535), the last Duke of
Milan was carried to his tomb in the great temple founded by the first
Duke, Gian Galeazzo Visconte. Always delicate of constitution, and worn
out by the great anxieties of his life, Francesco fell a victim to a
severe illness in 1535. He left no child to inherit the ducal throne.

There still survived, however, a Sforza, Gian Paolo, son of the Moro by
Lucrezia Crivelli. This prince set off immediately for Rome, to press
the Pope to support his claim to the Dukedom. But on his way he was
seized with sickness and died. Men said that he was poisoned by those to
whom his existence was an inconvenience.

Thus was spent the dynasty of the Sforza, and Milan devolved as a vacant
fief to the Empire. This great city, once the seat of Roman Emperors,
the crowning place of Carlovingian and German monarchs, the capital of
North Italy, and for centuries the heart of the most powerful
principality in the peninsula, was now to sink to a mere provincial
position, to become an impotent fragment of dismembered and captive
Italy.

We need not occupy ourselves with the further vicissitudes of the city
under the now settled dominion of Spain, which all the chivalrous and
repeated efforts of France in the sixteenth century was unable to
overthrow. It is enough to note her transference from Spanish to
Austrian rule after the War of Succession in the early years of the
seventeenth century, and her continued subjection to the House of
Hapsburg—with the brief Napoleonic interruption of 1796 to 1815—till in
1848 she rid herself by insurrection of the Austrian garrison, and ten
years later became free and national at last as a member of the new-born
Kingdom of Italy.

Her mediæval life ended with her mediæval liberty. Its robust passions,
its vigorous and restless activity of body and mind, the sense of human
power, the wide-ranging speculation, the audacious flights of the
spirit, which mark its florescence in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, turned to weariness, disillusion and despair. Individuality
lost itself in the bonds of convention and submission. In art, in
literature, everywhere—decay. On thought, on science, the blight fell.
The same hand which had stilled the political aspirations of Milan was
laid heavily upon her soul. The prepotence of Spain and the revival of
dogmatic zeal in the Papacy meant the employment of every engine of
oppression against that spiritual freedom which Italy had used both for
good and for evil. The Holy Office was set up in the Convent of Sta.
Maria delle Grazie, and our friend Burigozzo lived long enough to see
the pitiful ceremonies of the public recantations and penances of
heretics before the door of the Duomo. But the most powerful agent of
the Catholic reform in Milan was the famous Cardinal Archbishop, Carlo
Borromeo, known to religious history as San Carlo. As Ambrose stands at
the entrance of Milan’s mediæval era, with back turned upon the ruined
Empire behind, and strong gaze broadening down the centuries of new
faith, new hope, new ideals, so Carlo Borromeo stands at its close, as
sternly facing towards the past, and closing the door upon the new world
of thought and knowledge beyond. Her independent story is consecrated at
its beginning and at its end by the mighty personality of a saint, who,
whatever his influence upon her actual progress, gives by his example of
will, of courage, and of spiritual exaltation, an everlasting
inspiration to mankind.

Carlo Borromeo was a scion of the great patrician family of that name in
Milan, founded far back in the mists of mediæval antiquity by a certain
pilgrim, the _buon romeo_ from whom it took its name. The House was
conspicuous in the story of the city, and was foremost in consequence
and in wealth in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Carlo was born
in the ecclesiastical purple. His uncle, Pius IV., of the Milanese House
of Medici, created him a cardinal in 1559, at the age of nineteen, and
heaped benefices upon him. In 1560 he became Archbishop of Milan on the
retirement of Cardinal Ippolito II. d’Este, who had occupied the See for
a great number of years in succession to his uncle Ippolito I. The young
Cardinal was now wealthier than any other prince of the Church. A few
years later, however, he renounced all his benefices, _which having he
was great, and casting away, greater_, as his biographer observes. He
retained the Archbishopric only, and taking up his abode in the city, he
devoted himself to the government of his diocese, with an immense zeal
and fervour of reform. The Jesuits, the Teatini, and other of the new
and reformed orders which sprang up in obedience to the religious
impulse of the time, were introduced by him into Milan, and he
suppressed the immensely wealthy and influential order of the Umiliati,
and alienated its revenues to the support of the new communities and to
the furtherance of his great schemes. An ascetic of purest and most
exemplary life, he indulged as representative of the Church in a
boundless pride and pomp. He was a despot, and his despotism opposed
itself to all independence of thought. He extended his ecclesiastical
jurisdiction to its utmost limits, and seizing delinquents almost under
the nose of the civil authorities, filled the dungeons of the episcopal
palace with them. His imperious will came into conflict with the
governors, but his powerful influence in the bigoted Court of Spain gave
him supremacy, and he was in fact the ruler of Milan. His splendid
temper of Milanese patrician vented itself in grandiose schemes for the
building, restoration and ornamentation of churches and religious
institutions. But as his authority was exerted to suppress all
individuality and spontaneity in literature and thought, so his rich
patronage was lent only to the decadence in art. A nobler manifestation
of the man was seen during the pestilence of 1576, when, with heroic
self-forgetfulness, he fulfilled his duty as chief pastor of the
afflicted people, succouring them by every means in his power. His
exalted figure, with cross borne high, leading processions of penitent
and supplicatory citizens through the streets, is one of the saintly
pictures of history.

Carlo Borromeo died in 1584, having lived but just forty-six years.
Beyond him is the long sleep of Milan. Under the pall of stillness her
historic virtues lie dormant, her historic names inglorious. But not
dead. When the long-deferred moment of the awakening comes, the old
courage, the old faith, the old sense of fellowship arises stronger and
more lively than before, and the names of old resound again among the
champions of Lombard and Italian freedom, in the prisons of repressive
tyranny, round the barricades of the Cinque Giornate, on the fields of
Custozza, Novara, Solferino, side by side with the patriots sprung of
the nameless blood which long ago watered the rich tilth of Legnano.




                               CHAPTER IX
                             _Art in Milan_


       “Cosa bella mortal passa e non d’arte.”—LEONARDO DA VINCI.

The Milanese as a people do not take a great place in the story of
Italian art. They show at no time the spontaneous artistic character
which was the blessed birthright of the Florentines, Sienese, Umbrians,
Venetians. They granted, however, splendid hospitality to the art of
others. Talent of every kind was attracted to this wealthy and luxurious
city, and the concourse of foreign artists roused and developed
considerable industry in the natives from early times.

Lombardy, and in particular Milan, its principal city, were exposed to
influences which did not reach further south. The strain of northern
blood in the people, derived from their Gallic origin, readily received
the impress of the ultramontanes who flowed down throughout the
centuries into the fertile plains of Po and Ticino, and the thoughts and
ideas which they brought, assimilating with the natural instincts of the
soil, and with the ancient traditions of the Latins, resulted in an
artistic character which is quite Italian, though very different from
the more southern populations. It lacks their spontaneity and daring,
their lofty imagination and idealism, has little of their sense of
beauty, falls short in sheer ability. But it is distinguished by
sincerity, a love of realism, a humble and zealous industry, and also by
certain marked and inveterate mannerisms. And though the Milanese, or
rather the Lombards who peopled the wide Duchy of the Visconti and
Sforza, remained always very receptive, looking for a lead, and owing
their strongest artistic impulses to some genius from abroad, their work
keeps always its strong native character.

Milan’s greatest moment was one in her art, and in her public life. The
same spirit of freedom which stood up to Barbarossa and Frederick II.,
raised her incomparable brick buildings of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries. In this development of architecture on the large and
reasonable lines of the old Roman building, modified by the mystic ideas
and melancholy sentiment of the North, and by the capabilities of the
rich and plastic material yielded by the alluvial soil, Lombardy shows
the highest result of the mingled elements of her artistic life. When no
longer inspired by freedom, architecture was still fostered in Milan by
ostentatious tyranny, and continued to be the most genial art of the
people. In the fourteenth century, the Visconti raised beautiful
churches and palaces, but the builders inclined more and more to abandon
the national traditions for Gothic lightness and grace. In the crowning
work of the Cathedral, the false Gothic ideal finally triumphed. The
classical revival, which followed under the Sforza and filled the city
anew with churches and palaces, was communicated to Milan by Tuscan
architects. It was cherished by the eclectic spirit of princes and
nobles, and owed nothing to popular impulse. But in adapting her
peculiar material, brick, to the new style, Lombardy gave it a local and
special character, and only when the vulgar exaggeration of the classic
fashion overwhelmed Italy in a general flood of baroque extravagance,
did Lombardy lose architectural individuality.

Sculpture, as the handmaid of architecture, was also actively practised
in Milan from the twelfth century onwards. The same masters from the
shores of Como, from the valley of Antelamo, close to Maggiore, from
Campione near Lugano, who carried the Lombard or Romanesque style all
over North Italy and into Tuscany in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, built her churches and carved upon the façades mystical
figures and devices. The Romanesque sculpture remaining in Milan is very
rude, and the names of its authors are in few cases remembered. In the
fourteenth century the family or guild of masters from Campione is
prominent in the records of Milanese architecture and sculpture, and
individuals are distinguished by name. Under the guidance of the Pisan
sculptor Giovanni di Balduccio, one of the ablest of Nicola Pisano’s
followers, who worked long in Milan, these Campionese produced
numberless sepulchral monuments, a few of which survive still in the
churches and museums. The Pisan traditions appear in them, modified by
the native character. The classic nobility and severity, the ideal grace
of Nicola and Giovanni Pisano degrade into heaviness and coarseness in
these ruder and more realistic hands, and the forms learnt from them are
remoulded according to certain inveterate predilections which persist
always in Lombard sculpture.

At the end of this century, artistic industry received an extraordinary
impulse throughout the Visconte States from the splendid patronage of
Gian Galeazzo. His vast new foundations, the Duomo of Milan, the Certosa
of Pavia, his mighty engineering enterprises, gave endless employment to
workers in stone. In this fervour of activity Lombard sculpture began to
evolve clearly its special character, and agreeably to the gorgeous
tastes of the Prince, which became a tradition for his successors, a
love of excessive and exaggerated ornamentation appears, and marks it
henceforth.

After Gian Galeazzo a lull came in art with the civic confusion of Gian
Maria’s few years, and the continuous wars of Filippo Maria’s
thirty-five. This period represents the pause between the mediæval era
and the Renaissance in Milan. The building and decoration of the
Cathedral was continued slowly by men whom the old principles no longer
inspired, and the new had not yet reached. No great names occur in the
host of craftsmen engaged in the work. The Campione fraternity was still
represented, and continued to exist for a long time, though its
traditions were dying out, and Jacopino da Tradate, who worked in the
earlier half of the century, was a sculptor of some power.

The triumph of Francesco Sforza in 1450 began a new era of prosperity
for Milanese art. A long peace, a succession of sovereigns in whom a
policy of splendour was assisted by stupendous wealth and a genuine love
of beauty and culture, the concourse of strangers of genius to their
Court, bringing the inspiration of the great classic revival from
Tuscany and Central Italy, roused the Lombards to an enthusiasm and
activity which carried them to their highest pitch of achievement at the
end of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Brunelleschi, employed by
Filippo Maria to build a fortress, Antonio Averulino, known as Filarete,
whom Francesco Sforza summoned to design the Ospedale Maggiore and to
assist on the Castle, Michelozzo, builder of the beautiful Portinari
Chapel, and finally the great Bramante, twelve years resident in the
city in the Moro’s days, and Leonardo da Vinci himself, master of all
the arts and sciences, were their guides in the new or rediscovered
mysteries of architecture. Giuniforte Solari, and Pietro his son,
architects of the Duomo, Certosa, and many of the churches and convents
raised everywhere by Francesco and Bianca Maria in the ardour of their
piety and the joy of their newly-won glory, show the transition from
Gothic to the Renaissance style, slowly accomplished however, for the
Lombards were tenacious of their local traditions and not ready to
accept new ideas. Even in the next generation of builders, Amadeo,
Dolcebuono, Cristoforo Solari, Briosco, and the rest, all nursed in the
precepts imparted by the Tuscans, and fully inspired by the Renaissance
spirit, there was still a lingering adhesion to certain Gothic
predilections. The Lombard character, especially noticeable in a love of
ornamentation, still expressed itself in the forms learnt from foreign
example. In all that peculiarly graceful building in Milan of the later
fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, which is called
indiscriminately Bramantesque, and attributed to the influence of the
Urbino master—cloisters and cortiles with elegant pillared porticos and
sculptured capitals of rich and fanciful design, and archivolts and
cornices decorated with terra-cotta mouldings, grand arched portals
often decorated with classic heads—a Lombard character may almost always
be detected.

In sculpture the Mantegazza are the first of the Milanese artists to
show signs of the Renaissance. These two brothers, Cristoforo and
Antonio, natives of Milan, were working from about 1443 until late in
the century. They represent the old Campionese traditions revivified by
contact with the new ideas, as expressed by the Paduans and Florentines.
Their work is marked by that excessive zeal in the search for realism
common to North Italian art at this time, leading to the representation
of exaggerated action and emotion. With the Mantegazza violence is not
always accompanied by strength, and their conception is not lofty enough
to save their naturalistic tendency from vulgarising the sacred subjects
which they set forth. The Northern element in them, encouraged by the
German and Flemish artists at the liberal Sforza Court, appears in their
extreme sincerity and pains, their lack of grace and idealism, their
attention to minutiæ rather than to broad effect. Their figures are
usually long and ill-proportioned, with small heads, the contours
angular and sharp, the faces rude, with projecting cheek-bones and
cavernous eyes; and the Lombard peculiarity of numberless arbitrary
folds, flattened to the form beneath as if the draperies had been
wetted, gives to the whole compositions of these sculptors the
appearance of crumpled paper. The Mantegazza are closely followed by an
artist of much more sweetness and geniality, Giovanni Antonio Amadeo
(1447-1522), the most productive and typical of the new generation of
sculptors. The joyous vitality of the Renaissance overflows in Amadeo
and carries all his native characteristics to unrestrained excess. The
Lombard love of pomp and gorgeous decoration runs to a riot of
ornamentation in his reliefs, which are crowded and overloaded with rich
and fertile fancies. Builder as well as sculptor, he sacrifices
architectural effect without scruple for the sake of decorative detail,
as the extraordinarily ornate façade of the Colleoni Chapel at Bergamo,
one of his most famous works, testifies. This is a fault common to the
Lombard architects. The façade of the Certosa, that museum of
Renaissance art in Lombardy, the characteristic production of the busy
school of the Mantegazza, Amadeo, Benedetto Briosco, and their
assistants and followers, is an enduring monument of architects spoiled
by being decorative sculptors, the building being treated chiefly as a
space to load with decoration. The production of Amadeo’s prolific
talent, during a long and prosperous career, was very large, and
continued till shortly before his death. Amadeo shares the naturalistic
tendency of the Mantegazza and their native mannerisms, especially that
of the crumpled paper folds. A love of story-telling, amounting to
loquacity, appears in his subject reliefs, with their multitudinous
figures and redundant action. The florid, extravagant fancy of his
decorative work is not restrained by his sense of proportion, and in his
indiscriminating use of classical motives borrowed from other
schools—heads of emperors, allegorical conceits, etc.—a want of culture
and scholarship is evident. The vulgarity of Lombard art in comparison
with the Tuscan is exemplified in Amadeo, but is redeemed by the
sympathetic qualities of gaiety, spontaneity and artlessness, which give
his work often much charm and sweetness.

Amadeo’s activity was at its height at the time when Leonardo was
working in Milan upon the equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza. Duke
Galeazzo Maria’s failure to find a native to do the work shows the
limitations of the Lombard sculptors. All shunned the problem of casting
a bronze figure on so large a scale. But Lodovico il Moro, taking up the
interrupted project after his brother’s death, found in the Tuscan
Leonardo one who feared no difficulties. The completion of the model of
the horse, after years of preliminary study, was the greatest sculptural
event that ever happened in Milan. But it remains outside the story of
the Lombard sculptors. Unlike the painters, they seemed to have been
little disturbed in their course by the tremendous personality of the
Florentine. If traces of his influence appear in their work, it is in
types borrowed from his paintings.

A host of well-known sculptors accompany and follow Amadeo. Gio.
Dolcebuono, Cristoforo Solari, known as il Gobbo (the Hunchback),
Benedetto Briosco, the Cazzaniga brothers, Agostino Busti, called il
Bambaia—all show the local characteristics. But an inclination to
softness and sensuousness and a lack of the old virile energy begins to
vitiate their work as time goes on, and signals the coming of the
decadence, though the technical skill of the school increases. Il Gobbo,
scion of the old artistic stock of the Solari, was one of the most
highly-reputed of the sculptors, though he has left little of high worth
behind him. He was much favoured by the Moro, who chose him to execute
the monument for Beatrice’s tomb. The interesting sepulchral figures of
this ill-fated pair, completed many years later, and now in the Certosa,
are his work. In Agostino Busti the school reaches its highest technical
proficiency. But the old freshness and inspiration is gone. Il Bambaia,
who is at times great—as in the beautiful recumbent figure of Gaston de
Foix—degenerates often into coldness and conventionality, and his
decorative taste was as ill-regulated as that of his less accomplished
predecessors and contemporaries. A number of other artists—Gian Giacomo
della Porta, Andrea Fusina, Cristoforo de’ Lombardi, Angelo Siciliano,
and, later on, Gabrio Busca, Vincenzo Seregni, etc.—were engaged on
architectural and decorative work in Milan in the sixteenth century,
chiefly on the never-ending subject of the Duomo, the exterior of which
is a vast object-lesson in the artistic decadence of the Milanese. The
pious zeal of S. Carlo and the cultured tastes of his nephew and
successor in the Archbishopric, Cardinal Federigo Borromeo, gave a new
impetus to art; but it was ill-directed by the false taste of the age,
and Lombard sculpture, like the architecture, ends in the empty
pomposity and extravagance of the baroque style.

The other branches of mediæval and Renaissance art found a busy centre
also in Milan. The decorative crafts of the goldsmith, wood-carver, of
the intarsia worker and embroiderer, flourished here early. In the
fourteenth century the fame of the Milanese armourers was shared by the
hands which engraved the swords and shields and cuirasses forged in the
clanging quarter of the Spadari. The unparalleled wealth and luxury of
the Visconti and of their nobles called for the finest skill of the
embroiderer and goldsmith to adorn their apparel and harness, and
lavished ornamentation on their palaces, their pageants, their feasts,
which shone with gold and glowed with costly and beautiful colour. In
the following century all these crafts were still more encouraged by the
Sforza. Matteo da Civate was a goldsmith of repute, and the Mantegazza
and others of the sculptors pursued this delicate craft also with great
success. The fame of the Milanese goldsmiths was finally crowned by
Ambrogio Foppa, known as Caradosso, whose figures chiselled in gold were
of such admirable workmanship that Cellini himself praised and envied
him as one of the greatest masters in this art that he had ever known.
The native workers were, however, but a few of those employed at the
Sforza Court, which in the days of Lodovico and Beatrice was a very
museum of artistic work of every kind, contributed by the finest talent
of Italy, Germany, Flanders and Spain.

Nor was the art of painting less cherished in Milan. The Visconti, for
the adornment of their great palace at Pavia, the Sforza for the
splendid halls of the Castle of Milan, and of their hundred villas and
palaces of pleasure, engaged an army of painters. But until the later
half of the fifteenth century not one name occurs there of any
significance in the history of painting. Giovanni da Milano, mentioned
by Vasari as a pupil of Taddeo Gaddi, and an excellent painter, shows in
his surviving works the conventional style of the later Giottesque
school, varied by something of that heaviness and darkness of colour
which we see afterwards in the Milanese Quattrocentists. From Giovanni
onwards the few artists that we hear of, and the many that certainly
worked in Milan, have left little trace behind them, and that little
does not differ from the rude and homely style common in North Italy
before the development of the Paduan school. Early in the fifteenth
century the influence of Pisanello, who worked in the Visconti Court,
and of the artistic ideals which he represents, made itself felt in
Milan, and painters like Michelino da Besozzo and the Zavatarii peopled
the walls of the ducal and aristocratic palaces of the Milanese state
with such decorative, but strangely proportioned figures as are still to
be seen in a chamber of the Palazzo Borromeo. Other and stronger
influences, however, must have been working in the Milanese at this
time, and under the spur of Florentine and Paduan example, and that of
the German artists who thronged the court of Filippo Maria and Francesco
Sforza, they were doubtless evolving obscurely the more or less
distinctive character which emerges first into notice with Vincenzo
Foppa. Were the works of the earlier contemporaries of Foppa, Bonifacio
Bembo, Pietro dei Marchesi, Stefano de’ Fedeli, Constantino da Vaprio,
Bernardino de’ Rossi, etc., still existing, we should probably find that
they were already moving in the direction which his greater talent was
able to pursue definitely and to point out to his successors.

Foppa’s is the first figure that stands out for real artistic excellence
in the history of Milanese painting, and he is always called the founder
of the school. Born at Brescia sometime in the first half of the
fifteenth century, Foppa is generally supposed to have studied in the
school of Squarcione. His earliest known work is the Crucifixion, at
Bergamo, dated 1456. He worked chiefly in Milan and the neighbourhood,
and died in 1492. He was a very serious painter, and though he had not
the inspiration of genius, with sound artistic sense he grasped the
material facts of nature and gave force and reality to his creations.
His treatment of forms is simple and direct, and his sincerity and
singleness of purpose redeem the homeliness of his types, and render his
figures noble and impressive. The Squarcionesque tradition is to be seen
in the classical backgrounds and inlaid marble thrones, etc., of his
pictures, but the general character of his work shows a distinct
departure from the Paduan style. The heavy forms and dark grey flesh
tones are native qualities, and are very persistent throughout the
Milanese school of painting.

Zenale, born at Treviglio in 1436, died in 1526, is little more than a
name to us, for in spite of his long life scarcely any of his work has
survived. The altarpiece at Treviglio, in which Buttinone was associated
with him, is the only work extant that can with certainty be called his.
Buttinone was his contemporary and co-worker in the frescoes in S.
Pietro Gessate in Milan, as well as in the Treviglio altarpiece.
Zenale’s share in these frescoes is quite unrecognisable, and there is
nothing else in Milan that can be identified as his work.

Buttinone’s paintings are rare, but some survive in Milan and the
neighbourhood. He has a good deal in common with Foppa, and probably
derived his training from the same source; but there is a decided
individuality in his work, an almost painful struggle after realism
which results in a strange ugliness. His faces have great protruding
foreheads and enormous ears, the flesh tones are dark and grey with
streaks of high light, the children have large heads and
disproportionately small limbs. There is something pathetic in his
painstaking efforts and their poor results.

Ambrogio da Fossano, called Borgognone, is a much better artist. His
name first appears in 1481 as a painter of the University of Milan. His
early work is characterised by a simplicity and refinement and a sense
of beauty which is much developed later on. He has at first the same
tendency to grey flesh tones as Foppa and Buttinone, only with him they
are modified to pleasant cool colour harmonizing with the silvery hues
of background and draperies. Later he develops a freer expression, which
we see at its best in the beautiful frescoes of S. Satiro (now in the
Brera) and the Certosa. He may have felt the influence of Leonardo, but
he never lost his individuality. All through his life he kept the
religious feeling which is his marked characteristic, and which makes
the deepest appeal of his work. His drawing, however, is often bad; his
flying angels are wrongly foreshortened, and there is no movement in his
figures. He did an immense amount of painting and there is a sameness in
his pictures, graceful though they are.

About 1483 Leonardo da Vinci came from Florence and settled in Milan.
His art must have been a revelation to the Lombard painters. Not only
was his technique infinitely superior to theirs, but his scope was so
great, his imagination so profound, he created new forms, new types, a
new world of light and shadow and perspective. His enterprises were
gigantic, not in painting only, but in sculpture, architecture and
engineering. The Milanese, who had little originality of their own and
were always susceptible to outside influence, gathered round him, and a
school of painting was formed in which we see his types imitated to such
a degree that much of his pupils’ work has been attributed to the master
himself, until modern criticism, headed by Morelli, has given it back to
the true authors. The painters we shall now mention must all have felt
more or less Leonardo’s influence.

Ambrogio de Predis was Court painter to Lodovico il Moro in 1482, and
therefore was a painter of repute when Leonardo arrived in Milan; but
that he became a close follower of the master is shown by the fact of
his being associated with him in the altarpiece of the Virgin of the
Rocks, of which de Predis painted the two side panels, the angels in the
National Gallery, and many critics think he also executed the London
version of the central part under the direction of Leonardo. Of the
portraits attributed to him, some are very good, a profile of a girl in
the Ambrosiana being the best. So much better is it than the
coarsely-painted clumsy angels of the National Gallery, that it is
difficult to recognise the connection between them; we can only suppose,
however, that portrait painting was more congenial to him.

Bartolomeo Suardi, called Bramantino, painted at the end of the
fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries. He is said to have
been a pupil of Foppa and of Bramante, working architecturally with the
latter. His work is free and broad in manner, though often empty and
wanting in drawing; the forms are full and the faces wide, with very
regular features, particularly noticeable in the profiles. The blonde
colouring of his flesh tones is unlike the usual low tones of the
Milanese. There is little evidence in his work of Leonardo’s influence.

Andrea Solario, born about 1460, was an accomplished painter. Of his
early training we know nothing; but his elder brother Cristoforo was a
sculptor, and may have helped Andrea to arrive at the excellence of
drawing which we see in his portraits. Some of his work shows the
influence of Leonardo, but he was also affected by the Venetians, and
especially by Antonello da Messina; his portraits also show affinity
with the Flemish school, in their clear outlines and high finish. The
landscape backgrounds to his subjects are fine in colour and effect. He
was fond of painting half-length pictures of the Madonna and Child, and
treated the subject with a tender realism that is very charming.
Technically he reached a higher excellence than any of his
fellow-Milanese painters. With the exception of the large altarpiece at
the Certosa, his pictures are mostly small and unambitious in subject.
He was, however, employed by Charles d’Amboise, in 1507, to decorate
with frescoes the chapel in his Castle of Gaillon in Normandy. These
have perished.

Boltraffio, Cesare da Sesto, Gianpietrino, Bernardino dei Conti, Marco
d’Oggionno, Melzi and Salai were all close followers of Leonardo. Their
work is not strong or original, nor is the drawing very good, but it has
a charm nevertheless, that of earnest and conscientious effort, striving
after the ideal of beauty their great master set before them, which
degenerates in their hands, however, into a fatal prettiness. Their
fault was an almost morbid exaggeration of the gradation of tones in the
modelling of contours, by which they lost all freshness and vigour.
Boltraffio, born 1467, was of noble family, and was a favourite pupil of
Leonardo’s. His painting is highly finished and has distinction; his
Madonnas, clad always in rich garments, are stately and beautiful, with
oval faces and regular features. The painting is very smooth, which
gives a cold and unnatural effect to the flesh. The fresco in St.
Onofrio in Rome, formerly ascribed to Leonardo, is now given to him, and
some critics consider him the author of the much-disputed Belle
Ferronière of the Louvre.

Cesare da Sesto’s work was very Leonardesque to begin with; later on he
was influenced by Raphael. His manner is lighter and more graceful than
most of the Lombards. In Gianpietrino’s painting the Lombard greyness of
flesh tones is carried to an almost gloomy extreme. His Madonnas and
Magdalens often have charm, but in the former he imitated Leonardo too
closely, and the execution is timid.

Bernardino dei Conti painted Madonnas in the Leonardesque manner, but
the colour is peculiarly hot and the contours lumpy. His drawings, which
are better than his paintings, have a great resemblance to those of
Ambrogio de Predis, by whom, Morelli says, he was much influenced. Marco
d’Oggionno’s pictures are lifeless imitations of the master, in which
all the subtlety is lost, the chiaroscuro is too strong and the colours
too intense. In his large canvases, such as the Archangels of the Brera,
he fails signally. Of the work of Melzi and Salai we know little. Salai
is mentioned by Vasari as a youth of singular grace and beauty with
waving curly hair. He may have served as model for some of those
Leonardesque drawings of youths with curling hair with which we are
familiar.

Painters deriving still from Leonardo but who have achieved a great
celebrity of their own are Bernardino Luini and Gaudenzio Ferrari. Luini
is the most popular painter of the Lombard school, probably because his
paintings are so numerous and therefore widely known. There is always a
sweetness and charm in his work, though rather superficial and
sentimental, and in the best examples he attains beauty and dignity; but
his forms have the Lombard heaviness and his drawing is not good. There
is want of imagination and a tameness in his pictures that make them
very monotonous. The dates of his birth and death are unknown, nor is
anything known of his early training. He certainly imitated Leonardo,
but his best work has a character and individuality of its own. The
frescoes of the Monastero Maggiore in Milan, of Saronno and Lugano are
considered very fine.

Gaudenzio Ferrari was born about 1481 at Valduggia. Little is known of
his early life; he must have felt the influence of Bramantino and Luini;
his work is sometimes confused with that of the latter painter. He had
much more inventive and dramatic power than Luini, as his frescoes show.
He was a most prolific painter, and had too much energy and too little
self-restraint. His colour is fiery and his compositions overcrowded. In
spite of his ability he fell into bad taste and careless workmanship,
showing unmistakable signs of that decadence which gradually overtook
Italian art.

The most talented of all the Lombard painters was Giovanni Antonio
Bazzi, called il Sodoma, for though Tuscany and Rome were the scenes of
his activity and possess his greatest works, yet he derives his artistic
descent from Lombardy. He was born at Vercelli in Piedmont in 1477, and
studied painting for two or three years at Milan before going to Siena,
where we hear of him in 1501. His painting shows plainly his origin, and
some of his works have great affinity to Leonardo, though he is not
known to have been actually his pupil.

The Leonardesque tradition was carried on by the brothers Martino and
Albertino Piazza of Lodi, whose work is suave and pleasing, but weak.
The family of Campi, two generations, worked through three-quarters of
the sixteenth century. Their work is able, but without distinction; they
show a Venetian influence.

Bernardino Lanino was a pupil and imitator of Gaudenzio Ferrari; he was
active through the middle of the sixteenth century. The school dies away
with Lomazzo, more famous for his writings on Art than for his
paintings, and with Daniele Crespi, in whom we see all the exaggerated
realism of the decadence of Art.




                               CHAPTER X
                              _The Duomo_


 “The far-famed Cathedral of Milan, which men call the eighth wonder of
    the world.”

In Milan, as we see the city to-day, modernised, commonplace,
characterlessly handsome, there is one great redeeming thing—the
Cathedral. Other churches there are, greater and more beautiful in every
sense except size, but they are smothered in the dull drift of everyday
buildings. The Duomo, as is befitting, has a supreme position. It is the
heart of the city, the converging point of all the far-coming ways, the
irresistible magnet for the eyes of the myriads thronging those ways. It
rises up in its immense stature above the petty interests and activities
of the crowds at its base, an embodied exhalation of the holy spirit of
man, a witness to the irrepressible upward flight of his thoughts and to
his eternal need of beauty and light.

The impression which a traveller coming from the station first receives
of the Duomo is of a vast ethereal presence at the end of the long
street, so light, so cloud-like, so delicate that it seems to be no
temple piled up slowly by men’s hands to the measure of their prayers,
but a fabric of some upper sphere, built of air and dreams. Broad set in
its main proportions, it gives high and ample seat to the swelling
contour of the cupola, which a hundred pinnacles guard like serried
spears, pointing into the upper blue around the spring of the midmost
spire. In the silvery light of afternoon it appears a shadowy forest of
upward-springing shafts, with sharp gleams along edges and salient
lines. The details are lost in a soft mass, and the atmosphere casts
over all a veil of illusion. Through such a veil this famous Cathedral
of Milan is best seen and best understood.

In the view of the whole building from the great Piazza on the west
side, its faults are more apparent—the inadequacy and insignificance of
the cupola, or central tower, the incongruity of the façade, the
extravagance of the ornamentation. Nevertheless, the huge white marble
pile has always majesty and splendour, if only from its size and
material and the amazing number of its airy embroideries and fripperies
of stone. It has a magic, unearthly beauty of colour, silver, dove-like,
rosy against the blue, according to the changing light of the day—most
wonderful in the strange, pale, clear moment when the sun has just set.
An exotic in this flat country of the alluvial soil, where brick is the
natural medium for the builder, it seems to bring into the hot and
stifling city at midsummer a cooling breath from that marble cave close
to Lago Maggiore whence its material was drawn. One could almost believe
that it was the dripping of water through countless ages which had built
up its clear substance into those strange fantastic shapes, those spires
and fretted edges and fairy shafts.

Their Cathedral is the pride and joy of the Milanese. Yet not so much
this billowy heap of stone, but the spot upon which it stands should be
consecrate to their hearts. None of the noblest memories of their past
sanctify the church which Gian Galeazzo Visconte founded, which opened
its doors with equal welcome to Francesco Sforza, the usurper, and to
French and Spanish and Austrian conquerors by turn, and which was
finished by Napoleon Buonaparte. But the ancient, half-ruined church,
which Gian Galeazzo pulled down to make room for his new temple,
enshrined the dearer history of Milan’s liberty. Sta. Maria Maggiore, as
it was then called, was the representative through many transformations
of that _basilica nuova intramuros_ in which Ambrose entrenched himself
in his great struggle with the Empress Justina and achieved his victory
for the new organisation of the Church, protector of the people, over
the corrupt despotism of the Empire. And if what is one of the spiritual
events of the world’s history must be fixed in time and place, it was no
doubt at the gates of this, the chief church, that Ambrose interposed
his hand between the blood-stained Emperor and the altar of Christ. In
later centuries, in the figures of the enthusiasts Arialdo and
Erlembaldo, of the courageous Peter Damian, fronting the excited and
hostile multitudes, the memories of the old Cathedral church were still
of the victory of the spirit over the forces of the world, of liberty
over oppression, of a new order of things over the corrupt system of the
past. And in the early days of the Milanese Republic the church was
closely associated with the life and struggles of the people. All
business, public and private, was transacted in the piazza outside. The
portico of the church was the house of parliament, and the politics of
the city were sanctified by the benediction of religion. The chief
priest was likewise the head of the people, and the pastoral staff which
topped the lofty Campanile stood for temporal as well as spiritual
dominion. In times of peace the Sacred Car was housed within the church,
and in the church those warlike decisions were taken which occasioned it
to be drawn forth that it might go in the midst of the host against the
enemy.

But the noblest moment in the story of the old Cathedral was its
restoration after the ruin of the city by Barbarossa in 1166. The
ruthless destruction of the Campanile, a tower _of such marvellous
beauty, such great breadth and admirable altitude that there was said to
be none other like it in Italy_, had wrecked it in great part. The
labour of the men, the jewels of the women, went to the rebuilding, till
the church stood up once more in the midst of the re-risen city, defying
the destroyer.

With the building of the present Duomo all the vestiges of those ancient
and good days were swept away. Milan’s liberty was gone, and the church
which symbolised it, both in association and in its Lombard style of
architecture, had been allowed to become half-ruinous. The population
had outgrown the capacity of the church, and in their rapidly growing
wealth and importance it was natural that prince and people should
desire a cathedral more suited to their condition. So the old building
fell for ever.

The citizens acquiesced in the scheme for a new Cathedral, but the
enormous temple which rose on the site of the old one, the Duomo of
to-day, was the conception of Gian Galeazzo Visconte, and of him alone.
It was the measure of his vast ambition and audacious will. He planned
it great enough for the capital of a Kingdom of Italy. The citizens
seconded him with generous offerings, but whether their enthusiasm was
genuine or merely flattery of the tyrant’s wishes mattered nothing. Gian
Galeazzo was doubtless moved to this work by a desire to expiate the
crime by which he had acquired sole sovereignty, and to entomb it in the
memories of his subjects beneath this proud ornament to the city. He is
said to have had another motive, shared by the people. A strange evil,
we are told, afflicted Milan at this time. Some say that the women were
unable to bring their male children safely to the birth; others, that a
mysterious malady prevailed among the boy babies, withering them within
a few years. The citizens were filled with terror at the doom of
extinction which seemed to impend over them. Gian Galeazzo’s three sons
by Isabella of France had all died in infancy, leaving him only the girl
Valentina, and at this time his second wife, Caterina Visconte, was
still childless.

The Duomo was then a votive offering from Gian Galeazzo Visconte to
Heaven for a son to inherit the great destinies which he intended to
conquer, and from the Milanese people for children to continue their
race. It was dedicated, not to the Birth of the Son of God, but to hers
who brought Him into the world—_Mariæ Nascenti_, as the inscription on
the façade proclaims—to the Birth of Motherhood.

Thus the great church rises in worship of the mystery of Life. When one
thinks of its origin, the wonderful ribbed and perforated and pinnacled
building appears in a new light, rising as it were out of the still
hovering darkness of the Middle Ages, the embodiment of a people’s
aspiration towards renewed life. The moment of its inception was that
pregnant one for Italy when the mediæval pessimism was yielding to hope
and joy in life, and when to the worship of the Nascent Mary was to be
joined the worship of that twin mystery, the Venus Reborn.

The building was begun in 1386. The story of its actual rise is
extremely lengthy and tedious. The multitude of conflicting counsels,
the number of architects concerned with it, make its very existence seem
a miracle. It is not known who first designed it, or whether he was a
native or foreigner. Milan’s close relations with the countries beyond
the Alps, and the alliances and constant intercourse of the Visconti
with the Courts of France and Germany, naturally induced Gian Galeazzo
to call Northern architects to his aid and to choose the Gothic style of
the North. There is little doubt that the original plan proceeded from a
Northern mind. The work of carrying it out, however, passed very soon
into the hands of native builders, most of whom belonged to the
celebrated guild of stoneworkers from Campione. Marco da Campione was
chief architect—ingegnere—in 1386. Others of the company, Zeno, Bonino,
Jacopo, and Maffiolo, appear in the records of the first years, with
Simone Orsenigo, the dei Grassi and a host of other noted craftsmen of
the day. Among the crowd there was evidently no conspicuous master
spirit, and the post of chief was obtained, especially later on, as much
by interest and intrigue as by merit. Many foreign artists were called
from time to time by Gian Galeazzo to give help and advice. Their
intervention always led to heated argument and loud contention in the
Council of the Fabric, the foreigners criticising and condemning the
work of the Lombard builders, and these defending it with jealous zeal,
and invariably defeating and driving out the intruders. Johann von
Fernach and Heinrich von Gmünd were employed for a short time in the
latter part of the century. Their strenuous objections to important
points in the structure were overruled by the Italians. In 1400 the
Frenchman, Jean Mignot, having been engaged to take a prominent part in
the work, pronounced the building unsafe, and proposed radical
alterations. The indignant Lombards, headed by the celebrated military
architect, Bertolino da Novara, disputed his opinion and persuaded the
Duke that all was well. Mignot was dismissed and condemned to replace
what he had already pulled down in conformity with his own ideas.

So the battle raged for years. It had a negative rather than positive
result on the building, which progressed on the lines already laid down,
but without receiving any impress of individual thought or genius. In
its complete state to-day it shows, with all its immensity, a poverty of
ideas, both within and without, which no wealth of ornamentation can
hide. It rose with great rapidity at first, in response to the energy
and will of the prince. In 1392 the walls had reached the full height of
the side aisles, and all the pillars of the interior were already
standing. That forest of lofty shafts soaring to dim heights, in which
we wander to-day, astonished and awed, must once have enclosed the puny
mortal form and the immeasurable spirit of the first and greatest Duke
of Milan. His death in 1402 robbed the great enterprise of vitality and
inspiration. In the misfortunes of Giovanmaria’s reign, both funds and
encouragement lacked, and the general mediocrity of the builders was
equally blighting to the progress of the work. The local architects had
by this time obtained undisputed charge of it, and the clamour of
controversy had died down. Sons had succeeded to their fathers’ posts,
and continued slowly in the old track. By the time Francesco Sforza
attained the Dukedom, in 1450, general interest in the Cathedral was
much diminished. Architectural ideas were changing. The Renaissance was
begun. The great Tuscan masters, summoned to Milan by this Duke and his
predecessor, had recalled to the Lombard builders those classic
principles native to Italy and long forgotten under the Gothic
influences of the Middle Ages. The earlier Sforza sovereigns used their
patronage to raise new churches, and it was not till the fervent
artistic atmosphere of the end of the century had developed a certain
eclecticism in cultured minds that the Duomo received a new impetus from
Lodovico il Moro.

The main body of the church was already finished, but the façade, the
cupola, and other details were still to do. A German master, Johann
Nexempilger von Gratz, was first invited by the Moro to continue the
work, but was quickly dismissed, the severity of his ideas being
unacceptable to the Italians. A number of native artists were then set
to work to design a cupola which should reconcile the curves and
rectangles dear to the Renaissance with the acutely-pointed style of the
rest of the Cathedral. Over this problem great minds pored. Leonardo da
Vinci made several designs and models of a cupola, but they were not
accepted. Bramante also made models for it. The assistance of the Tuscan
Luca Fancelli, and the Sienese Francesco di Giorgio was also called
upon. But the work remained finally to the local artists, men of
industry and ingenuity, but of no great genius. Chief among them were
Cristoforo Solari, Giovanni Antonio Amadeo, and Gian Giacomo Dolcebuono.
To Amadeo was finally entrusted the building of the cupola, which he
carried out and completed, with the exception of the crowning pinnacle.
This artist held the post of chief architect from 1490 till his death in
1522, becoming the repository of all the traditions and secrets of the
long-continued work.

Though the great fabric was apparently carried on in the old style, it
reveals a new spirit from this time. The true feeling for Gothic was
dead, and the architects of the late Quattrocento could only reconcile
it with their artistic conscience by flamboyant excesses. Moreover,
Amadeo and his companions were sculptors first and architects second.
The opportunities of Gothic were fatal in their hands. It was they who
first started the building on that evil course of elaborate and
excessive ornamentation which has made it what it is to-day—a building
generally admired for its resemblance to a monstrous sugar-cake. Their
lead was followed with an ever-diminishing sense of artistic propriety
and an increasing love for florid effect by their successors in the
middle and latter part of the sixteenth century. The impulse imparted to
the work by the zeal of Carlo Borromeo and the great religious revival,
expressed itself only in cold and uninspired artistic platitudes, the
emptiness of which is ill concealed by superficial exaggerations. The
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are represented by an increase of
bad taste and meretricious effect, and the story of the long evolution
of the temple ends in a climax of bombast in the Napoleonic era, to
which is owed the present grandiose façade and the battalions of
pinnacles which crown the whole edifice.

[Illustration: CUPOLA OF THE DUOMO, FROM THE ROOF.]

A building conceived in a spirit foreign to the place where it was to
rise, and carried out by men to whom its design and idea was naturally
unsympathetic and incomprehensible, through ages in which all the
original inspiration was lost, could not well be a wholly satisfactory
achievement. Milan Cathedral sins grievously against the principles of
pure Gothic. The pointed style is carried in it to an acuteness in which
all grace and flexibility of line is lost. In fretful moments one feels
that these endless sharp angles scrape one’s nerves. The effect of
solidity and strength has been completely sacrificed for the sake of
ornamentation, and dignity and repose lost in a restless reiteration of
trivial details. The huge-ribbed flanks gape with enormous windows.
Every nook and cranny, every jag and angle is crowded with statues. The
outlines of the roof are frilled by an elaborately-pierced balustrade
with crocketed pinnacles. From the central roof to the lower level of
the side aisles spring a host of flying buttresses, so perforated that
they look like wisps of foam rather than solid props intended to support
the fabric. A myriad spears quiver upwards from the roof far into the
sky, and upon each dances a statue. No wonder that the guides call upon
you to admire its likeness to lacework or confectionery, and that people
compare it to a drift of snow, a billow dashing into spray, a white
mountain bird alighted in the midst of the city—anything except a
building of solid bones and substance.

Restorations and continual repairs have almost effaced the handiwork of
the original builders. The north-east part of the exterior is the most
ancient. The three magnificent windows of the apse, with their rich
tracery, are one of the most beautiful features of the original design.
And amid the swarms of baroque saints, in every contorted attitude of
theatric sentiment, which have settled on this part, as everywhere over
the building—four thousand four hundred and forty, outside and in, they
say—a patient observer may pick out some which, by their dignified
simplicity, refinement and repose, show the purer taste of the fifteenth
and early sixteenth centuries. The lowest figures on the northernmost
window of the apse are an Adam and Eve, and have been attributed to
Antonio Rizzo, a fifteenth century Venetian sculptor, known by his work
in the cortile of the Doge’s Palace. Cristoforo Solari, Andrea Fusina,
Tomaso da Cazzaniga, il Bambaia, are all represented by sculptures on
the apse. Higher up are works by earlier and less accomplished hands,
huge gargoyles of fantastic form—dragons, a serpent coiled round the
nude body of a woman, a child entwining itself with a bough, a female
figure with great curling hair, a siren with bat’s wings—monstrous
creations of the Northern fancy, which dominated in the first years of
the Cathedral. Beneath these gargoyles are ranged the so-called Giganti,
colossal statues of warriors, heralds, huntsmen, foresters,
slaves—figures of romance and of the rude fields too. Some are by German
sculptors, and by Lombards under their influence; others of rather later
date show new and realistic tendencies.

There is little of interest on the south side and in the lower end of
the exterior. The monotonous length of the vast flanks is unbroken by
the rich interest of doorways, such as were originally projected. The
classic façade is frankly discordant, though it is no less thickly
littered with bad sculptures. The bronze doors of the middle entrance
are a very recent work, showing the hark back of the modern sculptor to
Quattrocento models. But if the exterior of the Duomo lacks in
impressiveness, the interior makes amends. Wonder and awe overwhelm one
on entering. In the dim religious light from the great stained windows,
one is aware of vast echoing aisles, of mighty columns passing away, one
behind the other, into depths and distances of rich gloom, where the
pointed lines of arch behind arch become visible, broken by long slits
of glowing glass. A quiet reigns as of places untrodden by earthly
things. Pigmy human forms creep here and there over the immense expanses
of the pavement, or kneel at the foot of a column, bowed in devotion.

In this solemn interior it seems as if the native and foreign ideals had
united for once, with harmonious result. Here is the breadth and
spaciousness of Latin thought—the loftiness of Gothic. With its five
aisles, transepts and apsidal east end, the church is of striking
simplicity. There are no chapels built out, few side altars, and few
monuments. The High Altar, with its canopy, and the florid pulpits and
marble screen round the sanctuary, are the only conspicuous objects.
There is little incident in the building itself. A feeling gains upon
one, after a time, of a certain emptiness, monotony, even poverty, in
all this grandeur of height and space. The inadequacy of the short light
arches of the nave, in comparison with the colossal shafts supporting
them becomes visible, and the eye is offended by the shameless deception
of the roof, which is painted to simulate open tracery, and give a false
effect of added height. The endless repetition of line and arch ends by
being wearisome, and one longs for the rich symmetric light and shade of
triforium and clerestory, for the beautiful mouldings, the star
blackness of trefoil and quatrefoil piercings, and for all that deep and
varied interest which grows upon the eye slowly, and in just relation to
general effect, in the best Gothic architecture. The curious and
elaborate capitals, like huge rings, are the most conspicuous details
here. Each in itself is a wonderful piece of Gothic ornament, with
arcades and crocketed pinnacles and niches filled with statues, but they
are so high up that one can hardly appreciate them in detail. As
capitals, one must quarrel with them. They do not seem natural members
of the columns, but things put on merely for effect, and look as if they
were meant to slip up and down, and might be at the bottom as well as at
the top. That on the great pier to the left of the High Altar is said to
be the handiwork of Heinrich von Gmünd, and to have been the model of
the rest. The statues which decorate the lofty interior of the cupola,
high up, are in the characteristic manner of the late fifteenth century
Lombard sculptors, and the busts of the Fathers of the Church in the
spandrils are by Cristoforo Solari. The rest of the ornamentation in the
church is mostly of the Borromean and later periods. It is the ascetic
cardinal’s fault that all the picturesque incrustations which had
gathered upon the old building, with priceless historic associations,
are missing. He ruthlessly swept away the shades of the rich and lively
past, its profanities and sincerities together. The tombs of the old
Lords of Milan, Visconti and Sforza, in the ambulatory, were cleared
away, and other monuments were destroyed or displaced in too zealous
obedience to the decree of the Council of Trent, forbidding the burial
of bodies in monuments in churches. The doors in the transepts were
walled up, and his favourite sculptor, Pellegrino Tebaldi, a belated
follower of Michaelangelo, whose neo-classic predilections were in utter
disaccord with the spirit of the building, was set to work to re-garnish
its devastated spaces.

[Illustration: WITHIN THE DUOMO.]

There are no paintings of account in the church. The few pictures belong
to the same period as the altars, designed by il Pellegrini, over which
they hang. The original Gothic design did not admit of frescoes on the
walls. The necessary colour is given by the windows. In many of these
the glass is modern, but some very fine fifteenth and sixteenth century
glass still survives. It has not the supreme beauty of very early glass;
the designs are pictorial, but the colour is gorgeously rich and deep,
and in the earlier ones the subjects are treated with due regard for
decorative effect.

A few things of interest may indeed be found in the vast spaces of the
nave and ambulatory. Low down against the north wall is the rude granite
tomb of Archbishop Ariberto, eleventh century, brought hither in 1783
from the suppressed Church of St. Dionysius. The ancient crucifix of
Byzantine style above it, upon the foot of which is a relief of Ariberto
holding a model of St. Calimero, a church restored by him, is said, but
without foundation, to be the crucifix which used to be carried into
battle on the Caroccio. Beneath a window further up stands a
sarcophagus, raised upon columns of Verona marble; in it are the bones
of the two Visconte Archbishops, Otto, Lord of Milan in the thirteenth
century, and his great grand-nephew Giovanni, who ruled See and city in
the first half of the fourteenth, and who elected to be laid with his
great predecessor when he died. The recumbent statue of Giovanni on the
top is probably by a Campionese master. This monument, which had once an
honourable place in the apse, is the only memorial in the church of the
great family which founded it. Higher up is the Gothic tomb of Marco
Caselli, a merchant who died in 1394, and gave his large fortune to the
building of the Cathedral. The tomb was designed by Filippino da Modena,
but the recumbent statue and the figures of Evangelists and Fathers on
the front and sides are by another hand, a Venetian or a Lombard
influenced by the Venetian school.[4] We come next to a refined little
sixteenth century monument to Giovanni Antonio Vimercati, by Agostino
Busti, il Bambaia. Three altars designed by il Pellegrini follow. Over
the last there is a bas-relief of Madonna with SS. Catherine and Paul, a
poor and primitive work by one Jacomolo di Antonio (1495), recently
placed here.

Footnote 4:

  Malaguzzi Valeri, _Milano_, vol. i. p. 73.

In the south transept the beautiful window over the door into the street
is mainly the work, much mutilated and added to, of Michelino da Besozzo
in 1438. Here on the west side is a great monument by Leone Leoni of
Arezzo, a disciple of Michaelangelo, to Gian Giacomo de’ Medici, brother
of Pius IV., a princely pirate who terrorised Lake Como and led his
undisciplined troops in the service now of one, now of the other of the
combatants struggling for North Italy in the sixteenth century, till
Charles V. compounded with him by creating him Marquis of Melegnano. On
the east side is an altar with a relief of the Presentation of the
Virgin, and statues by the school of il Bambaia. A statue close by
representing St. Bartholomew flayed is admirable only for the impudence
of the inscription on it—‘_Non me Praxitiles, sed Marcus finxit
Agrates._’ Marco Agrate was one of the crowd of early sixteenth century
Lombard sculptors who helped to people the Duomo with statues. This one
was originally on the exterior of the church.

The choir in its present form is due to Pellegrini, whose assistants
executed the grandiose work after his designs. It is enclosed by a high
marble screen, which is sculptured on the side towards the ambulatory
with reliefs of the life of the Virgin and decorative figures of late
Renaissance style. Two extremely ornate gilded pulpits stand in front of
the choir, one on each side. The organs are embellished with heavy
gilded decoration and paintings by Proccacini and the late Lombard
school. The choir has very fine decorative panelling, and the triple row
of stalls are of walnut wood very richly carved, those behind showing
scenes from the story of St. Ambrose and effigies of the martyrs and
saints and prelates of Milan. The bronze ciborium over the altar is a
good work of its period; it is in the form of a round temple, and
beneath is the richly-ornamented tabernacle given by the Milanese Pope,
Pius IV. (1559-65), to the Cathedral.

Beneath the choir is the crypt, also built in classic style by il
Pellegrini. The outer chamber was restored in 1817. In the inner
sanctuary lies the body of San Carlo in a silver coffin given by Filippo
IV. of Spain. Vault and coffin are remarkable only for gorgeousness.
Pomp and magnificence outside, an emaciated ascetic within, contrast
significant of the Church of the Catholic Revival. An aperture in front
of the choir above allows a view of the saintly resting-place.

The door into the sacristy on the south side of the ambulatory is
decorated with a rich and interesting Gothic canopy of the earliest
period of the Cathedral. This sculpture was designed and partly executed
by Hans von Fernach in 1393 and finished soon after by an Italian,
Porrino de’ Grassi, who doubtless did the graceful subject reliefs,
while the rude, vivacious little figures, from the Gospel story, in the
decorative border round, are evidently by a hand of different
nationality, that of the German Hans. Within the sacristy there is a
richly-sculptured Gothic arch over the lavabo, enshrining a relief of
Christ and the Samaritan Woman, signed by the sculptor, Giacomo da
Campione.[5] Also a statue of Christ at the Column, by Cristoforo
Solari, a heavy and flaccid work.

Footnote 5:

  See Malaguzzi Valeri, op. cit. vol. i. p. 56.

The famous treasure of the Cathedral is kept in this sacristy. Here are
great seicento figures of St. Ambrogio and S. Carlo in solid silver, and
other silver objects of the same period, precious in material but
artistically of little account. In a small case there are, however, some
veritable treasures. The covers of a Book of the Gospels, presented to
the Cathedral by Ariberto, beautiful examples of the goldsmith’s art in
the Romanesque period, adorned with chiselled reliefs, with enamel, gold
filigree work and precious stones. On one is represented Christ between
the Virgin and St. John, with Ariberto presenting the book to her, and
below, St. Ambrogio between SS. Protasio and Gervasio. The work shows
the Byzantine influence, which was still supreme in this branch of art
in the eleventh century. A pastoral staff of silver gilt, ornamented
with enamel, is of the same period. Two ivory diptychs, one of very
early date, carved with the freedom and grace still surviving in Greek
artists in the fourth and fifth centuries; the other of heavy and
debased Lombard workmanship of the ninth century must be noticed, and
also a little ivory vessel carved with figures of the Virgin and
Evangelists, tenth century Lombard work. Among many precious mediæval
and Renaissance objects there is a golden pax, with a finely carved
Deposition between columns of lapis-lazuli, and a group of angels above,
with the arms of the donor, Pius IV. This is attributed, but
erroneously, to Caradosso.

The magnificent tapestries in the possession of the Cathedral were shown
at the Great Exhibition of 1906, and several of them perished in the
fire which occurred on that occasion.

Beyond the sacristy, in the ambulatory, is a copy of the sacred painting
of the Annunciation, in the SS. Annunziata in Florence. It is said to
have been painted by Bronzino, and given by Francesco I. de’ Medici to
Cardinal Borromeo. The Madonna del Parto further on is apparently a
restoration of an ancient painting, and the object of a very special
devotion. A bare inscription beneath it records that Niccolò Piccinino
is buried with his son Francesco in this spot. The great Condottiere had
prepared a splendid tomb for himself, but the marble was seized at his
death for other purposes, and when Francesco Sforza became Duke, he
preferred that the memory of his rival should go uncelebrated. The
statue of Martin V. close by, a colossal seated figure, was sculptured
by Jacopino da Tradate in 1421. In the long inscription in verse, by a
Milanese gentleman of humanistic tastes, the sculptor is likened to
Praxiteles. Beyond we come to the monument of Cardinal Marino
Caraccioli, Governor of Milan from 1536 to 1538—a late and very
uninspired work by il Bambaia. Close to it is a little Pietà, by one of
the early Cathedral sculptors. The three great windows of the apse were
originally filled with stained glass, by Stefano da Pandino and
Franceschino de’ Zavatarii, early in the fifteenth century, but only in
the upper part of the middle window does any of it survive; the rest is
modern. In the sculptured tracery of the middle window appear the
favourite emblem of Gian Galeazzo Visconte, the Dove in the midst of
rays, and figures, sculptured after the design of Isacco da Imbonate, of
the Virgin and the Angel of the Annunciation, and of the two bishop
saints, Ambrogio and Galdino. The latter was Archbishop of Milan from
1166 to 1176, and a notable foe of heretics and Ghibellines.

Under the window further on is an ancient Crucifix, with head restored,
brought here from the chapel of Filippo Maria’s castle when it was
demolished by the Ambrosian Republic. Tablets under the great windows
record members of the Sforza family buried here. It was in the apse that
the biers of the Dukes of Milan used to be suspended, between the
columns, till San Carlo reformed them away. The body of Gaston de Foix
was given royal place among them, being hung between the two great
pillars on the left hand of the altar. Cardinal Borromeo did not have
the displacing of that, however. He was anticipated by the Swiss
mercenaries under the brutal Cardinal de Sion, who, only a few years
after the hero was buried, tore down the bier and scattered the remains,
to the scandal of all Christendom. A fresco further on in the
ambulatory, of the Crucified, with Saints, a poor work with a certain
charm of simplicity and prettiness, by Isacco da Imbonate, in 1423,
seems to show an intention, quickly abandoned, of clothing the walls
with paintings. Beyond we come to a fifteenth century painting of
Madonna, and St. John the Baptist, standing in a flowery landscape,
showing little merit except decorative charm. High up against the wall
is a statue of Pius IV., by the sixteenth century sculptor, Angelo
Siciliano.

The Gothic ornamentation over the door of the north sacristy takes us
back to early days again. It is by Giacomo da Campione.[6] The canopy
encloses a relief of Christ in Glory, surrounded by angels and saints,
and in the tympanum below, Christ appears between the Virgin and St.
John. These sculptures are more accomplished than those of the south
sacristy, though they show the Lombard lack of idealism; the small
profile busts of men in the costume of the period on the
architrave—perhaps portraits of the artist’s fellow-workmen on the
Cathedral—are excellent, well-modelled, and full of vivacity.

Footnote 6:

  See Malaguzzi Valeri, op. cit., vol. i. p. 56.

In the north transept stands the _Albero_, a colossal seven-branched
candlestick of bronze, in the form of a tree. An inscription on the base
records that it was presented to the Cathedral by one of the Trivulzio
family in 1562, but it is usually described as thirteenth century work.
The style, however, proclaims it not earlier than the late fifteenth,
and it might well be later. The seven branches spring from a bossy stem
supported on winged dragons; the interstices are filled up with a web of
vine tendrils in which figures of delicate workmanship are
wrought—sacred and symbolic characters, and biblical scenes; the story
of Adam and Eve, Noah and the Dove, the Sacrifice of Isaac, David with
the head of Goliath, etc. The Procession and Adoration of the Magi are
cunningly arranged round the stem. Up the sides of the chapel of the
Madonna dell’ Albero there are some bas-reliefs representing the Life of
the Virgin, by Cristoforo Solari, il Bambaia and others of the early
Cinquecentists; these were originally round the door in this transept
which Cardinal Borromeo abolished. The stained glass window over the
altar of St. Catherine in the corner of the transept to the left is by
Stefano da Pandino (1432). The altar has statues of St. Jerome and St.
Augustine, early works of Cristoforo Solari, and some little sculptures
of earlier date, doubtless from some older shrine. The tabernacle on the
right, with a figure of God the Father, is by one of the Campionesi.

On the third altar in the nave on this side is preserved the wooden
crucifix carried by S. Carlo in procession round the city during the
Great Plague of 1576.

A little altar further on, with modern sculptures, is decorated with
beautiful Quattrocento arabesques, fragments of a monument sculptured by
Amadeo in 1480 for Alessio Tarchetta, a general of the Sforza. Other
parts of the monument are preserved in the Castello. Beyond is the tomb
of Gio. Angelo Arcimboldi, Archbishop of Milan from 1550 to 1555. Lower
down we see some twelfth and thirteenth century figures representing the
writers of the New Testament, in Verona marble, probably parts of an
ambone or pulpit, and perhaps some of the figures of saints with which
Archbishop Uberto Crivelli, afterwards Urban III., is recorded to have
decorated the old Sta. Maria Maggiore in 1185.

The Baptistery is on this side of the nave, between two of the pillars.
The font is an ancient basin of red porphyry, said to have once been in
the Baths of Maximian Hercules; it was found in S. Dionysius, with the
remains of that saintly prelate of Milan inside. These were translated
to a place in front of the High Altar. The canopy over the font is an
ornate late Renaissance work designed by il Pellegrini.

Down here in the nave, where the later ornamental details are lost in
the great pillared spaces, it is possible to call back some of the
shades frightened away by the purifying S. Carlo. Wicked they were
indeed, but in a great way which it is not given to modern sinners to
emulate. First of all we see Gian Galeazzo, the founder of the temple—he
who all but mounted to a throne of Italy on the body of his murdered
uncle—passing calm, cultured and impenetrable, between the columns. Then
the bleeding body of his evil son Giovanmaria, carried from the steps of
the palace where he had fallen and flung down here in haste by the
terrified bearers. The cunning and suspicious Filippo next—who but a few
weeks before had beheaded his wife—following Pope Martin in the great
pageant of the consecration of the High Altar in 1418, uneasy at finding
himself under the eyes of his subjects. Francesco Sforza, the splendid
conqueror, pressing his way up the great nave on his war-horse, amid the
thronging multitudes, to give thanks to God that Milan was delivered
into his hands. His weak young grandson, Gian Galeazzo, hand in hand
with his youthful bride, Isabella of Aragon, a white-robed pathetic
pair, passing up to the celebration of their marriage, beneath a
specially constructed portico, simulating a pergola and supported on
fifty-two columns. The usurper Lodovico il Moro, with the ducal beretta
newly set upon his head at the door of the Cathedral, moving with
majestic step towards the High Altar, to seek the benediction of Heaven
upon his unlawful dignities. We see the latter again a few years later,
during that brief return in 1500, bowed with care and apprehension,
giving hasty thanks to God for restoring the city to him, while the
French guns, thundering from the Castle, tell him what a mockery that
restoration is. A moment later his tragic figure has vanished into the
shades and the aisles echo to the triumphant tread of the French
conqueror and his captains, Trivulzio and the rest, and the subservient
Italian princes and ambassadors, coming to give thanks in their turn.
And now the stately figures of foreign kings and emperors succeed one
another in the many gorgeous processions which pass up between the
columns. Thrust between them is the mournful Triumph of the young French
hero, whose dead body, with the sword of Julius II., and the standards
of the Spanish King and of all the great captains whom he had overthrown
in his last victory displayed before it, is carried up in silence and
tears. Anon the place fills with the pitiful multitudes during the
dreadful days of French and Spanish occupation; now they gather round
the frenzied _frate barbazza_, who shrieks to them to rise and slaughter
their persecutors, now marshal themselves in penitential procession,
beating their breasts and wailing _misericordia_. And as the figure of
the reforming Cardinal Archbishop—the ascetic and despotic saint—rises
before us, the great nave clears suddenly of all that clamorous life of
the city which did not fear before to pass in and out on its daily
affairs and to bring its worldly traffickings, its quarrels, troubles,
excitements, sorrows, into the House of God,—and we lose sight for ever
of the mediæval world.

The roof of the Duomo is ascended from the south transept. It is a long
climb, but well worth the pains. You emerge at the top into sunshine and
air, and find yourself on the terrace of a vast garden, all of sparkling
candid stone, where you may wander, easily losing yourself, along paths
and alleys, up and down flights of steps, always between marble groves
of flowers and foliage, with a forest of slender stems springing up
around you, and flowering into human forms high up against the blue—all
the petrified growth of that lake grotto of Gandoglia, or _Candoglia_,
as the punning old writers call it. There is no open space in the heart
of Milan where you can take the air so pleasantly on fine days in winter
and spring as up here. But this garden is suspended in the air, and you
look down upon the thick clustered roofs which cover all the ground
below in an immense roundure, like the low ruddy vegetation of an island
left bare at low tide in the middle of a purple sea. Immediately
beneath, at dizzy depths, are the narrow intersecting lines of the
streets, full of black, crawling humanity. From up here you see the city
as a whole, and are able to realise something of its geographic place.
If the day is clear there will appear, rising up on north and west
beyond the sea of plain, the dim shores of what looks like another
world—a vast half-moon of hovering forms, cloud-like, yet with the
clear-cut contours of earthly substances, rising out of the shadow of
earth to shining whiteness against the sky. The guidebooks give names to
these fairy shapes—Mont Blanc to the west, Monta Rosa nearer and more
conspicuous, the Matterhorn rising close behind this last, and other
famous heights. Unless the weather is exceptionally favourable, however,
one cannot discern with clearness more than the nearer spurs of the
mighty Alpine barrier which defends the pleasant land of Italy from the
cold and gloomy North. But it is enough to make one understand the
significance of Milan in the historic past, as guardian of the chief
gateways of Italy.

[Illustration: PUTTI, GUGLIA DI AMADEO.]

The Cathedral itself is a wonderful vision from the top, with its vistas
of flying buttresses and crocketed pinnacles, and all its immensity of
intricate stone-work. The colour of the marble, and the play of light
and shade upon the fretted surfaces give it a peculiar enchantment.
Looked at closely, however, it all becomes rather frivolous and
wearisome. Nothing could be more monotonous than the uninventive
likeness in difference of the endless ornamentation. No one detail is
the same as another, yet the lines are all alike, for ever and ever
repeated. The actual work is mostly modern. The most conspicuous and
interesting feature is, of course, the great octagonal cupola, the main
part of which was built in the early years of the sixteenth century by
Amadeo. He was prevented, however, by the continual objections and
disputes of the experts whose advice was called in about it, from
finishing the work, and the ornate construction of rampant arches and
pinnacles and central spire which surmounts it belongs to the eighteenth
century. Of the four spiral turrets at the corners, with staircases in
them, three were not built till the last century, but the one on the
north-east was designed by Amadeo himself, who perhaps set his own hand
to some of the excessively flamboyant ornamentation. It is called the
_Guglia di Amadeo_, but the upper part was rebuilt in 1799. The loggetta
connecting it with the body of the structure is encrusted with charming
reliefs, but though the delightful medley of putti, and angels dancing
and playing instruments of music round the medallions of Madonna on one
side, and the Pietà on the other, have much of the gaiety and abandon of
Amadeo’s work, their execution is too weak for him. The attractive
infants, swinging and playing in the openings of the stone-work on
either side of the passage lower down are more like his handiwork, and
the New Testament scenes carved in low relief at the base are probably
by a late follower of the master.[7] At the top of the staircase in this
_Guglia_, now kept locked, in the little passage in the loggetta, there
is a medallion portrait in bas-relief, by an unknown hand, of Amadeo
himself, showing the deep-lined bony profile of an old man, with scanty
locks flowing from under his beretta.

Footnote 7:

  Malaguzzi Valeri, _G. A. Amadeo_, p. 232.

[Illustration: GIANT STATUES ON THE DUOMO.]

Other details of interest are to be seen on and about the roof of the
apse. When in ascending from below you emerge into the open air, take
the passage straight before you, instead of mounting higher or turning
on to the roof of the south aisle. Passing through a covered way you
will soon come out upon a little projection of the roof, close to some
of the monstrous gargoyles, and the _Giganti_ beneath them. These last
are robust and dignified survivals of the fourteenth century, and of the
serious traditions of the Lake Masters, and are curiously at variance
with the later style of ornamentation on the building. Further on, on
the roof of the south sacristy, to which a stairway leads down, stands
the Eve of Cristoforo Solari, a graceful and expressive figure, lumpy,
however, in its contours. On the corresponding roof of the north
sacristy, on the other side of the apse, is the companion statue of
Adam, leaning in melancholy pose upon his spade, a heavy and nerveless
presentment of the father of mankind, yet most favourably distinguished
in taste from the later statues on the Cathedral. The pinnacle at the
north-east angle of this sacristy roof, surmounted by the figure of a
Knight holding a banner, is one of the oldest pieces of work on the
Cathedral. It is fourteenth century pure Gothic, and the careful and
artistic workmanship of all the rich detail of ornament on it is very
impressive in comparison with its surroundings.

From the roof of the Cathedral one has an unobstructed view of the tall
octagonal Campanile of San Gottardo to the south. This beautiful and
characteristic North Italian building of the fourteenth century combines
the beauties of Lombard and Gothic with incomparably harmonious effect,
achieving a wonderful charm of colour and grace by the delicate marble
arcades and slender soaring shafts of marble with which the solidity of
the ruddy brick is lightened. Unfortunately we see the brick now in the
rawness of recent restoration. The tiled steeple is surmounted by a
bronze angel in stiff pose with wings outspread. This Campanile was
built about 1330 by Magister Franciscus di Pecoraris da Cremona for Azzo
Visconte. The church beside it which that gouty prince raised in
honour—among other saints—of S. Gottardo, the protector of sufferers
from gout, and filled with precious ornaments and works of art, replaced
the old Baptistery, San Giovanni alle Fonti. It was completely
modernised in 1770, and the ancient apse—which is perhaps anterior to
the fourteenth century—is the only survival of the old building. San
Gottardo served as the chapel of the great Visconte palace, which stood
on the south of the Cathedral where now sprawl the melancholy courts and
mean buildings of the Palazzo Reale. This palace had been originally the
seat of the Milanese Consuls, and the space around it was the Broletto
Vecchio, where the public buildings stood in the early days of the
Republic. When Matteo Visconte made himself master of Milan, he and his
family, as permanent heads of the Republic, occupied the palace, and
transformed it into a fortress, with towers and moats, for the defence
of their tyranny. His grandson Azzo beautified it with ornaments and
paintings and fountains. These were all destroyed by Galeazzo II., who
rebuilt the palace on a much larger and more magnificent scale, with two
great courts surrounded by porticos, wherein took place the great
marriage feasts, and other celebrations of the splendid Visconte
Princes. There, doubtless, was set the banquet for the young Duke of
Clarence and his bride Violante, when Petrarca sat beside the
bridegroom, among the chief guests, and the boy Gian Galeazzo brought in
the marriage gifts. It was in this palace that Giovanmaria Visconte,
passing through the courts on his way to hear Mass in S. Gottardo, was
stabbed to death by the waiting conspirators. Francesco Sforza and
Lodovico il Moro repaired and embellished the palace, and it was
inhabited by Isabella of Aragon after the death of her husband Gian
Galeazzo Sforza. Restored by il Pellegrini, it was reduced to its
present aspect in 1770.

The Archiepiscopal Palace, which faces the Duomo on the south-east,
represents the dwelling-place of the ecclesiastical princes of Milan for
at least a score of centuries, and probably many more. Standing close
beside the Cathedral church, the Archbishop’s residence was called, up
to the twelfth century, the _Palazzo Milanese_, being in fact during the
earlier Middle Ages, when the archbishops ruled the city, the seat of
government, until the Palace of the Commune, or of the elected Consuls,
which rose in its precincts and under its protection, gradually usurped
its place, as the voice of the public parliament, or Arengo, held in the
Piazza, grew more and more powerful. Under the Visconte archbishops, who
once again united the ecclesiastic and temporal sovereignty in a single
hand, the palace was enlarged and partly incorporated with the palace of
the Consuls, now become, as we have seen, the fortress of the Visconti.
The Arcivescovato was rebuilt in the fifteenth century by Archbishop
Arcimboldi, and remains of that date may be seen in the outer cortile.
The great inner court is the work of il Pellegrini in S. Carlo
Borromeo’s time, and the existing building belongs partly to that period
and partly to the end of the eighteenth century.




                               CHAPTER XI
                     _The Basilica of St. Ambrogio_


                    “Regina delle chiese lombarde.”

In a quiet plebeian quarter, remote from the bustle of the city,
surrounded by a wide piazza and a pleasant grove of lime-trees, stands
the old basilica of St. Ambrogio. It is reached in a few minutes from
the Duomo by the S. Vittore tram. This church, architecturally and
historically, ranks first among all in Milan. The Duomo, foreign in
material and bastard in style, cannot compare in interest with this
grand product of the Lombard soil and the Lombard spirit. The story of
St. Ambrogio reaches back through the long centuries of Milan’s modern
and mediæval life to the time of the saintly Doctor himself. It was in
386 that St. Ambrose founded it beside the already existing basilica
Faustæ. Here he buried, in the place which he had prepared for himself,
the bodies of the martyr saints Protasio and Gervasio, whose
resting-place had been revealed to him just at the crisis of his
struggle with the Empress. _Two men of marvellous stature such as the
first age bore_, so he describes the bodies in a letter to his sister
Marcellina. _We carried them, as the evening was falling, to the
basilica Faustæ.... The following day we removed them to the church
which they call Ambrosianam._ They were laid beneath the altar, _where
Christ is offered up_, and Ambrose commanded that when his own time came
he should be buried in all humility beside them upon their left hand.

The church was dedicated to the martyrs. Nevertheless, it continued to
be called the Basilica Ambrosiana according to the fashion of that day,
when the churches were called after their founders, as for example the
Basilica Faustæ, otherwise S. Vittore in Cielo d’Oro, the Basilica
Porciana, also dedicated to S. Vittore, and the Basilica Paulina, or SS.
Felix and Nabor. To later centuries it has become unalterably Sant
Ambrogio.

Being in a peculiar sense the church of the patron saint and protector
of the Milanese people, the basilica held from the first a very
prominent place in the life of the Ambrosian city. Here the Primates
gathered their suffragans to those synods and provincial councils, in
which in the days of ecclesiastical rule the affairs of North Italy were
decided. The foundation of a monastery of the powerful Benedictine Order
in connection with the church, in 783, added to its importance. The
archbishops of the reviving See of Milan, in the ninth century, restored
it and bestowed upon it the utmost honour and reverence, endowing it
with great riches. Here Otho the Great was crowned King of Italy by
Archbishop Walperto in 961, and from that time, whenever a coronation
took place in Milan, it was performed in St. Ambrogio. Perhaps the
curious privilege which the city enjoyed, of keeping all sovereigns
excluded from its precincts, was the reason why the Cathedral church was
never chosen for the ceremony. In 1186, Frederick Barbarossa was present
here when with immense splendour Henry of Suabia wedded Constance of
Sicily, the Constance who is moon-arrested in Dante’s _Paradise_,
because of her supposed inconstancy to monastic vows, though the old
tale of her being dragged from a convent to marry the Emperor’s son has
been proved a fable.

During the factious age of liberty St. Ambrogio was the church in which
the popular party gathered, to seek the sanction and protection of the
patron saint and to discuss their affairs, being shut out from the Duomo
by the Archbishop and the aristocratic party. Here the short-lived
reconciliation of 1258, called the _Pace di St. Ambrogio_, was completed
and sworn to before the Altar with great solemnity by the
representatives of both factions.

In St. Ambrogio Henry of Luxemburg, the looked-for peacemaker, was
crowned in 1311, with his consort, Margaret of Brabant, in the presence
of all the great nobles of Italy and characters conspicuous in the
history of the time. A strange and somewhat ominous circumstance of this
occasion was that the crown always used for the coronation of the Kings
of Italy—which had become, though only shortly before this time, known
as the Iron Crown—was missing. With the rest of the treasure of the
Cathedral of Monza—where it was kept then, as to-day—it had been pawned
by the Torriani.[8] So a new iron crown, in the form of a laurel wreath,
was forged to encircle the brow of Henry VII. The newly anointed monarch
created two hundred knights in the church, the first upon whom he laid
his sword being Matteo Visconte. From this time the ceremony of
knighting was customarily performed in St. Ambrogio, and later on those
who received the dignity there were called the Knights of St. Ambrogio.

Footnote 8:

  The treasure was recovered later from Avignon by Matteo Visconte.

It was in St. Ambrogio that Gian Galeazzo Visconte, newly created Duke
of Milan, knelt before the altar while the Archbishop of Milan and a
splendid array of prelates chanted hymns and offices in celebration of
his elevation to the ducal dignity, in the presence of princes and
ambassadors from all the States of Italy and Europe. Here, in 1477, the
young Republicans who had sworn to avenge the wrongs of their city upon
the tyrant Galeazzo Maria Sforza, bowed themselves before the image of
the Saint, patron of the Milanese liberties, and besought his blessing
upon their enterprise. In the sixteenth century St. Ambrogio was the
goal of the pathetic penitential processions which used to wind their
way from the Duomo day after day during the visitations of the plague
and the persecutions by the Spaniards.

The Basilica as we see it now shows no trace, it need hardly be said, of
the church which Ambrose himself built. But it still contains his bones.
An interesting proof of his actual burial there beside the two martyrs,
according to his directions, was the discovery, in 1864, beneath the
High Altar, of two cavities of unequal size, the larger in the middle,
the smaller on its left hand, evidently burial-places. There were no
bodies in them, but the remains of the three saints were found in a
sepulchre of porphyry above the cavities. It was known that they had
been removed and laid in one tomb together by Archbishop Angilberto in
the ninth century, probably at the time when the floor of the sanctuary
was raised and the golden altar set up. The church appears to have been
completely rebuilt at this time by Angilberto (824-859) and Ansperto
(868-881), after the instalment of the Benedictines, in order to suit it
to the requirements of monastic ritual. Angilberto had the main part
built, it is supposed, and Ansperto added the atrium—_Atria vicinas
struxit et ante fores_,—as is recorded in the lengthy epitaph of the
said prelate inscribed above his tomb on the south side of the nave.

But the noble building of to-day, with its grand forecourt, or atrium,
is almost certainly not the ninth century church of Angilberto and
Ansperto, but a reconstruction on the same lines in the eleventh or
early twelfth century. The date of St. Ambrogio has been a much-disputed
point, and some authorities still cherish the theory that it is in the
main the ninth century building, and as such, the prototype of all the
many churches of the Romanesque style scattered throughout Europe. But
the advanced system of vaulting, and the compound form of the pillars,
as seen in St. Ambrogio, are said not to appear in other Italian
churches until a good deal later than the ninth century—later, in fact,
than in more northern countries. If the Basilica be of this early date,
it must have remained for two hundred years a solitary example of a
splendid style of architecture which had arrived at completeness without
leaving any traces of preliminary stages. There are many tenth and
eleventh century churches, however, which show what would naturally seem
the early and undeveloped stages of the style, which is in favour of the
belief held by most of the writers on the subject, that St. Ambrogio
follows rather than precedes them in date, and stands at the zenith and
not at the dawn of Romanesque architecture. The style of most of the
decorative sculpture on the building also points to a later origin.[9]

Footnote 9:

  The exponents of the ninth century theory are Dartein, Landriani, and
  Mongeri, among others, and more recently, Luca Beltrami; and of the
  theory of a later origin, Kügler, Viollet-le-Duc, Stielh, Cattaneo,
  Adolfo Venturi, etc.

There is no actual record, it is true, of a restoration in the eleventh
or twelfth century, but the patriotism and fervour of vitality which
animated the Milanese in that epoch, and brought them into conflict with
Barbarossa, may well have induced them to rebuild and beautify this
church, which, being the resting-place of their Patron, was to them as
the sanctuary of their liberties. Italian enthusiasm has always
memorialised itself in brick and stone, and, moreover, in the twelfth
century architecture was the only art in which they could fully express
themselves. Not only in Milan, but throughout Lombardy, the churches of
this period are a grand and enduring testimony to the great era of the
Italian Communes, and in St. Ambrogio, queen if not mother of them
all,[10] surely we have before us the noblest artistic embodiment of the
spirit which produced the Lombard League.

Footnote 10:

  _Madre e regina delle chiese lombarde_—Dartein.

The outward form of the church—the large Romanesque style—is in keeping
with that great patriotic thought and resolve. It is essentially of the
soil. The grand curves of the arches, the massive pillars, the sense of
space and freedom seem the proper expression of the mediæval Lombard
character, in their union of Latin breadth and clearness with the
picturesque ruggedness, and the rich effects of light and shade of
Northern building. Above all, the material—brick and stone, that
fortunate combination which produces such glory and enchantment of
colour—is peculiarly Lombard. The effect of it in St. Ambrogio is most
beautiful and satisfying. Even the newness of much of the brick at the
present time—crude evidence of restoration—cannot destroy the charm.

[Illustration: SIDE AISLE OF ATRIUM, ST. AMBROGIO.]

[Illustration:

  CAPITAL IN ATRIUM OF
  ST. AMBROGIO.
]

The atrium or forecourt is surrounded on three sides by arcades
supported on massive pillars. It is rather later in date than the façade
of the church, which rises up in a wide gable, pierced with lofty
round-headed openings above the shadow of the narthex or portico,
triple-arched, which forms the eastern side of the atrium. On either
hand of the church rises a campanile of characteristic Lombard type. The
lower one is the Monks’ Tower, and dates from the eighth or ninth
century. It is probably the first thing which the Benedictines built on
entering into possession of the church in 783, bells being a necessity
of the monastic ritual. The tall tower on the left, which, with its
ornamental arcading and delicate ribs of brick and stone, shows an
advance of some centuries on the simplicity of the older one, was built
in 1128 by Archbishop Anselmo for the Canons, to vindicate the ancient
rights of these, the original servants and custodians of the basilica,
against the encroaching monks, who are said to have pulled down the
pre-existing belfry of the secular priests. The struggles between these
two bodies of secular and regular clergy, established side by side and
sharing the privilege of serving the church, were very fierce and
continuous through the Middle Ages. The monks are long gone now, and the
Canons remain in peaceful possession of the altars and of the quiet
courts and shrunken cloisters of the old place. Both towers have been
restored in recent times. The atrium and façade have also been restored,
but show more vestiges of the original work. In the fantastic sculptured
imagery which ornaments the capitals of the great columns, in the
curling foliage patterns of the friezes on archivolts and architraves,
in the endless knots and intricate web of the ribbed stems upon the
lintels and jambs and columns of the great middle doorway, in the
grotesque beasts and human creatures which course up pillars, or writhe
round capitals, we see the hand of the twelfth century craftsman still
shaping the stone into the forms of religious symbolism, but expressing
also his own satiric and pessimistic views of life, of nature ever at
war with itself, and at the same time beginning to subordinate spiritual
ideas to a desire for decorative effect. The attempts seen here at
representing human figures are still of the rudest and most primitive,
as for example the figure—perhaps Salome—dancing, while another plays
the lyre, on a capital to the left of the middle door, the Adam and Eve
(?) on either side of the Tree on one of the middle capitals of the
narthex, the huntsman standing triumphant above a crowd of horned
beasts—symbolic of the victory of the human over the animal nature. But
many of the capitals are purely fanciful and decorative; the grotesque
creatures writhe into graceful and symmetric designs, and that sort of
flat-ribbed cord that appears so constantly, and in its endless windings
is emblematic of eternity, is led into graceful curves and develops into
leaves and stems which, growing bolder and freer, become finally
beautiful foliage designs with masks and grotesques that seem to herald
the Renaissance. This more advanced decoration is probably thirteenth
century. Some fragments of the more archaic ornament, especially round
the middle doorway, which has the appearance of being pieced together in
places, seem to be survivals of an earlier existence of the church,
which were embodied in the twelfth century reconstruction—the symbolic
Lion of St. Mark, for example, and the Abbot’s Cross on a column on the
right hand, which belongs perhaps to the period of the rebuilding for
the monks. The name of _Adam Magister_, inscribed round a slender column
on the left of the door, upside down, is no doubt that of the architect
or sculptor of the present or some former phase of the building.

[Illustration:

  CAPITAL IN ATRIUM OF
  ST. AMBROGIO.
]

The walls of the atrium and round the doorways of the church show
everywhere traces of fresco paintings of various periods, from Byzantine
to Giottesque and the fifteenth century Lombard school, carefully
uncovered in recent times, but all hopelessly ruined. The two large
half-obliterated scenes in chiaroscuro on either side, at right angles
to the front wall of the church, have been attributed tentatively to the
little-known painter, Zenale. They represent the story of St. Ambrose
and St. Augustine. That on the right hand, which is the least spoilt,
shows three devotees kneeling before St. Ambrose, who are supposed to be
the three successive dukes, Francesco, Galeazzo Maria, and Gian Galeazzo
Sforza. On the left of the principal door, supported on four columns, is
the sarcophagus of the humanist, Pier Candido Decembrio (died 1477),
secretary and biographer of Duke Filippo Maria, and of his successor,
Francesco Sforza. It is a graceful Renaissance work, perhaps by the
Lombard sculptor, Tommaso da Cazzaniga,[11] and has bas-reliefs on the
front, showing the Virgin, with Decembrio kneeling before her protected
by St. Ambrose, and the journey of Tobias and the Angel, signifying the
soul’s journey into eternity. A very archaic bas-relief representing St.
Ambrose, with the triple-thonged scourge in his hand, is on the wall
beyond the left-hand door. The atrium is a museum of sculpture of many
periods. Here are monuments and shields of mediæval and Renaissance
days—tombstones cast out from this and neighbouring churches—the broken
original of the carven beasts over the right-hand door, and various
unburied fragments of that dead Roman world which underlies Milan.

Footnote 11:

  See Malaguzzi Valeri, _G. A. Amadeo_, p. 295.

The great wooden door of the church, carved all over with small scenes,
and of very ancient origin, has lost its interest by a too complete
restoration. An unrestored fragment which is kept in the _Archivio
Capitolare_ has been pronounced to be of the time of Theodosius.

The interior of the basilica has the same noble effect of largeness,
dignity, and repose as the atrium. In the solemn obscurity and devout
silence one becomes aware of massive arches and deep vaulting, of great
spaces and dim, far-off recesses, of rich colour and gilding, of
grotesque forms and wreathing serpentine stems in the pallid stone of
capitals and pulpit and screen. The careful restoration of half a
century ago has repaired as much as possible the mishandlings which the
church suffered from the zeal of Carlo Borromeo, and again two hundred
years later, though the modern decoration of the cupola cannot be
admired. We now see the Lombard basilica in its twelfth century form,
with a great central nave of four bays, and side aisles with
_matronei_—galleries for the women—above them, an essential feature of a
Romanesque church. The nave is roofed with cross vaults springing from
enormous pilasters, except the last bay before the choir, which opens up
into a lofty cupola, whence a circumscribed light pours down from a
circle of windows high up, illuminating the beautiful canopy of the High
Altar beneath. This cupola, carried up to a height not in accord with
the rest of the church, is a thirteenth century restoration, following a
disastrous fall of the roof of this part in 1196.

[Illustration: CIBORIUM, ST. AMBROGIO.]

The eastern portion of the basilica, which has three apses, is a
survival of the ninth century building. The apses do not exactly
correspond in direction with the later built body of the church, as is
easily seen in looking up from the nave to the central apse. That they
belong to the church built for the monks, and not to an earlier
basilica, as their obvious priority to the rest of the building has led
the supporters of the ninth century theory to suppose, is shown by there
being three apses, and by the prolongation of the space in front of them
for the choir, to accommodate the monks, who needed a place apart from
the people for their special functions. In a very early basilica there
would be but one apse, and it would start from the nave. The sanctuary
is raised a few steps above the level of the nave, and in its midst,
conspicuous and alone as it should be, beneath the noble curves of arch
and cupola rises the four-sided canopy of the High Altar, upon four
antique columns of red porphyry, glowing with deep colour and gilding
against the rich darkness of the great mosaic in the tribune behind. The
decoration of the canopy is of stucco. Moulded upon the flat pediments
above the semicircular arches are gilded figures in relief against a
background of deep blue; on the front, facing into the nave, Christ
enthroned, giving the keys to Peter, and the law to Paul; on the back
St. Ambrogio, protected by an angel behind him, stands between SS.
Gervasio and Protasio, who present to him two kneeling Benedictine
monks, one of whom holds in his hands a model of the canopy, and is
thought to be Abbot Gaudenzio, appointed head of the monastery in 835;
on the left side Madonna, with the Dove of the Holy Spirit on her head,
is standing between two kneeling princesses, who lift their hands in
supplication to her; on the right is St. Ambrogio and two princes, who
also kneel and seem to beseech him. The friezes and bands of
ornamentation are exceedingly rich, and very beautiful in design. At the
corners are eagles, with their wings spread and fish between their
claws. The canopy is an early thirteenth century restoration of a
pre-existing one produced by Byzantine artists, probably in the time of
Archbishop Angilberto, and wrecked by the fall of the cupola in 1196,
little but the columns and the capitals surviving. The new work kept the
Byzantine character of the old—the rigidity of the figures, the
conventionalised draperies, the sacred symbols, though the spirit of a
later age is visible in a certain rude attempt to give life to the
heads.

Beneath the canopy the treasure which it was built to shelter still
stands, the famous golden altar of Archbishop Angilberto. This altar is
the largest and perhaps the most beautiful example known of the
goldsmith’s art in the Carlovingian period. It is kept enclosed in a
massive case, and a fee of five francs must be paid to the sacristan to
see it. On St. Ambrose’s Day only is it uncovered to public view. The
front of the altar is entirely faced with plates of fine gold divided
into panels by borders of exquisite mosaic of enamel, and gold filigree
work of delicate and various design, enriched with thickly-set gems,
rubies, opals, sapphires, topaz and turquoise, cats’-eyes and every sort
of strange-hued stone, some of great size, and edged with pearls. The
panels are filled with figures in relief. In the middle, in a panel of
oval form is Christ, with a jewelled halo, enthroned amid stars formed
of precious stones. Around Him are the four Evangelic Beasts and the
Apostles, three and three together. On either side are scenes from the
Gospel story. The Resurrection, Ascension and Pentecost are sixteenth
century restorations, quite out of keeping with the archaic character of
the rest. The back and sides of the altar are of silver and of
silver-gilt. On each of the sides there is a Greek cross of gold
filigree set with gems and bordered with exquisite enamel, and around
are figures of saints and angels, SS. Ambrose, Simpliciano, Gervasio and
Protasio appearing on the right side, and on the left SS. Martin, Nabor,
Nazario and Magno, the three latter being Milanese martyrs in the time
of Diocletian and Decius. The back is divided into panels like the
front, but in the middle there are four medallions. The two upper ones
contain figures of the angels Michael and Gabriel. The two below are of
great interest, as evidence of the origin and antiquity of the altar. In
one is shown St. Ambrose crowning Angilberto, who has a halo of
rectangular form, which signifies that he was living at the time of the
representation; he offers a model of the altar to the Saint. The names
Sanctus Ambrosius and Dominus Angilbertus are inscribed beside them. In
the companion medallion we see Ambrose again, crowning _Volvinus
magister phaber_ (Master Volvinus the Smith), as the inscription
describes him, the German artificer whom the Archbishop charged to make
this altar, art at that time being far more advanced beyond the Alps
than in Italy. The panels contain scenes from the legend of St. Ambrose;
the Saint as a babe in the cradle attracting a swarm of bees by his
honeyed mouth; journeying on horseback into Liguria, where he was
prefect; flying at full gallop from Milan to avoid being Bishop, and
admonished by a voice from on high to return; being baptized and
ordained Bishop; celebrating Mass, while a cleric touches him on the
back, showing how, as the legend relates, sleep has fallen on him and he
is being transported in a vision to Tours, where in another panel he is
represented laying the dead St. Martin in his tomb; again he appears
preaching, inspired by an angel; treading beside the altar on the gouty
foot of a bystander and healing it; seeing Christ in a dream, who
announces to him his approaching death; offering his body to God as he
dies; lastly, his dead body is being carried to Heaven by angels. These
reliefs are very reminiscent of classic forms and have a surprising
grace and freedom for the period. The representations of St. Ambrose’s
story in particular are full of life and vigour, and show much beauty of
composition and modelling, though they betray the era of their origin in
certain awkwardnesses of proportion and grotesque attitudes. Here and
there cameos of exquisite and evidently antique workmanship are let into
the borders, and gems with Greek words cut in them; but perhaps the
greatest beauty of all is the enamel—just beginning at that time to be
used extensively in decorative art—and the delicate designs in which it
is composed.

This gorgeous jewelled work, flashing out beneath the splendour of the
canopy, seems to gather into a point all the glory of this rich
interior. From the choir, which is raised several steps above the
sanctuary, one can get a complete view of the mosaic decoration of the
apse, a grand and imposing composition, with a colossal figure of Christ
enthroned in the centre, lifting His hand in benediction, and on either
side of Him SS. Gervasio and Protasio, and the Archangels Michael and
Gabriel above. The names of the two martyrs are written beside them,
letter beneath letter. Under the central figure there are three
medallions; S. Satiro, brother of St. Ambrose, in the centre, and S.
Marcellina, their sister, and S. Candida to right and left. The sides of
the composition depict the story related by S. Gregory of Tours about
St. Ambrose and represented on the altar; how he fell into a trance as
he celebrated Mass and was rapt in spirit to Tours, where he performed
the burial rite over the body of S. Martin. This mosaic is of the
twelfth century, and though it follows the Byzantine style in
arrangement and general treatment, it shows a tendency to abandon the
old rigid conventions for the sake of more life and expression in the
attitudes and draperies of the figures, and so sacrifices something of
the decorative effect. The colour is very sombre, lacking the richness
and glow of the best mosaic.

There is a marble episcopal seat of the ninth century in the choir. The
stalls are very beautiful. Some are of the fourteenth century, as is
also the triple seat on the right hand of the altar; the other stalls
date from 1507. The designs carved upon them—trees and foliage, with
small figures of men and animals, a peasant gathering grapes, a
neglectful swineherd munching acorns, while the pig climbs the tree to
reach some for itself, a man and a bear facing each other with comical
hesitation beneath a tree, and other rustic scenes—are very graceful and
delicate, and show a Renaissance spirit of gaiety.

The richly sculptured pulpit carries us back again to the earlier ages
of the church. It is a very late twelfth century restoration of the
pre-existing pulpit, which was ruined by the fall of the roof in 1196.
An inscription on the side facing down the nave records that Guglielmus
de Pomo, Superstes—chief priest or superior of the church—caused this
and many other works to be done. It rests partly upon a Christian
sarcophagus of the fifth or sixth century, and partly upon columns. The
cover of the sarcophagus is crowded with figures in bas-relief, among
which appear the effigies of the unknown couple, apparently of high
rank, buried in it. On the side facing into the middle of the church,
Christ is represented, seated among the Prophets, and on the other side
He appears with the Apostles. Abraham sacrificing Isaac is the subject
sculptured on one end, Elijah ascending in the chariot of fire on the
other. These sculptures of the late Roman age, showing the decadence of
a developed style, contrast strangely with the exuberant twelfth century
decoration upon the other parts of the structure—ornamental borders and
friezes with the characteristic curling stems that enmesh strange
animals in endless pursuit of one another, innocent creatures, stags and
hares chased by savage-fanged beasts, birds and grotesque humans forming
caryatids, an ass playing the lyre, an eagle pecked by another bird,
etc. Art has died and been born again in the interval between the old
and the late work. In the twelfth century sculpture we see the wild rush
of a new life, vigorous, cruel and merry, but at the same time
penetrated by the pessimistic consciousness of youth. The difficulty of
the sculptor in dealing with human figures is shown by the absurdly
childish way in which the little scenes of Adam and Eve’s history, in
the spaces beneath the arches, are represented. On the parapet of the
pulpit at the back a Christian feast is sculptured.

The crypt beneath the choir was originally built in the ninth century,
but is now completely modern. Descending into it you may look into the
hallowed recess, where in an ornate silver shrine of very recent date
lie the bodies of St. Ambrose and of the twin martyrs, Gervasio and
Protasio, still beneath the high altar, where long ago the great bishop
willed to lie.

[Illustration: SCULPTURE ON PULPIT IN ST. AMBROGIO.]

Beside the door leading into the crypt, on the north side, there is a
fresco, by Borgognone, of the Child Jesus among the elders in the
Temple, and being found by His Mother. The sweet seriousness and
devoutness of the painter are charmingly shown in this painting; the
colour, warmer and gayer than he often uses, seems a forecast of his
famous pupil Luini. A painting on the wall opposite of Madonna with
Saints, placed so much in the dark that little can be distinguished in
it except its unmistakable Lombard character, has been attributed to
Zenale, but without sufficient evidence.

A chapel on the south side of the church leads to the small sanctuary
which is all that remains of the Basilica Faustæ, or San Vittore in
Cielo d’Oro, afterwards dedicated to S. Satiro, who was buried there in
379 by his brother St. Ambrose. The present chapel, restored in 1859, is
the easternmost bay of the original church, which was probably rebuilt
in the eighth century. The deep cupola is covered with gold mosaic, with
a figure of San Vittore in the centre, whence the name San Vittore in
Cielo d’Oro. The Evangelic Beasts are represented round the cupola, and
on the walls below are stiff figures of bishops and saints of the
Milanese Church. These mosaics are fifth century, but have been
restored.

A chapel lower down on this side of the church is frescoed with the
legend of St. George, by Lanino, a follower of Gaudenzio Ferrari. Near a
side door further down still is a painting, in very bad condition,
attributed to Ferrari—Christ bearing the Cross, with the Three
Maries—and some late and inferior frescoes of the same school. A
coloured stucco image of St. Ambrose, of the eleventh century, done from
a portrait of him taken from life, as the inscription informs us, is to
be seen on the wall nearer the west end. Beneath it is the stone
sarcophagus of Archbishop Ansperto, and the famous epitaph referring to
the building of the atrium. On the north wall, opposite, a relic of the
pagan past is placed over the door leading into the belfry, a bas-relief
of the Vintage, exquisitely decorative and gay. It is supposed to be a
vestige of a Temple of Bacchus, which, according to tradition, stood
upon the site of this church and was swept away by Ambrose. The last
chapel on this side is the baptistery, and here is a fresco by
Borgognone over the altar—the Risen Christ between two Angels. The long,
slender figure of the Christ, graceful but nerveless, the general
expression of pensiveness and sweetness, the colour no longer grey and
pallid, as in his earlier pictures, but rich and harmonious, are very
characteristic of this artist in his late period.

Two columns standing in the nave are surmounted, one by a serpent of
bronze, the other by the cross. The serpent, if we may believe the
eleventh century chronicler Landolfo, is that very one which Moses set
up in the wilderness, and was brought in the writer’s own day from
Constantinople by Archbishop Arnolfo, who had gone thither to seek the
hand of the Emperor’s daughter for Otho III., and to whom the Greeks,
who owned the sacred treasure, had presented it. Women used to bring
their sick children to the column to be healed by the serpent.

In the Sacristy of the Canons may be seen some beautiful illuminated
books, the most precious of which is the famous Missal of Gian Galeazzo
Visconte, of the late fourteenth century, which commemorates the
coronation of that prince as first Duke of Milan. It is exquisitely
illuminated, in clear brilliant colour, by a Lombard miniaturist,
Annovello da Imbonate. The front page depicts the scene of the
coronation; a beautiful composition in which the Duke appears kneeling
in crimson robe and ermine at the feet of the imperial legate, with his
subjects gathered below. In the ornamental border the emblems of the
Visconti are introduced; the snake, the dog chained beneath a tree, the
dove with the motto, _A bon droit_, etc. There are other pages fully
miniatured with scenes of Gian Galeazzo’s career. Among several Corali
of the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century, there are two with
very fine and delicate miniatures, attributed to Borgognone and
suggestive of that painter in the sentiment and pose of the figures.

The _Teca degli Innocenti_, a silver casket of the late fifteenth
century, containing relics of the Innocents, and very elaborately
decorated with bas-reliefs of the Massacre, and other New Testament
scenes, is kept in the sacristy, and also a silver pax, called Filippo
Maria Visconte’s, with a bas-relief of the Dead Christ, of Lombard
workmanship; a fifteenth century ostensory, of beautiful Gothic form,
and a processional cross, given by S. Carlo to the church, but of
earlier date.

A door on the north side of the church leads into the canonica, and one
steps out from the grand old Lombard basilica into a beautiful portico
of the Renaissance period. Lodovico il Moro intended to raise here a
stately residence for the Canons. He charged Bramante of Urbino with the
work, but the much occupied architect had little time to devote to it,
and it dragged on, so that only this one side of the cloister, and that
unfinished, was built before the Moro’s fall put an end to all his
ambitious schemes. This fragment, at once so noble and so graceful in
its proportions, and showing a fine and restrained taste in the
capitals, is almost certainly of Bramante’s design, which is more than
can be said of most of the work attributed to him in this city. The
delicious _putti_, in every charming pose, and plastic as life itself,
which decorate the labels upon the arches, show the development of
Italian art in the three centuries which divide them from the grotesque
sculptures in the church. How interesting, too, the contrast between the
treatment of arch and pillar, of brick and stone, by the learned and
sophisticated Quattrocentist, and the same forms, the same materials in
the hands of the rude, vigorous, and deeply religious generation which
built the church. The cloister, in its incompleteness, leaning up
against the old basilica, monument of democratic fervour and strength,
is a poignant relic of the aristocratic and exclusive ideas of the
Renaissance, and of the incomparable grace and joyousness of their brief
reign in Milan. The profiles of the two presiding spirits of that
moment, Lodovico and Beatrice, are moulded on either side of the doorway
by a mediocre Lombard sculptor of the Renaissance period.

A quaint chimney, upon the house facing the cloister, is an interesting
example of a type once common in Milan, and still often seen in the
neighbouring towns.

Adjoining the basilica is the old convent, now a military hospital, with
two fine cloisters, designed, it is thought, by Bramante.

Among the lime-trees on the piazza, near the church on the north side,
stands an antique column, a relic of some pagan building, either the
Roman temple, which is supposed to have preceded the basilica, or of a
summer palace of the emperors, which stood beside it. An ingenious
thirteenth century chronicler, one Daniele, in an imaginary description
of the coronation of the mediæval kings in St. Ambrogio, makes this
column play an important part in the ceremony. _The King must swear the
oath outside the church, where a marble column stands.... He must kiss
the said column, because as the column is upright, so must the judgment
of the sovereign be upright._ A more faithful account of the ritual at
the coronations is given by the tenth century chronicler, Landolfo the
Elder.

[Illustration: CHIMNEY, CANONICA OF ST. AMBROGIO.]




                              CHAPTER XII
                  _San Lorenzo. Romanesque Buildings_


                “Gloriose sacris micat ornata Ecclesiis
                Ex quibus alma est Laurenti....”

In the Via Ticinese, just within the twelfth century boundary of the
city, there stands a magnificent row of Corinthian columns, the only
vestige above ground, in its original position, of the imperial Milan,
whose splendours were sung by Ausonius. The Roman building of which they
formed probably the peristyle, has long vanished, but the place where it
must have stood is now occupied by San Lorenzo, the most ancient
existing church in Milan, though much restored and altered, especially
in the sixteenth century. The large impressive interior, octagonal in
form, and surrounded by a wide ambulatory with a gallery above, which
opens into the body of the church through four double storied arcades,
recalls the style of San Vitale at Ravenna. Recent studies favour the
theory that it was built in this form, as a church, in the sixth
century, rather than the old idea that it was originally the great hall
of Maximian’s Baths, and was converted to a Christian temple by St.
Ambrose. However that may be, its form carries us back to a time which
no other building in Milan commemorates, when the Roman Empire still
lived, and the Church had but lately issued from its martyr struggles,
and was still linked in its architecture with the old world.

San Lorenzo has unfortunately preserved none of those splendours
celebrated by historian and poet in the eighth century. Arnolfo the
chronicler weeps over the destruction of its roofs of mosaic and gold
and starry gems, its paintings and sculptured marbles, in the calamitous
fire of 1071. _Oh Temple, which had not your like in the world_, he
cries. Restored after the fire, it was again grievously damaged by fire
in 1124, and again restored. The fall of a great part of the roof in
1573 gave Cardinal Borromeo and his favourite Pellegrini an opportunity
for interference. Pellegrini was succeeded in the work of restoration by
his pupil, Martino Bassi. The result of their labours was the present
lofty cupola, supported on great pilasters between the openings into the
ambulatory, and the heavy architectural decoration of neo-classic style,
which impose upon the old building, bare now of the rich and glowing
colour of its original design, a cold, austere and melancholy character.

Fragments of antique capitals used upside down as bases of columns here
and there, some columns of African marble in the chapel of St. Ippolito
behind the High Altar, and a beautiful marble doorway with decoration of
pagan character in low relief, at the entrance to the chapel of St.
Aquilino, show that the church is partly composed out of the wreckage of
the Roman city. The chapel last named, which opens off the ambulatory on
the south, is of the sixth century, and has kept its ancient form. It is
octagonal like the church, and is roofed with a shallow cupola. The
circle of deep apertures high up, by which it is lighted, form outside
those round-headed niches so familiar in later Lombard buildings. The
Empress Galla Placidia is supposed to have founded this chapel, and to
have intended to be buried there. A Christian sarcophagus, of late Roman
workmanship, stands in a niche on the right hand of the entrance. But
Galla Placidia lies in her gorgeous mausoleum at Ravenna. This sepulchre
is said, however, to enclose the remains of her first husband,
Athanulph, King of the Goths. Some mosaics in lunettes on either side of
the apse date from the early days of the chapel—Christ with the
Apostles, and the Shepherds feeding their Flocks. The sixteenth century
tomb of St. Aquilino occupies the apse, which is decorated with frescoes
of the Luinesque school.

There is little else of interest in the church. In the ambulatory is a
tomb of 1411, and above it a much restored painting of Madonna with SS.
Stephen and Ambrose presenting to her members of the Robbiano family,
and in the chapel of St. Ippolito, a tomb with the effigy of Antonio
Conte, a priest of the church, who died in 1349, and the late fifteenth
century monument of another of the same family, Giovanni Conte, who
restored the chapel.

The façade is of ornate late classic style, and the unfinished building
on either side of the court in front was designed by Ricchini, a
seventeenth century architect. An interesting view of the exterior, from
the Piazza Vetra, on the north-east side, shows the enormous dome rising
with incongruous effect, above the brick mass of the building, between
four low towers of Lombard style, which survive from the eleventh or
twelfth century reconstruction of the church after the great fires.

The archway and towers in the main street just beyond San Lorenzo
represent the old Porta Ticinese, built by the Milanese consuls in 1171,
and restored by Azzo Visconte in the fourteenth century. The structure
was newly restored in 1858. Upon the outer side of the arch there is a
sculpture of Madonna enthroned with the Child, and St. Ambrose
presenting to her a model of the city, with SS. Lorenzo, Eustorgio and
Peter Martyr, standing around. Similar groups, now in the Museo
Archeologico, were placed upon Porta Romana and Porta Orientale by Azzo.
They are the work apparently of the Campionese followers of Giovanni di
Balduccio of Pisa.

[Illustration: THE OLD PORTA TICINESE.]

The Porta Ticinese corresponds to the original gate of the same name in
the old circuit of the Roman walls, which stood nearer into the centre
of the city at a spot now called _Carobbio_, a corruption of Quadrivium,
the Four Ways. The modern gate is some little distance further south.
This is the way out of the city to Pavia, the ancient Ticinum, hence the
name Via Ticinese. Throughout the Middle Ages, from the time when Pavia
was a royal seat, this street was the scene of all the state entries of
conquering kings, or princely visitors. Barbarossa came this way,
passing in majesty over the flattened earthworks and prone gates of the
humiliated city. Three centuries later, the victorious soldier of
fortune, Francesco Sforza, made his state entry by Porta Ticinese,
appearing with his wife, Bianca Maria, and his young son, Galeazzo, upon
a triumphal car beneath a canopy of cloth of gold, followed by the
captains and chosen men of his army. Less than fifty years after, the
destroyer of the brief Sforza domination, Louis XII., passed up in
unparalleled splendour, wearing the ducal cap of Milan, having been
presented by the Constable of the Gate with the keys of Porta Ticinese
on the bridge over the canal immediately outside. He was preceded by all
the clergy in pontifical array, and by a gorgeous procession of pages,
musicians, men-at-arms, and courtiers. Immediately before him rode Gian
Giacomo Trivulzio, the golden staff of a Marshal of France in his hand,
and in the throng of cardinals and ambassadors who followed, the most
conspicuous was that warlike ecclesiastic, known then as S. Pietro in
Vincula, who, as Julius II., a few years later became the scourge of the
French intruders. So is the shame of Milan and of Italy written on the
stones of that street.

Just beyond the gate the street crosses the canal—the _Naviglio_ it is
called—which follows the mediæval circumference of the city, on the line
of the great fosse dug by the Milanese as a defence against Barbarossa.
It is the central mesh as it were of the network of waterways connecting
Milan with Pavia and the other cities of the Lombard Plain. The narrow
streak of water, with picturesque backs of houses descending into it,
and women in bright coloured skirts and gay kerchiefs on their heads,
washing by the edge, is a pleasant interruption to the crowded, rather
squalid street.

[Illustration: HOUSES ON THE NAVIGLIO.]

Further on, beside the modern gate, is the old basilica of St.
Eustorgio, once famous as the resting-place of the Three Kings, and
later as the shrine of St. Peter Martyr. Tradition declares that the
basilica was built by the Milanese bishop, St. Eustorgio, in the fourth
century, on the site of an ancient font used by St. Barnabas himself to
baptise his converts. The primitive church, whatever its date, was
replaced later by a Romanesque building, which exists in the main to
this day, though with many alterations and modifications made by
successive generations of devotees. Recent restorations have cleared
away the disfigurements which it suffered in the baroque period.

The exterior gives a striking record of the phases through which the
church has passed. The façade is in the characteristic style of the
thirteenth century, but dates only from 1865. The south flank, which was
restored at the same time, is of the fourteenth century, when the
Visconti, Torriani and other great families, eager to show their
devotion to the church where the recent martyr Peter of Verona was
buried, built a series of sepulchral chapels on this side. With its
slender pointed windows, and _oculi_ deeply set within a rich framework
of multiplied mouldings, its gables and characteristic ornamentation of
interlaced _archetti_ beneath the eaves, it is a very graceful example
of the Gothic brick building of North Italy. A chapel projecting at the
western end belongs to the fifteenth century, and was built by Pietro
Solari. The apse of the church, with its deep-niched arcade, carries us
back again to the Romanesque period. Beside it rises, in accordant
style, the Campanile, which was begun in 1297, and beyond, at the east
end of the church, is a beautiful chapel, built nearly two centuries
later—in 1462—for Pigello Portinari by a Tuscan architect, probably
Michele Michelozzo. The tall brick Campanile, soaring in its direct
simplicity and strength, each storey marked by a line of graceful
_archetti_ and of bricks set pointwise above them, making a sort of
dogtooth ornamentation, and its angles faced with white stone, contrasts
in an interesting manner with the proud little building below. The
Portinari chapel shows the new development of brick architecture in
obedience to the classic ideas of the Renaissance. The rotund cupola
swelling upon the broad square base, the elaborate yet harmonious
combination of curves and rectangles, the restrained decoration of
moulded pilasters and flat-carved capitals, of rich terra-cotta cornices
and deep-moulded _oculi_, the skilful arrangement of colour in the
distribution of stucco and brick, all reveal new thoughts, new ideals,
new knowledge, a sort of human pride undreamed of by the faithful souls
of the earlier generation, who thought only of glorifying God and
lifting their building as near to Heaven as they could.

[Illustration: EXTERIOR OF PORTINARI CHAPEL, ST. EUSTORGIO.]

The interior of the basilica, though the tribune and part of the side
aisles are said to be late ninth century, is in the main of the twelfth
or early thirteenth century. It has lofty semicircular arches, showing
here and there the slightest inclination to a point; cross-vaulting,
compound pillars, and at the lower end women’s galleries, or rather a
restored semblance of them—all Romanesque features. The capitals are
sculptured in the style of the same period, with strange animals and
grotesques. The large and noble architectural form, combined with the
harmonious colour of the faded red brick and pallid stone, makes a very
beautiful and impressive effect, which is enhanced by the dim light
crossed by misty shafts of sunlight, and lost in deep shadows beyond,
and by the silence, the spaciousness, the sharp note of voiceless prayer
that rises up from a little group of shawled figures bowed before some
altar, or from a solitary figure suppliant at the foot of a pillar. The
very incongruities in the building and in the ornamentation add to the
interest. Here are fragments of old fresco peeling from pillar and
vaulted roof; there newly restored gaudy figures; everywhere the past
and the present joining in one living whole. You feel here the
continuity of religious fervour, of Christian love and faith, through
all the changes of thought and taste during eight centuries.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF ST. EUSTORGIO.]

The institution of a convent of Dominicans for the service of the church
in 1227, and the burial here of their famous prior, Peter of Verona,
murdered by heretics in 1252, drew the attention of the pious to St.
Eustorgio just when art was showing a new vitality. The church still
contains a number of sculptured monuments of Milanese nobles, who were
buried here in the chapels which they built in the centuries immediately
following. These are of great interest to the student of Lombard art.
The first chapel on the right at the bottom of the church was not built
till 1484, and the tomb within it is of the Renaissance period, and is
the work of the Cazzaniga and of Benedetto Briosco. The tomb of a young
fifteenth century knight, Pietro Torelli, who died in battle at the age
of eighteen, is in the next chapel. His effigy lies on the top, and the
Madonna and Child, with various saints, are sculptured on the front,
perhaps by Jacopo da Tradate.[12] The canopy is later and inferior work.
A chapel farther up has

Footnote 12:

  Mongeri, _L’Arte in Milano_.

ruined fourteenth century frescoes in the vaulting, representing
apparently the four Doctors of the Church in grand canopied seats. The
next contains the rich Gothic tomb of Stefano Visconte, son of the great
Matteo and father of Bernabò and Galeazzo. The monument dates from the
middle of the fourteenth century. Upon the front is a bas-relief of
Madonna and Child, with the kneeling figures of Stefano and his wife,
Valentina Doria, the one being presented by his name-saint, St. Stephen,
behind whom stand Peter Martyr and Peter the Apostle, the other by St.
John Baptist, with St. John the Evangelist and St. Paul behind. Beneath
the cusped arch of the canopy is Madonna again, a stately maternal type,
smiling as she holds a fruit above the Child, as if playing with His
eagerness to seize it—a motive more graceful and natural than is usual
in the rather stiff and heavy compositions of the Lombard masters of
that period. The dignity and naturalism of this sculpture altogether
shows the hand of one of the most successful followers of the Pisan
Giovanni di Balduccio.

The monument in the next chapel is to Gaspare Visconte, of a collateral
branch of the reigning House, who had been sent on embassies to England
and was a Knight of the Garter. It resembles Stefano’s in design, but
the bas-reliefs are later and inferior work. Opposite is the recumbent
statue, torn from its right place and set up against the wall, of
Gaspare’s wife, Agnese Besozzi (died 1417), with her sons at her feet.
Above this stone is a sarcophagus, with a bas-relief of the Coronation
of the Virgin, with angels and saints and devotees, also by some scholar
of Giovanni di Balduccio. The Snake emblazoned on it shows that it
commemorates some of the Visconte family, probably one Uberto and his
son Giovanni, with their respective wives. The last chapel on this side
is said to have been dedicated by Martino della Torre to his name-saint
of Tours. No trace of the great Guelf House remains in it. It seems to
have been usurped by their conquerors, the Visconti, whose Snake appears
in the fifteenth century frescoes—much damaged by the whitewash which
once covered them—upon the vaulted roof. In these, which represent the
Evangelic Beasts and various saints, there appears on the left a woman’s
figure carrying a shield with the letters ‘B. M.’ and a crown upon it,
in homage, it would seem, to the Duchess Bianca Maria Visconte Sforza.

The arch of the east wall in the arm of the church is covered with a
large faded fresco of the Adoration of the Magi, attributed by some to
Bramantino. In the Chapel of the Magi below a massive and quite
unadorned sarcophagus purports to be the tomb where the bodies of the
Three Kings reposed. They had been brought hither, according to
tradition, by home-returning crusaders, and here they lay, worshipped
and plied with rich offerings by faithful pilgrims from all parts of
Christendom, until 1164, when they were carried off by Barbarossa’s
chancellor, the Archbishop of Cologne, as some of the most precious
spoils of the conquered city. The old story of the Wise Men is
sculptured over the altar by Gio. di Balduccio, or more probably by one
of his scholars. It is a crowded composition, in which the vivacity and
movement of the short thick figures show the growing tendency towards
realism still restrained by classic traditions.

On the wall opposite this chapel is the fourteenth century tomb of
Protaso Caimi, a noble Milanese knight; it is decorated with the
familiar composition of the occupant kneeling before Madonna, with
saints in attendance, among whom may be noticed Sta. Martina, holding
her lion across her by its fore and hind legs. A coloured and gilded
statue of St. Eugenius, of rigid archaic style, but probably not earlier
than the end of the thirteenth century, stands also in this part of the
church.

The richly sculptured altarpiece of the High Altar still shows the Pisan
influence. But it belongs to the end of the fourteenth century, when it
was presented to the church by Gian Galeazzo Visconte, and shows in the
attitudes and draperies and long slender forms a new delicacy of
workmanship and a new search for sentiment and grace, notably in the
Madonna with head turned and throat stretched, standing beside the
cross, and the grieving St. John on the other side. The upper part, with
the stucco statues, is a seventeenth century restoration.

Passing behind the High Altar, through the crypt or under choir, which
was built in 1537 and is supported on columns once forming part of the
cloister of the adjoining convent, and through a vestibule with remains
of old frescoes on the walls, we come to the Capella di S. Pietro
Martire—the Portinari Chapel—the exterior of which has been already
described. In this rich and complex structure, rectangular below and
rising by the grand curves of wide-spanned arches to a lofty
sixteen-sided cupola, in the delicate arcade and parapet running round
it high up, in the beautiful terra-cotta decoration of frieze and
cornices, the sculptured arabesques of the pilasters, the frescoes in
spandril and arch, we recognise the new spirit of the Renaissance. The
architecture is of Tuscan inspiration, though certain details, such as
the point still visible in the rather ornate windows, are indicative of
Lombard taste. The chapel, which in form recalls the Pazzi Chapel in
Florence—though it lacks the perfect purity and restraint of that
wonderful building—is always supposed, though without any positive
evidence, to be by Brunelleschi’s pupil, Michelozzo. The general design
may be regarded as certainly Michelozzo’s, and much also of the
ornamentation, especially the charming stucco frieze of dancing angels,
light graceful forms instinct with winged motion and linked by a long
chain from which depend great bells of fruit and foliage. The same great
bells or tassels with fat _putti_ swinging on them, compose the
delightful arabesques on the pilasters. To Vincenzo Foppa, chief of the
early Milanese school of painters, was entrusted the fresco decoration
of the chapel. The four Fathers of the Church, in tondi in the
spandrils, figures of a robust and quiet realism, full of a
naturally-expressed dignity and fresh and decorative in colour, are some
of his finest work. The other frescoes, four large scenes representing
scenes from the life of Peter Martyr—the Saint preaching at Florence;
confounding a false miracle-worker at the altar; tending a youth who has
fallen from the top of a building and whom he has miraculously saved
from death; and being stabbed to death by heretics—are Foppa’s design
and in part his work, but they have been much restored, and in their
present state are hardly worthy of him.

The monument of Peter Martyr occupies the middle of the chapel, which
was built to enshrine his head only, and not this huge Trecento tomb
containing the rest of his body, which was moved here in the seventeenth
century from its place in the church and is a superfluous and cumbersome
feature, quite out of keeping with the finished little Renaissance
building. In itself the tomb is a very fine and important work, the
masterpiece of Giovanni di Balduccio—though in parts the help of his
scholars is visible—the model in thought and style for the monumental
sculptors of the Trecento in Milan. The name of the sculptor and the
date, 1239, are inscribed upon it. The sarcophagus is decorated with
bas-reliefs narrative of the Saint’s career, crowded and vivacious
compositions, in all of which except that of the healing of the dumb boy
an inferior hand has been traced.[13] Figures of the Virtues, stately
and classic in type though characteristically thick and short, stand
against the pilasters, each with feet planted on some symbolic creature.
The different orders of angels are represented by figures on the top of
the sarcophagus, and the pyramidal cover is decorated with more
bas-reliefs—a king and queen kneeling, a bishop, friars and devotees,
the Saint crowned by angels and blessing the people of Milan. The
monument is completed by a beautiful Gothic canopy with Madonna
enthroned between St. Dominic and St. Peter Martyr.

Footnote 13:

  Ventura, _Storia dell’ Arte_, vol. 4, p. 562.

                  *       *       *       *       *

S. Vincenzo in Prato, to the west of San Lorenzo, is a beautiful example
of early Romanesque. Built by Abbot Gisilberto in 833, it was restored
after 1000, and after undergoing the usual transformations of the
baroque period it was reduced quite recently to its old Lombard form of
three aisles ending in three apses, the principal apse containing the
sanctuary being raised above a deep crypt. The brick exterior, with the
row of deep niches round the apse and the ornamental _archetti_ beneath
the roof, is very picturesque and characteristic.

Another interesting building of the end of the tenth century is the
abandoned fragment of the old Church of S. Celso, which gives its name
to the great adjacent temple of Sta. Maria di S. Celso. The principal
part of the old basilica was pulled down in 1818 to give light and air
to its overgrown neighbour, and there is little more than the apse now
left, and some interesting capitals of Romanesque style inside and
outside the building. The fine old doorway has fortunately escaped
destruction, and has been embodied in a new façade, built in 1851. Upon
the architrave is a rude bas-relief depicting the story of San Celso and
his companion, San Nazaro, who were martyred in the Field of the Three
Mulberry Trees, the very spot where the church stands. The decaying
wooden doors and the Madonna and saints at the top are of the fifteenth
century.

S. Calimero, to the north-east, is also Romanesque. S. Nazaro, close to
the last, one of the oldest foundations, standing in the days of St.
Ambrose, rebuilt in later centuries and again completely transformed by
Cardinal Borromeo, has preserved some Romanesque features in its
exterior. Within there are some old stained-glass windows of German
workmanship. A very precious silver coffer, with beautiful reliefs of
late Roman workmanship, is also kept here. Attached to the church is a
sepulchral chapel, built for Gian Giacomo Trivulzio by Francesco da
Briosco in 1518. The tombs of the great Marshal and of members of his
family, with their recumbent figures carved upon them by sixteenth
century sculptors, may be seen in it.

S. Giovanni alla Conca, also a very ancient church and much favoured by
Bernabò Visconti, has a fine thirteenth century façade, restored.

A very ancient church, said to have been the first built in Milan, on
the site of a temple to the Sun, is the little S. Babila, just opposite
the Column with the Lion, which marks the place of the old Porta
Orientale at the beginning of Corso Venezia. As seen now S. Babila is a
complete restoration, very scientifically accomplished in the last few
years, and presents within and without a very perfect model of a Lombard
church of the early centuries after the 1000.

Most of these early Milanese buildings have indeed to be accepted on the
faith of the modern restorer, but for whom these interesting churches
would still be vested in the hideous baroque disfigurements of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. S. Sepolcro, close to the
Biblioteca Ambrosiana, is one of these. The towers, the crypt—studied
with much interest by Leonardo da Vinci—and the exterior of the apse
alone remained of the eleventh or twelfth century church, and these have
been lately restored and a new façade built in appropriate style to
replace the Borromean substitute for the original. The interior is quite
spoilt. In the sacristy there is a Nativity by Gianpietrino, a
characteristic work, with some infants of attractively soft contours,
but curiously brown flesh colour in the foreground. Sta. Maria a
Beltrade, off Via Torino on the west side, is of very ancient origin,
but has nothing of interest left except a twelfth century bas-relief of
rudest and most childish style upon the wall outside, representing the
old Candlemas procession in which an image of Madonna was carried from
this church to the Cathedral, a Christian substitute for the Pagan
ceremony in honour of Cybele.

Another ancient Milanese sanctuary, the Chapel of S. Satiro, built in
879, was restored in the Renaissance period, and incorporated with the
Church of Sta. Maria presso S. Satiro.[14]

Footnote 14:

  See Chapter XIII.

S. Simpliciano, in the north of the city, has preserved three beautiful
doorways of the Romanesque period, enriched with sculptured marble
columns and roll mouldings. The eleventh century interior was enlarged
in the late fifteenth century, and transformed in later restorations.
Its chief interest now is the great fresco in the apse—the Coronation of
the Virgin—an imposing composition by Borgognone in his advanced years,
rich and decorative in colour, and remarkable for Quattrocento
simplicity of treatment and feeling at a time when the great
Cinquecentists had already revolutionised artistic ideals.

To the east of S. Simpliciano, close to the Palazzo di Brera, stands S.
Marco, which in the exterior of the transepts alone shows traces of its
original thirteenth century form. The beautiful pointed door, with the
statues in Gothic niches above, was built more than a century later. The
rest of the façade is modern, and the whole exterior wears a vesture of
new red brick. The campanile, with its pointed steeple and frieze of
interlaced _archetti_, is early fourteenth century and very
characteristic of the brick building of that period. The interior is
baroque, but in the north transept there are some fine sepulchral
monuments of Milanese nobles. They are all of the school of Giovanni di
Balduccio, and the bas-reliefs upon them resemble in arrangement and
style the tombs already seen in St. Eustorgio. One is to Salvarino
Aliprandi, of an ancient patrician family in the city, who died 1344.
Another commemorates Lanfranco Settala, General of the Augustinian Order
and founder of the church, who died in 1264. His genial effigy is carved
on the tomb, seated in his preceptor’s chair, with his devout and
diminutive pupils around him. Here is also the tomb of Martino
Aliprandi, a man distinguished for his learning and eloquence, sent as
envoy from Azzo Visconte to Pope John XXII. in 1332, and yet another,
that of Giacomo Bossi, a knight of the Empire, who died in 1355. The
monument of the Birago family, which is placed above the last, though
sculptured as late as 1455 by Cristoforo dei Luvoni, shows little
artistic advance on the Trecento works.

Of secular buildings of the Romanesque and early Gothic period hardly
anything is now left in Milan. The Palazzo della Ragione, however, still
stands, though disfigured in later days, on the spot which was once the
Broletto Nuovo, the centre and citadel of civic life in the Republican
era, a space enclosed in defensive walls and pierced by six gates,
corresponding in direction to the principal gates of the city. The walls
were built and the seat of the Podestà was transferred thither early in
the thirteenth century from the Broletto Vecchio beside the Cathedral, a
move significant of the complete liberation of the Commune from the old
domination of the Archbishop. The word Broletto appears to be derived
from _brolo_, signifying in Milanese a garden, the old Broletto having
been once the garden of the Archbishop; but the name followed the civic
offices with which it had become inseparably associated—hence Broletto
Nuovo. The move was in fact a return of the chief authority in the city
to its old abode, since the Broletto Nuovo was apparently the citadel in
Roman times, and the seat later on of the military governors, called
_Dukes_, under the Lombard rulers. The name of Curia Ducis, the Court of
the Duke, still survives in the name Cordusio, by which the big modern
piazza close by is called.

The Palazzo della Ragione was built in 1228, with a vast open portico
below and a great hall above, which was reached, not by a staircase in
the building, but over the archway still existing at the north end. It
was altered in later times, and an incongruous upper storey was added in
the eighteenth century. It is now being restored. The palace stood till
1866 in the centre of a piazza—the original Broletto in fact—which was
enclosed on the north side by the great Palazzo dei Giurisconsulti. The
modern Via Mercanti now runs between it and the last-named palace, but
on the other side it faces into the little Piazza dei Mercanti, which
represents all that remains of the Broletto, and is still surrounded by
old palaces. It is the one bit of mediæval Milan left, apart from single
buildings. On this side of the Palazzo della Ragione there is a little
equestrian statue of the Podestà Oldrado da Tresseno, with his name and
the date, 1233, beneath, and some Leonine verses in which he is lauded
in an elegant rhyme for building the upper storey of the palace and for
sedulously performing his duty of burning heretics.

              _Qui solum struxit Catharos ut debuit uxit._

[Illustration: STATUE OF OLDRADO DA TRESSENO]

The statue is by Benedetto Antelami,[15] chief of the so-called Comacine
masters—predecessors of the Campionesi—and best known by his sculptures
on the Cathedral and Baptistery at Parma. It is the work of his old age.
It shows a feeling for nature and a power of expression immensely in
advance of the twelfth century sculptors, and marks the gradual
emancipation of thought from the strange terror and the sense of human
littleness in the midst of natural and supernatural forces, which
oppressed the Middle Ages. Here is a work of art in honour of one who is
neither God nor saint—a new conception of man’s importance in the scheme
of the Universe.

Footnote 15:

  Venturi, _Storia dell’ Arte_, vol. 3, p. 340.

On the south side of the piazza is the Loggia degli Osii, built, as a
scarcely legible inscription in the wall records, in 1316, by Matteo
Visconte, who had acquired the houses of the Osii, a Milanese family,
for the purpose. Built in and partly concealed in later times, the old
features of this palace have been quite recently disclosed by careful
restoration. The beautiful pointed arcade of the loggia rests upon a
parapet decorated with the shields of the Visconti and of the different
divisions of the city, and in the middle projects the _ringhiera_ or
balcony, from which official harangues were made and decrees proclaimed.
The statues of the Virgin and various saints in the deeply-sunk niches
of the storey above are of the school of Giovanni di Balduccio.

The palace on the right hand of the loggia, of heavy ornate style,
replaced in the seventeenth century a much earlier building. The west
side of the piazza is filled by a little palace, originally built by
Azzo Visconte early in the fourteenth century for the bankers and
money-changers. It is decorated with charming terra-cotta ornamentation,
and has been partly restored, but it is much spoilt by modern occupation
and use for business purposes.

[Illustration: PALAZZO DEI BANCHIERI]

On this spot of the Broletto Nuovo all the busy excited life of mediæval
Milan once swayed and surged. This was the point upon which all the
different parts of the city converged, and hither at the call of danger
marched the militia of each division, called by the name of its gate,
Porta Romana, Porta Ticinese, etc., to go forth again, each preceded by
its gonfalon, to the defence of the respective gates and quarters. Or if
the decree of the Republic were for an offensive expedition, the
Caroccio would be drawn forth from its place in the Duomo and brought
here, and the combined host, gathering round it, would pass out in order
of battle. In the upper chamber of the Palazzo della Ragione public
business was transacted, and the portico below was the assembly place
for the citizens for the discussion of public affairs and for amusement
and sport, all that common social life, shared together by noble and
plebeian, of republican Italy in the Middle Ages. Here were brought the
captured enemies of the Republic—that is, of the party in power. In some
dark and secure corner of the palace there were cages inhabited by
living prisoners. The chroniclers relate how Napo della Torre, to
revenge his brother Paganino’s death at the hands of Milanese exiles in
Vercelli, had thirteen noble prisoners carried to the Broletto and their
heads smitten off one by one, till his own young son fell at his feet
and vowed that he himself would not live if the life of the thirteenth—a
certain physician who had lately cured the boy of a mortal sickness—were
not spared. But the statue of Oldrado, burner of heretics, has not
looked down on grim scenes only. Here many great feasts took place, such
as that one which Francesco della Torre made in 1268 to celebrate the
passage through Milan of Margaret of Burgundy, the bride of Charles of
Anjou, when two oxen stuffed with pigs and sheep were roasted in the
Broletto, and more than three thousand persons were fed; tournaments
also were often held here in honour of victories and joyful events. We
read of tumults too, and of the Milanese women on one occasion, when a
rumour of new taxes had gone forth, besieging the palace with knives in
their hands and seizing and selling all the salt, which was then as
always a Government monopoly and was stored in an adjacent building.

Another monument of Milan’s republican days, and of her noble struggles
for liberty in the twelfth century, is the old Porta Nuova, often called
the Portone,—the massive arches at the end of the Via Manzoni. This is
one of the gates built in defiance of Barbarossa in 1171. It was
originally decorated with rude sculptures representing the return of the
Milanese, after the destruction of the city in 1162, and with a figure
of Barbarossa seated cross-legged on a devil; these are now in the
Castello. The bas-relief with two Roman heads, still to be seen on the
gate, is said to be a relic of the older gate corresponding to this one
in the Roman walls. The old towers have been pulled down.




                              CHAPTER XIII
                   _Gothic and Renaissance Buildings_


 “O tempo consumatore delle cose e o invidiosa antichità.”—LEONARDO DA
    VINCI.

A campanile here and there about the city, as for example those of S.
Gottardo and S. Marco, already described, the richly decorated belfry of
St. Antonio—near the Ospedale Maggiore—and but little else, remains in
Milan of the graceful Gothic brick building of the period, early
fourteenth century, when Azzo Visconte beautified the city with many new
edifices. The Duomo stands as the great monument of Gian Galeazzo
Visconte’s time, half a century or so later.

[Illustration: DOORWAY OF PALAZZO BORROMEO]

From the beginning of the fifteenth century dates the Palazzo Borromeo,
a rare example, still surviving, of the domestic building of the Gothic
period. The fine pointed doorway is enriched with sculptured mouldings
of beautiful design, into which at the top is introduced the heraldic
device of the House, the Camel couched in a basket, emblematic of the
patience and the far journeyings of the _Bonromei_, the Good Pilgrims.
The cortile, which is exceedingly picturesque, has porticoes with
pointed arches of wide span, resting on low octagonal pillars with
simple capitals of stiff foliage. On one side, where there is no
portico, the windows are richly ornamented with terra-cotta mouldings,
and are of a somewhat later date. They have been recently restored, and
the fresco decoration in the wall appears too freshly repainted. The
Bit, also a device of the Borromei, is moulded beneath the windows, and
the motto Humilitas, surmounted by a crown—a suggestive juxtaposition—is
repeated everywhere in the painted pattern. Fragments of early fifteenth
century frescoes have been uncovered on other parts of the walls in the
cortile. In one corner we see a company of sweetfaced, pensive ladies,
with the shaven foreheads and turban-like head-dresses and coiffures of
the period, gathered on a ship, which a reverend Signor, in crimson
cloak and cap, seems to await at a landing-place, a page without
beginning or end of one of those entrancing stories of Ursula and her
maidens, or some other saint, or of errant knights and beautiful
princesses which, figured thus upon the walls, fed the romantic spirit
of mediæval households. More complete and of great charm are some
frescoes in a chamber on the ground floor of the palace, which visitors
are allowed to see. They depict the pleasant country life of the
Milanese nobles in the fifteenth century—gaily attired ladies and
gentlemen, with high head-dresses and broad hats, seated round a table
under a tree in a wide landscape, playing the game of cards called
_tarocco_, others dancing, a lady with an astonishingly tall form and
tiny head performing a _pas seul_. These paintings suggest to some
extent Pisanello’s style, and are doubtless by one of the many
painters—Michelino da Besozzo, the Zavatarii, and others, who were
covering the walls of the Viscontean palaces in Milan and elsewhere with
scenes of the same sort, all now long vanished.

The Borromeo Art Collection will be spoken of in a later chapter.

Buildings of the middle and second half of the fifteenth century, the
period of the Sforza, those great patrons of architecture and all the
arts, are much more numerous. Sta. Maria del Carmine, a little to the
south-west of the Brera, was built under the direction of Guiniforte
Solari about 1446, and is the first of the transitional period from
Gothic to Renaissance. It has a modern façade, and the nave is the only
original part, the choir having been rebuilt late in the sixteenth
century. In a chapel on the north side there is a Madonna by Luini, much
spoilt.

[Illustration: CORTILE OF PALAZZO BORROMEO]

Sta. Maria Incoronata, further north, near Porta Garibaldi, consists of
two churches in one, that on the right built by the Augustinian monks,
with the help of Francesco Sforza, in 1451, the other by the Duchess
Bianca Maria ten years later. The twin building is an interesting
memorial of the closely united ducal pair. It has been much modernised.
The exterior of the north side and of the apse, and the tower, with its
rich terra-cotta decoration, make a very picturesque mass of brick
building. Inside the church is the fifteenth century tomb of Gabriele da
Cotignola, brother of Francesco Sforza and Archbishop of Milan, with his
recumbent effigy set up against the wall. Also monuments to some of the
Bossi family, with finely carved profile heads, perhaps by one of the
Busti; a monument to Giovanni Tolentino, attributed to Fusina, and one
or two other sculptured memorials, also of Renaissance style.

The interesting Church of S. Pietro in Gessate, in the east, has kept
more of its original form. It was built about 1460, probably by
Guiniforte Solari, and enlarged later. The nave, of a pure and simple
Gothic, is flanked with chapels of the same style, built by noble
Milanese families. Some of these have escaped seventeenth and eighteenth
century disfigurement. The second chapel on the right has mediocre and
much repainted frescoes of the Marriage and Death of the Virgin. The
decoration of the roof with figures of saints in simulated niches, and
angels in medallions resembling round windows, is a very favourite
arrangement with the Milanese painters. The frescoes in the chapel of
St. Anthony—the next going upwards—are attributed to Montorfano. In the
large altarpiece Mariotto Obiano da Perugia, and Antonia de Michelotti,
his wife, founders of the chapel, are portrayed kneeling to the
enthroned Virgin, to whom they are being recommended by St. Benedict and
St. Anthony respectively. Above is the Dead Christ with St. Sebastian
and St. Roch. The architectural details of this picture are very rich,
and the marvellously patterned dress of the lady is painted with the
utmost minuteness and finish. The dark ashen hue of the Virgin’s face,
the high lights on the salient features, the ugly little angel playing
on the lute, and the general impression of laborious care are all very
characteristic of the uninspired but painstaking minor painters of the
earlier Milanese school.

The great frescoes of the Capella Grifi in the south transept are more
important, and are interesting as being in part by Bernardo Zenale, of
whom there is only one other undisputed work known. As in the altarpiece
at Treviglio, so here Zenale was associated with Buttinone. The frescoes
are, however, so much ruined that it is difficult to judge them or to
distinguish the different hands. On the left wall are scenes from the
life of St. Ambrose, with groups of fifteenth century courtiers in the
foreground. The subjects on the right are almost obliterated, but we
seem to distinguish St. Ambrose again, seated in judgment. The curious
figure above, of a man hanging, is inexplicable, unless as a symbol of
justice visited on malefactors. The general colour of the painting is
warm and decorative, and more spontaneous than Buttinone’s laboured
easel pictures would make us expect. The types of some of the courtiers
in the left-hand fresco, and the women with long plaited hair on the
right are so much fairer and more refined than anything one knows of
Buttinone’s that one is led to attribute that part to Zenale; but the
rather coarse angels of the vaulted roof, very recently uncovered, seem
to be very Buttinone. The white-robed figure of St. Ambrose below them,
on a white horse against a blue sky, prancing forth against the Arians,
scourge in hand, is extremely decorative. On the floor of the chapel,
bereft of the sarcophagus on which it once rested, lies the recumbent
figure of Ambrogio Grifi, buried here in 1495.

In the Via Filodrammatici, close to La Scala, is the beautiful old
doorway of the Palazzo Vimercati, which belongs to the early Sforzesque
period. The portrait of Duke Francesco, sculptured in profile, decorates
the front of the archivolt, with those of Julius Cæsar and Alexander in
flattering conjunction on either side. The rich band of foliage round
the arch culminates in the pine-cone, one of the emblems of the Sforza.
There is much resemblance between this door and that of the Borromeo
Palace.

One of the greatest achievements of Francesco Sforza and Bianca Maria,
and a proof of an advanced sentiment of humanity, was the erection of
the vast Ospedale Maggiore for the reception and care of the sick, still
to this day the chief hospital of Milan.[16] It was begun in 1456 by the
Florentine architect, Antonio Averulino, or Filarete, who made the plans
and carried on the work till 1465, when he was supplanted by his Lombard
rival, Guiniforte Solari. The southern portion, distinguished by its
elegance and comparative purity of style from the rest, is the only part
of the immense façade which is the original fifteenth century work. The
diversity of architects is plainly revealed in this portion. The lower
part, with its stately round-headed arcade and restrained ornamentation,
is by the pupil of Brunelleschi; while in the windows of the upper
storey, not interspaced in correspondence with the arcade below, the
Lombard affection for the pointed arch and for luxuriant decoration has
prevailed over the original design of the Florentine. The building is
one of the richest examples of the brick and terra-cotta architecture of
North Italy, and this meeting of Gothic and Renaissance ideals in it
adds to its interest. The rest of the façade was built in

Footnote 16:

  The famous Lazaretto, outside the old Porta Orientale, a beautiful
  fifteenth century building, where the plague-stricken thousands were
  huddled in the awful visitations of 1576 and 1630, as described in the
  _Promessi Sposi_, has been pulled down.

the seventeenth century, in imitation of the earlier part, but the
coarseness and crowded excess of the terra-cotta decoration betrays its
period. In the great marble portal, the architect, Ricchini, has frankly
followed the style of his own times. Within there is a vast cortile of
the same date. On the south side part of the fifteenth century building
is incorporated in it. Two much spoilt paintings of 1472, by Francesco
Vico, representing Francesco and Bianca Maria Sforza and their
benefactions to the hospital, are in one of the wards. Passages on the
right lead out of the principal cortile into smaller courts, fragmentary
and encumbered with erections for hospital use, but evidently remains of
the original building. The elegance and lightness of the porticoes here,
the graceful terra-cotta ornamentation of the archivolts, the richness
of the moulded brick cornices, the charming colour of the brick and
stone used together, show how beautiful the hospital must once have
been. These old cortiles have been attributed to Bramante, but
apparently with no more justification than most of the other buildings
of this style in Milan, labelled indiscriminately in uncritical times as
Bramantesque.

The Via dell’ Ospedale opens into the piazza beside S. Stefano, where
Galeazzo Maria Sforza, was stabbed to death by Girolamo Olgiati and his
companions on St. Stephen’s Day, 1476. The church, of very ancient
foundation, has been completely modernised, and the atrium where the
deed was accomplished has disappeared altogether. A primitive Madonna
and Saints is frescoed over an altar on the south side, and beside the
west entrance is an archaic bas-relief representing Christ blessing two
saints. Via Brolo leads hence into Piazza Verzieri, the fruit and
vegetable market, where the rows of women hucksters, in their bright
kerchiefs and coloured skirts, seated beneath vast white umbrellas, make
a picturesque scene in spite of the modernised surroundings.

                  *       *       *       *       *

The traces of Bramante’s handiwork in Milan, where he is known to have
been employed for many years, have vanished more and more in the light
of the careful studies of recent times. But in the Church of Sta. Maria
delle Grazie we do at last come upon them, though his part in this
building also seems to be much less than was generally supposed. The
famous Dominican church, with its memories of Lodovico il Moro and
Beatrice d’Este, of Leonardo and Bramante, of the novelist Prior, Matteo
Bandello, brings us to the full Renaissance. It is in part, however, of
the transition style, and links together the earlier and later
Sforzesque periods. It was built for the Dominicans in 1465, by Count
Gaspare Vimercati, one of Francesco Sforza’s chief supporters, and
became later a special object of interest to the Moro, who, not
satisfied with its already antiquated style, began to rebuild it
completely as soon as he attained the Dukedom. His project was, however,
only carried out as far as the choir and cupola. This part used always
to be, and is still by some, attributed to Bramante, but there is no
evidence that he contributed except with his advice and influence to the
work. The great clustered pile, as it appears outside, with its
rectangular and circular projections, its panels and pilasters,
parapets, arcades, columns and candelabra, its medallions and perforated
wheels, seems typical of Renaissance ideas as interpreted by the Lombard
architects, with their dislike for simplicity and broad effects, their
fondness for broken surfaces and elaborate detail, their natural
redundancy. It is grandiose, melancholy and cold. Round the base are
shields bearing the various devices of the Sforza. The flank of the
church, with its long windows and round _oculi_, and rich terra-cotta
mouldings, is of the earlier style used by the Solari, as is also the
façade, but here in the beautiful marble portal, the only part
accomplished of the new front projected by Lodovico, we come upon what
is generally allowed to be actually Bramante’s work. Its large and
dignified character, and the pure design of the arabesques, show a great
artist, and a character foreign to the Lombard. The _scoppetta_, il
Moro’s peculiar emblem, is introduced into the pattern on the pilaster
on the right hand of the door.

On entering the church one cannot but feel grateful that the Moro’s
ambitious designs never arrived at the destruction of this beautiful
Gothic nave, so simple and so graceful, so devout and suggestive, with
its grey columns and hoary colour and touches of faded fresco
everywhere. The story goes that Count Gaspare Vimercati, the founder,
and Fra Jacopo Sestio, who was in charge of the work for the Dominicans,
had much contention over it, the one desiring a fine handsome building,
the other a sanctuary suited to the poverty and humility of the friars.
They seem to have succeeded in embodying the ideals of both. From the
dim Gothic aisles one emerges with a curious sense of contrast into the
great space beyond, where immense arches, springing from heavy
pilasters, support a lofty dome, whence abundant light pours down from a
circle of windows. This is, of course, the later part of the building.
The cupola, which is of nobler and severer aspect within than outside,
is much disfigured by baroque decorations. The device of painting
objects in perspective, to simulate relief, had already attracted the
architects even of the great age, as is shown here, where it is used
with ingenuity and restraint in the simulated parts of the gallery in
the lowest storey of the dome. The Evangelists in the spandrils are a
glaring instance of its abuse in later times.

The choir has fine stalls of 1470, decorated with figures and elaborate
designs in intarsia. High up on the right, near the organ, is a charming
fresco by Luini, painted in 1517, of the Virgin and Saints and a
devotee, one Laschenaer, an officer of Louis XII.’s. It was to this
choir, still unfinished, that the dead body of the young Duchess
Beatrice was carried in those mournful early days of 1497, and here that
the friars chanted Masses round her bier for seven days and nights
without ceasing, and that amid a countless host of mourners bearing
torches she was committed to her tomb. Hither came her husband, to weep
and pray over her grave, before he abandoned his and her Milan to the
invader. Beneath the pavement behind the High Altar she lies now, her
infant children beside her. Some say that the Moro’s body, recovered
from its far-off exile in France, rests here too beside it, but this is
very uncertain. Anyhow a pitiful obscurity covers this grave in which
those brief years of an incomparable pride and glory ended—not even a
stone marks it now. The monument carved for it by Cristoforo Solari,
with the effigies of the husband and wife upon it, has been removed to
the Certosa of Pavia.

There are some ruined frescoes by Gaudenzio Ferrari in the fourth Chapel
on the south side of the church. The old, low-vaulted ornate chapel of
the Rosario, on the north side, has some fifteenth century frescoes,
also ruined. Close to the altar is a large sepulchral monument to the
Della Torre family, late fifteenth century, attributed to the Cazzaniga.
The monument to Branda Castiglione, with the realistic profile and
delicate arabesques, is perhaps by Briosco,[17] and that to the Della
Valle by Fusina.

Footnote 17:

  See Malaguzzi Valeri, _G. A. Amadeo_, p. 238.

The most interesting part of the building architecturally is the small
cloister which leads to the old sacristy, both recently restored. Here
the beautiful porticoes, in which the characteristic Lombard charm of
colour due to the combination of brick and stone is joined to a singular
purity and grace of form, justify the traditional belief that Bramante
was the architect. The sacristy also, a lofty rectangular building, is
probably his. The roof is decorated with a curious painted pattern of
intertwisted cords, such as is seen in some of Leonardo’s drawings.
There are beautiful presses, some of which are inlaid, others painted in
imitation of inlay; they are decorated with small painted scenes,
biblical and legendary. They were begun in 1498 by the sacristan, Fra
Vincenzo Spanzotto, and continued later under the care of Matteo
Bandello. In the recess at the east end there is a very poor altarpiece,
representing Gaspare Vimercati kneeling before St. John Baptist,
attributed to Marco d’Oggiono; and on either side of the chapel a
profile in bas-relief, one a portrait of the Moro, the other of his son
Maximilian, a charming-looking youth with curling hair, at about the age
when he returned to Milan as Duke—by some Milanese sculptor of the early
sixteenth century. A fresco on the right-hand side, by Luini, shows
Madonna, with Beatrice d’Este and one of her little sons kneeling as
devotees. It is a charming presentment, joyous and young, of the
princess as she may have remained in the memory of the artist from the
days of his youth.

The convent, now long converted to secular purposes, was, like the
church, the object of Lodovico Sforza’s generosity. Leonardo da Vinci
was commissioned by him to decorate the refectory with paintings, and
there the Florentine artist, working slowly through many years, produced
his Last Supper. The work was probably begun soon after 1483, and
apparently not finished till 1498. The fate that befell it within a few
years is one of the greatest tragedies in the history of art. Owing to
his experimental use of oil, instead of the usual method of
wall-painting, it was already quite ruined—_rovinata tutta_—when Lomazzo
wrote his treatise on painting, sixty years later, and as early as 1536
it was, by Vasari’s testimony, only a blur. The repeated restorations of
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have almost obliterated the
faint remaining traces of the master’s handiwork. The Dominicans
wantonly contributed to the destruction of their priceless possession by
cutting a door into their kitchen through the lower part of the central
group, and Napoleon’s troops, stabled in the hall in 1796, gave it a
final battering.

The refectory stands beside the church. As one enters, the ghost of the
great picture appears at the upper end of the long melancholy chamber.
It seems at first sight as if nothing of the real work were left. _Cosa
bella mortal passa_, Leonardo has said himself, and he, least of all,
seems to have cared to give immortality to the beauty which he created.
_E non d’arte_, he adds. And soon we perceive that this too is true
here. For the deep and elemental significance of the painter’s
conception lives still in its largeness and entirety, expressed in the
great lines of the composition, in the distribution of light and shade,
in the disposition of the figures. Our eyes are carried up by every line
of the composition, every action of the subordinate figures, and left
alone with the Christ. He sits upright, His hands spread out upon the
table, His head against the space of light framed by the large middle
window of the long chamber. On either side, but a little apart, so that
no other head intrudes on this central space of light, are ranged the
Twelve, in groups of three. The words have been uttered—_One of you
shall betray me_—and a tempest of surprise and questioning agitates
them. Peter, half rising, grasps the shoulder of John, who still sleeps
on. Judas draws fiercely away, clutching the moneybag. Beyond this
group, Andrew, James the Less, and Bartholomew, variously show distress
and wonder. On the other side, James the Elder spreads his hands in
horror; Thomas lifts his forefinger; Philip, risen, leans forward in
earnest protest. Matthew, Thaddeus and Simon, beyond, comment eagerly on
His words. But their agitation cannot touch that central stillness; it
serves only to deepen the spiritual silence in which He sits solitary.
He has eaten and drunk with them, but they have not understood. Love
itself is asleep, leaning away to a sinner’s breast. Only Hate
understands and watches, proud and defiant, with tense grasp upon its
desire. But even the splendid Judas, supremely evil, draws back afraid.
The Passion has begun. Out there in the dawn lies Gethsemane. Calvary is
beyond. _Could ye not watch with Me one hour?_ will be but a question
already answered; only the _Eli Eli lama Sabacthani_ has yet to come.

[Illustration:

  _To face p. 314_]

            LAST SUPPER, BY LEONARDO. DETAIL, FIGURE OF CHRIST

             [_A. Ferrario, Milan_
]

It is commonly said that Leonardo never quite finished the face of the
Christ. In any case we do not see it now as he left it. The half-length
pencil drawing in the Brera Gallery has been regarded as Leonardo’s own
study for this figure, but if it is genuine—which many authorities
deny—it has been so much worked over by other hands that it has no value
as an indication of the artist’s conception, which remains for us
unparticularised. Studies of the heads of Matthew, Simon and Judas
fortunately exist in the Windsor Castle Collection and show the heroic
lines on which they were designed by Leonardo. The drawings of the
Apostles in the Weimar Collection, photographs of which are to be seen
in the room, are judged to be copies of studies made by one of
Leonardo’s followers from the picture, and are valuable as giving a
contemporary version of the originals. There are also a few genuine
sketches at Windsor and at Paris of some of the groups, and in Venice a
drawing of the whole scene exists, probably a copy of one by the master.
The subject had long occupied Leonardo’s thoughts before he received the
commission, and these sketches show the progress of his conception of
it. Among his writings, too, there are ideas noted down of various
attitudes and actions for the Apostles.

Some of the many copies made by Leonardo’s pupils hang on the walls
here; the most important is the one on the right hand nearest the
original, by Marco d’Oggiono. Here the artist has followed his master’s
work as faithfully as he could, and it is extremely interesting to
notice the differences into which his own temperament has insensibly led
him. These are most apparent in the central figure, which he has
inclined sideways and impressed with a sentimentality and effeminacy
absolutely foreign to the attitude of the original. This shows the
direction in which Leonardo’s Lombard followers were disposed
instinctively to carry his style, evolving a morbid type which has
become too much associated with his name. The copyist appears to have
altered the Apostles, also giving the weakness of exaggeration to their
virile and spontaneous expression of emotion. It is from this copy, or
rather from a copy of it and not from the ruined original, that the
engraving was done by which the picture has become known all over the
world, another instance of the strange fate of ruin or of travestied
existence which has befallen so much of Leonardo’s work. The other
copies in the room lose value by their departure in part from the
arrangement of the original.

[Illustration:

  LAST SUPPER, BY LEONARDO. DETAIL, ST. JOHN, ST. PETER AND JUDAS

  _To face p. 316_]      [_A. Ferrario, Milan_
]

The great work in the Dominican convent attracted immense attention and
interest even during its progress. It is often mentioned by writers of
this time and a little later. Bandello, in one of his novels, gives an
oft-quoted description of the painter at work. _He used often to go
early in the morning and mount upon the platform and, from sunrise until
the dusk of evening, never putting down his brush and forgetting to eat
and drink, paint without ceasing. Then two, three or four days would
pass when he would not touch it, but remained for one or two hours
together contemplating, considering and examining within himself,
judging his figures. I have seen him too, according as his caprice or
humour moved him, go off at noon-day, when the sun was in Leo, from the
Corte Vecchia, where he was composing his stupendous horse of clay, and
come straight to the Grazie, and mounting the platform, take a brush and
give one or two strokes to one of the figures, and straightway depart
and go elsewhere._ Doubtless Bandello was often in that room, where the
friars watched the progress of the painting with great impatience,
annoyed at the painter’s unaccountable lengthiness. Duke Lodovico
himself, finest and most appreciative of critics, would sometimes come,
and many noble gentlemen were wont to visit the painter here and
converse with him as they contemplated his work. The fame of the great
picture spread quickly throughout Europe. When Louis XII. entered Milan
in 1499, he came to see it, and expressed a desire, fortunately
impracticable, to carry it away to his own country. With him were Duke
Ercole of Ferrara, the Marquis Gian Francesco of Mantua, and many other
brilliant and historic characters; among them was Cæsar Borgia, and
possibly it was on this occasion, before his newly finished picture,
that Leonardo first met this extraordinary man, into whose service he
shortly after entered.

The other end of the refectory is filled with a vast fresco of the
Crucifixion, by Montorfano, signed with his name and the date 1495. The
perfect state of preservation of this poor, laboured and crowded
composition, an inferior example even of the Milanese school, seems a
bitter irony here. The Lombard painter, sticking to the old groove, has
achieved the permanence which Leonardo recklessly risked for the sake of
an experiment. At the lower corner of the painting, on either side, are
portraits of the ducal family kneeling in devotion, Lodovico and the
little Maximilian on the left, Beatrice and the younger child Francesco
on the right, and these, unlike the rest of the picture, are in very bad
condition—almost obliterated. Vasari affirms them to have been painted
by Leonardo himself at the special command of the Duke, and in oil, like
the Last Supper; but the portraits themselves, as far as can be judged
from what remains of them, are quite mediocre and do not bear out his
statement.

                  *       *       *       *       *

In San Satiro, entered from Via Torino, we come at last to a building
really by Bramante. The church is properly called Sta. Maria, the
ancient S. Satiro being represented by a chapel incorporated with it. It
was founded in 1476, on the site of a shrine containing a miraculous
picture of the Virgin. It is a purely Renaissance building, but has
certain peculiarities due to cramped conditions, the builder having been
restricted in space and bound by the necessity of embodying the remains
of the old Basilica of S. Satiro on one side and of an existing Chapel
of S. Teodoro on the other. The difficulties have been ingeniously
surmounted, and the effect is very fine, but it seems a pity that the
genius of Bramante should not have had room for free play. The general
impression on entering into the rich and gilded obscurity of the
interior is of great breadth and spaciousness. The three aisles, in
which the dividing pilasters and arches are unusually low in proportion
to the height of the roof—a feature explained by the necessity of
according them with the old S. Satiro, now the Chapel of the Pietà—open
out into a great space roofed by a lofty cupola and with wide transepts.
The church ends in a grandiose semicircular choir. Here the architect
met with his chief difficulty, being prevented by the street outside
from carrying the building as far eastward as was necessary for his
design after allowing full scope for the rise of the cupola. He has
overcome it by a deceptive use of perspective, the depth of the choir
being simulated, not real. The device can only be admired for its
ingenuity and the cleverness with which it is executed.

The gilded friezes and capitals of the nave are of the best Renaissance
style, rich but of clear and not over-elaborate design. In the spandrils
beneath the cupola are medallions circled with gilded ornamentation and
containing paintings of the four Evangelists, by Bramantino, dignified
forms, dim and rich in colour as seen from below. There is an old
picture of the Virgin over the High Altar, with a portrait in it of the
young Duke Gian Galeazzo Sforza, but it is held in such extreme
veneration that the veil covering it may not be withdrawn except on one
special day of the year.

The Chapel of the Pietà is at the end of the left transept. This ninth
century structure, founded according to tradition by Archbishop
Ansperto, was restored at the time when the large church was built
beside it. The coloured terra-cotta group of the Deposition which gives
its present name to the chapel, a crudely realistic work, ably modelled
and utterly inartistic, has been ascribed, quite unjustifiably, to the
famous Milanese goldsmith, Caradosso, a delicate worker in fine
materials. It is probably by one of the many Lombard sculptors of the
style of the Mantegazza.

Adjoining the church on the right is the Baptistery or sacristy, a
beautiful little example of Bramante’s work. It is a small octagonal
building with a lofty dome and very richly decorated. The remarkable
terra-cotta frieze, composed of heads projecting from wreaths, between
groups of sportive _putti_, and painted to look like bronze, has been
also always ascribed to Caradosso; but it is now pronounced to be
certainly not his work, the style of the heads, vigorous, realistic, and
somewhat coarse, showing all the characteristics of the late fifteenth
century Lombard school of sculpture, rather than the fine hand of the
metal-worker, trained in Rome, whom documents, moreover, prove to have
been absent from Milan when this work was executed.

The exterior of the church is much hidden by the houses around, but a
bit of it can be seen closely in Via Falcone and shows Bramante’s hand
in the bold classic style, and the strong, simple, and graceful design
of the terra-cotta ornamentation. From the Via Carlo Alberto one gets an
impressive view of part of the low and elaborate Renaissance pile, proud
and learned, and beautiful with brick and stucco decoration, swelling
beside the simple old Campanile which belongs to the original ninth
century church, and is the most ancient example of a Romanesque tower
now existing in Milan.

[Illustration: SAN SATIRO]

The Monastero Maggiore, also called S. Maurizio, in the Corso Magenta,
is an early sixteenth century building of typical Renaissance form, by
Dolcebuono, and is extremely interesting on account of the complete and
beautiful decoration of the interior by Luini and his school. It is one
of the principal shrines for the worshippers of that master, who is seen
at his best there. Luini was commissioned, about 1522, to paint this
church by Alessandro Bentivoglio and his wife, Ippolita Sforza, their
daughter Alessandra being a nun in the ancient and wealthy Benedictine
convent to which it belonged. The interior, which is of great length,
without aisles, has a very graceful gallery or loggia all round, and
chapels in the corresponding space below. A partition wall in the
middle, not reaching to the roof, divides it into halves, the lower half
being the public church, with the High Altar at its upper end, and the
part shut off behind the choir that reserved by the nuns for their
private use. The whole interior has the effect of a splendid hall,
rather than a church. The walls are entirely covered with paintings, of
the strong gay colour characteristic of Luini’s work, dimmed by time to
a delightful harmony where the temptation to “freshen it up” has been
resisted. Beautiful ladies, in richest robes, look out from beside the
High Altar with that sweet familiar smile, of which the charm grows
somewhat stale by too much repetition. The emblems they carry show them
to be saints—Cecilia and Ursula holding a tabernacle between them,
Apollonia and Lucia standing on either side of a small figure of the
Redeemer. Above them appears a real lady of the time, Ippolita Sforza
herself, a beautiful and stately creature, in a spreading white brocade
dress, kneeling under the protecting presence of three saints, of whom
Sta. Scholastica, who has her hand on Ippolita’s shoulder, is said to be
a portrait of her daughter, the young Suora Alessandra. Alessandro
Bentivoglio, a mild personage, who is lauded by his daughter in a
memorial inscription for having done no one any harm—_nemini nocuit_—is
depicted in a corresponding composition on the other side of the altar,
with S. Benedict, St. John Baptist, and St. Lawrence. Above on the left
is the Martyrdom of St. Maurice, and on the right St. Sigismund, the
supposed original founder of the church, offering a model of the
building to St. Maurice, who stands upon a pedestal, and in the
background of the same composition is seen the Martyrdom of Sigismund.
Between is represented the Assumption of the Virgin, in which the
principal figure has been unfortunately much restored. The altarpiece is
by Campi, 1578.

The frescoes of the chapel on the right of the sanctuary are also by
Luini. In the midst is the Scourging of Christ; on the left the fine
portrait of an old man, Francesco Besozzi, at whose charge the chapel
was painted, and St. Catherine protecting him; on the right St.
Lawrence. Above and at the sides are depicted scenes from the legend of
St. Catherine. The figure of the saint being beheaded—on the right-hand
side—is very beautiful. The meek bent head, with rich gold hair simply
coiled, the adorable neck bared for the sword, the golden dress,
composing an exquisite harmony of colour, make one forgive Luini for
sometimes boring one a little. Bandello, in his story of the Contessa di
Cellant, tells us that this is a portrait of that naughty and ill-fated
lady, who was beheaded on the piazza of the Castello in 1524 for having
induced one of her lovers to murder another. But there seems to be no
real foundation for this identification, and it is difficult to
associate this wholly lovely creature with the too passionate Contessa.

The frescoes in the other chapels are by the school of Luini.

Passing into the choir, or Nuns’ Church, we see on the other side of the
dividing wall more frescoes by Luini himself, corresponding to the
decoration on the public side. Here is another row of sister saints,
whose beauty is the more enchanting for the veil spread over them by the
centuries, and happily undisturbed. These gracious ladies stand for
Apollonia, Lucia, Catherine, and Agatha. The story of the Passion is
frescoed round the altar. Near by may be seen the arms of the Bentivogli
and Sforza quartered together, and the initials of Alessandro and
Hippolita, the benefactors of the church. The lower part of the wall is
decorated in chiaroscuro, with angels and saints in simulated
terra-cotta medallions. The ceiling painting over the altar—God the
Father surrounded by saints—is by Borgognone, by whom are also the
figures of bishops and saints between the arches on each side of the
church. The rest of the frescoes with which the walls are everywhere
covered are poor works, by the sons and followers of Luini. The carving
of the double row of stalls, simple but of very good style, is of the
same period as the church.

By a staircase, which emerges on a terrace, where you find yourself
close to the ancient brick campanile of the convent—a relic, some say,
of the Roman walls, or, according to other authorities, one of the
towers built by Ansperto when he restored the walls in the ninth
century—you are conducted into the upper gallery of the church. Over the
doorways leading through this loggia there are half-length paintings of
women saints by Boltraffio, exceedingly charming where they have not
been spoilt by repainting. They have the familiar contours of that
artist’s Madonnas, but the colour, unlike the hot and opaque tones of
his oil-painting, is very fresh and delicate, and decorative. They are
all there, the Martyrs, Catherine, Agnes, Agatha, and the rest, each
sweet-visaged creature bearing a green branch flowering into red or some
lovely blossom. Here is one of a type especially characteristic of
Boltraffio, with long golden hair curling in rings over her shoulders;
she is dressed in green and purple, and holds a lily. On the wall
dividing the two parts of the church there are some very poor frescoes
by the sons of Luini—the Supper in the House of the Pharisee, the
Adoration of the Magi, and the Baptism of Christ.

The effect of the long gallery and of the richly-decorated church as
seen through its graceful pillared openings is very charming. A fit
temple for Suora Alessandra and her fellows, those vestal virgins of the
Renaissance, cherishing the flame of its many-sided religion in their
art-irradiated cloisters, innocent sacrifices for the sins of the too
vigorous races, Bentivogli, Sforza, and many another almost as wicked,
from which they sprang. Beneath the archways, where their beautiful
martyr sisters of long before look sweetly down upon them, the meek
veiled figures seem to flit silently before us. But they, too, are but
beings of the imagination now. The little door in the wall between
Luini’s saints is never opened now for the passing of the Eucharist to
the cloistered worshippers on the inner side. No sweet voices rise any
more to the accompaniment of that ornate organ; the long row of stalls
has been untenanted this hundred years and more. In this place, where
those virgin princesses and ladies knelt and adored, surrounded by these
exquisite creations of the Renaissance spirit, and by its lovely order
and refinement, the loathsome dust to-day lies thickly everywhere, and
no foot falls but that of a chance visitor. And the vast gardens and
vineyards of the convent, where behind high secluding walls Alessandra
and her companions took the air and played and laughed, let us hope, and
where, doubtless, the stately Ippolita came to visit her daughter,
bringing a breath of the joyous world outside, have given place to
modern streets and houses, and the great Monastero Maggiore has utterly
disappeared, except for this one rich relic, the church.

Sta. Maria della Passione, with a great cupola built by Cristoforo
Solari early in the sixteenth century, and an ornate late Renaissance
façade, contains one of the most important works of Luini’s earlier
career, a large picture of the Deposition, in the choir. There are some
fine Cinquecento choir stalls. In the right transept are Christ and the
Apostles by Borgognone, and in the left a Last Supper by Gaudenzio
Ferrari. The sacristy has frescoes by Borgognone.

_Sta. Maria presso S. Celso_ adjoining the little Romanesque basilica of
S. Celso, was built by Dolcebuono at the end of the fifteenth century,
but altered and finished later. The ornate façade is of the later part
of the sixteenth century. The cloister in front was probably designed by
Cristoforo Solari. There are some pictures by important masters in the
spacious and imposing interior. The lowest on the left-hand side is a
characteristic work by Borgognone—Madonna, with St. Roch and St. John
Baptist. Behind the choir there is a Madonna with St. Jerome, by Paris
Bordone; the Baptism of Christ, by Gaudenzio Ferrari; and St. Paul, by
Moretto. In the sacristy is preserved a very precious example of ninth
century goldsmith’s work, a cross given by Louis the Pious to Milan, of
exquisite workmanship and thickly set with gems. It has figures of the
Emperor and Empress and the Carlovingian princes carved upon it. The
treasure also includes a carved Cinquecento jug, once attributed to
Cellini, and one or two other pieces of goldsmiths’ work. There are,
besides, some beautiful embroidered vestments.

S. Giorgio al Palazzo, in Via Torino, an old church completely
transformed in recent centuries, contains in the third chapel on the
right some fine frescoes by Luini, of the scenes of the Passion. The
Crucifixion in the dome of the chapel is an impressive composition,
quiet and harmonious in colour.

S. Fedele, designed by Pellegrini in the latter part of the sixteenth
century, and containing fine Cinquecento choir stalls—once in the
destroyed church of S. Maria della Scala—St. Alessandro, of the
seventeenth century, S. Carlo, built about a hundred years ago, all
sumptuously decorated in the taste of their times, and other less
important churches of the same style, have little artistic interest, and
are, in any case, far outside the scope of our mediæval story. We must
turn back to the best period of the Renaissance, and look at some
palaces which still remain from that time.

The Palazzo Carmagnola, also called the Palazzo di Broletto, at the
corner of Via Rovello and Via Dante, is the oldest of these palaces, and
is also of historic interest. Duke Filippo Maria gave a house here, in
1418, to his great general, Carmagnola, who rebuilt it a few years
later. The house passed through one of his daughters to the Dal Verme
family, and was confiscated in 1485 by Lodovico Sforza, who installed
his mistress, Cecilia Gallerani in it later. The historian Giorgio
Merula, one of the ornaments of the Moro’s court, also inhabited it for
some years. When Louis XII. made himself master of Milan, he gave the
palace to his general, Charles d’Amboise, and later on it came into the
possession of the city, and was used for public offices, whence it
acquired the name of Palazzo di Broletto. It is now the Intendenza di
Finanza. The building has little of its old aspect left, but there is a
picturesque cortile of the late fifteenth century, with graceful and
characteristic sculptured capitals, part of a probable restoration of
the palace by the Moro, to make it a habitation worthy of his beautiful
favourite.

A beautiful late Quattrocento palace is the Casa Fontana, or Silvestri,
in the Corso Venezia, which has a noble portal of classic form,
supported on columns in the form of candelabra, and windows enframed in
terra-cotta ornamentation. The façade is, moreover, painted in
chiaroscuro, with designs of the typical style of Lombard Renaissance
decoration—colossal heads and sporting _putti_, etc. It has been
attributed to Bramante, but is more probably the work of local
architects. The cortile is very picturesque.

Casa Ponti, in Via Bigli, has a Cinquecento cortile of very graceful
proportions, and glowing with the deep rich colour of painted
decoration. On the walls above the porticoes there are full-length
figures, representing gods, muses, the arts, etc. They are of noble
grace and stateliness, with the familiar contours and the everlasting
smile of Luini and his school. The archivolts, spandrils, the little
arcade beneath the rich projecting cornice, are all covered with
arabesques and devices of graceful and playful fancy. We see here the
very setting of that joyous decorative Cinquecento life which has hardly
its parallel for beauty in history. But the old glory of it is dimmed by
the passing of centuries and the influences of a damp climate. Many of
the figures are in very bad condition, and on one side of the court
modern copies have been substituted and the originals removed and placed
on the staircase of the palace, where, if one has the good fortune to be
allowed to enter, one may study closely the gracious figures of Painting
and Sculpture, and some delightful baby forms, riding on sea-horses,
playing with grapes, etc., from the frieze upon the parapet in the
cortile. The portal of the palace is a fine example of early sixteenth
century building, and has two little statuettes of Madonna and the Angel
of the Annunciation, in the spandrils.

Casa Castani—opposite S. Sepolcro—of the late fifteenth century, has
also a fine doorway, of simple but noble form. It is decorated with
classic heads in the spandrils, and has a Greek motto on the cornice,
signifying Good Luck. A medallion of Francesco Sforza appears above, a
sign of homage to the reigning house, often seen on palaces of this
period in Milan. The cortile is built with double loggias.

Casa Dal Verme in Foro Bonaparte, opposite the theatre of that name, is
another house of the same style, with an exceedingly picturesque
cortile, to which the warm colour of the terra-cotta decoration gives a
great charm. Between each arch there is the familiar decoration of
medallions with shields or classic heads. These palaces have all much
affinity, and they are generally attributed to the influence of
Bramante. They have, indeed, been labelled sometimes as the work of the
Master himself. The style is, however, common throughout North Italy at
this time, though probably derived in the first instance from Florentine
sources. There are others of similar style in different parts of the
city.

No. 10-12 Via Torino, entered through a squalid passage, has a very
picturesque small court, with porticoes surmounted by two open storeys,
and delightful terra-cotta ornamentation. This beautiful old fragment of
the Milan of the Sforza period has fallen into plebeian use, and is,
moreover, doomed to speedy destruction in the course of projected
improvements to this crowded quarter.

[Illustration: PALAZZO VISCONTI DI MODRONE—GARDEN ON THE NAVIGLIO]

There are many fine palaces of the late sixteenth and of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries in Milan, of heavy and ornate Renaissance
style, degenerating into florid excesses in the later period. These do
not come within our subject, but one or two must be mentioned. The
enormous Palazzo Marino, the seat of the Municipality, was built in the
middle of the sixteenth century by Galeazzo Alessi for a Genoese named
Tommaso Marino, who had made an immense fortune as a merchant in Milan.
Before the great edifice was finished however, the fortune had been
swallowed up by various misfortunes, and the family discredited through
one of Tommaso’s sons, who murdered his wife. The palace was sequestered
in 1577 by the city, to which it still belongs. It is of the grandiose
style of the later Renaissance, and the cortile is extremely ornate,
though the decoration is not allowed to conceal the stately
architectural lines. The great hall is also very richly decorated in the
same style with stucco reliefs and paintings. The façade into Piazza
della Scala is modern.

The Palazzo de’ Giurisconsulti, in Via Mercanti, opposite the Palazzo
della Ragione, was built in its present handsome but heavy form by
Vincenzo Seregni in the sixteenth century, at the charge of Pope Pius
IV., of the Milanese house of Medici, whose arms appear on the edifice.
Till recent times this palace formed part of the old enclosure of the
Broletto Nuovo.

The Palazzo Arcivescovile, of which the large cortile was built by
Pellegrini, has been already mentioned in Chapter X.

The house—in Via Omenoni—built by the sculptor Leone Leoni for himself
in the second half of the sixteenth century, is remarkable for the
colossal statues supporting the cornice, whence it has acquired the name
of Palazzo _Omenoni_.

Palazzo Chierici—an eighteenth century building, now a law-court—close
to Sta. Maria del Carmine, should be visited for the sake of a great
ceiling painting by G. B. Tiepolo, the Venetian painter. The room is
open to the public.

You may get a charming glimpse of old Milan—long past the mediæval
period indeed, which we set out to describe—but in a luxurious, leisured
Settecento aspect almost as completely gone in these her industrial
days, by walking down the Via Damiano—passing, by the way, as you turn
out of Via Monforte, one of those locks in the canal which are
attributed to the invention of Leonardo da Vinci—along the Naviglio,
till you come to a beautiful pierced balustrade facing you across the
narrow streak of water beneath a thicket of wistaria, chestnut and
flowering trees. Behind appears the graceful arched portico of the
palace to which the garden belongs—the Palazzo Visconti di Modrone. The
wistaria has climbed all over the trees, and in spring it is a cloud of
softest purple. You see the fine feathery twigs and sparse young leaves
of the trees caught high up against the blue in delicate wreaths and
garlands of the tender-coloured bloom, and hung with a film of its fine
tendrils. A curtain of it drapes the lively green of the horse-chestnut
and smothers the spikes of white blossom. The dry stem from which all
this loveliness gushes forth, to fall in these cascades and streams of
delicious colour, winds in great serpentine coils in the shadow over the
parapet, and you may trace its stealthy and sinuous climb amid the
branches of the trees—the strangling clasp of its huge vine. The central
part of the parapet is guarded by two delightful stone _putti_, holding
cornucopiæ—the genii of this joyous blossoming place. Mocked by the
still flow and reflection of the water beneath, you might fancy yourself
for a moment in Venice.

The flowering May-time of the year is a pleasant moment in which to see
this Milan, when her squares and gardens break forth into the luxurious
blossom of magnolia, chestnut and wistaria, which endear all her modern
ways by their colour and sweetness, and soothe with the sight of their
ever recurring, imperishable beauty, our regret for all that has
perished.




                              CHAPTER XIV
                      _The Brera Picture Gallery_


 “Chi sprezza la Pittura non ama la Filosofia ne la Natura.”—LEONARDO DA
    VINCI.

The Palazzo di Brera contains one of the finest collections of pictures
in Italy. The palace itself, once the house of the great order of the
Umiliati, and after them of the Jesuits, who in their turn were
dispossessed by the State in 1772, is in its present form a grandiose
seventeenth century building, with a double galleried cortile of fine
proportions. In the midst of the cortile stands a statue of Napoleon
Buonaparte, by Canova. The Biblioteca Nazionale occupies part of the
building. There is a large fresco of the Marriage at Cana in Galilee on
the staircase leading to the Library, by Callisto Piazza, one of the
late Milanese school—a good example of the artist.

The Pinacoteca is entered from the upper loggia. The pictures have
recently been admirably arranged. They are labelled with the names and
dates of the artists, and the attributions are in accordance with the
latest criticism. We shall only dwell on the most interesting of the
numerous works, noticing particularly the local school.

We pass through Sala I. with cartoons by Andrea Appiani, a late
eighteenth century Milanese artist.

Sala II. contains some of the best work of the early Lombard school,
frescoes of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which have been
removed from churches and convents. We pass some unimportant primitive
frescoes that would be beautiful in their original position, but lose
artistic value in the narrow space where they are now seen, and come to
three frescoes by Bramantino, which show him at his best. The Madonna
and Child (15) is very characteristic of his manner, in the broad
treatment of the flesh and drapery, in the blond types, and the way in
which the figures are lighted from below. A _Putto_ (16) has an
irresistible charm. This child among the vine leaves is so true to
nature, so full of joy and life. The St. Martin (17) is a noble
conception of chivalrous youth. In beauty and refinement it excels any
other work by Bramantino.

We now come to Vincenzo Foppa, who takes the most important place in the
early Lombard school. Madonna and Child with SS. John Baptist and John
Evangelist kneeling on each side (19). The composition is formal, but
there is a strong feeling for nature in the figures. Martyrdom of St.
Sebastian (20) is a composition full of vigour and life; the saint’s
figure is well drawn and modelled with a sculpturesque solidity. There
is a naïve simplicity in the expression of the archers’ faces and in
their close vicinity to their mark, hardly in keeping with the academic
feeling shown in the architectural surroundings. Foppa’s colour in these
two frescoes is much fresher and pleasanter than in his altarpieces.

Next we have Borgognone (Ambrogio da Fossano), whom Morelli calls the
Perugino of the Lombard school. These frescoes from the church of San
Satiro belong to his best period. St. Martha, St. Catherine, St. Mary
Magdalen (22); St. Barbara, St. Roch and St. Clara (23); St. Martina,
St. Apollonia and St. Agnes (24). They are very beautiful figures, of
most refined and delicate execution. St. Roch is especially fine, his
poetic face shows a power of characterisation that is seldom seen in
Borgognone’s work, and the St. Barbara is exquisitely graceful. It is
very unfortunate that these valuable frescoes have been so much damaged.
The large Madonna with angels and God the Father (25) is a fine picture,
but loses its due effect in the narrow gallery.

[Illustration:

  PUTTO, FRESCO BY BRAMANTINO (BRERA)
  _To face p. 336_]      [_Anderson, Rome_
]

We come next to a number of frescoes by Bernardino Luini, where his
fundamental faults, viz., heavy forms and want of drawing, are glossed
over by his gift of charm. Madonna and Child, with a lamb and little St.
John, in a landscape (63), is one of the best. The Madonna is tender and
dignified, and there is an idyllic feeling about the whole that is very
attractive. Madonna and Child with St. Anne (64) is also charming. St.
Anne is a graceful figure in yellow and purple, a combination of colours
which the peasant women of Lombardy wear to this day. There are some
profane subjects, 70 to 76 inclusive, from the Villa Pelucca, near
Monza. A young horseman in a decoratively-treated landscape (72);
Sacrifice to Pan (73); Daphne (74); Birth of Adonis (76). A very
charming bust of a young woman (75), whose golden hair and dress of
palest puce and white against a background of pale green makes a
pleasant colour harmony.

On the opposite wall are frescoes by Gaudenzio Ferrari, scenes from the
life of the Virgin. There is life and movement in these paintings and a
freshness both of treatment and feeling, but the execution is careless.
The side panels of the Adoration of the Magi (33), with the servants and
horses, are very spirited. The Meeting of the Virgin and Elizabeth (37)
is rather theatrical, but the lines of the composition are good.

There are other frescoes by Marco d’Oggiono and Bernardino Lanino.

Sala III.—Here we have pictures of the Venetian schools of the
sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. There are examples by
Moretto, and fine portraits by G. B. Moroni. By Paris Bordone there are
three sacred subjects (106, 107, 108), and a picture called Gli Amanti
Veneziani (105) which shows him in a more congenial mood. It has all the
charm of rich colour and sensuous beauty, and one can admire the fine
qualities of the technique here, whereas in the religious subjects it
gives no pleasure. Near by hangs the masterpiece of the Brescian artist,
Girolamo Savoldo, Madonna and Child, with SS. Peter, Domenico, Paul and
Jerome (114). The background is especially beautiful, with its water and
hills and luminous sky paling to an exquisite light on the horizon. The
Cenacolo (117), doubtfully ascribed to Titian, cannot be considered his
work. The rather uninteresting Adoration of the Magi (119) was begun by
Palma Vecchio and finished by Cariani. The large Marriage of Cana (120)
is a work of the school of Paolo Veronese. There are also pictures by
the sons of il Bassano.

Sala IV. contains Venetian works of the sixteenth century. The first
thing one sees is Tintoretto’s famous picture of St. Mark Appearing to
the Venetians, who are searching for his body in the crypt of St.
Eufemia of Alexandria (143). Mr. Berenson says of this picture—‘... the
figures, although colossal, are so energetic and easy in movement, and
the effects of perspective and of light and atmosphere are so on a level
with the gigantic figures, that the eye at once adapts itself to the
scale, and you feel as if you too partook of the strength and health of
heroes.’[18] In Tintoretto’s Deposition of Christ (149), the grand lines
of the shadowed figure fill us with a deep sense of tragedy. Of a very
different character to these two pictures is

Footnote 18:

  _The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance_, p. 56.

the festive scene, by Bonifazio Veronese (114), Moses Saved from the
Water. The subject here is an excuse for one of those _fêtes champêtres_
which the Venetian artists loved to paint. The picture shows us
delightful groups of richly-dressed men and beautiful women in a
romantic landscape, painted with all Bonifazio’s characteristic glory of
colour.

Baptism and Temptation of Jesus (151) cannot be regarded as a genuine
work of Paolo Veronese.

Sala V.—Venetian pictures of the fourteenth-sixteenth centuries.—Gentile
Bellini’s great canvas of the Preaching of St. Mark in the Piazza of
Alexandria (164) is a stately representation of a contemporary scene;
some of the groups are very quaint. It was finished by Gian Bellini.
Bartolommeo Montagna has a very fine altarpiece, Madonna and Child, with
SS. Andrew, Monica, Ursula and Sigismondo (165), signed 1498. There are
three charming little pictures by Carpaccio—Marriage of the Virgin
(169), Dispute of St. Stephen (170), and Presentation of Mary in the
Temple (171). Three works by Cima show us this gentle artist at his
best. St. Peter enthroned between SS. John Baptist and Paul (174) is a
restful picture with devout saints; the mild and youthful St. John is a
notable contrast to the wild and ascetic figure of this saint as usually
depicted by the Florentines. The other two pictures are Madonna and SS.
John Baptist, Sebastian, Roch, Magdalen and donors (175), and St. Peter
Martyr between SS. Nicolo of Bari and Augustine (176). St. Sebastian
(177), by Liberale da Verona, is a most delightful and satisfying
picture, suffused with a golden glow, and the idealised figure of the
saint forms an exquisite harmony with the colour of the houses and blue
sky and water of the background.

Sala VI. contains three fine works by Titian. Portrait of Count Antonio
Porcia (180) is a magnificent painting; the pale face, black dress and
background, and blue landscape, make a striking arrangement of colour.
The St. Jerome (182) is a late work, the rugged figure in the savage
landscape is tremendously vigorous. Ruskin writes of this picture that
it is ‘a superb example of the modes in which the objects of landscape
may be either suggested or elaborated according to their place and
claim. The larger features of the ground, foliage and drapery, as well
as lion in the lower angle, are executed with a slightness that admits
not of close examination.... But on the rock above ... there is a wreath
of ivy, of which every leaf is drawn with the greatest accuracy and
care, and beside it a lizard, studied with equal earnestness, yet always
with that right grandeur of manner to which I have alluded....’[19]
Beside the Titians, the picture by Palma Vecchio—S. Sebastian,
Constantine, St. Helena, and St. Roch (179)—seems wanting in strength
and distinction. St. Roch has a poetical head, and S. Sebastian is a
well-painted nude, but the type is effeminate.

Footnote 19:

  Ruskin, _Modern Painters_.

Sala VII.—Some of the finest portraits by the Venetian painter Lorenzo
Lotto are here. Of the portrait of a Gentleman (183), Mr. Berenson
says—‘This is the most subtle of all Lotto’s portraits in
characterisation, and considered merely as technique, it is his most
masterly achievement.’[20] Nos. 184 and 185 are almost certainly the
portraits of Messer Febo da Brescia and Madonna Laura da Pola, his wife,
which are known to have been painted in 1543-44. The woman, beautiful
and distinguished, has an intent, sad gaze, with that reserve in her
expression that one is familiar with in Lotto’s portraits. The man’s
character is less complex than hers. Both portraits are of very

Footnote 20:

  B. Berenson, _Lorenzo Lotto_.

fine execution, though hers is the more delicate. The little panel,
Assumption of the Virgin (186), is an early work with a pleasant
landscape. The Pietà (188) is an important but unattractive composition.

Sala VIII. contains unimportant works of various Venetian schools.

Sala IX. is one of the most interesting of all, for here are the works
of Gian Bellini, Mantegna, and some of the best examples of that
individual and fascinating painter, Carlo Crivelli. On entering, one is
at once arrested by the noble Pietà of Gian Bellini (214). In this most
touching picture the artist has expressed himself with a deep human
feeling which he rarely shows afterwards. We feel almost awed in the
presence of the Mother’s infinite love and sorrow, and the perfect peace
and calm of the dead Christ amid the agony of hopeless grief. St. John
cries aloud in his despair, and a pitiless dawn is breaking behind them.
It is an early work and the treatment of the flesh and heavy draperies
is broad and severe. In the picture hanging next, Madonna and Child in a
beautiful landscape (215), dated 1510, we see the change wrought by
nearly fifty years. The intensity of feeling of the young Bellini has
died away in technical perfection. The Madonna and Child (216) is an
early work of the same period as the Pietà. In this beautiful sad Mother
and Child is visible the earnest sentiment and the same broad manner of
painting.

Mantegna’s three pictures hang opposite, and it is interesting to
compare them with Bellini’s, as the two painters had much in common to
start with, and departed widely each on his own lines afterwards. The
Polyptych, St. Luke and other saints, with Pietà in upper part (200), is
one of his earliest works, finished in 1454. The figures are very
refined and carefully drawn, but they are rather stiff, and the
execution almost timid. Beside this picture hangs one of his latest
works, the Dead Christ and the Maries (199), and we can note the
difference between the early and late style of the master; the careful
academic manner of the first has yielded to the broad freedom of the
second. This uncompromisingly foreshortened figure must have been an
experiment, and is chiefly interesting technically. The Madonna and
Child surrounded with cherubim (198) is a beautiful picture, painted in
the broad manner of Mantegna’s maturity.

Carlo Crivelli fills the rest of the room with a wealth of colour and
beauty. Madonna and Child with SS. Peter and Dominic (201) is so
exquisite a picture, so lovely in colour and design, that one feels the
last word has been said in an art that combines the highest decoration
with a true and childlike religious feeling. Who has ever imagined a
more pure and innocent creature than this lovely Madonna who sits with
such unconscious grace in her rich garments on the stately throne? The
Child, too, is so sweet as he earnestly squeezes a dove in both hands.
The young S. Geminianus has the ardour of a martyr. The whole picture is
a very exquisite harmony of colour and line. Coronation of Christ and
the Virgin by the Eternal Father (202), signed and dated 1493, is a
superbly decorative work glowing with rich colour. The flying angels
seem really beings of the air, and the devout saints really dwellers in
Paradise. S. Catherine and S. Sebastian are especially beautiful. The
Pietà above (203) is very fine in composition, and the Christ is godlike
with His long golden hair. The Crucifixion (206) is a restless
composition. Crivelli has striven so hard to express his emotion, but
the result is an exaggeration of forms and movement. There is no repose
anywhere, draperies flying, fingers contorted; even the sky is in
troubled wavelets. Madonna of the Candle (207). In this beautiful panel
the Madonna sits like a goddess on her high throne, yet has all the
sweetness of humanity. The perfect oval of her face and symmetry of her
form are drawn by a master’s hand. The rich garland of fruits and the
roses and lilies are painted with a loving care. There are also two
panels of saints by Crivelli (204 and 205).

Sala X. contains Venetian pictures of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries. There are four small pictures by Cima (217, 218, 219 and
220), charming little pictures in which there is more life and movement
than in his larger works. Adoration of the Magi (223) by Stefano da
Zevio, dated 1435, is a pleasing picture, showing the early Veronese
character. The decorative Polyptych (228) is by Antonio Vivarini and
Giovanni da Murano.

In Sala XI. we have Venetian schools of the sixteenth-eighteenth
centuries. Two landscapes by Canaletto (235 and 236) are full of light
and air. Guardi has two views of the Grand Canal at Venice (242 and
243).

Sala XII., Lombard School.—Here are portraits of the Visconti family, of
little artistic value. A Madonna Adoring the Child, with SS. Catherine
and Joseph (248) by Vincenzo Civerchio. The Milanese painter Bernardino
Buttinone has two pictures, Madonna and Child between SS. Bernardino and
Stephen (249), signed and dated 145-. This picture has all the decided
characteristics of the artist—the laboured execution, low flesh tones,
high and prominent foreheads, enormous ears, claw-like fingers and
vividly-coloured draperies. The small Madonna (250) is a highly-finished
picture and equally lacking in beauty. The SS. Catherine and Sebastian
by Defendente Ferrari are charming figures in gorgeous costumes.

Sala XIII. possesses four pictures by Borgognone. The most interesting
is the small picture of the Madonna and Child with S. Clare and a
Certosino (259). It is an early work, very devout and sweet in feeling,
and shows the artist’s connection with Foppa, particularly in the type
of the Child and the grey flesh tones. The latter, however, are very
much modified, and form a very harmonious scheme with the white
draperies and silvery colour of sky and water behind. Madonna and Saints
(257), by Bevilacqua, is a decorative altarpiece with colour brilliant
almost to crudeness.

Sala XIV. contains works of the sixteenth century by Leonardo’s
followers. Two Magdalens, by Gianpietrino (262 and 263), are good
examples of his work, and have some poetical charm. An unfinished
Madonna (261) of Leonardesque composition shows a great similarity in
the landscape background to that of the well-known Bacchus of the
Louvre, a doubtful Leonardo. Madonna and Child with little S. John
(271), by Bernardino dei Conti, is reminiscent of Leonardo’s Virgin of
the Rocks. The colour is hot and the modelling lumpy.

Sala XV., Lombard school of sixteenth century.—The first picture in this
room is a lovely Madonna and Child (276) by Cesare da Sesto. It is
sympathetic in feeling and refined in execution. The arrangement of dark
foliage behind the Madonna, showing on one side the distant landscape
and pale sky, is very happy. It is the best picture we know of this
artist. Madonna and Child (277) by Gaudenzio Ferrari is very typical of
his style, rather affected in attitude and hot in colour. Close by hangs
a Holy Family (279) by Bramantino. The drawing of the Saviour (280) is
not admitted by the best authorities to be a genuine work of Leonardo’s.
Two kneeling figures (281) by Boltraffio are distinguished by dignity
and feeling. They show how well Boltraffio could paint portraits. Andrea
Solario has three paintings and a drawing. The best is a portrait of a
young man (282), whose characteristic head, with clear, almost hard
outline, is well-drawn and carefully finished. Madonna and Child (286)
by Sodoma is one of his most Leonardesque works.

Sala XVI. is entirely devoted to works by Luini. A fresco of angels
bearing the corpse of St. Catherine to deposit in the Sepulchre (288) is
a graceful composition. The well-known Madonna del Roseto (289) with its
charming background of a rose-trellis is one of the most popular of this
artist’s pictures. To us a more sympathetic work is the charcoal drawing
(290) of the Madonna watching the Child, who sleeps on a cushion. Here
is also a series of frescoes giving the story of S. Joseph, taken from
the suppressed Church of Sta. Maria della Pace.

Sala XVII. contains works of the Lombard school of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. There is a large Polyptych (307) by Vincenzo Foppa.
The central panel, Madonna and Child with Angels, is a very
characteristic painting of the artist. The Madonna, stately and almost
severely simple, is yet perfectly natural, and so is the Child as He
touches the strings of the instrument held by an angel, leaning His head
as if listening to the sound. The large heads and crumpled draperies of
the angels are peculiarities which Foppa shares with the Lombard
sculptors. St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata, in the panel above, is
rather a feeble figure. The bright red and lavish use of gold in the
side panels of saints have a rich effect. The Assumption of the Virgin
(308), by Borgognone, dated 1522, is a poor work; in it all his faults
are exaggerated; there is no movement in the figures, the background
does not recede: the whole thing is absolutely lifeless. Bramantino’s
large Crucifixion (309) is very inferior to his other works in the
gallery.

The picture of the Madonna and Child, with the Doctors of the Church,
and Lodovico il Moro, his wife Beatrice, and their children kneeling
(310), has been variously attributed to Zenale, Bernardino dei Conti and
Ambrogio de Predis. It has little artistic merit, much the best part
being the portraits. The Virgin and Saints are heavy in type and coarse
in execution, showing the Leonardesque influence imposed on the native
school. Ambrogio de Predis seems to us the most probable author of this
much disputed work. Marco d’Oggiono has three pictures—St. Paul (311),
Assumption of the Virgin (312), the Archangels Michael, Raphael and
Gabriel overcoming the Devil (313). There is no genuine inspiration in
these works, nor any charm of colour or technique. We turn with relief
to Boltraffio’s interesting and well-painted portrait of the poet
Girolamo Casio (319). Martyrdom of St. Catherine of Alexandria (321), by
Gaudenzio Farrari, a crowded and confused composition, shows the
decadence of this able and facile painter.

We come to several large canvases by the family of Campi of Cremona. The
best of these is Madonna Adoring the Child (329), by Giulio Campi; the
technique is able, in the later Venetian style. Two pictures by Vincenzo
Campi—a Fruitseller and Fishseller—are Flemish in manner. Next come the
painters of Lodi, but we have not time to dwell on these productions of
the later Milanese school. In the cases are drawings of various Italian
schools.

Sala XVIII. contains productions of the late Lombard schools (sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries) that repel by their brutal realism.

In Sala XIX. we have unimportant works of the schools of Parma, Reggio
and Modena.

Sala XX. Ferrarese and Bolognese Schools.—The Ferrarese school is
represented in this gallery by some splendid pictures of the best
period. In his St. Sebastian (433) that richly imaginative artist Dosso
Dossi, with his Cinquecento enjoyment of beauty and his mastery of
dramatic effects of light and shade, has given us a picture of
enthralling interest, painted with marvellous breadth and power. This
strong young body, bound by uplifted arms to the tree, expresses the
very passion of martyrdom. This is no mere physical agony; though the
arrows visibly torture the flesh, they pierce the soul more sharply. The
dark grove, where great fruits and leaves shine out, touched by a
strange evil light, surrounds the figure with mystery and magic, which
is heightened by the glimpse of a tranquil distant landscape. Not St.
Sebastian, but a character from some Ariostean fable this seems—a young
hero in search of truth ensnared by cruel necromancy, stripped and bound
by the powers of evil. His knight’s helmet lies at his feet. The
sensuous beauty of the picture increases its dramatic interest; the
curve of the nude body, the flesh colour, incomparable in its coolness
and its pearly shadow, crossed by that swathe of green drapery—a green
all Dosso—the rich glossy leaves, the distant blue, all serve to deepen
the tragedy.

Francesco d’Este, whose portrait (431), in the character of St. George,
by Dosso, hangs beside St. Sebastian, was one of the sons of Duke
Alfonso of Ferrara and Lucrezia Borgia. The St. John Baptist (432) is
lighted as if by a fire from below, in a manner very characteristic of
Dosso.

The Adoration of the Magi (429) by Lorenzo Costa, the predella of an
altarpiece by Francia, is a good example of the master.

The great altarpiece (428) is a majestic composition, and especially
interesting as the work of that rarest painter, the Ferrarese Ercole de’
Roberti, who in the grand architectural and decorative environment of
this Madonna Enthroned shows himself faithful to the precepts of Cosimo
Tura. But the arrangement of the triple figures on the throne—St. Anne
and St. Elizabeth seated on stools on either side of the Virgin, with a
sort of pyramidal effect—and the types of the heads, especially of the
fair and regal Virgin, are very individual. The figures of St. Augustine
and of Peter the Sinner, below, complete the stately arrangement. The
beautiful harmony of red and purple and puce and gorgeous reddish gold
shows with rare splendour the Ferrarese feeling for colour.

The Correggio (427) is not one of the painter’s best works, but the
graceful Madonna has his peculiar charm; the baby is strangely small.
Two figures of saints (449) are characteristic, but rather conventional
productions by Cossa, noticeable for their decoration and the ‘lacquer
enamel’ quality of the colour. They are parts of a triptych, of which
the centre, S. Vincenzo, is in the National Gallery.

The great Annunciation (448), by Francia, is a beautiful and spacious
composition, with an exquisitely clear atmospheric effect and
picturesque background; but in the over-elaborated Angel the painter
comes perilously near the banal.

A little figure of the Crucified (447) by Cosimo Tura—a fragment
probably of a picture of St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata, is instinct
with the great Ferrarese master’s intensity of feeling and devotion.
Other and inferior painters of the school fill the rest of the room.

Sala XXI., Schools of the Romagna.—The three painters, Rondinelli, Marco
Palmezzano—who was pupil of Melozzo da Forlì—and Cotignola, are well
represented. Rondinelli has three pictures. One illustrates a legend in
the life of Galla Placidia (452), in which St. John the Evangelist
appears to her and leaves his shoe behind him as a relic. Cotignola’s
(Francesco Zaganelli) pictures are decorative and pleasant in colour,
but weak in drawing. He was assisted in Nos. 457 and 458 by his brother
Bernardino. Marco Palmezzano is the best painter of the three. The
Nativity (469) is a pleasing picture, and in the Coronation (470) the
music-making angels are charming. The Madonna and SS. John Baptist,
Peter, Domenico and Mary Magdalen (471) is a good picture, but rather
mannered in the treatment of draperies and clouds.

Sala XXII. possesses the most famous picture of the collection—the
Marriage of the Virgin, by Raphael (472). It is signed and dated 1504.
This was painted when the artist was only twenty-one. It is an
extraordinarily complete work for so young a painter. He did not set
himself new and difficult problems to solve; he was content to take the
composition of his master Perugino (fresco in the Sistine Chapel), and
with perfect artistic instinct improve it into the exquisite picture we
have before us. We cannot do better than quote Mr. Berenson. ‘Subtler
feeling for space, greater refinement, even a certain daintiness, give
this “Sposalizio” a fragrance, a freshness that are not in Perugino’s
fresco. In presence of young Sanzio’s picture you feel a poignant thrill
of transfiguring sensation, as if, on a morning early, the air cool and
dustless, you suddenly found yourself in presence of a fairer world,
where lovely people were taking part in a gracious ceremony, while
beyond them stretched harmonious distances, line on line to the
horizon’s edge.’[21] The picture is seen to full advantage, admirably
placed as it is in a room by

Footnote 21:

  B. Berenson, _The Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance_, p.
  124.

itself, where it can be well seen and thoroughly studied and enjoyed.

Sala XXIII., Central Italian Painters.—Signorelli has two pictures
here—Flagellation of Christ (476), and Madonna and Child between
Cherubims (477). There is a predella picture (483) by Eusebio di San
Giorgio, a Madonna (473) by Pacchiarotti, and other works of the
Siennese school.

Sala XXIV. contains frescoes by Bramante of Urbino, representing
Heraclites and Democritus, six men-at-arms and a singer, originally
decorating the Baron’s Hall in Casa Panigarola at Milan. These paintings
show a distinct connection with the art of Melozzo da Forlì. They are
grand monumental figures, that one feels belong to a great architectural
scheme, and cannot be properly appreciated in this small room.

Sala XXV., Painters of Umbria and the Marches.—Here we have several
interesting works, especially the very fine picture by Piero dei
Franceschi, Madonna and Saints, with Federigo da Montefeltro, Duke of
Urbino (510). This is a stately composition, where the saints are
grouped round the Madonna, and the great Duke of Urbino kneels at her
feet, while she sits with the Child sleeping easily on her knee, grand
and aloof, a being far above the passions and weakness of humanity. She
is quite unlike any other Madonna, and though not exactly beautiful,
holds one’s attention far more than many that are so. After Piero’s work
most pictures look trivial; but one can turn with pleasure to Gentile da
Fabriano’s exquisite Polyptych (497), whose flower-like beauty of colour
and line transports us into another world. There is an Annunciation
(503) by Giovanni Santi, the father of Raphael, which foreshadows the
charm so highly developed later in his son. A Madonna and Angels, and
various Saints (504) by Nicolò da Foligno. A Madonna with SS. Simon,
Guida, Bonaventura and Francis (505), by Signorelli, signed and dated
1508. In one of Timoteo Viti’s pictures, Madonna with SS. Crescenzio and
Vitale (508), the saint holding the banner is of that distinct Umbrian
type one sees in the work of the young Raphael, whose first master
Timoteo probably was.

Salas XXVI. and XXVII. contain works of the Bolognese school of the
Caracci; Sala XXVIII., works of the Roman school of the seventeenth
century; Sala XXIX., works of the Genovese school, including pictures by
Salvator Rosa. Sala XXX. and XXXI., foreign schools, mostly Flemish and
Dutch, of the seventeenth century. The remaining rooms have modern
Italian pictures.




                               CHAPTER XV
                     _Other Galleries and Museums_


 (The Poldi-Pezzoli Museum—The Ambrosiana Library and Museums—The
    Borromeo and Trivulzio Collections, etc.)

The Poldi-Pezzoli Art Museum contains an admirable collection of
pictures of the greatest period of Italian art, and artistic treasures
of various kinds, and one has the added pleasure of seeing these things
in the harmonious surroundings of a luxurious house. The very sound of
the water pleasantly dripping from the fountain in the hall as we enter
is a promise of refreshment and delight. The palace and the collections
were the generous legacy of the Cavaliere Poldi-Pezzoli to the city, and
it remains much the same as when it was a private dwelling. The somewhat
florid decorations of the rooms are very obviously of recent date.

In the downstairs rooms there are some fine sixteenth century
tapestries, antique Eastern carpets, and cases containing antique
stuffs; a few pieces of antique sculpture, and pictures, chiefly
portraits, of the late Renaissance and modern periods.

Sala Verde, at the top of the staircase, contains pictures of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; two bas-reliefs (100-101) of the
Adoration of the Magi, and St. Giuliano Killing his Parents, German work
of the sixteenth century; landscapes by Guardi, Canaletto and Zucarelli;
Joshua stopping the Sun in its Course (111), and other paintings by
Tiepolo; and a beautiful Flemish tapestry (1201) of the early fifteenth
century—the Queen of Sheba before Solomon. There are also some fine
marriage chests; two exquisite chess-boards (122, 123) of the sixteenth
century, one of them with the _stemma_ of the Visconti, and other
interesting objects.

Ante-sala.—Pictures of the late sixteenth century.

Sala Gialla.—A very ornate Seicento clock; some Oriental porcelain; two
Sèvres vases (149), etc.

Salone Dorato contains many treasures. The Madonna and Child, by
Botticelli (156), though much restored, is a lovely picture, with that
incomparable distinction of line and colour that characterise his work.
The Portrait of a Young Woman (157) is ascribed to Piero dei Franceschi,
but Verrocchio and Antonio Pollajuolo have also been suggested as the
author. The outline has the play and movement, and the character a
vivacity that one associates with Florentine painting, and the
peculiarly large and impersonal qualities that Piero gets even into his
portraits are absent. But whoever the artist may be, it is a very
attractive work. The Madonna and Child (158) is by Rafaello Caponi, a
Florentine Cinquecento painter. The Madonna Enthroned with Angels (154)
is of the fifteenth century school of Murano.

Apart from the pictures, the most precious object in the room is a
marvellous Persian Carpet (159) of the fifteenth or sixteenth century,
of large size and in perfect preservation. The beauty of the design and
the exquisite colour make this carpet a miracle of decorative art. It
was made for the feet of princes, as the legend, worked in silver round
the border, records:—_Blessed is the carpet which in a pleasant company
has become shadowed beneath the footsteps of the Shah_.

_It has sacrificed itself upon his path, as the sun does, and has
offered itself beneath his feet like a white fleece._

_This is not a carpet, it is a white rose; it is a fabric which
resembles the eyes of the very Houris...._[22] And so on.

Footnote 22:

  An Italian translation of these verses is given in the _Rassegna
  d’Arte_ (Anno iv., No. 10), and appears in the official catalogue of
  the Museum.

Another beautiful piece of work (155) is the middle portion of a
vestment of the later fifteenth century, embroidered with the Coronation
of the Virgin and two devotees kneeling at the sides.

The case in the middle of the room contains a collection of beautiful
objects of the goldsmiths’ and kindred arts, chiefly of the fourteenth,
fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries—tabernacles, paxes, reliquaries of
precious materials chiselled and adorned with enamel; cups and vases and
basins of crystal and agate; exquisitely worked spoons and forks, etc.,
etc. One very lovely pax (unnumbered) of silver, decorated with enamel,
has a Resurrection on the front—the figures in grisaille upon a blue
background—and heads of saints in medallions, and on the back the Pietà
figured in mother-of-pearl. Another pax (161 _bis_), of characteristic
Lombard workmanship, is in the form of a little tabernacle, and has
sacred subjects and figures of saints exquisitely worked in enamel. A
fourteenth century crystal cup (163) is of most graceful form and
beautiful workmanship; upon the foot episodes from the story of Tristan
and Isolda are figured in enamel. It is suggested that this may have
been a tourney prize. A cup with a cover of agate (169) and decorated
with silver gilt, chiselled and enamelled and with precious stones, is
specially noticeable for beauty of material and shape. The enamel (180)
with a representation of the Resurrection, is a very precious fifteenth
century work, probably Milanese. A tiny diptych (214) of gilded bronze
is particularly interesting for the two little figures in _niello_ on
the outside, representing Lodovico il Moro and Beatrice d’Este. Within
there are subjects depicted in enamel—St. George and the Dragon, and the
Deposition—in the style of the painter Foppa.

In the large case nearer the window there is a wonderful display of
jewellery, from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. No. 286 is a
miniature of the Duke of Monmouth. In the other large case, near the
fireplace, there are numerous treasures of Roman, Etruscan, and Greek
art. A smaller case holds gold ornaments, chiefly of the Roman epoch.
There are also in this room suits of armour, some fine pieces of
seventeenth century furniture, tapestries, bronzes, etc.

Gabinetto del Salone Dorato.—Here are pictures of the late Flemish and
Italian schools, and an Annunciation (436) of Tuscan style, attributed
to Pesellino.

Sala Nera.—Among the pictures in this room are St. Mary Magdalen (473),
attributed to Luca Signorelli, but with doubtful justice, and a very
charming little triptych (477) by Mariotto Albertinelli, Madonna and
Child, with SS. Catherine and Barbara, which shows how good his work can
be on a small scale, like that of his fellow-worker Fra Bartolommeo,
whose style he much resembles. Here are also some fine pieces of
furniture, notably a cabinet (481) of sixteenth century Italian
workmanship, and another (482) of Florentine production in the
seventeenth century.

Sala dei Vetri Antichi.—The chief interest of this room is the splendid
collection of antique Muranese glass. Many of the pieces are of very
beautiful form, some decorated with patterns in colour and gold, and
some with handles and bases of bronze or silver.

Gabinetto Dante contains a numerous collection of small artistic
objects.

Sala degli Specchi.—Here hang pictures of various Italian schools, among
others a Deposition (552) of the school of Botticelli, and a Brescian
fifteenth century work (555)—a large canvas of the Madonna Enthroned, to
whom St. Benedict presents a devotee.

Sala del Perugino.—A pleasing little picture by Perugino (603), Madonna
and Child with angels, gives its name to this room. Here are also
pictures of the Florentine school and of the school of Murano. Of the
latter the large Madonna Enthroned (589), by Antonio Vivarini, is a fine
decorative altarpiece; by Nicolò da Foligno, there is a Crucifixion
(582), with a realistic Umbrian landscape; by Stefano da Zevio, a Hermit
in the Wilderness (591). A stout monk in a black habit (598), ascribed
to Piero dei Franceschi, looks like a good portrait of a man of strong
character. In the Annunciation (599), by Marco Palmezzano, the figures
are stiff, but there is light and air in the landscape. A little picture
of a bishop (600) has the peculiar manner of Cosimo Tura.

[Illustration:

  MADONNA, by MANTEGNA (POLDI-PEZZOLI)

  _To face p. 356_]      [_Anderson, Rome_
]

Gabinetto dei Veneti.—The small picture by Mantegna is the greatest
treasure of the collection. It is the most appealing of all his Madonna
pictures. Never has the subject of mother and child been so
sympathetically expressed, even among Italian masters, unless we except
Luca della Robbia. The sleeping baby is touchingly true to nature, its
round little form under the tightly wound drapery is perfectly given,
and there is a depth of feeling in the mother’s thoughtful, almost sad
expression as she clasps Him to her, as if the very intensity of her
love gave her a sense of foreboding. It is a late work of the master,
painted with perfect mastery of form and a breadth of technique in which
there is none of the dryness of his early years. Christ with the Symbols
of the Passion and St. Francis kneeling to receive the blood in a
chalice, (620) by Carlo Crivelli, has a mystical feeling and the beauty
of a miniature painting. St. Sebastian tied to a tree (621) is also a
characteristic picture of Crivelli’s. Pietà (623), a miniature in an
ornamental Gothic frame is of the school of Murano, probably of the
Vivarini. Pietà (624) is by an imitator of Giovanni Bellini. By
Bonsignore is a good profile of an old man (627). Cariani has a small
Holy Family (613), gracious in colour and composition. Lorenzo Lotto, a
Madonna with St. John Baptist and a prophet (614). A rather stiff
altarpiece, Madonna with angels making music (610), is by Marcello
Fogolino, a painter of Vicenza.

Passage.—A portrait (634), of herself, by the Bolognese woman painter,
Sofonisba Anguissola, of the later sixteenth century, hangs here.

Sala dei Lombardi.—This room contains a good collection of the Lombard
painters, especially of the followers of Leonardo da Vinci. Madonna
_alla cuscino verde_ (602), by Andrea Solario, is a thoroughly
representative picture, not only of Solario but of the Leonardesque
school. The subject is one we see repeated continually, and the
juxtaposition of vivid colours, the very soft flesh painting and rather
grey tones melting into each other, are local characteristics. Solario,
however, is a more accomplished painter and better draughtsman than most
of the school. This picture shows a kindly feeling in the portrayal of
the simple, happy-looking mother and child, but it lacks refinement and
distinction. The bit of landscape seen through the window is lovely. The
Ecce Homo (637) is an elaborately-finished work, but leaves the
spectator cold. Two panels of saints, S. Giovanni Battista (653), dated
1499, and St. Catherine of Alexandria (657), have the Lombard heaviness
of form. The _Riposo_, dated 1515 (655), is a mature work of Solario’s.
The landscape is beautiful and the colour with the dark trees and rich
purple and gold of St. Joseph’s garments is admirable, but rather
disturbed by the over bright blue and red of the Madonna’s drapery.
Madonna and Angels (640) by Borgognone is a very sweet and refined
little picture, harmonious in colour, the child’s gold-coloured tunic
being the brightest note in the picture. Madonna (643) by Foppa has the
charm of sincere and tender sentiment. Madonna and Child, picking a
flower (642), is one of Boltraffio’s most stately Madonnas, with perfect
oval face and regular features, and dressed in richly patterned
garments. The painting is highly finished and so smooth that the flesh
looks rather like porcelain. The child is Leonardesque in type with that
exaggeration of form and modelling that is common to the master’s
followers. Portrait of Francesco Brivio (641), by Ambrogio de Predis, is
a fine portrait, one of those profiles in which he excelled.
Gianpietrino has a charming little Madonna (648), with long hair falling
each side of her face. Also by Gianpietrino, according to Morelli, is
the delightful little picture of Madonna and Child with a lamb (667), of
Leonardesque composition, attributed to Cesare da Sesto. The Marriage of
St. Catherine (663) by Bernardino Luini is a much-admired picture. There
is also a St. Jerome (652) by him. The picture of the Sorrowing Madonna
and Christ carrying the Cross (659), attributed to Luini, is considered
by Signor Venturi[23] to be the work of Solario. Besides other pictures
we have not space to dwell on, there are some beautiful wedding chests
in this room.

Footnote 23:

  _La Galleria Crespi._

Sala d’Armi contains a very fine collection of armour and weapons,
chiefly of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with a few older
specimens.

                  *       *       *       *       *

Biblioteca Ambrosiana.—This famous library was founded by Cardinal
Federigo Borromeo, a cousin of San Carlo, and Archbishop of Milan in his
turn from 1594 to 1631. He is the Cardinal Borromeo of Manzoni’s
well-known romance, the _Promessi Sposi_. A man of great virtue, he was
also a splendid patron of literature, science and art. The foundation of
a library for the free use of his fellow-citizens and of all comers was
a long-pondered scheme of the Cardinal, and for years he employed
competent scholars to collect books and manuscripts in all countries,
till he had amassed no less than fifteen thousand codices, many of
exceeding rarity, and thirty thousand printed volumes. In 1603 the
building was begun and in 1609 it was solemnly opened. Since then the
treasures of the library have increased continually by gifts and
legacies, and collections of pictures and prints, etc., have been added
to it.

The entrance to the Ambrosiana is in the Piazza della Rosa. In the
vestibule an inscription records the Founder, and another threatens with
excommunication anyone who should carry away a book.

_Biblioteca._—In the Sala Antica some of the chief treasures of the
Library are exposed to view. Here is shown a page of the precious _Codex
Atlanticus_, a volume of miscellaneous writings and drawings, chiefly of
engineering subjects, by Leonardo da Vinci, collected and bound together
by Pompeo Leoni in the latter part of the sixteenth century. Here, too,
are twelve letters written by Lucrezia Borgia to Pietro Bembo, and with
them a lock of golden hair, her gift to him, according to a long
established belief, which there is no ground for discrediting. The same
case contains a MS. of the _Divina Commedia_—late fourteenth
century—with damaged miniatures; a Cicero, with very lovely and delicate
miniatures of the early Cinquecento; a MS. with a miniatured page—St.
Barnabas baptizing the first Christians in Milan—in the realistic
Lombard manner of the sixteenth century, several books of Hours, and
some very beautiful fifteenth century bindings, Italian and French. The
famous Borromeo Book of Hours, one of the gems of the Library, is not
shown here now, and can only be seen by permission of the Librarian. It
is a little fifteenth century volume, adorned with numerous miniatures
of exquisite workmanship by Cristoforo de Predis, a native of Modena,
and apparently by another hand, perhaps more than one. On one of the
pages the Annunciation is depicted, and below are two kneeling figures,
a knight and lady, conjectured to be portraits of Conte Giovanni and
Contessa Cleofe Borromeo. Besides scenes from the New Testament there is
a calendar in the book with miniatures descriptive of the occupations of
each month. The work is very delicate and fine, distinctively North
Italian, but not heavy like the Milanese. Another case contains ancient
manuscripts—Hebrew, Greek, Arabic, Ethiopian; a page of a Gothic version
of the Bible belonging to a very precious palimpsest; two Irish
manuscripts from the monastery of Bobbio, founded by St. Columban in the
seventh century; a Syrian MS. of the eighth century in a later
Greco-Egyptian binding, covered with stamped leather; some palimpsests
and an Egyptian papyrus of B.C. 169. Deeply interesting is the copy of
Virgil, which once belonged to Petrarca, and has minute marginal notes
in his handwriting. It has a miniatured page attributed to Simone
Martini, representing in allegorical form the different works of Virgil.
On the back there is a note written by Petrarca concerning Laura. A
French MS. of the fourteenth century has exquisitely fine miniatures
representing the Vices and Virtues, and the Judgment. Among the
remaining books in this case there is one, the treatise _Regimine
Principum_, by Lucano da Parma, dedicated to Galeazzo Maria Sforza, with
a miniature of that prince, a proud figure in black and gold, with St.
Catherine.

In another case are a number of very interesting autographs, including a
letter from Galileo to Cardinal Federigo Borromeo, lauding the
Biblioteca Ambrosiana.

The Library also possesses some priceless fragments of the _Iliad_, with
paintings of the third century, the most ancient illustrated text known,
but these are not exhibited. There are reproductions of two of the
illustrations in the Guide Book of the Ambrosiana.

A small case at the end of the room holds a unique printed copy of a
letter written by Christopher Columbus on his return from the discovery
of the New World. In another are some pages of Tasso, with his autograph
corrections; an Ethiopian psaltery; an illustrated Persian MS., etc.

The Sala Incoronazione is part of an older building incorporated a
century ago with the Library. At one end the wall is covered with a
great fresco by Luini, Christ being crowned with thorns; the kneeling
figures on either side, portraits of the Brothers of the Congregation of
Santa Corona, to which the hall belonged, are very finely depicted,
those on the left hand especially. Luini painted this fresco in 1521,
with the help of an assistant, and was paid 115 lire, 9 soldi.

The Museo Settala, also on the ground floor, is open on Wednesday,
Friday, and Sunday. It contains Etruscan, Roman, and Egyptian
antiquities, and objects of mediæval art; a mineralogical collection;
medals, weapons, and curiosities of various kinds.

_Pinacoteca._—The picture galleries are on the upper floor.

Sala A.—Cabinet of the gilded bronzes contains German and Dutch
pictures. Sala B has little of importance, but one may notice two panels
by Bernardino Buttinone, St. Bonaventura (1) and St. Louis (5). By
Bartolommeo Veneto, a Madonna and Child with St. John Baptist (3), and a
Madonna picture by Bernardino Luini. Sala D contains the gem of the
collection, Botticelli’s picture of the Madonna adoring the Child, and
three angels (15). It is one of the most lovely of his Madonna pictures,
luminous in colour, full of movement, and delicate in execution. Well
placed on an easel in the middle of the room it can be seen by itself
and thoroughly enjoyed. The small picture of the Eternal Father (6), now
attributed to Timoteo Viti, is very refined; it was formerly given to
Francesco Francia, and certainly reminds one of the Ferrarese-Bolognese
school. Two pictures by Bramantino, the Virgin, with St. Ambrogio,
angels and donors (18) is in his usual manner, but the Nativity (19) is
a strange picture, and somewhat suggestive of the Northern schools,
especially the Madonna with her abnormal forehead and quaint head-dress.
The group of musicians behind are graceful figures standing up against
the light sky. The large altarpiece by Borgognone, Madonna and Saints
(23), an early work, possesses the dignity, simplicity, and devotion
which are his unfailing qualities. The characteristics of his early
period are to be seen in the straight and rather rigid figures, the
badly foreshortened angels with large heads, and in the elaborate
architectural throne and lavish use of gold. There are also by him, two
Saints (17), St. Francis, rather sentimental, and St. Elizabeth, an
elderly woman with a sympathetic face; the colour of the picture is
pleasant.

[Illustration:

  PORTRAIT OF AN UNKNOWN, BY AMBROGIO DE PREDIS(?)

  _To face p. 363_]      (AMBROSIANA)      [_Anderson, Rome_
]

Sala E.—The most important work here is the cartoon by Raphael, for the
School of Athens, his great fresco in the Vatican. This extremely
interesting study was acquired for the Ambrosiana by Cardinal Federigo
Borromeo. The figures are drawn with all the vigour and grace of the
master, and are worth careful study. One noticeable difference between
the finished fresco and the cartoon is the absence in the latter of the
figure of Heraclites. The stooping figure on the right, Archimedes, is a
portrait of Bramante, and there is a study from life of his head beside
the cartoon.

Portrait of a young woman (8), formerly ascribed to Leonardo, but given
by Morelli to Ambrogio de Predis, an attribution which is now generally
accepted. It is a charming and vivacious portrait, and certainly
superior to most of de Predis’ work, but we must remember that he
excelled in portraiture. By Leonardo it assuredly is not. The identity
of the portrait has also been much discussed. It was at one time called
Beatrice d’Este. The latest conjecture is that it is the portrait of
Bianca, natural daughter of Lodovico Sforza and wife of Galeazzo di San
Severino. The portrait of a man holding a scroll of music (19), is
attributed in the catalogue to Leonardo; we think, however, it is more
likely to be also by Ambrogio de Predis, whose work was much influenced
by Leonardo, and it has all the characteristics of his painting, the
heavy modelling, and hot dark colour. It is an interesting and
thoughtful face, presumably a musician, and perhaps the portrait of the
celebrated Franchino Gaffurio, master of the choir of the Duomo of
Milan. Holy Family and St. Elizabeth (3), from Leonardo’s design (the
cartoon in Burlington House), is a well-known picture by Luini, but like
all imitations of the master, it is quite superficial, and loses
entirely the deep and mysterious significance of the original, so that
one can hardly help wishing his designs had not been so much copied. The
youthful Saviour (9) has a certain beauty and refinement, but shows
Luini’s weakness in drawing, especially in the large and clumsy hand.
St. John with a Lamb (10) is a very charming picture of a little boy
hugging a lamb. The Way to Calvary (18), by Giovanni Cariani, is an
interesting example of this Bergamesque artist. Other noticeable
pictures in this room are, the Presentation in the Temple (33), by
Tiepolo; Adoration of the Magi (42), ascribed to Titian; Holy Family
(43), by Bonifazio Veronese, and a full-length portrait by Gio. Battista
Moroni.

Sala F contains inferior pictures of the late Lombard school; there is,
besides, a pleasing altarpiece, attributed to Pinturicchio (58), though
surely by a North Italian hand.

Sala G.—This room is filled with drawings; there are various studies,
doubtfully attributed to Leonardo and drawings by his followers; among
the latter an excellent pencil-drawing of a child’s profile by Ambrogio
de Predis or Bernardino dei Conti; it is the portrait of Massimiliano
Sforza, eldest son of Lodovico il Moro, and probably the study for his
portrait in the large altarpiece in the Brera; some well-drawn heads by
Boltraffio; a drawing by Luini of Tobias and the Angel, and the Marriage
of the Virgin by Gaudenzio Ferrari. There are two small profiles of
Prospero Colonna and the Marchese di Pescara, and some caricatures. In a
case there is a reproduction of the _Codex Atlanticus_ of Leonardo.

Sala H.—Here are more drawings and a collection of prints. In the
central case is a drawing by Raphael for the figure of the Virgin in the
Dispute of the Sacrament; on the back of the sheet is a pen-sketch of a
group. There are other drawings attributed to various North Italian
artists, and to Albert Dürer. The prints include specimens of Italian,
French, English, Flemish and German schools.

                  *       *       *       *       *

Milan is rich in private art collections, some the fruit of a liberal
patronage of the fine arts by her wealthy and noble families in the
past, others brought together by distinguished connoisseurs in the
present day. The famous Borromeo Collection is housed in the old family
palace, and is open to the public on Tuesday and Friday afternoons.
Among a number of works of the best Lombard period there is the
Abbondanza of Gian Pietrino, an allegorical figure much resembling his
well-known Magdalenes, with beautiful hands displayed in somewhat
affected pose. The flesh colour is luminous and golden, not heavy and
dark as so often with this painter. A painting by Boltraffio, after
Leonardo’s Madonna of the Rocks, has been spoiled by cleaning. There is
a very charming small picture by the same artist, of a woman’s head,
with golden hair and a crown of leaves. A little Madonna, attributed in
the gallery to Leonardo, is by one of his followers, perhaps Ambrogio de
Predis. A small picture by Borgognone, grey in hue, shows his early
manner, derived from Foppa. There are several others by this artist. By
Filippo Mazzola is the line realistic head of a Young Man in a dark
crimson cap and black dress, seen against a green background. Another
very interesting portrait, of Camillo Trivulzio, is by the rare painter,
Bernardino de’ Conti. It shows a man in a red cap and red dress, with
black curling hair—a very serious profile, full of character and
thought, and finely realised by the artist. The Madonna and Child, with
two Hermit Saints, by Gaudenzio Ferrari, is a large and simple
composition, full of the painter’s geniality, but without the
exaggeration and vulgarity he often falls into. The Madonna is a
beautiful image of maternity, stately and sweet, with golden hair simply
arranged; such a face, typically North Italian, you may sometimes see
to-day among the peasant women in and around Milan. By the same artist
is St. Roch as a pilgrim in full travelling costume of the sixteenth
century. Luini is represented by Susannah and an Elder, of soft morbid
tones, and by Madonna and Child and little St. John, in a landscape of
hills and trees and water—a thoroughly characteristic work.

Of other Schools there is Christ on the Cross, by Lorenzo Lotto; St.
Catherine, by Bartolommeo Veneto; Christ bearing the Cross, by
Pinturicchio; and a Madonna, by Piero di Cosimo. There are many
interesting things in the Museum besides pictures, including relics of
San Carlo.

The important Trivulzio Collection, in the family palace, opposite to
St. Alessandro, can only be visited by permission of the owner, Prince
Trivulzio. It contains a fine Mantegna—the Assumption of the
Virgin—painted in 1497; Portrait of a Man, by Antonello da Messina;
Birth of the Virgin, by the Siennese Sano di Pietro; Madonna and Angels,
by Pier’ di Cosimo, etc., and a very interesting portrait of Lodovico il
Moro, by Boltraffio. Here is also preserved the Gothic tomb of Azzo
Visconte, originally in S. Gottardo, and some splendid tapestries—the
Twelve Months of the Year—of the Renaissance period, and of Lombard
production. The fine library is rich in the possession of a manuscript
by Leonardo, known as the _Codex Trivulziana_, and of a fragment of the
precious _Libro di Gesù_, in which are portraits of Lodovico il Moro and
his son Massimiliano, aged five, miniatured by Ambrogio de Predis.

The other private collections not being open to the public hardly come
within our province; we may perhaps be permitted to mention Signor
Crespi’s (Via Borgo Nuovo), a particularly fine collection, which has
been fully illustrated in a monograph by Sig. Adolfo Venturi, with
reproductions of the pictures.[24] It contains the very fine portrait of
a woman, variously ascribed to Titian and Giorgione, but given by
Venturi to Pordenone; a very interesting early Correggio—the
Presepio—and a small Madonna, by the same master; a Madonna of Gio.
Bellini, also an early work of great beauty; a Holy Family, by Lorenzo
Lotto, in which the Virgin is one of his most subtle presentments of
feminine character; the Flight into Egypt, also by Lotto; Victory of the
Gonzaga over the Buonacorsi, with a very interesting view of Mantua, by
Domenico Morone; a fine portrait of a man attributed to Andrea Solari,
but, according to Venturi, by Bartolommeo Veneto. The Milanese school is
also well represented, and there are many other works of value.

Footnote 24:

  _La Galleria Crespi._

The well-known connoisseur, Dr. Gustavo Frizzoni, also has a small, but
very choice collection of pictures, chiefly of the North Italian and
Venetian schools.




                              CHAPTER XVI
                             _The Castello_


 “La miglior fortezza che sia è non essere odiato dal
    popolo.”—MACCHIAVELLI.

In the west of the city a vast red brick building, towering against the
sky, closes the wide vista of the modern Via Dante. It stands for that
storied stronghold and palace of the Visconti and Sforza, the Castello
di Porta Giovia, whose rapidly vanishing remains, mutilated, ruined and
buried beneath the additions and incrustations of five centuries of
changing circumstance, have been very recently dug out and restored and
rebuilt into the present interesting semblance of the fifteenth century
original.

The Castello was first built by Galeazzo II. Visconte, in the latter
half of the fourteenth century. Galeazzo’s stronghold incorporated one
of the thirteenth century gates, the Porta Giovia—or, in Milanese,
_Zobia_—which had kept the name of the corresponding gate in the Roman
walls, named Giovia in honour of the Emperor Diocletian Jovius. It
served at first solely for defence, and as a prison. Only a few years
after its erection Galeazzo’s subtle son secured within its walls his
first great prey—Bernabò Visconte, his uncle and fellow-sovereign. The
fortress did not then extend beyond the city walls; these with the moat
formed its defence towards the country. But Gian Galeazzo constructed a
second citadel beyond the walls and moat, enlarging the enclosure to the
dimensions which they occupy to-day—and enclosing Porta Giovia and a
portion of the city walls in the new precincts.

The Castello, so increased and strengthened, became the chief support of
the tyrants of Milan. Its possession ensured dominion of the city. When
Duke Giovanni Maria was murdered, the fortress was faithfully held
against all attacks by Vincenzo Marliano for his lawful successor,
Filippo Maria, who was able to enter through it into the seditious city
at the head of an army and force the factions to accept his rule. This
last of the Visconte sovereigns made his dwelling in the innermost keep
of the Castle in gloomy seclusion, imprisoned by his own fears. His
tyranny and dark habit of life invested the Castle with horror for his
subjects, and immediately after his death they deliberately tore the
great building down, stone by stone, at great cost. Only the foundations
were left standing.

But for a very brief time did the Milanese see the free sky unobstructed
by menacing towers. On the overthrow of the Ambrosian republic and the
accession of Francesco Sforza, the Castle began to be rebuilt, and
before long the great fortress, enclosed within much stronger defences
than before, was again in existence. It is this Sforza building, with
the additions made by Francesco’s sons, which we see in the restored
Castello of to-day, though the brave new battlements and towers give a
poor idea of the substance of those walls which amazed King René of
Anjou when he visited the works with the Duchess Bianca Maria in 1453,
and of a building celebrated by many writers as the strongest and
proudest in the world.

The first architects—or _ingegneri_—were Filippo da Ancona and Giovanni
da Milano. The latter was succeeded by Jacopo da Cortona in 1451. A year
later the building was far enough advanced for the Castellan, Foschino
degli Attendoli, to take possession. The day of his installation was of
mystical import for the Duke, who chose a day approved by his
astrologers, when the moon was waxing. Francesco, who desired to make
his building beautiful as well as strong, engaged the Florentine
architect Filarete to design and adorn a lofty entrance tower in the
walls facing citywards. This tower, destroyed long ago by accident and
time, is now represented by the modern Torre d’Umberto, in which it must
be supposed that the architect has somewhat freely interpreted the
scanty evidence in contemporary documents and drawings of the appearance
of the original.[25]

Footnote 25:

  A fifteenth century graphite drawing of Milan on a wall of the old
  monastery of Chiaravalle, a short distance from the city, shows the
  form of the castle at that time.

The usual quarrels arose between Filarete and his Lombard
fellow-architects, whom the Tuscan scorned as mere masons. Their
jealousy and impatience defeated his ideas, and he was finally compelled
to abandon the work entirely to them. The Duke’s decorative projects
indeed came to little. His order to Jacopo da Cortona to make windows,
_of such beauty of style and form as a work like this demands_, in the
outer façade was never fulfilled, perhaps because of the inconvenience
of such openings in a defensive curtain, and it was left to the restorer
in these peaceful days to insert the Gothic windows—elaborately
ornamented in imitation of some of the old ones still remaining in other
parts of the building—which now adorn the front.

After the first the work proceeded slowly, hindered by the quarrels of
the architects, the irregularity of payments, and the dishonesty of
those in charge. In 1454 the Duke’s military engineer, Bartolommeo Gadio
of Cremona, was appointed to the chief post, which he held to the
satisfaction of three successive despots till his death in 1484. Duke
Francesco was destined never to inhabit himself this building which he
had watched with such ceaseless interest, but when he died in 1466 it
was complete in all its main features. Within the great walls which
flanked Filarete’s tower and were guarded at the angles by two massive
round towers lay the vast outer court, with fortified side gates, as
well as the main entrance in the central tower. At the other end of this
piazza rose a second mighty curtain of masonry, behind which lay the
citadel, containing the Corte Ducale on the north side, and on the south
a strongly defended inner enclosure, the Rochetta or innermost keep, the
place of retreat in extremity. In this form we see the Castle to-day,
though with all the defensive apparel which frowned from gates and tower
and walls gone.

On the accession of Galeazzo to the dukedom, the Corte Ducale was
completed with the utmost haste for his reception, and having settled
himself there, the young tyrant gave rein to his extravagant passion for
gorgeous decoration. While keeping architects and builders still
continually at work on his new palace, he called painters from all parts
of his state to fresco its walls, himself supplying the subjects. There
is little doubt that everything possible to mortals was done to please a
prince whose imperious will was supported by the torture chamber and the
executioner, and that the palace was soon gay with the colour which he
loved. Within its sumptuous halls Galeazzo entertained his guests with
lavish splendour. Here Cardinal Pietro Riario was accorded pontifical
state on his visit in 1473, and lay in a chamber so superbly adorned
that no one had ever seen another so magnificent and princely, and here
he and his host built up fantastic political schemes, which were to make
the one monarch of Peter’s throne and the other king of all
Italy—schemes drowned but a few days later in a poisoned cup offered to
the mad young priest at a Venetian banquet.

The Duke continued the construction of the Rocchetta also, which his
father had left unfinished, and gave orders for the decoration of the
great Sala della Palla on its north-east side. But it is with the Corte
Ducale that the fateful memories of this prince are especially
associated. Thither he returned on the Feast of St. Thomas, 1476, with
the glory of a victorious campaign freshly investing him, yet abstracted
and pensive, possessed with a sense of the nearness of death, so that he
bid the singers of his chapel to repeat every day in the midst of the
joyful celebrations of the season, the mournful cry from the Office of
the Dead, _Maria Mater Gratiæ, Mater Misericordiæ_.... In the painted
halls behind the chapel the usual Christmas ceremonies were carried out,
and in the Sala _dei Fazoli_ the Yule log was solemnly lighted upon the
hearth in the presence of the tyrant and his family, and of all the
great feudatories of state. In the Sala delle Columbine—painted with
doves—the Duke, clad in a long crimson robe, entertained his courtiers
on Christmas Day, and discoursed on the greatness of Casa Sforza,
pointing out with unconscious irony how firmly its fortunes were assured
in the many descendants of his father Francesco then existing in health
and prosperity. We may picture his tall figure on the following day,
clad in the doublet of crimson satin lined with sable, for which, with
characteristic vanity, he had cast aside his cuirass, fearing to appear
too stout if he wore the armour beneath; and in the long hose, one
crimson, one white, worn by the princes of Milan, passing through the
loggia, which still exists, though much restored, and down the great
staircase into the courtyard, on his way to attend Mass in S. Stefano.
He had kissed his little sons, and parted from them with a strange
hesitation—this man who, as his daughter Caterina proudly declared,
_never knew fear_. Mounting his horse in the outer court, he rode out
beneath the Tower of Filarete, followed by a gorgeous throng of
courtiers, and his brilliant figure disappears from the Castello for
ever. Later on the same day a messenger passed out of the gate charged
by Bona with three rings, a turquoise, a ruby, and a precious seal, and
with a vest of white cloth of gold, for the adornment of his body, which
lay laced with twenty-three dagger wounds, in the Canonica of S.
Stefano.

With the death of Galeazzo, the historic interest of the Castello shifts
to the Rocchetta. This inner keep has remained more in its old state
than the Corte Ducale, and is the most picturesque part of the castle
to-day. The cortile is one of those characteristic colonnaded buildings
which are generally described as Bramantesque in Milan. Two of the sides
of the quadrangle, however—to the left of and facing the entrance from
the outer court—are of older date, having been built by Francesco and
Galeazzo Maria respectively. The columns and capitals show the character
of the early Renaissance in Milan; upon the capitals are carved the
shields and various devices of the dukes. The other part was not
finished till later. The lofty tower at the north-east angle, called the
Torre di Bona, was built during the brief regency of Galeazzo’s widow,
when Cecco Simonetta hastened to complete the defences of the Rocchetta
in order to ensure her authority. This measure, however, only served for
her undoing at the hands of Lodovico il Moro, who, having taken
advantage of her weakness and folly to possess himself of the Rocchetta,
the person of the little Duke, and, in consequence, of the supreme
government of the state, made his abode in this, the heart and key of
the whole stronghold.

During the first years of his rule Lodovico did little to the Castle
beyond completing its defences. But as time went on he allowed himself
to assume the splendour of a reigning prince, and to satisfy an artistic
appetite as eager as Galeazzo’s and ordered by a finer discrimination.
The great artists whom he called to his court were set to work to make
the palace such a home of art and beauty as the world has rarely seen.
Their services were required not only for lasting work, but to design
the ephemeral decorations of the gorgeous state ceremonies in which the
regent delighted to display the wealth at his command. The magnificent
decorations for the coming of the young Duke’s bride, Isabella of
Aragon, in 1489, were designed, it is said, by Leonardo da Vinci. The
regent’s own approaching marriage with Beatrice d’Este caused a great
ferment of artistic activity during the next year in the Rocchetta in
preparation for her habitation there. With despotic impatience Lodovico
summoned all the best “painters of histories”—_depinctori de
istoriade_—to come to Milan within two days of his order on pain of
heavy fines, and show designs for the decoration of the Sala della
Palla. He himself describes the room in a letter to his brother Cardinal
Ascanio. The ceiling was blue, with golden stars, in similitude of the
heavens, and the walls were covered with pictures on canvas representing
the exploits of Francesco Sforza, whose image on horseback beneath a
triumphal arch was depicted at the upper end.

With the advent of Beatrice d’Este the Rocchetta became the scene of an
incomparable gaiety. The young princess filled it with new life. Her
extraordinary capacity for enjoyment never knew satiety, not even in the
lengthiest of state functions, which she enlivened by teasing the hoary
ambassadors who occupied the place of honour beside her. In the
beautiful rooms prepared for her in the south-west side of the court she
lived her brief enchanted existence in the midst of the most exquisite
environment which her husband’s wealth and devotion and the fine art of
the Renaissance could create for her.

[Illustration: THE ROCCHETTA, CASTELLO]

How difficult it is to-day, in this exhumed corpse of her old home,
these dry bones of the past, denuded of all their old richness of detail
and decoration, to realise that vivid young presence. Yet the sun shines
gloriously in the wide cortile this afternoon, making a stately pattern
of light and shade in the arcades, and we recognise at least in the fair
and spacious proportions of the building and the grace of sculptured
column and curving arch, that Renaissance beauty of architecture which
made it once a worthy setting for such a prince and princess as Lodovico
il Moro and Beatrice d’Este.

During his regency the Moro spent enormous sums on the various works
which he undertook in the Castle. He formed a vast piazza around it, in
the midst of which he apparently intended to place Leonardo’s great
equestrian statue of Duke Francesco. The clay model of this statue was
in fact set up there on the occasion of Bianca Maria Sforza’s marriage
with the Emperor Maximilian, and remained there till, with the passing
of the Moro’s ephemeral glory, it too perished for the wanton amusement
of a foreign invader. In 1494, when the death of Gian Galeazzo removed
the last shadowy limitation of Lodovico’s sovereignty, the tyrant
pressed on with new eagerness the incessant labours of his architects
and engineers on the great building. The Rocchetta was finally completed
by a portico on the north-east side; and among many other alterations
and additions a set of exquisite camerini opening into a loggia were
built across a bridge over the moat on the north-east side of the Corte
Ducale. The picturesque exterior of this structure, which has been
attributed to Bramante—groundlessly, it appears—may be seen in restored
form to-day. The great gardens which extended on the north and west of
the Castle were a special object of the Moro’s care. He enlarged them
continually, absorbing without mercy all the Naboths’ vineyards
adjacent. Both Leonardo and Bramante were employed by him at this time
for various works in the Castello—chiefly of defence and utility—though
Leonardo was also charged with the decoration of rooms in his character
of painter. There are jottings in his notebooks referring to work of
this sort, estimates in fact of the cost of the materials and labour
required. Other existing documents show him frescoing the Sala delle
Asse and a certain Saletta Negra in the Corte Ducale. But in spite of
the most painstaking research and every effort of restoration, there is
nothing now remaining in these rooms which can be considered Leonardo’s
handiwork. Neither of Bramante is there any undoubted trace left, except
a precious fragment of a painting in one of the rooms of the Rocchetta.

The sudden death of Beatrice in the early days of 1497 extinguished all
the sunshine in the Castello. The labours of builders and artists still
continued upon it. But it was to works of defence that the thoughts of
the Duke were compelled now to turn almost exclusively. The peril of the
French threatened the throne of the Sforza. Leonardo and the others were
occupied in 1498 and 1499 in strengthening the fortifications and
inventing new engines of defence, and the Rocchetta especially was
rendered so strong that it was practically impregnable. Yet all this
labour and care served only for the ruin of the Moro, and the advantage
of his enemies. Afraid to trust himself within it, as we have seen, he
abandoned it at the critical moment, leaving it in the hands of his
faithless Castellan Bernardino da Corte, and deluding himself with the
belief that he was turning his back upon it for an hour only, to return
in triumph to its relief, he passed out of the gates for ever.

With the departure of Lodovico Sforza ended the good days of the
Castello. Surrendered by Bernardino da Corte to the French, it was
sacked of all its wonderful contents. Bernardino claimed as his share of
the spoil all that Lodovico had not removed of the famous Sforza
treasure, including priceless works of the goldsmiths’ art. Gian Giacomo
Trivulzio seized the splendid tapestries. All the exquisite accessories
of Beatrice’s short life, her costly robes, her instruments of music,
her jewels, her beautiful books, were rudely shared between the various
spoilers. What became of the pictures is unknown. The French captains
occupied her private apartments, her delicate camerini, and the
beautiful halls and courts where life had been practised as a fine art,
were given up to coarse and drunken jollity, and defiled by the foul
habits of the invaders. How deplorable the change in the eyes of the
Italian princes and ambassadors who waited with servile deference upon
Louis XII. during his stay in Milan is shown by many records. _In the
castello there is nothing but dirt and foulness_, says a Venetian who
was present then, _such as Signor Lodovico would not have allowed for
the whole world_.

The Castle had now to serve the grim purposes of war, not of art and
pleasure. For these it was well fitted, in the hands of determined
defenders. The French chronicler, Jean d’Auton, who was in the train of
Louis XII., describes with admiration its immense strength, its broad
moats, its towers, ramparts, walls and outworks, its fortified gates,
its sally ports and posterns, with the impregnable Rocchetta in its
midst. _If their effeminate stomachs had been swelled by manly hearts_,
says he, speaking of Lodovico’s garrison, _well might they have held it
long against every human power, for they had in their hands one of the
most advantageous places in the world.... In such keeping is it now_, he
adds, _that, in spite of all the winds, in every corner of its garden,
the noble fleur-de-lys shall flower for ever_. The fleur-de-lys was not,
however, so fadeless as he boasted. But it bloomed undisturbed for
twelve years, during which period the palace once or twice knew
splendour and gaiety once more, as in 1507, when Louis XII. held his
court there for a short time, and was waited on by cardinals, princes,
and distinguished men from all parts of Italy. Then it was that Isabella
d’Este danced with the king in the great ball-room in the Rocchetta,
where her dead sister had presided. There, too, was Galeazzo di San
Severino, once the most intimate friend of the now captive Moro and his
wife, and now Grand Ecuyer to the usurper. The court poets, the
musicians sang their venal praises as gaily for the new as for the old
master, Leonardo, too, was there, in the service of the French king. For
him one tyrant passed and another came; art alone endured.

The ravages in the palace were concealed by the gorgeous decorations.
Two years later the king came again, and the company on this occasion
was so superb that the meanest dresses were of brocade. These were but
temporary liftings of the gloom. In 1512 the castle was besieged by the
Holy League, and the French turned out. Again in 1515 it was retaken by
the French, and the weak young Duke Massimiliano Sforza was replaced by
the splendid Francis I., who rode in, fresh from his victory in the
Battle of the Giants, beneath the usual arches of triumph. In 1521 a
terrific explosion of gunpowder, lit it is said by a thunderbolt from a
serene sky, destroyed the great Torre di Filarete, and killed the
Castellan and a number of the garrison. A few months later the Castle
was besieged by Charles V.’s army, and after fourteen months of heroic
endurance, the French were again expelled. The reign of Francesco II.
Sforza followed with all its terrible vicissitudes of war and siege and
Spanish occupation. Bombardments, the necessity for new defences and
alterations, the polluting presence of the Spaniards and lanzknechts
wrecked ever more and more the proud habitation of the Sforza. A mocking
reflection of its old glory brightened it for a few years after Duke
Francesco’s reconciliation with the Emperor in 1530, and one or two
splendid pageants were added to the long succession of gorgeous
spectacles of which it had been the scene under the Sforza. These ended
in 1535 in the melancholy ceremony of the last Duke’s funeral, when his
dead body, or rather an image of it, arrayed in crimson velvet and
scarlet hose, and a mantle of richest golden brocade, and crowned with
the ducal beretta, was borne forth beneath a canopy of cloth of gold, by
the doctors of the University, preceded by an endless train of friars
and monks and clergy and black-hooded mourners carrying torches, and
followed by kinsmen, ambassadors and nobles in sable robes reaching to
the ground. The real body was carried out quietly to the Duomo the same
evening. Thus in symbolic show and unreal grandeur the short-lived
dynasty of the Sforza vanished out of this great fabric of its creation.

From this time the Castello ceased to be the chief palace of a sovereign
prince. Under the Spaniards its precincts were enlarged and strengthened
in the second half of the sixteenth century by an immense outer
quadrangle of fortifications which completely altered its aspect. The
changing conditions of warfare, and the advance of the science of
fortification, brought continual additions and changes, and many of the
beautiful constructions of the Sforza period were ruthlessly sacrificed.
Yet the Castello remained for long one of the famous sights of Europe,
and is described with admiration by many travellers.

In 1800 the fortifications built by the Spaniards were destroyed, and
only the old Sforza nucleus remained, abandoned to natural decay, and
converted later into barracks. It is from this fate that its ruins have
been rescued and built up into the imposing edifice of to-day.

The stately halls of the Corte Ducale are now the home of the
archæological and artistic collections of the municipality. We have only
space to mention shortly some of the most interesting objects as we pass
through the rooms.

Sala I., once the office of the ducal chancellors, contains prehistoric,
Etruscan, Greek and Roman antiquities, mostly dug up in Milan and its
province. The beautiful torso of a Venus, with fragments of a Cupid and
marine accessories forming a group with her, is the most precious relic
yet drawn from the grave of imperial Milan. Another treasure is the base
decorated with graceful fresco paintings, in excellent preservation, of
Ceres, Fortune, Hercules and Victory.

Sala II., containing Lombard sculptures from the sixth to the thirteenth
centuries shows the complete decay of the old Roman tradition and the
rude early stages of the new era of art. The most interesting objects
historically, and also as evidence of the extraordinarily barbarous
state of Lombard sculpture in the twelfth century, are the bas-reliefs
from the old Porta Romana, one of the gates built by the Milanese in
1171. They represent the return of the citizens after their expulsion by
Barbarossa, and in the rows of rudely carved figures on the first
pilaster we see on one side the Milanese knights and men-at-arms
entering a gate, with the name Mediolanum above, marshalled by a priest
bearing a banner; on another side the soldiers of the allied cities,
issuing from gates, with Brisia (Brescia) and Cremona marked above; on
another, women and horsemen and priests carrying the cross. A boastful
inscription records the authors of the sculptures, Anselmo and Gherardo,
and proclaims one a new Dædalus, the other as being _pollice docto_, of
cunning hand! On the other pilaster St. Ambrose is represented with
scourge in hand driving out the Arians, and on another side are the
citizens in procession, men with tools and chattels, women with babies.

A large figure astride a devil, supposed to be a satirical portrait of
Barbarossa, was once on the same gate, together with an insulting figure
of the Empress which is also in this room. Here is, besides that
precious memorial of Milan’s freedom, the Stone of the Milanese Consuls,
once fixed also on Porta Romana, a tablet recording the return of the
people to their city in 1167, and the erection of the towers and gates,
together with the names of the consuls.

The ceiling of this hall—one of the state rooms of the Sforza—shows
traces of Renaissance painting—Cupids holding shields.

Sala III.—Fourteenth century sculpture by the Campionese masters. Here
is the great sepulchral monument of Bernabò Visconte, with an equestrian
statue of him on the top, executed in his lifetime, probably by Bonino
da Campione, the sculptor of the tomb of Cansignorio at Verona, which it
resembles in style. In the reliefs the Pisan traditions of Giovanni da
Balduccio are followed, but with the inferior ability and the heaviness
and rigidity of the local school, and modified also by a tendency
towards realistic expression and elaboration of the draperies, which
develops later into the mannerism of the fifteenth century Lombards. The
smaller monument of Bernabò’s wife, Regina della Scala, is by the same
school. The Dead Christ upon the front is, however, a more artistic
piece of work than the same subject on Bernabò’s tomb. The droop of the
head and fall of the arms is expressed with truth and feeling, and the
figures of Luke and John are excellent in their dignity and simplicity.
The vaulted roof of this room is decorated with a fifteenth century
fresco of the Resurrection by an inferior Lombard painter, and with the
arms and initials of Galeazzo Maria Sforza.

Sala IV.—Works of the Campionese masters, among them the groups of
Madonna and Saints, once upon the old Porta Orientale and Porta Romana.
In the cortile is set up the magnificent marble portal of the palace
built by Pigello Portinari in the reign of Francesco Sforza, to
accommodate the Medicean Bank, and not long since pulled down. This
beautifully proportioned doorway is attributed to Michelozzo. In the
spandrils are profile busts of Duke Francesco and Bianca Maria. The
heavy figures on the outer sides of the door are additions by some
Lombard sculptor.

Sala V. consists of the upper half of the old ducal chapel. It still
preserves, in much damaged condition, the ceiling fresco of God the
Father in a blue sky with golden stars, which Galeazzo Maria commanded
to be painted, and for which there was great competition between the
court artists. It was finally done, in part at least, by Bonifazio
Bembo, Stefano de’ Fedeli and Gio. Montorfano. A Resurrection is also
dimly visible, and beneath the vaulting the Virgin and Angel of the
Annunciation, with Saints half obliterated on the walls below. The room
contains sculpture of the early fifteenth century, and an exquisite
Renaissance doorway at the head of the room, and another from the palace
of Ippolita Sforza in Piazza S. Giovanni in Conca, at the entrance into
Sala X.

Sala VI.—The old Sala delle Asse—at present empty—has a grand ceiling
decoration, purporting to be a restoration of the decoration done by
Leonardo in this room for Lodovico il Moro, of which some supposed
traces were discovered here.

Sala VII.—This, called the Sala dei Ducali, from the ducal shields with
which the ceiling is painted, contains sculpture of the late fifteenth
century. Here are some of the characteristic productions of the Milanese
Renaissance sculptors, among them a tondo of the Nativity, an early and
attractive work by Amadeo, in which the mannerisms, such as the
paper-like folds of his draperies, are not yet unpleasantly evident;
four pilasters, with reliefs attributed to Tommaso Cazzaniga; a little
tabernacle in the window representing St. Sebastian, now attributed to
Amadeo, to whom is also ascribed a little bas-relief of St. Cristopher,
carrying a vivacious infant with a large head. There is also here a
beautiful tabernacle, attributed to the Maestro di San Tommaso (so
called from a work by him in S. Tommaso at Venice), and a bas-relief by
the Florentine Agostino di Duccio.

Sala VIII.—The Sala delle Columbine of Galeazzo Maria’s time is
decorated with the favourite ducal device of the dove in the midst of
rays, and the motto A Bon Droit. It is devoted to the works of Amadeo
and the sculptors of his time. Here are some characteristic pieces by
the Mantegazza brothers, two kneeling saints, angular and unbeautiful,
and four bas-reliefs from the old façade of S. Satiro, representing
Sibyls, and the creation of Adam and Eve. In these a predilection for
long and angular contours and exaggeratedly complicated folds are united
to an energetic, almost violent expression. Two kneeling angels, once
attributed to the Mantegazza, are probably by Amadeo, by whom also are
the tondi with the Virgin and the Angel of the Annunciation, and
probably the head of a boy, placed in the middle of the room, broad and
realistic in style, and of vivacious expression, but without beauty. Of
rich and exuberant fancy are the exquisite arabesques on some marble
fragments supposed to belong to the Targhetta monument in the Duomo,
sculptured by Amadeo. A tondo of the Nativity shows the fully developed
manner of this master. There is also a bas-relief of Cain and Abel by
Amadeo, as well as other things by him and his fellow sculptors.

Sala IX.—The Sala degli _Scarlioni_—of the Zigzags—painted with red and
white stripes, contains sculpture of the rather later period of il
Bambaia and Fusina. Here is Bambaia’s famous work, the recumbent statue
of Gaston de Foix, from the hero’s monument in Sta. Marta, which was
broken up and sold at the demolition of that church. The head is of
classic beauty, and the whole figure shows a depth and sincerity of
feeling to which we are hardly accustomed in this able but usually cold
and uninspired artist. There are smaller fragments of the decoration of
the same tomb on a stand close by. The casts in the cases are from
reliefs also intended for this monument and now dispersed in various
collections; they show in the detached style of the ornamentation and
the confused design, a desire for novelty, unrestrained by artistic
feeling. There are other works by this master, some of a classic grace,
besides a number of other interesting things.

Sala X.—The lower half of the Capella Ducale exhibits a fine collection
of the characteristic terra-cotta ornamentation of North Italy. In this
delightfully plastic material, so rich and picturesque in colour, the
Lombard decorative artists found a most happy medium for their art,
which for the play of its exuberant gaiety and fancy needed a less
severe material than marble. This wealth of exquisite fragments of
decoration from old houses and convents gives some idea of the beauty
which clothed the buildings of this city and its neighbours in the
Gothic and Renaissance periods. Here are set up windows with rich
mouldings such as may still be seen here and there about the city, but
more and more rarely as time goes on and the beautiful old buildings
fall one by one in that dreadful sounding process, the _sventramento_ of
the old crowded quarters. Here are some remains of the lately destroyed
house of the Missaglia, a famous family of armourers in the fifteenth
century, whose monogram appears upon a capital, and fragments from the
beautiful Banco de’ Medici, of which some drawings are also shown. The
charming fresco of little Gian Galeazzo Sforza, reading Cicero, by
Bramantino, now in the Wallace Collection, came from this palace.

Mounting by the grand staircase and passing through the Loggia di
Galeazzo Maria, we enter the great Sala Verde of the ducal days, which
now contains a fine collection of majolica; ivories of the Roman and
Mediæval eras; Limoges enamels; some beautiful sixteenth and seventeenth
century glass, besides other things.

Sala II.—Here are some very beautiful crucifixes and sacred vessels,
examples of goldsmiths’ work of the Gothic and Renaissance periods;
bronzes of later date; seventeenth century tapestries, etc.

Sala III. and Sala IV. contain carved and inlaid furniture—cornices,
panels of altarpieces, etc. A carved altar frame of richest Renaissance
style, with little paintings of saints at the corners, is a Lombard
production of the fifteenth century.

Sala Milano.—This room is chiefly occupied with drawings and paintings
of the buildings of old Milan, and mementoes of her history. Beneath the
ceiling are ranged charming fresco portraits of the Sforza, by Luini,
taken from a house in Corso Magenta. They are of course chiefly fancy
presentments of those historic personages. The great silken standard of
St. Ambrogio, partly needlework, partly painted in tempera, of the
sixteenth century, hangs on the wall. A very interesting little painting
on wood, much damaged, depicts Galeazzo Maria Sforza, his son Gian
Galeazzo, and lastly Lodovico il Moro, following one another in order of
rank on horseback, fully armed and accompanied by their pages. Their
arms and special devices are painted on the trappings of their horses.
It is a work evidently of Galeazzo Maria’s time.

Sala VII.—Here we enter the Pinacoteca, which contains a small but very
valuable collection of the Lombard and other North Italian Schools.

Martyrdom of S. Sebastian by Vincenzo Foppa is an impressive work. The
artist’s tendency to dark and grey tones is carried to an extreme, and
the effect is gloomy, almost tragic. St. Ursula and her Virgins by
Moretto. The saint in her flowing draperies, holding the banners, is a
noble figure, and the colour is good, with that opaque quality peculiar
to this Brescian artist.

Sala II.—Large altarpiece by Borgognone, Madonna with SS. Sebastian and
Jerome, is in his usual gentle and devout manner. Buttinone, a series of
small scenes from the New Testament, showing all his peculiar
mannerisms; the action of the rather grotesque figures is decidedly
vigorous. Vincenzo Foppa, a small Madonna picture, has all the painter’s
strong characteristics. The string of corals reminds one of his Paduan
training. Gianpietrino, a picture of the Magdalen, his favourite
subject, is better drawn and modelled than his figures sometimes are,
and less morbid in the flesh tones. Sodoma, a very theatrical S.
Michael. Boltraffio, Madonna and Child of his usual type, and rather hot
colour, and two panels of Saints, with well-painted profile portraits of
donors. Correggio, Madonna and Child, with little S. John is a
particularly gracious composition. She looks down with a sad half smile
at the children, who have the childish charm which Correggio depicts
with such subtle mastery. It is a picture to sit down in front of and
enjoy. By Carlo Crivelli there are two Saints, S. John with finger on
lip, holding a book, and S. Bartholomew holding a knife and book.
Antonello da Messina, a fine portrait of a dark man crowned with a green
wreath. On the other side of the room there is a splendid portrait by
Tintoretto of Doge Jacopo Soranzo, an old man in deep wine-coloured
dress. Moroni, a portrait of a man in black with white ruff. Il Bassano,
a man in elaborately ornamental armour. Antonio Pordenone, a fine
portrait of a man with a small dog, a Titianesque landscape showing
through the window. By Bernardino Licinio is a beautiful portrait of a
fair, golden-haired woman, in rich black velvet dress embroidered in
gold. She holds a picture of a man, and a lovely landscape of water and
hills and sky shows through the window. This work has all the warmth and
glow of the best period of Venetian painting. Cariani, a realistic
portrait of a stout woman painted in a masterly manner. In interesting
contrast to these splendid, generous, if decidedly sensuous paintings,
is the small portrait by Lorenzo Lotto of a young man. It is not only
the great subtlety and delicacy of treatment, the arrangement of cool
flesh tones, grey dress and blue background, but the individuality of
facial expression that most distinguishes it from contemporary painting.
The artist has analysed the character of this youth and given us a
psychological study. Mr. Berenson calls this picture ‘artistic’ in the
French sense of the word and unexpected as a work of the
Renaissance.[26]

Footnote 26:

  B. Berenson, _Lorenzo Lotto_.

On the walls are placed frescoes by Foppa and the early Milanese school,
removed from demolished churches. Some beautiful miniatured books,
Corali, Missals, Lives of the Saints, Bibles, etc., are ranged down the
middle of the room on screens.

A small door at the end of this room opens into a way which leads by
narrow staircases and passages and by a sort of drawbridge through the
Torre di Bona into the Rocchetta. It was across here, by ways very
strongly defended and almost impossible to force, that the little Duke
Gian Galeazzo was hurried into the keep when he was stolen from his
mother by the emissaries of Lodovico il Moro. The great rooms of the
Rocchetta, once sacred to the fortunate existence of Lodovico and
Beatrice, and now completely restored, contain the collections of Modern
Art and the Museum of the Risorgimento, which is filled with deeply
interesting memorials of that great recent moment of Milan’s history,
when she showed herself splendidly true to her grand traditions as the
leader of the Lombard League seven hundred years earlier. There is
something curiously suggestive in the presence of these memorials here
in the old home of Lodovico il Moro, who represents the height of the
tyranny to which the city succumbed in the intervening centuries. As we
glance round these renovated rooms we realise how victoriously she has
at last swept that tyranny and all its sins and evil memories away,
sacrificing with it inevitably the artistic and decorative beauty which
partly redeemed it.

[Illustration: MILAN]

  1 Duomo

  2 Palazzo della Ragione

  3 S. Satiro

  4 S. Sepolcro

  5 Ambrosiana

  6 Palazzo Borromeo

  7 Monastero Maggiore

  8 S. M. delle Grazie

  9 S. Ambrogio

 10 S. Vincenzo in Prato

 11 S. Giorgio in Palazzo

 12 S. Lorenzo

 13 S. Eustorgio

 14 S. Celso

 15 S. Calimero

 16 S. Nazaro

 17 S. Stefano

 18 S. Pietro in Gessate

 19 S. M. della Passione

 20 S. Babila

 21 Palazzo Marino

 22 Museo Poldi-Pezzoli

 23 S. M. del Carmine

 24 Pinacoteca di Brera

 25 S. Marco

 26 S. Simpliciano

 27 S. M. dell’ Incoronata

In the Sala del Tesoro, on the ground floor, where modern sculpture is
now exhibited, will be found the remains of a fresco by Bramante,
representing Argus, a magnificent warrior figure, fit guardian of this
chamber, which once held the famous treasure of the Sforza.




                         TABLE OF THE VISCONTI


[Illustration]

 Uberto
 +—— =Otto= Archbishop of Milan, _d._ 1295
 +—— Obizzo
 |   +—— Tebaldo
 |       +—— =Matteo il Grande=, _d._ 1322
 |           +—— =Galeazzo I.=, _d._ 1328
 |           |   _m._ Beatrice d’Este
 |           |   +—— =Azzo=, _d._ 1339
 |           +—— Marco, _d._ 1329
 |           +—— =Luchino=, _d._ 1349
 |           |   +—— Luchino Novello
 |           |   +—— Bruzio (illegitimate)
 |           +—— =Giovanni= Archbishop of Milan, _d._ 1354
 |           +—— Stefano, _d._ 1327
 |               +—— Matteo, _d._ 1355
 |               +—— =Bernabò=, _d._ 1385
 |               |   _m._ Regina della Scala
 |               |   +—— Lodovico
 |               |   +—— Marco
 |               |   +—— Carlo
 |               |   +—— Verde
 |               |   +—— Caterina
 |               |   |   _m._ Gian Galeazzo Visconte
 |               |   +—— Agnese
 |               |   |   _m._ Francesco Gonzaga
 |               |   +—— Ettore (illegitimate)
 |               |   +—— Donnina (illegitimate)
 |               |   |   _m._ Sir John Hawkwood
 |               |   +—— Valentina, etc. (illegitimate)
 |               +—— =Galeazzo II.=, _d._ 1378
 |                   _m._ Bianca di Savoia
 |                   +—— =Gian Galeazzo= 1st Duke of Milan, _d._ 1402
 |                   |   _m._ (1) Isabella de Valois
 |                   |   _m._ (2) Caterina Visconte
 |                   |   +—— =Giovanni Maria= 2nd Duke of Milan, _d._ 1412
 |                   |   +—— =Filippo Maria=, _d._ 1447
 |                   |   |   _m._ (1) Beatrice Tenda
 |                   |   |   _m._ (2) Maria di Savoia
 |                   |   |   +—— =Bianca Maria= (illegitimate)
 |                   |   |       _m._ =Francesco Sforza=
 |                   |   +—— Valentina
 |                   |   |   _m._ Louis Duke of Orleans
 |                   |   |   +—— Charles Duke of Orleans
 |                   |   |       +—— Louis XII.
 |                   |   +—— Gabriello (illegitimate)
 |                   +—— Violante
 |                       _m._ Lionel Duke of Clarence
 +—— Gaspare
 +—— Pietro
 +—— Lodrisio




                          TABLE OF THE SFORZA


[Illustration]

       =Sforza degli Attendoli=
       +—— =Francesco= 4th Duke of Milan, _d._ 1466
       |   _m._ Bianca Maria Visconte
       |   +—— =Galeazzo Maria= 5th Duke of Milan, _d._ 1476
       |   |   _m._ Bona di Savoia
       |   |   +—— =Gian Galeazzo= 6th Duke of Milan, _d._ 1495
       |   |   |   _m._ Isabella of Aragon
       |   |   |   +—— Francesco Conte di Pavia
       |   |   |   +—— Bona
       |   |   |       _m._ Sigismond of Poland
       |   |   +—— Ermes
       |   |   +—— Bianca Maria
       |   |   |   _m._ Emperor Maximilian
       |   |   +—— Anna
       |   |   |   _m._ Alfonso d’Este
       |   |   +—— Alessandro (illegitimate)
       |   |   +—— Carlo (illegitimate)
       |   |   |   +—— Ippolita
       |   |   |       _m._ Alessandro Bentivoglio
       |   |   +—— Caterina (illegitimate) Lady of Forlì
       |   +—— Sforza Duke of Bari, _d._ 1479
       |   +—— Filippo
       |   +—— =Lodovico il Moro= 7th Duke of Milan, _d._ 1508
       |   |   _m._ Beatrice d’Este
       |   |   +—— =Massimiliano= 8th Duke of Milan, _abd._ 1515
       |   |   +—— =Francesco II.= 9th Duke of Milan, _d._ 1535
       |   |   |   _m._ Cristina of Sweden
       |   |   +—— Cesare (illegitimate)
       |   |   +—— Gian Paolo (illegitimate), _d._ 1535
       |   |   +—— Bianca (illegitimate), _d._ 1496
       |   |       _m._ Galeazzo di San Severino
       |   +—— Ascanio Cardinal
       |   +—— Ottaviano, _d._ 1477
       |   +—— Ippolita
       |   |   _m._ Alfonso of Aragon
       |   +—— Tristano (illegitimate)
       |   |   _m._ Beatrice d’Este (the elder)
       |   +—— Drusiana (illegitimate)
       |       _m._ Giacopo Piccinino
       +—— Alessandro Lord of Pesaro
       |   +—— Constanzo
       |       +—— Giovanni
       |           _m._ Lucrezia Borgia
       +—— Bosio Conte di Santa Fiora
       |   +—— Francesco
       +—— Corrado
       +—— Giovanni




                                APPENDIX

                           TRAM ROUTES, ETC.


The following is a list of the trams and ways to the various places of
interest. The trams start from the Duomo.

St. Ambrogio (p. 256), _San Vittore_ tram.

Palazzo di Brera (p. 335) and S. Marco (p. 296) (street on right),
_Porta Volta_ tram.

S. Lorenzo (p. 278), Colonne di S. Lorenzo (p. 278) and St. Eustorgio
(p. 284), _Porta Ticinese_ tram.

Monastero Maggiore (p. 320) and S. Maria delle Grazie (p. 310), _Porta
Magenta_ (_Maddalena_) tram.

S. Simpliciano (p. 295) and S. Maria Incoronata (p. 305), _Corso
Garibaldi_ tram.

S. Pietro in Gessate (p. 306), _Porta Vittoria_ tram.

S. Maria della Passione (p. 326). _Piazza Monforte_ tram is the nearest.
Alighting at _Via S. Damiano_, you pass by the garden of Pal. Visconti
di Modrone (p. 334) on the way to the church.

Ospedale Maggiore (p. 308), _Porta Romana_ tram. Alight at _S. Nazaro_.

S. Celso (p. 293) and S. Maria presso S. Celso (p. 327), _Porta
Lodovica_ tram.

S. Babila (p. 294) and Pal. Silvestri (p. 328), _Porta Venezia_ tram.

Museo Poldi-Pezzoli in Via Morone (p. 352) is quickly reached on foot
from the Duomo by _Corso Vittoria Emanuele_ and _Via S. Paolo_.

S. Satiro (p. 318), in _Via Torino_, is two or three minutes on foot
from the Duomo.

Biblioteca Ambrosiana (p. 359) and S. Sepolcro (p. 295) are also quickly
reached by _Via Torino_ and _Via Spadari_ (on right).

Pal. Borromeo (pp. 302 and 365) is reached from _Piazza Cordusio_ by
_Via del Bocchetto_.

The Castello (p. 368) is a few minutes’ walk by Via Mercanti (Pal. della
Ragione (p. 296) and Piazza dei Mercanti on the left) and Via Dante.
Many trams go in that direction from the Duomo or Piazza Cordusio.

There are frequent trains from the Stazione Centrale for the Certosa of
Pavia (30 to 40 min.), Chiaravalle (11 min.) and Monza (15 min.). Monza
may also be tediously reached by steam-tram from the Duomo.




                                 INDEX


                                  A

 Adelmano, 18

 Adeodatus, 11

 Agostino di Duccio, 385

 _Albero_, the, 244

 Albertinelli, Mariotto, 355

 Alessi, Gal., 330

 Alexander II., Pope, 30, 32, 33

 —— VI., Pope, 168, 179, 187

 Alypius, 11

 Amadeo, Gio. Ant., 213, 214, 231, 245, 250, 385, 386

 ——, _Guglia di_, 250

 Ambrogio da Fossano (_see_ Borgognone)

 Ambrose, St., 8;
   elected Bishop of Milan, 9;
   contention with Empress, 9-12;
   triumph over Theodosius, 12;
   power in the Empire, 13;
   death, 13, 256, 259, 273

 Angilberto, Archbishop, 16, 259

 Anguissola, Sophonisba, 357

 Annovello da Imbonate, 275

 Anselmo da Baggio, 29-32 (_see_ also Alexander II.)

 Ansperto, Archbishop, 16, 17, 259, 274

 Antelami, Benedetto, 298

 Antonello da Messina, 366, 389

 Appiani, Andrea, 335

 Aragon, Alfonso of, King of Naples, 124, 127;
   Alfonso of, Duke of Calabria, 134, 170;
   Ferdinand, or Ferrante, King of Naples, 140, 170, 173;
   Isabella of, 158, 167, 168, 173

 Arialdo, 30, 31, 33

 Ariberto, Archbishop, 18-25

 Averulino, Ant. (_see_ Filarete)

 Augustine, St., 10, 11

 Ausonius, 7

 Auxentius, 8


                                  B

 Bambaia, il, 214, 215, 234, 240, 243, 245, 386

 Bandello, Fra Matteo, 201, 317, 324

 Barbavara, Francesco, 117

 Barnabas, St., 7

 Bartolommeo Veneto, 336

 Bassano, il, 389

 Bassi, Martino, 279

 Beatrice, Empress, 50, 51, 55

 Bellincione, Bernardo, 161

 Bellini, Gentile, 339

 ——, Gian, 341, 367

 Bembo, Bonifazio, 215, 384

 ——, Pietro, 359

 Bentivoglio, Alessandra, 323, 326

 ——, Alessandro, 320

 Bernard, St., 35

 Bernardino da Corte, 182, 183, 379

 Bertolino da Novara, 229

 Biblioteca Ambrosiana, 359-65

 —— Pinacoteca, 361-365
   Museo Settala, 361

 Bicocca, La, battle of, 193

 Boltraffio, 221, 325, 345, 346, 358, 365, 366, 389

 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 225;
   statue of, 335

 Bonifazio Veronese, 339

 Bonsignore, 357

 Bordone, Paris, 327, 338

 Borgia, Lucrezia, 359

 Borgognone, 218, 219, 273, 274, 275, 295, 325, 327, 336, 344, 345, 388

 Borromeo, Carlo, Cardinal and Saint, 39, 205-207, 215, 231, 247;
   tomb of, 241

 ——, Federigo, Cardinal, 215, 359

 Botticelli, 353, 362

 Bourbon, Constable de, 193, 194, 196

 Bramante, 156, 162, 211, 231, 276, 277, 313, 318-320, 350, 378, 391

 Bramantino, 220, 290, 336, 344, 346, 358, 365, 387

 _Brera, Biblioteca, di_, 335

 ——, _Pinacoteca, di_, 335-51

 Briosco, Benedetto, 212, 213, 214, 288

 ——, Francesco, 294

 Brunelleschi, 121, 211

 Burigozzo, 199, 200, 203, 205

 Busca, Gabrio, 215

 Bussolari, Fra Giacomo de, 101

 Busti, Agostino (_see_ Bambaia, il)

 Buttinone, Bernardo, 218, 307, 343, 388


                                  C

 Caiazzo, Conte di, 181

 Cambrai, Peace of, 197

 Camelli, Ant. (il Pistoia), 161, 171, 173

 Campi, the, 223;
   Giulio, 346;
   Vincenzo, 346

 Campione, Masters of, 210, 245, 383, 384

 ——, Bonino da, 229, 383, 384

 ——, Giacomo da, 241, 244

 ——, Maffiolo da, 229

 ——, Marco da, 229

 ——, Zeno da, 229

 Campo Fregoso, Ant. di, 161

 Canaletto, 343

 Cane, Facino, 117, 118

 Canova, 335

 Caponi, Rafaello, 353

 Caradosso, 162, 216, 319, 320

 Cariani, 338, 357, 389

 Carmagnola, 120, 122, 328

 Carpaccio, 339

 _Castle of Milan_, 119, 127, 130, 145, 150, 182, 183, 185, 191, 192,
    196, 368-382;
   Art Collections in, 382-391

 Castruccio, 91

 Catharists, the, 28, 29

 Cazzaniga, the, 214, 288, 312

 Cazzaniga, Tommaso da, 234, 385

 Cellant, Contessa di, 324

 Cesare da Sesto, 221, 344

 Charlemagne, 15

 Charles the Bald, 17

 —— of Bohemia, 100

 —— VIII. of France, 170, 172, 173, 175, 179

 —— V., Emperor, 193, 195, 196, 197, 198, 203

 Chrysoloras, Emanuel, 112

 Cima, 339, 343

 Civerchio, 343

 Clement VI., Pope, 97

 —— VII., Pope, 195, 197

 Conrad the Salic, Emperor, 19, 20, 21, 22

 Constance, Peace of, 55

 Constance of Sicily, 55, 257

 Constantine, Emperor, 5, 7

 Conti, Bernardino dei, 221, 222, 365

 Correggio (Antonio Allegri), 348, 367, 389

 Cortenuova, Battle of, 59

 Cossa, Francesco, 348

 Costa, Lorenzo, 348

 Crespi, Daniele, 223

 Cristina of Sweden, 203

 Crivelli, Carlo, 341, 342, 343, 357, 389

 ——, Lucrezia, 160


                                  D

 Dal Verme, Jacopo, 110, 122

 D’Amboise, Charles, 190

 Decembrio, Pier Candido, 121, 265

 De Foix, Gaston, 190, 244;
   statue of, 386

 De Lautrec, Sieur, 193

 De Leyva, 196, 197

 De Predis, Ambrogio, 219, 220, 346, 358

 Desio, battle of, 75

 Diocletian, Emperor, 5, 6

 Dolcebuono, Gio., 212, 214, 231, 320, 327

 Dosso Dossi, 347

 _Duomo_, the, 11, 199, 112, 324-253


                                  E

 Enzo, King of Sardinia, 60

 Erlembaldo da Cotta, 32, 33, 34

 Este, da, Beatrice (Visconte), 77, 78

 ——, Beatrice (wife of Tristan Sforza), 149

 ——, Beatrice (wife of Lodovico il Moro), 158, 162, 163, 164, 165, 167,
    173, 176, 177, 178, 374, 377, 378;
   Niccolò III., 125

 Eugenius IV., Pope, 124

 Eusebio di San Giorgio, 350

 Eustachio, Filippo, 150

 Eustorgio, St., 284

 Ezzelino da Romano, 67, 69


                                  F

 Fancelli, Luca, 231

 Fernach, Hans von, 241

 Ferrari, Gaudenzio, 222, 274, 312, 327, 337, 344, 346, 365

 ——, Defendente, 343

 Fiesca, Elisabetta della, 96

 Filarete, 211, 308, 370

 Filelfo, 133, 136

 Fogolino Marco, 357

 Foppa, Ambrogio (_see_ Caradosso)

 ——, Vincenzo, 217, 218, 292, 336, 345, 358, 388, 390

 Francesco di Giorgio, 231

 Francia, 348

 Francis I. of France, 192, 194, 195, 197, 380

 Frederick I., Barbarossa, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49;
   orders destruction of Milan, 50, 51, 52, 53;
   defeated at Legnano, 54, 55, 56

 Frederick II., Emperor, 56, 59, 60

 Fusina, Andrea, 215, 234, 306, 386


                                  G

 Gadio, Bart., 140, 370

 Gallerani, Cecilia, 160, 164, 201, 328

 Gentile da Fabriano, 351

 Gervasio, S., 7, 11, 256, 259, 273

 Gianpietrino, 221, 295, 344, 358, 365, 388

 Giovanni di Balduccio, 210, 290, 292, 293

 —— da Milano, 216

 —— da Murano, 343

 Gmünd, Heinrich von, 236

 Grassi, dei, the, 229; Porrino, 241

 Gregorio da Montelungo, 60

 Gregory VII., Pope, 26, 34, 35, 42

 Guardi, 343

 Guido, Archbishop, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34

 Guitelmo, Mastro, 50


                                  H

 Hawkwood, Sir John, 101, 102

 Henry III., Emperor, 24, 29

 —— VI., King of the Romans, 55, 257

 —— VII., Emperor, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 258

 Hildebrand, 26, 30, 31, 32 (_see_ also Gregory VII.)


                                  I

 Isacco da Imbonate, 243, 244


                                  J

 Jacopino da Tradate, 211, 243

 Julius, II., Pope, 187, 190, 191, 283

 Justina, Empress, 8, 9, 11


                                  L

 Lampugnano, Gio. Ant., 143, 145, 146

 Lando, Count, 100

 Landolfo da Cotta, 30

 Lanino, Bernardino, 223, 274, 337

 Lanzone, 24, 25

 Legnano, Battle of, 54, 55

 Leo X. Pope, 193

 Leonardo da Vinci, 154, 156, 158, 159, 160, 162, 179, 211, 214, 219,
    231, 313, 315, 316, 317, 318, 374, 378, 380

 Leone da Perego, Fra, 41, 60, 66, 67, 68

 Leoni, Leone, 240, 333

 Liberale da Verona, 339

 Licinio, Bernardino, 389

 Liprando di San Paolo, 33

 _Loggia degli Osii_, 298, 299

 Lombard League, the, 53, 54, 56

 Lotto, Lorenzo, 340, 357, 366, 367, 389, 390

 Louis of Bavaria, Emperor, 89, 90, 91

 —— XII. of France, claim on Milan, 171, 179;
   invades the Duchy, 181;
   enters Milan, 183, 191, 283, 328, 380

 Luini, Bernardino, 222, 304, 312, 313, 320, 323, 324, 327, 337, 345,
    358, 361, 366, 388


                                  M

 Maestro di San Tommaso, 385

 Maino, Agnese del, 121, 133

 Mantegazza, Cristoforo and Antonio, 212, 213, 385

 Mantegna, Andrea, 341, 342, 356, 366

 Marco d’ Oggiono, 221, 222, 337, 346

 Margaret of Brabant, Empress, 258

 Marliano, Vincenzo, 119, 369

 Matteo da Civate, 216

 Maximian, Emperor, 5, 7

 Maximilian, Emperor, 158, 169, 181

 Mazzola, Filippo, 365

 Medici, Cosimo dei, 134;
   Lorenzo dei, 140, 153, 170;
   Piero dei, 170, 174

 Melegnano (Marignano), Battle of, 192

 Melzi, Francesco, 221, 222

 Merula, Giorgio, 328

 Michelino da Besozzo, 217, 240, 304

 Michelozzo, Michele, 211, 285, 291, 292

 Mignot, Jean, 229

 Monica, St., 10

 Montagna, Bart., 338

 Montana, Cola, 143

 Montorfano, Gio., 306, 317, 318, 384

 Moretto, 327, 338, 388

 Morone, Domenico, 367

 ——, Girolamo, 192, 195

 Moroni, G. B., 338, 389


                                  N

 Naples, King of (_see_ Aragon)

 _Naviglio_, the, 154, 284

 Niccolò da Correggio, 162

 —— Foligno, 351, 356

 Novara, Battle of, 186;
   defeat of the French at, 192


                                  O

 Oberto da Pellavicino, 68, 75

 Oldrado da Tresseno, 298

 Olgiati, Girolamo, 143, 144, 145, 146

 Orleans, Duke of, 116

 Orombello, Michele, 120

 Orsenigo, Simone, 229

 _Ospedale Maggiore_, 308, 309

 Ossona, Gio., 128

 Otho the Great, 18, 257

 Ottobello da Mandello, 60


                                  P

 Pacchiarotti, 350

 Pallavicino, Gio. Francesco, 150

 ——, Antonio Maria, 180

 _Palazzo Arcivescovile_, 255, 333

 —— _Borromeo_, 302, 303, 304

 —— _Carmagnola_, 328

 —— _Castani_, 329

 —— _Chierici_, 333

 —— _Dal Verme_, 330

 —— _dei Giurisconsulti_, 333

 —— _della Ragione_, 296, 297, 298, 300, 301

 —— _Fontana, or Silvestri_, 328

 —— _Marino_, 330

 —— _Omenoni_, 333

 —— _Ponti_, 329

 —— _Vimercati, doorway of_, 307

 —— _Visconti di Modrone_, 33

 Palissy, Sieur de, 190, 191

 Palma Vecchio, 338

 Palmezzano, Marco 349, 356

 Patarini, the, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34.

 Pellegrini, Pellegrino, 236, 240, 241, 255, 327

 Perugino, Pietro, 156, 356

 Pescara, Marquis of, 194, 195, 196

 Pesellino, Francesco, 355

 Peter Damian, 31, 32

 Peter of Verona (Peter Martyr), 40, 41, 66, 67, 287;
   monument of, 292, 293

 Petrarca, Francesco, 103, 105, 106

 Piazza of Lodi, the, 223;
   Callisto, 335

 —— _dei Mercanti_, 297, 298, 299, 300, 301

 —— _Cordusio_, 297

 —— _Verzieri_, 309

 Piccinino, Niccolò, 123, 124, 125, 126, 243

 ——, Francesco, 126, 128, 243

 ——, Jacopo, 126, 128, 134

 Piero di Cosimo, 366

 —— dei Franceschi, 350, 356

 Pinturicchio, 366

 Pius IV., Pope, 206

 _Poldi-Pezzoli, Museo_, 352-359

 Pordenone, Ant., 367, 389

 Porta, della, Gian Giacomo, 215

 _Porta Nuova_, 301

 —— _Ticinese_, 280, 283

 Proccacini, 241

 Protasio, St., 7, 11, 256, 259, 273

 Pusterla, della, Francesco, 95;
   Margherita, 96;
   Pietro, 202


                                  R

 Raphael, 349, 362, 363

 Ravenna, Battle of, 190

 Riario, Card. Pietro, 371

 Ricchini, 280

 Rizzo, Antonio, 234

 Roberti, Ercole dei, 348

 Romano, Gian Cristoforo, 163

 Rondinelli, 349

 Rosa, Salvator, 351


                                  S

 Salai, 221, 222

 San Secondo, Jacopo di, 163

 San Severino, Roberto di, 148, 151

 ——, Galeazzo di, 162, 163, 180, 181, 184, 186, 195, 380

 ——, Gaspare di (Fracasso), 180

 Sano di Pietro, 366

 _St. Alessandro_, 328

 _St. Ambrogio, Basilica of_, 55, 110, 199, 256-277

 ——, _Golden Altar in_, 268-271

 ——, _Canonica of_, 276, 277

 _St. Antonio, Campanile of_, 302

 _S. Babila_, 294

 _S. Calimero_, 294

 _S. Carlo_, 328

 _S. Celso_, 293;
   _Sta. Maria di S. Celso_, 293, 327

 _St. Eustorgio_, 284-293;
   _Capella Portinari_, 285, 286, 291-293

 _S. Fedele_, 327

 _S. Giovanni alla Conca_, 294

 _S. Gottardo_, 11, 253, 254

 _S. Lorenzo_, 278-280;
   _Columns of_, 278

 _S. Marco_, 296

 _Sta. Maria a Beltrade_, 295

 _Sta. Maria del Carmine_, 304

 _Sta. Maria delle Grazie_, 310-313

 ——, _Refectory of_, 313-318

 ——, _Last Supper, by Leonardo_, 313-317

 _Sta. Maria della Passione_, 326, 327

 _Sta. Maria Incoronata_, 305

 _S. Maurizio, or Monastero Maggiore_, 320, 323-326

 _S. Nazaro_, 294

 _S. Pietro in Gessate_, 306, 307

 _S. Satiro_, 295, 318-320

 _S. Sepolcro_, 295

 _S. Simpliciano_, 295

 _S. Stefano_, 309

 _S. Vincenzo in Prato_, 293

 Santi, Gio., 351, 358

 Savoldo Girolamo, 338

 Savoy, Bianca of, 103

 ——, Bona of, 137, 139, 148, 149, 150, 151;
   Maria of, 121, 128

 Scala, della, Can Grande, 89, 90
   Regina, 102, 103

 Scarampi, Camilla, 201

 Seregni, Vincenzo, 215, 333

 Sforza, Anna, 158

 ——, Ascanio, Cardinal, 148, 168, 184, 185

 ——, Bianca, 363

 ——, Bianca Maria, 158

 ——, Caterina, 136

 ——, Constanzo, 151

 ——, Francesco I., 122;
   is engaged as Condottiere by Duke Filippo, 123;
   betrothed to Bianca Maria 124;
   abandons Milan for Venice, 124, 125;
   wins Bianca Maria, 125;
   is again fighting against Milan, 126, 127;
   defeats Piccinini and besieges Milan, 128;
   is received into city and proclaimed Duke, 129;
   his character, 130, 131;
   his encouragement of learning and art, 132, 133;
   wars and foreign policy, 134;
   dies, 135, 288;
   his building of the Castle, 369, 370, 371

 ——, Francesco II., 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 198, 203, 204

 ——, Galeazzo Maria, 134;
   character, 135, 136, 137, 138;
   vices and virtues, 139;
   ability, policy, 140, 142, 143, 144;
   assassination, 145, 146, 147, 258, 371, 372, 373

 ——, Gian Galeazzo, 147, 150, 158, 166, 167, 168, 170, 173, 174

 ——, Gian Paolo, 204

 ——, Ippolita (Bentivoglio), 201, 323, 326

 ——, Lodovico il Moro, 134;
   banished, 148;
   his intrigues and return, 149;
   overthrows Simonetta, 150;
   makes himself regent, 151;
   his personality, 152;
   foreign policy, 153;
   improvement of the State, 154, 155;
   patronage of art and letters, 156;
   mildness, 157;
   his brilliant Court, 158, 159;
   relations with Leonardo, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 165;
   instability of his position, 166;
   schemes to become Duke, 167, 168, 169;
   invites Charles VIII., 170, 171, 172, 173;
   is suspected of poisoning his nephew, 174;
   leagues against France, 175;
   his triumph and arrogance, 176;
   is crushed by death of his wife, 177, 178;
   his anxieties and difficulties, 179, 180;
   is invaded by French, 181;
   abandons Milan, 182, 183;
   returns, 184;
   his indecision and difficulties, 185;
   is captured by the French at Novara, 186, 187, 276, 373, 374, 377,
      378, 379

 ——, Massimiliano, is made Duke, 191;
   renounces Duchy to Francis I., 193, 380

 ——, Ottaviano, 148

 ——, Duke of Bari, 148, 149

 Sicherius, 45, 46

 Siciliano, Angelo, 215, 244

 Signorelli, Luca, 350, 351

 Simonetta, Cecco, 140, 147, 148, 149, 150

 Sion, Cardinal de, 190, 191

 Sixtus IV., Pope, 147, 153

 Sodoma, Gio. Ant. Bazzi, il, 223, 345, 389

 Solari, or Solario, Andrea, 220, 221, 345, 357, 358;
   Cristoforo (il Gobbo), 212, 214, 215, 231, 234, 236, 241, 245, 253,
      326, 327;
   Guiniforte, 211, 306, 308;
   Pietro, 211, 285

 Spanzotto, Fra Vincenzo, 313

 Stefano dei Fedeli, 217, 384

 —— da Pandino, 243, 245

 —— da Zevio, 356


                                  T

 Tanzi, Francesco, 161

 Tassino, Antonio, 149, 150, 151

 Tenda, Beatrice, 118, 120

 Theodosius, Emperor, 12, 13

 Tiepolo, Pietro, 59

 ——, G. B., 333, 353

 Tintoretto, 338, 389

 Titian, 339

 Torre, della, or Torriani, the, 65

 ——, Cassone, Archbishop of Milan, 80, 82, 83

 ——, Enrico, 79

 ——, Filippo, 70, 72

 ——, Francesco, son of Guido, 84

 ——, Francesco, son of Napo, 76

 ——, Guido, 79, 82, 83, 84

 ——, Martino, 66, 67, 68, 70, 72

 ——, Mosca, 79

 ——, Napo, 70;
   made Imperial Vicar of Milan, 72, 75;
   defeated and captured by Visconti at Desio, 76

 ——, Pagano, _the Good_, leader of the people’s faction, 66

 ——, Raimondo, 68

 ——, Simone, 84

 Trivulzio, Ambrogio, 129

 ——, Gian Giacomo, 178;
   Governor of Milan, 183, 184;
   driven out, 184, 191, 192, 283, 379

 ——, Art Collection and Library, 366

 Tura, Cosimo, 348, 356


                                  U

 Uberti, Fazio degli, 113

 Umiliati, Order of the, 37, 38, 39, 206

 Urban IV., Pope, 68, 69


                                  V

 Valentinian II., Emperor, 7, 9, 13

 Valois, Isabella de, 102, 106

 Vaprio, Battle of, 89

 _Via Ticinese_, 283

 _Via Torino_, No. 10-12, 330

 Vimercati, Gaspare, 311

 Visconti, the, 65, 69;
   cognisance of, 69;
   character of, 86, 87, 88, 130

 ——, Azzo, 90;
   created Imperial Vicar, 91, 92;
   tomb of, 366

 ——, Bernabò, 95, 96;
   succeeds to Lordship of Milan, 100, 101, 102, 104, 105, 106;
   his capture and death, 108,
   tomb of, 383

 ——, Bianca Maria (Sforza), 121, 124, 125, 133, 134, 135, 138

 ——, Carlo, 143, 145

 ——, Caterina, 107, 116, 117

 ——, Estorre, 117, 119

 ——, Filippo Maria, 116, 117;
   succeeds to dukedom, 118;
   enters Milan, 119;
   diplomacy and conquests, 119;
   character and habits, 119-121;
   patronage of learning, 121;
   wars and intrigues, 121, 122, 123, 124;
   embarrassments, 125;
   death, 126

 ——, Francesco Bernardino, 180, 183

 ——, Galeazzo I., 75, 77, 78, 79, 83, 85, 87, 88;
   succeeds his father as chief, 88;
   rules Milan, 89;
   is arrested and imprisoned by Emperor Louis, 90;
   his release and death, 91

 ——, Galeazzo II., 95, 96;
   shares Lordship of Milan with Bernabò, 100, 101, 102, 104, 105, 106,
      107

 ——, Gaspare (poet), 161, 163

 ——, Gian Galeazzo, 102, 103, 107;
   overthrows Bernabò and makes himself sole Lord, 108;
   his military enterprises, 109, 110;
   is created Duke of Milan, 110;
   his government, 110, 111;
   character, 111;
   patronage of letters, 112, 113;
   conquests, death, 114, 115;
   his building of the Duomo, 227, 228, 229, 230, 258, 368

 ——, Giovanni, Archbishop, 92, 95, 96;
   conquests, 97;
   Government, 98, 99;
   death, 100

 ——, Giovanni Maria, succeeds to Dukedom 116, 117, 118

 ——, Lodrisio, 89, 92

 ——, Luchino, 87, 89, 91, 92, 95, 96, 98, 99

 ——, Luchino, Novello, 96

 ——, Marco, 87, 91, 92

 ——, Matteo, _il Grande_, 75;
   assumes leadership of Ghibelline party, 76, 77;
   abandons Milan, 78, 79, 80, 81;
   returns, 82, 83;
   outwits Torriani, 84;
   is created Imperial Vicar, 85, 87;
   death, 88

 ——, Matteo (son of Stefano), 95, 96, 100

 ——, Otto, Archbishop, 68;
   leader of Ghibelline party, 69, 75;
   defeats Torriani and rules Milan, 76

 ——, Stefano, 90;
   tomb of, 289

 ——, Valentina, 116

 ——, Violante, 102, 103

 Viti, Timoteo, 351

 Vivarini, Ant., 343, 356


                                  Z

 Zaganelli (Cotignola), 349

 Zavatarii, the, 217

 ——, Franceschino, dei, 243

 Zenale, Bernardino, 218, 265, 273, 307


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                          TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES


 1. Moved advertising from second page to end.
 2. Changed ‘1446’ to ‘1466’on p. 135.
 3. Changed ‘then’ to ‘than’ on p. 155.
 4. Changed ‘1595’ to ‘1515’ on p. 192.
 5. Changed ‘or’ to ‘on’ on p. 202.
 6. The ‘55’ in ‘1355’ for the death date of Matteo was hand written on
      p. 392.
 7. Changed ‘„’ ditto markup to ‘——’ prefix markup in the index.
 8. Silently corrected typographical errors.
 9. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.
10. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
11. Enclosed bold font in =equals=.
12. Superscripts are denoted by a carat before a single superscript
      character.