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.
303

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, 304pensive 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 medi?val 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 fa?ade, 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.
305

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. 306It 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 307lights 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, 308which belongs to the early Sforzesque period. The portrait of Duke Francesco, sculptured in profile, decorates the front of the archivolt, with those of Julius C?sar 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 fa?ade 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 fa?ade was built in

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.

309the 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, 310make 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 311earlier style used by the Solari, as is also the fa?ade, 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.

312The 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.

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, 313both 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 314the 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.

To face p. 314]

LAST SUPPER, BY LEONARDO. DETAIL, FIGURE OF CHRIST

[A. Ferrario, Milan

315It 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 316contemporary 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.

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. 317It 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 examin............