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 279the 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 280is 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 fa?ade 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 281the work apparently of the Campionese followers of Giovanni di Balduccio of Pisa.

THE OLD PORTA TICINESE.

283The 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.

284Just beyond the gate the street crosses the canal—the Naviglio it is called—which follows the medi?val 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.

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 285of 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 fa?ade 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, 286the 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.

EXTERIOR OF PORTINARI CHAPEL, ST. EUSTORGIO.

287The 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.
288

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

12.  Mongeri, L’Arte in Milano.

289ruined 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 290by 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. 291Eugenius, 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............