Ella Noyes

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”