_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.