The large chapel, which corresponding to that of San Giovanni Buono, terminates this cross aisle, is dedicated to the Virgin; and beautiful, in spite of masses of artificial flowers in the hands and tinsel on the heads, is the group of the Virgin and Child. On either side of the entrance is a colossal plaster statue, even worse executed than those in San Giovanni’s chapel, and the floor in front is paved with the tombs of six cardinals. Farther on, descending the aisle, there is over an altar a wooden crucifix inclosed in a glass frame, interesting because the same which was carried by St. Charles Borromeo when he walked barefoot in the processions he instituted during the plague of 1576. There existed here formerly an antique altar, remarkable for its age only, surmounted by a figure of the Virgin in wood, rudely carved and heavily framed. When removed some time since, there were discovered behind it two inscriptions by one Alexio of Albania, an officer of Duke Francis Sforza, who, in gratitude to Our Lady for his successes, raised this altar in the year 1480. Near the entrance stands the baptismal font, (a large vase of porphyry, brought, it is believed, from the baths of Maximilian,) beneath a tabernacle, whose pillars are of antique marble, and their capitals of carved bronze.
The pavement, with its arabesque ornaments and various coloured marbles, is worn by the feet of curious or faithful, and from the dirty habits of the numbers who frequent the church, forces one to tread it with the same precaution as the streets themselves.
Having made the tour, we returned to rest ourselves on one of the benches opposite the choir, allowable, where people walk and talk unscrupulously during mass, for I noticed even priests doing so with the unconcern of two boys, who kneeled before San Giovanni Buono, praying a little and talking a little by turns. Opposite the doors of the two sacristies are steps conducting to the subterranean chapels, the roof of the first supported by eight massive marble columns. The sunbeams from above entered faintly, touching with their gold a part of the quaint carving, and leaving the rest in obscurity, hardly lessened by the light which burned feebly in the elegantly formed lamp before the marble balustrade of the altar. The guide leads the way to the inner chapel, which is St. Charles’s sepulchre. From the grated opening in the floor above, it receives but a pale and imperfect day; and as the torch which the priest bears flashes on the riches it contains, its precious metals and marble floor, to the worth of four millions, it resembles Aladdin’s cave rather than a burial place. The vault is of octagon form, the roof encrusted with silver bassi relievi, recalling the principal events of the saint’s life; the panels of cloth of gold divided by silver Caryatides, representing the Virtues, one at each angle; and the saint’s embalmed body attired in pontifical robes laid at its extremity in a shrine of rock crystal mounted in silver and ornamented with the arms of Philip the Fourth of Spain, (by whom it was presented to the cathedral,) wrought in massive gold; the dead face and hands are bare, the latter covered with jewels, which sparkle as in mockery.
Having spent the day in the Duomo, the curiosity next in order was La Scala. You know that it retains this name because erected on the site of a church founded by Beatrice of La Scala, wife of Bernabo Visconti. We went thither in the evening, the opera being Roberto Devereux, and the ballet the last Visconti and first Sforza. The house, which yields in size only to San Carlo of Naples, is freshly and brilliantly decorated; its six rows of boxes which each with its drapery are carried up the whole height, its pit seventy-five feet long and sixty-six broad, are capable of containing three thousand six hundred spectators. Its demerits are, that its fine lustre lights its immense space imperfectly; that the effect of the royal box which fronts the stage and is handsome, is injured by the crown above it, out of all proportion ponderous; that its singers are scarce above mediocrity, and its scenery below criticism. Whether from these causes or the season, there were not a dozen people in the boxes, and the parterre was but half filled. The governor’s box is within two of the stage, but he did not occupy it. La Scala once boasted a first-rate scene-painter, but dying, he failed to drop his mantle on his successor, and, saving a few of his faded scenes, you can fancy nothing so pitiable. The prima donna, who performs Queen Elizabeth of England and possesses a voice just passable, is unhappily plain, and Roberto Devereux, Earl of Essex, chanted a base most awful. The costumes were of any and no period, and yet the audience in the pit determined to be pleased, and compensating for its small numbers by applauding manfully, demanded the performers at the close of the first act, when Roberto and his beloved, who, fearing the queen’s ire, had just parted for ever, came forward to bow and curtsey hand in hand. Of the undelivered ring we heard nothing, but a great deal of a dirty blue scarf which belonged to the damsel, and by mistake was sent as a token to the queen. Quitting the opera at the end of the second act, an Italian custom which would destroy all illusion, if such existed, we summoned patience to see the ballet, more fatiguing to the eyes and incomprehensible to the understanding than anything I could have imagined, the heads, arms and hands of the actors moving in unison with every note of the music, and forming a ludicrous contrast to the expressive French pantomime and magical decorations of the grand Opera. The dancers were ungraceful, but all, even to the fat figurantes, were applauded noisily, and they have, I observe, the habit of concluding each pas seul with a grateful curtsey to the pit. The palace of Visconti was a chaos of tin, coloured paper and sheets of foil, and the ballet ended with a seafight, (rockets sent across the stage representing cannon,) and the entrance of a party of pasteboard deities who came in on wheels. We did not wait for the last act of the opera, preferring to stroll home by the light of a young moon.
28th.
Torrents of rain. We passed a part of the day at the Brera, which was, in times of yore, the monastery of the Umiliati; the order which produced St. Charles’s assassin, and on its suppression was yielded to that of the Jesuits, who have left in its noble courts and spacious halls the mark of their wealth and power. A double tier of pillared arcades surrounds the court, while opposite the entrance is the fine staircase, designed by the architect Piermarini; a monument to whose memory, with others sacred to native poets and painters, occupy places beneath these porticoes, for the Brera unites within its walls the picture gallery, the cabinet of medals, the observatory, and the schools of painting, sculpture, architecture and anatomy, besides a gymnasium and a botanical garden on the spot where the monks cultivated theirs. In the fine rooms which contain the paintings are some of the most splendid I have seen of Paul Veronese, particularly the Adoration of the Saviour by the Wise Men of the East, whose subject might puzzle a novice, for the wise men are dressed in the costume of Paul’s time, one of them accompanied by his dwarf, and the baby Christ wears a pearl diadem on his brow. I noticed also a superb Vandyck, St. Ambrose in Prayer to the Virgin, and a Last Supper by Rubens, whose composition it would be difficult not to prefer to that on the same subject by Paul Veronese. Guercino’s Abraham and Agar, which several students were employed in copying badly, is very beautiful; the weeping face of Agar about to go forth to the desert contrasts finely with the proud and half averted one of Sara. In one of the rooms are several heads of the famed fresco of Leonardo da Vinci, carefully raised from the walls of what was the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie, and is now a barrack-room. We had gone thither hoping to see its remains, but the convent, converted to military uses, is not now shown. We could enter the church only, which, an ill-formed mass of red brick without, is curious within, and has a side chapel filled with monuments, decorated with ultra Catholic care, but many of them ancient and interesting. The head of the Saviour, which is at the Brera, is mild and beautiful in expression, but its colouring wholly faded.
The library is rich in curious manuscripts, and occupies five spacious apartments; in the first are two bad portraits of the emperor and his consort. All the modern productions we saw, for there is a smaller chamber dedicated to them, were strangely wretched in their execution.
This part of Milan contains the widest streets and finest palazzi; the latter awoke my admiration, with their double gates and arcaded courts, surrounded by orange and pomegranate trees.
The most interesting spot in Milan, recalling as it does names famous in its story, is the old castle, which held in turn the Visconti and the Sforza. Originally built in 1358 by Galeazzo, lord of Milan, it was demolished at his death through the jealous fears of the citizens, but rebuilt by his son Giovanni Galeazzo. It stood unmolested till the decease of Filippo Mario, last duke of the Visconti family, when the Milanese, determined on adopting a republican form of government, razed it to the ground once more. Francis Sforza, married to Blanche, daughter of Filippo Mario, and become duke of Milan, raised it from its ruins with strength and extent greater than before. It is this, of the date of 1450, which exists even now, for only its fortifications were destroyed in 1801 by Napoleon’s order, substituting a vast open space and avenues, which form shady promenades. Towards the town are the two massive round towers, and entering on this side you cross five inner courts, in the last of which (that fronting the place d’armes and Arco del Sempione) are the ancient state apartments. On the capitals of the columns which support the vestibule of the grand staircase are carved the arms of Sforza and Visconti; the latter bare the serpent on their escutcheon on account of the exploit of an ancestor who, ere yet his family ruled Milan, marched to the first crusade with Godfrey of Bouillon, and there, in single combat, killed a Saracen general, and despoiled him of his arms and the shield on which was emblazoned a snake swallowing a child.
Giovanni Galeazzo Visconti, born in 1347, whose daughter Valentine espoused the duke of Orleans, the murdered son of Charles the Fifth of France, purchased of the Emperor Wenceslas the rank of duke, which he bore first of his family. He was a believer in astrology, and when already attacked with plague, a comet becoming visible in the heavens, he made no doubt that it appeared to summon him.