Carlo Borromeo was a scion of the great patrician family of that name in Milan, founded far back in the mists of mediæval antiquity by a certain pilgrim, the buon romeo from whom it took its name. The House was conspicuous in the story of the city, and was foremost in consequence and in wealth in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Carlo was born in the ecclesiastical purple. His uncle, Pius IV., of the Milanese House of Medici, created him a cardinal in 1559, at the age of nineteen, and heaped benefices upon him. In 1560 he became Archbishop of Milan on the retirement of Cardinal Ippolito II. d’Este, who had occupied the See for a great number of years in succession to his uncle Ippolito I. The young Cardinal was now wealthier than any other prince of the Church. A few years later, however, he renounced all his benefices, which having he was great, and casting away, greater, as his biographer observes. He retained the Archbishopric only, and taking up his abode in the city, he devoted himself to the government of his diocese, with an immense zeal and fervour of reform. The Jesuits, the Teatini, and other of the new and reformed orders which sprang up in obedience to the religious impulse of the time, were introduced by him into Milan, and he suppressed the immensely wealthy and influential order of the Umiliati, and alienated its revenues to the support of the new communities and to the furtherance of his great schemes. An ascetic of purest and most exemplary life, he indulged as representative of the Church in a boundless pride and pomp. He was a despot, and his despotism opposed itself to all independence of thought. He extended his ecclesiastical jurisdiction to its utmost limits, and seizing delinquents almost under the nose of the civil authorities, filled the dungeons of the episcopal palace with them. His imperious will came into conflict with the governors, but his powerful influence in the bigoted Court of Spain gave him supremacy, and he was in fact the ruler of Milan. His splendid temper of Milanese patrician vented itself in grandiose schemes for the building, restoration and ornamentation of churches and religious institutions. But as his authority was exerted to suppress all individuality and spontaneity in literature and thought, so his rich patronage was lent only to the decadence in art. A nobler manifestation of the man was seen during the pestilence of 1576, when, with heroic self-forgetfulness, he fulfilled his duty as chief pastor of the afflicted people, succouring them by every means in his power. His exalted figure, with cross borne high, leading processions of penitent and supplicatory citizens through the streets, is one of the saintly pictures of history.

Carlo Borromeo died in 1584, having lived but just forty-six years. Beyond him is the long sleep of Milan. Under the pall of stillness her historic virtues lie dormant, her historic names inglorious. But not dead. When the long-deferred moment of the awakening comes, the old courage, the old faith, the old sense of fellowship arises stronger and more lively than before, and the names of old resound again among the champions of Lombard and Italian freedom, in the prisons of repressive tyranny, round the barricades of the Cinque Giornate, on the fields of Custozza, Novara, Solferino, side by side with the patriots sprung of the nameless blood which long ago watered the rich tilth of Legnano.

CHAPTER IX
Art in Milan

“Cosa bella mortal passa e non d’arte.”—Leonardo da Vinci.

The Milanese as a people do not take a great place in the story of Italian art. They show at no time the spontaneous artistic character which was the blessed birthright of the Florentines, Sienese, Umbrians, Venetians. They granted, however, splendid hospitality to the art of others. Talent of every kind was attracted to this wealthy and luxurious city, and the concourse of foreign artists roused and developed considerable industry in the natives from early times.

Lombardy, and in particular Milan, its principal city, were exposed to influences which did not reach further south. The strain of northern blood in the people, derived from their Gallic origin, readily received the impress of the ultramontanes who flowed down throughout the centuries into the fertile plains of Po and Ticino, and the thoughts and ideas which they brought, assimilating with the natural instincts of the soil, and with the ancient traditions of the Latins, resulted in an artistic character which is quite Italian, though very different from the more southern populations. It lacks their spontaneity and daring, their lofty imagination and idealism, has little of their sense of beauty, falls short in sheer ability. But it is distinguished by sincerity, a love of realism, a humble and zealous industry, and also by certain marked and inveterate mannerisms. And though the Milanese, or rather the Lombards who peopled the wide Duchy of the Visconti and Sforza, remained always very receptive, looking for a lead, and owing their strongest artistic impulses to some genius from abroad, their work keeps always its strong native character.

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. When no longer inspired by freedom, architecture was still fostered in Milan by ostentatious tyranny, and continued to be the most genial art of the people. In the fourteenth century, the Visconti raised beautiful churches and palaces, but the builders inclined more and more to abandon the national traditions for Gothic lightness and grace. In the crowning work of the Cathedral, the false Gothic ideal finally triumphed. The classical revival, which followed under the Sforza and filled the city anew with churches and palaces, was communicated to Milan by Tuscan architects. It was cherished by the eclectic spirit of princes and nobles, and owed nothing to popular impulse. But in adapting her peculiar material, brick, to the new style, Lombardy gave it a local and special character, and only when the vulgar exaggeration of the classic fashion overwhelmed Italy in a general flood of baroque extravagance, did Lombardy lose architectural individuality.

Sculpture, as the handmaid of architecture, was also actively practised in Milan from the twelfth century onwards. The same masters from the shores of Como, from the valley of Antelamo, close to Maggiore, from Campione near Lugano, who carried the Lombard or Romanesque style all over North Italy and into Tuscany in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, built her churches and carved upon the façades mystical figures and devices. The Romanesque sculpture remaining in Milan is very rude, and the names of its authors are in few cases remembered. In the fourteenth century the family or guild of masters from Campione is prominent in the records of Milanese architecture and sculpture, and individuals are distinguished by name. Under the guidance of the Pisan sculptor Giovanni di Balduccio, one of the ablest of Nicola Pisano’s followers, who worked long in Milan, these Campionese produced numberless sepulchral monuments, a few of which survive still in the churches and museums. The Pisan traditions appear in them, modified by the native character. The classic nobility and severity, the ideal grace of Nicola and Giovanni Pisano degrade into heaviness and coarseness in these ruder and more realistic hands, and the forms learnt from them are remoulded according to certain inveterate predilections which persist always in Lombard sculpture.

At the end of this century, artistic industry received an extraordinary impulse throughout the Visconte States from the splendid patronage of Gian Galeazzo. His vast new foundations, the Duomo of Milan, the Certosa of Pavia, his mighty engineering enterprises, gave endless employment to workers in stone. In this fervour of activity Lombard sculpture began to evolve clearly its special character, and agreeably to the gorgeous tastes of the Prince, which became a tradition for his successors, a love of excessive and exaggerated ornamentation appears, and marks it henceforth.

After Gian Galeazzo a lull came in art with the civic confusion of Gian Maria’s few years, and the continuous wars of Filippo Maria’s thirty-five. This period represents the pause between the mediæval era and the Renaissance in Milan. The building and decoration of the Cathedral was continued slowly by men whom the old principles no longer inspired, and the new had not yet reached. No great names occur in the host of craftsmen engaged in the work. The Campione fraternity was still represented, and continued to exist for a long time, though its traditions were dying out, and Jacopino da Tradate, who worked in the earlier half of the century, was a sculptor of some power.