GIANT STATUES ON THE DUOMO.
Other details of interest are to be seen on and about the roof of the apse. When in ascending from below you emerge into the open air, take the passage straight before you, instead of mounting higher or turning on to the roof of the south aisle. Passing through a covered way you will soon come out upon a little projection of the roof, close to some of the monstrous gargoyles, and the Giganti beneath them. These last are robust and dignified survivals of the fourteenth century, and of the serious traditions of the Lake Masters, and are curiously at variance with the later style of ornamentation on the building. Further on, on the roof of the south sacristy, to which a stairway leads down, stands the Eve of Cristoforo Solari, a graceful and expressive figure, lumpy, however, in its contours. On the corresponding roof of the north sacristy, on the other side of the apse, is the companion statue of Adam, leaning in melancholy pose upon his spade, a heavy and nerveless presentment of the father of mankind, yet most favourably distinguished in taste from the later statues on the Cathedral. The pinnacle at the north-east angle of this sacristy roof, surmounted by the figure of a Knight holding a banner, is one of the oldest pieces of work on the Cathedral. It is fourteenth century pure Gothic, and the careful and artistic workmanship of all the rich detail of ornament on it is very impressive in comparison with its surroundings.
From the roof of the Cathedral one has an unobstructed view of the tall octagonal Campanile of San Gottardo to the south. This beautiful and characteristic North Italian building of the fourteenth century combines the beauties of Lombard and Gothic with incomparably harmonious effect, achieving a wonderful charm of colour and grace by the delicate marble arcades and slender soaring shafts of marble with which the solidity of the ruddy brick is lightened. Unfortunately we see the brick now in the rawness of recent restoration. The tiled steeple is surmounted by a bronze angel in stiff pose with wings outspread. This Campanile was built about 1330 by Magister Franciscus di Pecoraris da Cremona for Azzo Visconte. The church beside it which that gouty prince raised in honour—among other saints—of S. Gottardo, the protector of sufferers from gout, and filled with precious ornaments and works of art, replaced the old Baptistery, San Giovanni alle Fonti. It was completely modernised in 1770, and the ancient apse—which is perhaps anterior to the fourteenth century—is the only survival of the old building. San Gottardo served as the chapel of the great Visconte palace, which stood on the south of the Cathedral where now sprawl the melancholy courts and mean buildings of the Palazzo Reale. This palace had been originally the seat of the Milanese Consuls, and the space around it was the Broletto Vecchio, where the public buildings stood in the early days of the Republic. When Matteo Visconte made himself master of Milan, he and his family, as permanent heads of the Republic, occupied the palace, and transformed it into a fortress, with towers and moats, for the defence of their tyranny. His grandson Azzo beautified it with ornaments and paintings and fountains. These were all destroyed by Galeazzo II., who rebuilt the palace on a much larger and more magnificent scale, with two great courts surrounded by porticos, wherein took place the great marriage feasts, and other celebrations of the splendid Visconte Princes. There, doubtless, was set the banquet for the young Duke of Clarence and his bride Violante, when Petrarca sat beside the bridegroom, among the chief guests, and the boy Gian Galeazzo brought in the marriage gifts. It was in this palace that Giovanmaria Visconte, passing through the courts on his way to hear Mass in S. Gottardo, was stabbed to death by the waiting conspirators. Francesco Sforza and Lodovico il Moro repaired and embellished the palace, and it was inhabited by Isabella of Aragon after the death of her husband Gian Galeazzo Sforza. Restored by il Pellegrini, it was reduced to its present aspect in 1770.
The Archiepiscopal Palace, which faces the Duomo on the south-east, represents the dwelling-place of the ecclesiastical princes of Milan for at least a score of centuries, and probably many more. Standing close beside the Cathedral church, the Archbishop’s residence was called, up to the twelfth century, the Palazzo Milanese, being in fact during the earlier Middle Ages, when the archbishops ruled the city, the seat of government, until the Palace of the Commune, or of the elected Consuls, which rose in its precincts and under its protection, gradually usurped its place, as the voice of the public parliament, or Arengo, held in the Piazza, grew more and more powerful. Under the Visconte archbishops, who once again united the ecclesiastic and temporal sovereignty in a single hand, the palace was enlarged and partly incorporated with the palace of the Consuls, now become, as we have seen, the fortress of the Visconti. The Arcivescovato was rebuilt in the fifteenth century by Archbishop Arcimboldi, and remains of that date may be seen in the outer cortile. The great inner court is the work of il Pellegrini in S. Carlo Borromeo’s time, and the existing building belongs partly to that period and partly to the end of the eighteenth century.
CHAPTER XI
The Basilica of St. Ambrogio
“Regina delle chiese lombarde.”
In a quiet plebeian quarter, remote from the bustle of the city, surrounded by a wide piazza and a pleasant grove of lime-trees, stands the old basilica of St. Ambrogio. It is reached in a few minutes from the Duomo by the S. Vittore tram. This church, architecturally and historically, ranks first among all in Milan. The Duomo, foreign in material and bastard in style, cannot compare in interest with this grand product of the Lombard soil and the Lombard spirit. The story of St. Ambrogio reaches back through the long centuries of Milan’s modern and mediæval life to the time of the saintly Doctor himself. It was in 386 that St. Ambrose founded it beside the already existing basilica Faustæ. Here he buried, in the place which he had prepared for himself, the bodies of the martyr saints Protasio and Gervasio, whose resting-place had been revealed to him just at the crisis of his struggle with the Empress. Two men of marvellous stature such as the first age bore, so he describes the bodies in a letter to his sister Marcellina. We carried them, as the evening was falling, to the basilica Faustæ.... The following day we removed them to the church which they call Ambrosianam. They were laid beneath the altar, where Christ is offered up, and Ambrose commanded that when his own time came he should be buried in all humility beside them upon their left hand.
The church was dedicated to the martyrs. Nevertheless, it continued to be called the Basilica Ambrosiana according to the fashion of that day, when the churches were called after their founders, as for example the Basilica Faustæ, otherwise S. Vittore in Cielo d’Oro, the Basilica Porciana, also dedicated to S. Vittore, and the Basilica Paulina, or SS. Felix and Nabor. To later centuries it has become unalterably Sant Ambrogio.
Being in a peculiar sense the church of the patron saint and protector of the Milanese people, the basilica held from the first a very prominent place in the life of the Ambrosian city. Here the Primates gathered their suffragans to those synods and provincial councils, in which in the days of ecclesiastical rule the affairs of North Italy were decided. The foundation of a monastery of the powerful Benedictine Order in connection with the church, in 783, added to its importance. The archbishops of the reviving See of Milan, in the ninth century, restored it and bestowed upon it the utmost honour and reverence, endowing it with great riches. Here Otho the Great was crowned King of Italy by Archbishop Walperto in 961, and from that time, whenever a coronation took place in Milan, it was performed in St. Ambrogio. Perhaps the curious privilege which the city enjoyed, of keeping all sovereigns excluded from its precincts, was the reason why the Cathedral church was never chosen for the ceremony. In 1186, Frederick Barbarossa was present here when with immense splendour Henry of Suabia wedded Constance of Sicily, the Constance who is moon-arrested in Dante’s Paradise, because of her supposed inconstancy to monastic vows, though the old tale of her being dragged from a convent to marry the Emperor’s son has been proved a fable.
During the factious age of liberty St. Ambrogio was the church in which the popular party gathered, to seek the sanction and protection of the patron saint and to discuss their affairs, being shut out from the Duomo by the Archbishop and the aristocratic party. Here the short-lived reconciliation of 1258, called the Pace di St. Ambrogio, was completed and sworn to before the Altar with great solemnity by the representatives of both factions.