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.
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.
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.
