The Story of Milan

by Ella Noyes

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.

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

[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.