Most of these early Milanese buildings have indeed to be accepted on the faith of the modern restorer, but for whom these interesting churches would still be vested in the hideous baroque disfigurements of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. S. Sepolcro, close to the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, is one of these. The towers, the crypt—studied with much interest by Leonardo da Vinci—and the exterior of the apse alone remained of the eleventh or twelfth century church, and these have been lately restored and a new façade built in appropriate style to replace the Borromean substitute for the original. The interior is quite spoilt. In the sacristy there is a Nativity by Gianpietrino, a characteristic work, with some infants of attractively soft contours, but curiously brown flesh colour in the foreground. Sta. Maria a Beltrade, off Via Torino on the west side, is of very ancient origin, but has nothing of interest left except a twelfth century bas-relief of rudest and most childish style upon the wall outside, representing the old Candlemas procession in which an image of Madonna was carried from this church to the Cathedral, a Christian substitute for the Pagan ceremony in honour of Cybele.
Another ancient Milanese sanctuary, the Chapel of S. Satiro, built in 879, was restored in the Renaissance period, and incorporated with the Church of Sta. Maria presso S. Satiro.[[14]]
[14]. See Chapter XIII.
S. Simpliciano, in the north of the city, has preserved three beautiful doorways of the Romanesque period, enriched with sculptured marble columns and roll mouldings. The eleventh century interior was enlarged in the late fifteenth century, and transformed in later restorations. Its chief interest now is the great fresco in the apse—the Coronation of the Virgin—an imposing composition by Borgognone in his advanced years, rich and decorative in colour, and remarkable for Quattrocento simplicity of treatment and feeling at a time when the great Cinquecentists had already revolutionised artistic ideals.
To the east of S. Simpliciano, close to the Palazzo di Brera, stands S. Marco, which in the exterior of the transepts alone shows traces of its original thirteenth century form. The beautiful pointed door, with the statues in Gothic niches above, was built more than a century later. The rest of the façade is modern, and the whole exterior wears a vesture of new red brick. The campanile, with its pointed steeple and frieze of interlaced archetti, is early fourteenth century and very characteristic of the brick building of that period. The interior is baroque, but in the north transept there are some fine sepulchral monuments of Milanese nobles. They are all of the school of Giovanni di Balduccio, and the bas-reliefs upon them resemble in arrangement and style the tombs already seen in St. Eustorgio. One is to Salvarino Aliprandi, of an ancient patrician family in the city, who died 1344. Another commemorates Lanfranco Settala, General of the Augustinian Order and founder of the church, who died in 1264. His genial effigy is carved on the tomb, seated in his preceptor’s chair, with his devout and diminutive pupils around him. Here is also the tomb of Martino Aliprandi, a man distinguished for his learning and eloquence, sent as envoy from Azzo Visconte to Pope John XXII. in 1332, and yet another, that of Giacomo Bossi, a knight of the Empire, who died in 1355. The monument of the Birago family, which is placed above the last, though sculptured as late as 1455 by Cristoforo dei Luvoni, shows little artistic advance on the Trecento works.
Of secular buildings of the Romanesque and early Gothic period hardly anything is now left in Milan. The Palazzo della Ragione, however, still stands, though disfigured in later days, on the spot which was once the Broletto Nuovo, the centre and citadel of civic life in the Republican era, a space enclosed in defensive walls and pierced by six gates, corresponding in direction to the principal gates of the city. The walls were built and the seat of the Podestà was transferred thither early in the thirteenth century from the Broletto Vecchio beside the Cathedral, a move significant of the complete liberation of the Commune from the old domination of the Archbishop. The word Broletto appears to be derived from brolo, signifying in Milanese a garden, the old Broletto having been once the garden of the Archbishop; but the name followed the civic offices with which it had become inseparably associated—hence Broletto Nuovo. The move was in fact a return of the chief authority in the city to its old abode, since the Broletto Nuovo was apparently the citadel in Roman times, and the seat later on of the military governors, called Dukes, under the Lombard rulers. The name of Curia Ducis, the Court of the Duke, still survives in the name Cordusio, by which the big modern piazza close by is called.
The Palazzo della Ragione was built in 1228, with a vast open portico below and a great hall above, which was reached, not by a staircase in the building, but over the archway still existing at the north end. It was altered in later times, and an incongruous upper storey was added in the eighteenth century. It is now being restored. The palace stood till 1866 in the centre of a piazza—the original Broletto in fact—which was enclosed on the north side by the great Palazzo dei Giurisconsulti. The modern Via Mercanti now runs between it and the last-named palace, but on the other side it faces into the little Piazza dei Mercanti, which represents all that remains of the Broletto, and is still surrounded by old palaces. It is the one bit of mediæval Milan left, apart from single buildings. On this side of the Palazzo della Ragione there is a little equestrian statue of the Podestà Oldrado da Tresseno, with his name and the date, 1233, beneath, and some Leonine verses in which he is lauded in an elegant rhyme for building the upper storey of the palace and for sedulously performing his duty of burning heretics.
Qui solum struxit Catharos ut debuit uxit.
STATUE OF OLDRADO DA TRESSENO