The statue is by Benedetto Antelami,[[15]] chief of the so-called Comacine masters—predecessors of the Campionesi—and best known by his sculptures on the Cathedral and Baptistery at Parma. It is the work of his old age. It shows a feeling for nature and a power of expression immensely in advance of the twelfth century sculptors, and marks the gradual emancipation of thought from the strange terror and the sense of human littleness in the midst of natural and supernatural forces, which oppressed the Middle Ages. Here is a work of art in honour of one who is neither God nor saint—a new conception of man’s importance in the scheme of the Universe.
[15]. Venturi, Storia dell’ Arte, vol. 3, p. 340.
On the south side of the piazza is the Loggia degli Osii, built, as a scarcely legible inscription in the wall records, in 1316, by Matteo Visconte, who had acquired the houses of the Osii, a Milanese family, for the purpose. Built in and partly concealed in later times, the old features of this palace have been quite recently disclosed by careful restoration. The beautiful pointed arcade of the loggia rests upon a parapet decorated with the shields of the Visconti and of the different divisions of the city, and in the middle projects the ringhiera or balcony, from which official harangues were made and decrees proclaimed. The statues of the Virgin and various saints in the deeply-sunk niches of the storey above are of the school of Giovanni di Balduccio.
The palace on the right hand of the loggia, of heavy ornate style, replaced in the seventeenth century a much earlier building. The west side of the piazza is filled by a little palace, originally built by Azzo Visconte early in the fourteenth century for the bankers and money-changers. It is decorated with charming terra-cotta ornamentation, and has been partly restored, but it is much spoilt by modern occupation and use for business purposes.
PALAZZO DEI BANCHIERI
On this spot of the Broletto Nuovo all the busy excited life of mediæval Milan once swayed and surged. This was the point upon which all the different parts of the city converged, and hither at the call of danger marched the militia of each division, called by the name of its gate, Porta Romana, Porta Ticinese, etc., to go forth again, each preceded by its gonfalon, to the defence of the respective gates and quarters. Or if the decree of the Republic were for an offensive expedition, the Caroccio would be drawn forth from its place in the Duomo and brought here, and the combined host, gathering round it, would pass out in order of battle. In the upper chamber of the Palazzo della Ragione public business was transacted, and the portico below was the assembly place for the citizens for the discussion of public affairs and for amusement and sport, all that common social life, shared together by noble and plebeian, of republican Italy in the Middle Ages. Here were brought the captured enemies of the Republic—that is, of the party in power. In some dark and secure corner of the palace there were cages inhabited by living prisoners. The chroniclers relate how Napo della Torre, to revenge his brother Paganino’s death at the hands of Milanese exiles in Vercelli, had thirteen noble prisoners carried to the Broletto and their heads smitten off one by one, till his own young son fell at his feet and vowed that he himself would not live if the life of the thirteenth—a certain physician who had lately cured the boy of a mortal sickness—were not spared. But the statue of Oldrado, burner of heretics, has not looked down on grim scenes only. Here many great feasts took place, such as that one which Francesco della Torre made in 1268 to celebrate the passage through Milan of Margaret of Burgundy, the bride of Charles of Anjou, when two oxen stuffed with pigs and sheep were roasted in the Broletto, and more than three thousand persons were fed; tournaments also were often held here in honour of victories and joyful events. We read of tumults too, and of the Milanese women on one occasion, when a rumour of new taxes had gone forth, besieging the palace with knives in their hands and seizing and selling all the salt, which was then as always a Government monopoly and was stored in an adjacent building.
Another monument of Milan’s republican days, and of her noble struggles for liberty in the twelfth century, is the old Porta Nuova, often called the Portone,—the massive arches at the end of the Via Manzoni. This is one of the gates built in defiance of Barbarossa in 1171. It was originally decorated with rude sculptures representing the return of the Milanese, after the destruction of the city in 1162, and with a figure of Barbarossa seated cross-legged on a devil; these are now in the Castello. The bas-relief with two Roman heads, still to be seen on the gate, is said to be a relic of the older gate corresponding to this one in the Roman walls. The old towers have been pulled down.
CHAPTER XIII
Gothic and Renaissance Buildings
“O tempo consumatore delle cose e o invidiosa antichità.”—Leonardo da Vinci.