The great frescoes of the Capella Grifi in the south transept are more important, and are interesting as being in part by Bernardo Zenale, of whom there is only one other undisputed work known. As in the altarpiece at Treviglio, so here Zenale was associated with Buttinone. The frescoes are, however, so much ruined that it is difficult to judge them or to distinguish the different hands. On the left wall are scenes from the life of St. Ambrose, with groups of fifteenth century courtiers in the foreground. The subjects on the right are almost obliterated, but we seem to distinguish St. Ambrose again, seated in judgment. The curious figure above, of a man hanging, is inexplicable, unless as a symbol of justice visited on malefactors. The general colour of the painting is warm and decorative, and more spontaneous than Buttinone’s laboured easel pictures would make us expect. The types of some of the courtiers in the left-hand fresco, and the women with long plaited hair on the right are so much fairer and more refined than anything one knows of Buttinone’s that one is led to attribute that part to Zenale; but the rather coarse angels of the vaulted roof, very recently uncovered, seem to be very Buttinone. The white-robed figure of St. Ambrose below them, on a white horse against a blue sky, prancing forth against the Arians, scourge in hand, is extremely decorative. On the floor of the chapel, bereft of the sarcophagus on which it once rested, lies the recumbent figure of Ambrogio Grifi, buried here in 1495.

In the Via Filodrammatici, close to La Scala, is the beautiful old doorway of the Palazzo Vimercati, which belongs to the early Sforzesque period. The portrait of Duke Francesco, sculptured in profile, decorates the front of the archivolt, with those of Julius Cæsar and Alexander in flattering conjunction on either side. The rich band of foliage round the arch culminates in the pine-cone, one of the emblems of the Sforza. There is much resemblance between this door and that of the Borromeo Palace.

One of the greatest achievements of Francesco Sforza and Bianca Maria, and a proof of an advanced sentiment of humanity, was the erection of the vast Ospedale Maggiore for the reception and care of the sick, still to this day the chief hospital of Milan.[[16]] It was begun in 1456 by the Florentine architect, Antonio Averulino, or Filarete, who made the plans and carried on the work till 1465, when he was supplanted by his Lombard rival, Guiniforte Solari. The southern portion, distinguished by its elegance and comparative purity of style from the rest, is the only part of the immense façade which is the original fifteenth century work. The diversity of architects is plainly revealed in this portion. The lower part, with its stately round-headed arcade and restrained ornamentation, is by the pupil of Brunelleschi; while in the windows of the upper storey, not interspaced in correspondence with the arcade below, the Lombard affection for the pointed arch and for luxuriant decoration has prevailed over the original design of the Florentine. The building is one of the richest examples of the brick and terra-cotta architecture of North Italy, and this meeting of Gothic and Renaissance ideals in it adds to its interest. The rest of the façade was built in

[16]. The famous Lazaretto, outside the old Porta Orientale, a beautiful fifteenth century building, where the plague-stricken thousands were huddled in the awful visitations of 1576 and 1630, as described in the Promessi Sposi, has been pulled down.

the seventeenth century, in imitation of the earlier part, but the coarseness and crowded excess of the terra-cotta decoration betrays its period. In the great marble portal, the architect, Ricchini, has frankly followed the style of his own times. Within there is a vast cortile of the same date. On the south side part of the fifteenth century building is incorporated in it. Two much spoilt paintings of 1472, by Francesco Vico, representing Francesco and Bianca Maria Sforza and their benefactions to the hospital, are in one of the wards. Passages on the right lead out of the principal cortile into smaller courts, fragmentary and encumbered with erections for hospital use, but evidently remains of the original building. The elegance and lightness of the porticoes here, the graceful terra-cotta ornamentation of the archivolts, the richness of the moulded brick cornices, the charming colour of the brick and stone used together, show how beautiful the hospital must once have been. These old cortiles have been attributed to Bramante, but apparently with no more justification than most of the other buildings of this style in Milan, labelled indiscriminately in uncritical times as Bramantesque.

The Via dell’ Ospedale opens into the piazza beside S. Stefano, where Galeazzo Maria Sforza, was stabbed to death by Girolamo Olgiati and his companions on St. Stephen’s Day, 1476. The church, of very ancient foundation, has been completely modernised, and the atrium where the deed was accomplished has disappeared altogether. A primitive Madonna and Saints is frescoed over an altar on the south side, and beside the west entrance is an archaic bas-relief representing Christ blessing two saints. Via Brolo leads hence into Piazza Verzieri, the fruit and vegetable market, where the rows of women hucksters, in their bright kerchiefs and coloured skirts, seated beneath vast white umbrellas, make a picturesque scene in spite of the modernised surroundings.

The traces of Bramante’s handiwork in Milan, where he is known to have been employed for many years, have vanished more and more in the light of the careful studies of recent times. But in the Church of Sta. Maria delle Grazie we do at last come upon them, though his part in this building also seems to be much less than was generally supposed. The famous Dominican church, with its memories of Lodovico il Moro and Beatrice d’Este, of Leonardo and Bramante, of the novelist Prior, Matteo Bandello, brings us to the full Renaissance. It is in part, however, of the transition style, and links together the earlier and later Sforzesque periods. It was built for the Dominicans in 1465, by Count Gaspare Vimercati, one of Francesco Sforza’s chief supporters, and became later a special object of interest to the Moro, who, not satisfied with its already antiquated style, began to rebuild it completely as soon as he attained the Dukedom. His project was, however, only carried out as far as the choir and cupola. This part used always to be, and is still by some, attributed to Bramante, but there is no evidence that he contributed except with his advice and influence to the work. The great clustered pile, as it appears outside, with its rectangular and circular projections, its panels and pilasters, parapets, arcades, columns and candelabra, its medallions and perforated wheels, seems typical of Renaissance ideas as interpreted by the Lombard architects, with their dislike for simplicity and broad effects, their fondness for broken surfaces and elaborate detail, their natural redundancy. It is grandiose, melancholy and cold. Round the base are shields bearing the various devices of the Sforza. The flank of the church, with its long windows and round oculi, and rich terra-cotta mouldings, is of the earlier style used by the Solari, as is also the façade, but here in the beautiful marble portal, the only part accomplished of the new front projected by Lodovico, we come upon what is generally allowed to be actually Bramante’s work. Its large and dignified character, and the pure design of the arabesques, show a great artist, and a character foreign to the Lombard. The scoppetta, il Moro’s peculiar emblem, is introduced into the pattern on the pilaster on the right hand of the door.

On entering the church one cannot but feel grateful that the Moro’s ambitious designs never arrived at the destruction of this beautiful Gothic nave, so simple and so graceful, so devout and suggestive, with its grey columns and hoary colour and touches of faded fresco everywhere. The story goes that Count Gaspare Vimercati, the founder, and Fra Jacopo Sestio, who was in charge of the work for the Dominicans, had much contention over it, the one desiring a fine handsome building, the other a sanctuary suited to the poverty and humility of the friars. They seem to have succeeded in embodying the ideals of both. From the dim Gothic aisles one emerges with a curious sense of contrast into the great space beyond, where immense arches, springing from heavy pilasters, support a lofty dome, whence abundant light pours down from a circle of windows. This is, of course, the later part of the building. The cupola, which is of nobler and severer aspect within than outside, is much disfigured by baroque decorations. The device of painting objects in perspective, to simulate relief, had already attracted the architects even of the great age, as is shown here, where it is used with ingenuity and restraint in the simulated parts of the gallery in the lowest storey of the dome. The Evangelists in the spandrils are a glaring instance of its abuse in later times.

The choir has fine stalls of 1470, decorated with figures and elaborate designs in intarsia. High up on the right, near the organ, is a charming fresco by Luini, painted in 1517, of the Virgin and Saints and a devotee, one Laschenaer, an officer of Louis XII.’s. It was to this choir, still unfinished, that the dead body of the young Duchess Beatrice was carried in those mournful early days of 1497, and here that the friars chanted Masses round her bier for seven days and nights without ceasing, and that amid a countless host of mourners bearing torches she was committed to her tomb. Hither came her husband, to weep and pray over her grave, before he abandoned his and her Milan to the invader. Beneath the pavement behind the High Altar she lies now, her infant children beside her. Some say that the Moro’s body, recovered from its far-off exile in France, rests here too beside it, but this is very uncertain. Anyhow a pitiful obscurity covers this grave in which those brief years of an incomparable pride and glory ended—not even a stone marks it now. The monument carved for it by Cristoforo Solari, with the effigies of the husband and wife upon it, has been removed to the Certosa of Pavia.