The important Trivulzio Collection, in the family palace, opposite to St. Alessandro, can only be visited by permission of the owner, Prince Trivulzio. It contains a fine Mantegna—the Assumption of the Virgin—painted in 1497; Portrait of a Man, by Antonello da Messina; Birth of the Virgin, by the Siennese Sano di Pietro; Madonna and Angels, by Pier’ di Cosimo, etc., and a very interesting portrait of Lodovico il Moro, by Boltraffio. Here is also preserved the Gothic tomb of Azzo Visconte, originally in S. Gottardo, and some splendid tapestries—the Twelve Months of the Year—of the Renaissance period, and of Lombard production. The fine library is rich in the possession of a manuscript by Leonardo, known as the Codex Trivulziana, and of a fragment of the precious Libro di Gesù, in which are portraits of Lodovico il Moro and his son Massimiliano, aged five, miniatured by Ambrogio de Predis.
The other private collections not being open to the public hardly come within our province; we may perhaps be permitted to mention Signor Crespi’s (Via Borgo Nuovo), a particularly fine collection, which has been fully illustrated in a monograph by Sig. Adolfo Venturi, with reproductions of the pictures.[[24]] It contains the very fine portrait of a woman, variously ascribed to Titian and Giorgione, but given by Venturi to Pordenone; a very interesting early Correggio—the Presepio—and a small Madonna, by the same master; a Madonna of Gio. Bellini, also an early work of great beauty; a Holy Family, by Lorenzo Lotto, in which the Virgin is one of his most subtle presentments of feminine character; the Flight into Egypt, also by Lotto; Victory of the Gonzaga over the Buonacorsi, with a very interesting view of Mantua, by Domenico Morone; a fine portrait of a man attributed to Andrea Solari, but, according to Venturi, by Bartolommeo Veneto. The Milanese school is also well represented, and there are many other works of value.
[24]. La Galleria Crespi.
The well-known connoisseur, Dr. Gustavo Frizzoni, also has a small, but very choice collection of pictures, chiefly of the North Italian and Venetian schools.
CHAPTER XVI
The Castello
“La miglior fortezza che sia è non essere odiato dal popolo.”—Macchiavelli.
In the west of the city a vast red brick building, towering against the sky, closes the wide vista of the modern Via Dante. It stands for that storied stronghold and palace of the Visconti and Sforza, the Castello di Porta Giovia, whose rapidly vanishing remains, mutilated, ruined and buried beneath the additions and incrustations of five centuries of changing circumstance, have been very recently dug out and restored and rebuilt into the present interesting semblance of the fifteenth century original.
The Castello was first built by Galeazzo II. Visconte, in the latter half of the fourteenth century. Galeazzo’s stronghold incorporated one of the thirteenth century gates, the Porta Giovia—or, in Milanese, Zobia—which had kept the name of the corresponding gate in the Roman walls, named Giovia in honour of the Emperor Diocletian Jovius. It served at first solely for defence, and as a prison. Only a few years after its erection Galeazzo’s subtle son secured within its walls his first great prey—Bernabò Visconte, his uncle and fellow-sovereign. The fortress did not then extend beyond the city walls; these with the moat formed its defence towards the country. But Gian Galeazzo constructed a second citadel beyond the walls and moat, enlarging the enclosure to the dimensions which they occupy to-day—and enclosing Porta Giovia and a portion of the city walls in the new precincts.
The Castello, so increased and strengthened, became the chief support of the tyrants of Milan. Its possession ensured dominion of the city. When Duke Giovanni Maria was murdered, the fortress was faithfully held against all attacks by Vincenzo Marliano for his lawful successor, Filippo Maria, who was able to enter through it into the seditious city at the head of an army and force the factions to accept his rule. This last of the Visconte sovereigns made his dwelling in the innermost keep of the Castle in gloomy seclusion, imprisoned by his own fears. His tyranny and dark habit of life invested the Castle with horror for his subjects, and immediately after his death they deliberately tore the great building down, stone by stone, at great cost. Only the foundations were left standing.
But for a very brief time did the Milanese see the free sky unobstructed by menacing towers. On the overthrow of the Ambrosian republic and the accession of Francesco Sforza, the Castle began to be rebuilt, and before long the great fortress, enclosed within much stronger defences than before, was again in existence. It is this Sforza building, with the additions made by Francesco’s sons, which we see in the restored Castello of to-day, though the brave new battlements and towers give a poor idea of the substance of those walls which amazed King René of Anjou when he visited the works with the Duchess Bianca Maria in 1453, and of a building celebrated by many writers as the strongest and proudest in the world.