The Story of Milan

by Ella Noyes

THE ROCCHETTA, CASTELLO

How difficult it is to-day, in this exhumed corpse of her old home, these dry bones of the past, denuded of all their old richness of detail and decoration, to realise that vivid young presence. Yet the sun shines gloriously in the wide cortile this afternoon, making a stately pattern of light and shade in the arcades, and we recognise at least in the fair and spacious proportions of the building and the grace of sculptured column and curving arch, that Renaissance beauty of architecture which made it once a worthy setting for such a prince and princess as Lodovico il Moro and Beatrice d’Este.

During his regency the Moro spent enormous sums on the various works which he undertook in the Castle. He formed a vast piazza around it, in the midst of which he apparently intended to place Leonardo’s great equestrian statue of Duke Francesco. The clay model of this statue was in fact set up there on the occasion of Bianca Maria Sforza’s marriage with the Emperor Maximilian, and remained there till, with the passing of the Moro’s ephemeral glory, it too perished for the wanton amusement of a foreign invader. In 1494, when the death of Gian Galeazzo removed the last shadowy limitation of Lodovico’s sovereignty, the tyrant pressed on with new eagerness the incessant labours of his architects and engineers on the great building. The Rocchetta was finally completed by a portico on the north-east side; and among many other alterations and additions a set of exquisite camerini opening into a loggia were built across a bridge over the moat on the north-east side of the Corte Ducale. The picturesque exterior of this structure, which has been attributed to Bramante—groundlessly, it appears—may be seen in restored form to-day. The great gardens which extended on the north and west of the Castle were a special object of the Moro’s care. He enlarged them continually, absorbing without mercy all the Naboths’ vineyards adjacent. Both Leonardo and Bramante were employed by him at this time for various works in the Castello—chiefly of defence and utility—though Leonardo was also charged with the decoration of rooms in his character of painter. There are jottings in his notebooks referring to work of this sort, estimates in fact of the cost of the materials and labour required. Other existing documents show him frescoing the Sala delle Asse and a certain Saletta Negra in the Corte Ducale. But in spite of the most painstaking research and every effort of restoration, there is nothing now remaining in these rooms which can be considered Leonardo’s handiwork. Neither of Bramante is there any undoubted trace left, except a precious fragment of a painting in one of the rooms of the Rocchetta.

The sudden death of Beatrice in the early days of 1497 extinguished all the sunshine in the Castello. The labours of builders and artists still continued upon it. But it was to works of defence that the thoughts of the Duke were compelled now to turn almost exclusively. The peril of the French threatened the throne of the Sforza. Leonardo and the others were occupied in 1498 and 1499 in strengthening the fortifications and inventing new engines of defence, and the Rocchetta especially was rendered so strong that it was practically impregnable. Yet all this labour and care served only for the ruin of the Moro, and the advantage of his enemies. Afraid to trust himself within it, as we have seen, he abandoned it at the critical moment, leaving it in the hands of his faithless Castellan Bernardino da Corte, and deluding himself with the belief that he was turning his back upon it for an hour only, to return in triumph to its relief, he passed out of the gates for ever.

With the departure of Lodovico Sforza ended the good days of the Castello. Surrendered by Bernardino da Corte to the French, it was sacked of all its wonderful contents. Bernardino claimed as his share of the spoil all that Lodovico had not removed of the famous Sforza treasure, including priceless works of the goldsmiths’ art. Gian Giacomo Trivulzio seized the splendid tapestries. All the exquisite accessories of Beatrice’s short life, her costly robes, her instruments of music, her jewels, her beautiful books, were rudely shared between the various spoilers. What became of the pictures is unknown. The French captains occupied her private apartments, her delicate camerini, and the beautiful halls and courts where life had been practised as a fine art, were given up to coarse and drunken jollity, and defiled by the foul habits of the invaders. How deplorable the change in the eyes of the Italian princes and ambassadors who waited with servile deference upon Louis XII. during his stay in Milan is shown by many records. In the castello there is nothing but dirt and foulness, says a Venetian who was present then, such as Signor Lodovico would not have allowed for the whole world.

The Castle had now to serve the grim purposes of war, not of art and pleasure. For these it was well fitted, in the hands of determined defenders. The French chronicler, Jean d’Auton, who was in the train of Louis XII., describes with admiration its immense strength, its broad moats, its towers, ramparts, walls and outworks, its fortified gates, its sally ports and posterns, with the impregnable Rocchetta in its midst. If their effeminate stomachs had been swelled by manly hearts, says he, speaking of Lodovico’s garrison, well might they have held it long against every human power, for they had in their hands one of the most advantageous places in the world.... In such keeping is it now, he adds, that, in spite of all the winds, in every corner of its garden, the noble fleur-de-lys shall flower for ever. The fleur-de-lys was not, however, so fadeless as he boasted. But it bloomed undisturbed for twelve years, during which period the palace once or twice knew splendour and gaiety once more, as in 1507, when Louis XII. held his court there for a short time, and was waited on by cardinals, princes, and distinguished men from all parts of Italy. Then it was that Isabella d’Este danced with the king in the great ball-room in the Rocchetta, where her dead sister had presided. There, too, was Galeazzo di San Severino, once the most intimate friend of the now captive Moro and his wife, and now Grand Ecuyer to the usurper. The court poets, the musicians sang their venal praises as gaily for the new as for the old master, Leonardo, too, was there, in the service of the French king. For him one tyrant passed and another came; art alone endured.

The ravages in the palace were concealed by the gorgeous decorations. Two years later the king came again, and the company on this occasion was so superb that the meanest dresses were of brocade. These were but temporary liftings of the gloom. In 1512 the castle was besieged by the Holy League, and the French turned out. Again in 1515 it was retaken by the French, and the weak young Duke Massimiliano Sforza was replaced by the splendid Francis I., who rode in, fresh from his victory in the Battle of the Giants, beneath the usual arches of triumph. In 1521 a terrific explosion of gunpowder, lit it is said by a thunderbolt from a serene sky, destroyed the great Torre di Filarete, and killed the Castellan and a number of the garrison. A few months later the Castle was besieged by Charles V.’s army, and after fourteen months of heroic endurance, the French were again expelled. The reign of Francesco II. Sforza followed with all its terrible vicissitudes of war and siege and Spanish occupation. Bombardments, the necessity for new defences and alterations, the polluting presence of the Spaniards and lanzknechts wrecked ever more and more the proud habitation of the Sforza. A mocking reflection of its old glory brightened it for a few years after Duke Francesco’s reconciliation with the Emperor in 1530, and one or two splendid pageants were added to the long succession of gorgeous spectacles of which it had been the scene under the Sforza. These ended in 1535 in the melancholy ceremony of the last Duke’s funeral, when his dead body, or rather an image of it, arrayed in crimson velvet and scarlet hose, and a mantle of richest golden brocade, and crowned with the ducal beretta, was borne forth beneath a canopy of cloth of gold, by the doctors of the University, preceded by an endless train of friars and monks and clergy and black-hooded mourners carrying torches, and followed by kinsmen, ambassadors and nobles in sable robes reaching to the ground. The real body was carried out quietly to the Duomo the same evening. Thus in symbolic show and unreal grandeur the short-lived dynasty of the Sforza vanished out of this great fabric of its creation.

From this time the Castello ceased to be the chief palace of a sovereign prince. Under the Spaniards its precincts were enlarged and strengthened in the second half of the sixteenth century by an immense outer quadrangle of fortifications which completely altered its aspect. The changing conditions of warfare, and the advance of the science of fortification, brought continual additions and changes, and many of the beautiful constructions of the Sforza period were ruthlessly sacrificed. Yet the Castello remained for long one of the famous sights of Europe, and is described with admiration by many travellers.

In 1800 the fortifications built by the Spaniards were destroyed, and only the old Sforza nucleus remained, abandoned to natural decay, and converted later into barracks. It is from this fate that its ruins have been rescued and built up into the imposing edifice of to-day.

The stately halls of the Corte Ducale are now the home of the archæological and artistic collections of the municipality. We have only space to mention shortly some of the most interesting objects as we pass through the rooms.