Brick and Marble in the Middle Ages: Notes of Tours in the North of Italy

by George Edmund Street

Many are the works which might be catalogued in this great church, but I must content myself with noticing one only—the great bronze candelabrum. This is, I suppose, the most precious work of its kind in Europe. It was placed in the cathedral in 1557, a date too late for its execution by some three hundred years. The supports are four winged dragons, heads downwards, and with tails intertwined. The shaft has bosses in the centre, and branches out above into a profusion of branches full of exquisite leafage. This is all conventional in character, and entirely like thirteenth-century work. In spaces formed for the purpose and on the bosses are various figures and subjects all wrought with singular skill, and a lavish profusion of ingenuity which cannot be too much admired. Among these are the Temptation and the Expulsion from Paradise, the signs of the zodiac, figures illustrating architecture and music, and a variety of others.

After I had seen the cathedral I had, by way of enjoying the pleasures of a contrast, to devote myself patiently to all the troubles attendant upon personally procuring my passport. At Milan personal application was absolutely enforced; and there, in a small room crowded by vetturini and other Italians of the lower order, relieved by one or two unfortunate travellers like myself, I had for nearly two hours to endure heat, noise, and all the other annoyances of such a work, before I succeeded in getting my passport visé, with permission to abide three days only within the walls. This system is certainly most vexatious to an Englishman; but at the same time, if people will make a point of keeping the rulers of a city constantly on the qui vive with plots, or rumours of plots, I do not see what other resource their rulers can have. Some idea of the state of the population may be drawn from the way in which the soldiers patrol the streets, in companies of three or four, during the whole day, giving an impression of a place where men keeping guard singly would be in danger; and then again the great number of the troops at the gates and elsewhere throughout the city certainly presents very much the impression of a place whose normal condition is one perpetual state of siege.[73]

Next to the cathedral the great architectural attraction of Milan is the famous church of Sant’Ambrogio, which has equally as great claims upon the antiquary and upon the ecclesiologist as upon the architect.

Entering from the west, it presented a most striking and, to me, most novel effect. In advance of the church is an open atrium, surrounded by a cloister of Lombard-Romanesque character, the columns having quaintly and stiffly carved capitals of stone, and the wall and arches being built of mixed bricks and stone.[74] Three arches, open from the atrium to the west end of the church, and above them three other arches of similar plan, and arranged in triplet fashion, that in the centre being the highest and widest, nearly fill up the great flat pediment of the church, on either side of which rise towers—that on the north divided into stages by means of arcaded strings, like most Lombard belfries; that on the south perfectly plain and rude, and perhaps therefore of the very early date at which some antiquaries appear to place the building of the main structure of this portion of the existing church.[75]

This arrangement, borrowed though it may be from heathen days and civil buildings, is nevertheless uncommonly satisfactory; it serves to prepare the mind for the entrance to the church itself, and, instead of the abrupt transition commonly made from the world to the holy places, here the intermediate atrium gives time and space to throw off all worldly thoughts, and to enter entirely into the religious feelings proper in such a place.

The entrance by the west doorway is of great interest, for in its very ancient doors are inserted some still more ancient fragments, said by tradition—and there is every reason to believe it to be true—to be portions of the gates which S. Ambrose shut against the Emperor Theodosius.

The interior has suffered much at various times, either by repairs or alterations; and as most of the groining is of pointed character, the first impression is that of a very low, simple, and solemn-looking pointed church of early date. Upon more close examination, however, it is found that the main walls throughout are Romanesque, and that this groining was subsequently inserted, and again in later times strengthened and supported by great piers and arches of Classic character.

The plan, after passing the atrium, is a nave of three bays, each subdivided into two by arches into the aisles, a lantern over the altar, and three eastern apses. There are no transepts. The most striking object in the interior is the magnificent Romanesque baldachin above the high altar. This is supported on four marble shafts, and has a semicircular arch on each face, with figures and foliage in the four flat pediments or gables which finish it above. Three flights of five steps lead up to the altar from the north, south, and west, and the whole is protected both on the east and the west by high metal screens. Here is a splendid shrine for the relics of the tutelar saint, of the same age as the early church, which is however so jealously concealed that I have never seen it.[76] The front of the altar itself is very magnificent, executed entirely in metal, and containing subjects from the life of Our Blessed Lord and from that of S. Ambrose. A modernized dome rises above the baldachin; and behind this an apse decorated in mosaic upon a gold ground very grandly finishes the interior of this interesting church.