I can visualize Milan’s pink and red buildings, its fortress Castello between moats, its drawbridges, the fumbling city walls, the filthy streets. Though not as old as Rome, I often felt Milan’s shabby antiquity. It was a lesson in futility. So many sieges: 1497, 1500, 1512...military engagements that disrupted every fiber of living. (There is nothing like the filth of a city under siege.)
During the last siege, in 1515, the cannonades drove me out of the city. In my absence my apartment—with its view of the Alps—was looted by riffraff.
The city gates...I remember them: Porta Comasina, Porta Romana, Porta Orientale. Near the Orientale I found a bronze figurine, on one of my walks. Its small head had been uncovered by a recent rain. A priest, carrying a rice bowl.
How I worked during those Milanese years: apses, loggias, transepts, windows, frescos! Survival jobs. “This door needs immediate repair...place that medallion lower...no red marble here...” I could not equal Donato Bramante’s architectural skill. Friend, I wished him well.
Did I spend almost three years in the Castello, in those maddening salas, those perfumed rooms? The only place to avoid the stench of sewage. I urged the Duke to plan a city with upper and lower thoroughfares, a city where there was air space to lessen the danger of plague. Fifty thousand dead in ’09.
Sieges...death...
Milan...all focused on my cenasolo...my Maria delle Grazie...that refectory...that was my world...those faces, those outspread hands, that table...there is more than one way to break bread...more than one cup.
Cloux