From the church it is delightful to escape into the cloisters flooded with sunlight, where the swallows skim and the brown hawks circle and the mason bees are at work among the carvings. The arcades of the two cloisters are the final triumph of Lombard terra-cotta. The memory fails before such infinite invention, such facility and felicity of execution. Wreaths of cupids gliding round the arches among grape-bunches and bird-haunted foliage of vine; rows of angels, like rising and setting planets, some smiling and some grave, ascending and descending by the Gothic curves; saints stationary on their pedestals and faces leaning from the rounds above; crowds of cherubs and courses of stars and acanthus-leaves in woven lines and ribands incessantly inscribed with Ave Maria! Then, over all, the rich red light and purple shadows of the brick, than which no substance sympathizes more completely with the sky of solid blue above, the broad plain space of waving summer grass beneath our feet.
It is now late afternoon, and when evening comes the train will take us back to Milan. There is yet a little while to rest tired eyes and strained spirits among the willows and poplars by the monastery wall. Through that grey-green leafage, young with early spring, the pinnacles of the Certosa leap like flames into the sky. The rice-fields are under water, far and wide, shining like burnished gold beneath the level light now near to sundown. Frogs are croaking; those persistent frogs whom the muses have ordained to sing for aye in spite of Bion and all tuneful poets dead. We sit and watch the water snakes, the busy rats, the hundred creatures swarming in the fat, well watered soil. Nightingales here and there, newcomers, tune their timid April song. But, strangest of all sounds in such a place, my comrade from the Grisons jodels forth an Alpine cowherd’s melody—Auf den Alpen droben ist ein herrliches Leben!
Did the echoes of Gian Galeazzo’s convent ever wake to such a tune as this before?
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Perhaps in the choice of the abbot’s cheer, there was some occult reference to the verse of Solomon’s Song: “Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples.”
[2] “On the 14th day of April, 1374, there were found, in this church of the first martyr St. Stefano, two hundred and more bodies of holy martyrs, by the venerable priest, Matthew Fradello, incumbent of the church.”
[3] “The women, even as far back as 1100, wore dresses of blue, with mantles on the shoulder, which clothed them before and behind.”—Sansovino. It would be difficult to imagine a dress more modest and beautiful.
“Whom Eve destroyed, the pious Virgin Mary redeemed;
All praise her, who rejoice in the Grace of Christ.”