San Michele is an early Romanesque church of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and is very beautiful, both externally and internally. The façade is richly ornamented with bands of carving and small open galleries, and the chancel internally is on a much higher level than the nave, and is approached by a great flight of steps, giving it a most dignified appearance.
After leaving San Michele we tried to find our way to the station; no easy matter, as we found to our cost. We think we must have made the circumference of the city three times before an Italian boy, rather more intelligent than his fellows, at last pointed us out a place which proved to be the station, from whence we returned to Milan.
The Brera Gallery contains a magnificent collection of pictures. In an article like this it is impossible to give a detailed description of these paintings, and a mere list of works of art is both uninteresting and uninstructive; besides which no description of pictures is of any value unless it is prefaced by an account of the various schools to which the artists belong—a task which has been admirably done already by Miss Emily Macirone in the pages of this magazine. However, we may mention that the gallery is a complete history of Italian art.
To commence with, we find a good example of Giotto, who (as our girls will see from the excellent chart of the chief painters of the various schools of art, page 629 of our Annual for 1886) flourished in the commencement of the fourteenth century. As on a future occasion we shall have to speak of this painter, when describing the Arena Chapel at Padua, all we shall say at present is that one should not attempt to criticise him or the works of this early Italian school by mere isolated pictures found in galleries. Of course in the days of Giotto Italian art was more or less in its infancy, and the mechanical knowledge possessed by these fourteenth century painters was meagre, therefore we must not expect to find grand effects of chiaroscuro, neither is the rich colour of the later school to be discovered.
Of the more perfected early Italian school we find works by Luca Signorelli, Giovanni Bellini, whom we shall find far better represented in Venice, and the excellent Francia, whose lovely picture of “Mater Dolorosa” in our National Gallery is so well known to our girls. We find, also, works of Raffaelle, Leonardo da Vinci and his pupil, Luini. But the best represented painters in the Brera are the later Venetian school, especially Titian, Tintoretto, and Paul Veronese. The great glory of the collection is Raffaelle’s picture of the marriage of the Virgin. The arrangement of this picture at first struck us as being extremely formal. We find in the background a twelve-sided temple crowned with a dome, standing directly in the middle of the picture. The architecture of this temple has been severely criticised; but it by no means follows that because Raffaelle thought the structure suitable for his picture he would ever have built anything like it. In front of the temple is a very formal pavement divided into large squares. All the figures are grouped together immediately in the foreground. The High Priest stands in the centre, holding the hands of Mary and Joseph. Behind Joseph are many youths, and behind Mary are a number of women—five in each group, thus keeping up the symmetrical arrangement which runs throughout the whole picture. There is a charming grace about the head of Mary and the two women standing immediately behind her. May we call them the bridesmaids?
Joseph and the youths who accompany him are represented with rods, but it will be noticed that Joseph’s rod is crowned with five blossoms, probably of the almond. Several explanations have been given of this. The most poetical supposes it refers to an ancient legend that Mary had several suitors, as would be almost certain to be the case of a maiden of the house of David, possessed, moreover, of great personal beauty. The legend records that the various suitors each cut a rod, which they laid in the temple, and that after a time Joseph’s rod was discovered to have blossomed. Some writers suppose that the youths breaking the rods refer to an ancient custom practised in Jewish marriages.
The picture is extremely beautiful in colour, brilliant and well preserved. We venture to suggest that the very symmetrical and formal arrangement of the picture may have resulted from its having been intended as the centre portion of a group of compositions.
Titian is best represented by the frequently engraved picture of St. Jerome—a work full of grand power and magnificent chiaroscuro. Leonardo da Vinci’s work in the gallery is one of very great interest, as it is a study for the head of the Saviour for his mighty work of the Last Supper.
As the evening approaches, we dine at one of the perfect ristoranti of Milan and proceed by rail to Verona. On our way we were captivated by the charming manners of the peasantry; for we travelled third class, and thus had a capital opportunity of judging. It was a fête day at some of the towns our train called at, and there were fireworks, and every evidence of village festivity. But although there was great demand for seats in the train, we saw nothing of drunkenness nor heard coarse language, or anything resembling a vulgar cockney crowd—or, for the matter of that, the vulgar, well-dressed competitors for best seats who visit such civilising entertainments as the Monday or Saturday Popular and other London concerts! No, the Italian peasantry could teach wonderful lessons in kindness and self-respect to their betters of England! We reached Verona at midnight, and put up at a delightfully old world hotel and slept the sleep of—well, the tired, until the sun next morning reminded us of another happy day in store for us.
And now there arises before us a scene which will never be absent from the recollection of either bachelor. A broad and rapidly-flowing river, spanned by a lofty bridge, pierced by a great circle between the centremost arches, like the eye of some vast Cyclops. Banks covered with ancient tiled-roofed houses, above which rise an indescribable mass of domes, towers, spires, pinnacles, and lofty walls, crowned by forked battlements; the whole backed up by undulating hills, clad with the deep green of the cypress groves, amongst which arise the round towers of a strange-looking castle. Is this the recollection of some picture we have seen, some place we have dreamt of, or is it a reality?