TOMB OF JULIET,—VERONA.
So rapid a survey was not doing justice to fair Verona. There was much more to be seen in the town, while the river and its bridges and surroundings, and the neighbouring country, all looked so picturesque and inviting, that I have no doubt it is a favourite halting-place for the artist, and it may well repay a visit of some days.
XVI.
MILAN AND THE ITALIAN LAKES.
MILAN.
We left Verona at mid-day for Milan. The scenery was fine, and for some miles we had Lake Garda, the largest of the Italian lakes, in view, at one part as near as only a mile off. Here we passed over the field of the battle of Solferino, which took place on 24th June 1859. An interest naturally attaches to ground where not many years previously a great battle was fought, and so many events were being enacted terrible to the actors, but there is nothing specially to mark it out. The day had been clear when we started, but before we got to Milan the clouds began to gather, the sky became very black, and we unluckily arrived at four o’clock in a thunderstorm. However, we had not far to drive down the wide Corso to the Hôtel de Ville, which is well situated near the Cathedral, in the principal street of Milan.
We were out betimes next morning to see the glorious cathedral. It is certainly a magnificent church, inside and out, built of white marble, and of great size and height, being only inferior in size or extent to St. Peter’s.[42] It was not a little refreshing to see a Gothic church of any sort, after having had so much elsewhere in other styles. It is not divided into or surrounded by chapels, so that it wants the aid which these accessories afford for decoration; and therefore, in contrast with many less pretentious churches, there is a feeling of vacancy about it, although it is devoid of the gloom of the large, empty, dark Duomo of Florence. Fault, no doubt, has been found with the windows that they do not throw down the light sufficiently from above, but the windows themselves are traceried and filled with beautiful stained glass. Upon entering by the great portal at the west, the eye is caught in the far distance by the glimmering colours of the grand east window, whose dimensions are colossal, as may be gathered from the fact that its traceried compartments comprise no fewer than 350 pictures in glass, copies, in many instances, of known paintings. Then the eye is arrested by four long rows of lofty clustered columns—upwards of 50 in number in all—each 8 feet in diameter and 90 feet high, their comparative slenderness giving an airy character to the great interior, which rises in graceful pointed arches in the nave to the height of 152 feet. These pillars are most peculiarly adorned by a sort of double capital, between which are placed in canopied niches sculptured figures or statues in white marble, evincing that herein Milan is master; but somehow they do not attain the effect of a grand capital. The roof is painted in imitation fretwork or open carving, a species of deception which, however well done, is hardly to be expected, or even tolerated, where no cost has otherwise been spared.
The exterior has so light and fairy-like an appearance that one can hardly believe it to be of stone, and yet all the parts which look so light and delicate are in reality massive and substantial marble. The mass or quantity of statues is really surprising. Niches innumerable contain them, studded at every conceivable spot over the huge building. Every one of the countless pinnacles, besides being adorned in successive courses by them, is surmounted by a statue, a mute mast-headed man, patiently and uncomplainingly remaining where he has been ordered to do duty, and so aiding to adorn the magnificent edifice. The number of marble statues inside and outside has been variously computed, but cannot be less than 4000. The central tower may be objected to as fully too small or too light for the size of the building, but it is in style in harmony with the numberless spirelets which rise like a forest around it, sometimes in clusters, and spanned by flying buttresses in lace-like decoration, which give strength and stability to a structure which, if it were not irreverent to say so, has a good deal of the look, in its white purity, of a most gigantic and beautiful bride-cake.