S. Francesco in Pavia. S. Marco, modernized inside, still retains a beautiful façade of 1254 and a tower—in brick as elsewhere—and contains another tomb by Balduccio. S. Maria Incoronata is unique as a double Gothic church, in the horizontal sense (1451–1487).
Of the secular buildings of the beginning of the 15th century, the most notable is the Palazzo Borromeo, which still preserves its Gothic courtyard. It has a good collection of Lombard pictures. At no great distance from S. Ambrogio, in the Corso Magenta, is the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, built by the Dominicans about 1460, to which the Gothic façade and nave belong. The choir, crossing, and beautiful sixteen-sided dome, with the elegant external decorations in terra-cotta and marble, are by Bramante (c. 1492). Adjoining the church is the convent, long used as barracks. Leading from the fine cloisters, also the work of Bramante, is the former refectory, on the walls of which Leonardo da Vinci painted his celebrated “Last Supper,” a work which is unfortunately in a bad state of preservation.
Farther along the Corso, but nearer the Piazza del Duomo, is San Maurizio, the interior of which is covered by exceedingly effective frescoes by Luini and his contemporaries. The interior was erected by Giovanni Dolcebuono, a pupil of Bramante, to whom is also due S. Maria presso S. Celso (the interior and the baroque façade are by Alessi). Thence the Via Bollo leads to the Piazza della Rosa, in which is situated the renowned Biblioteca Ambrosiana, erected in 1603–1609 by Fabio Manzone, to whom the Palazzo del Senato is also due, rich in MSS. In the same building there is also a picture gallery, in which is Raphael’s cartoon for his fresco the “School of Athens” in the Vatican. Situated just within the Naviglio, the canal encircling the inner town (adjacent to San Nazaro, which contains Bernardino Lanini’s [fl. 1546] masterpiece, the “Martyrdom of St Catherine”), is the Ospedale Maggiore. This institution, which can accommodate 2400 patients, was founded in the reign of Francesco Sforza. The principal court (there are nine in all) is surrounded by fine arcades of the 17th century by Ricchini. The entire edifice is covered externally with terra-cotta, and its façade, designed by the Florentine Antonio Averulino (Filarete) and begun in 1457, is superior to any other of the kind in Milan.
The city is rich in works of art, for Milan, with the introduction of the early Renaissance style by Filarete and Michelozzo after 1450, became the home of a Lombard school of sculpture, among the chief masters of which may be mentioned Giovanni Antonio Amadeo, or Omodeo,[1] of Pavia (1447–1522), Cristoforo Solari, and, the last of them, Agostino Busti, known as Bambaia (c. 1480–1548), whose work may be seen in the cathedrals of Como and Milan and in the Certosa di Pavia. Subsequently, towards the close of the 15th century, the refined court of Lodovico Sforza attracted such celebrated men as Bramante, the architect, Gauffino Franchino, the founder of one of the earliest musical academies, and Leonardo da Vinci, from whose school came Luini, Boltraffio, Gaudenzio Ferrari, Marco d’Oggiono, &c. Later, Pellegrino Tibaldi and Galeazzo Alessi of Genoa (the former a man of very wide activity) were the chief architects, and Leone Leoni of Arezzo the chief sculptor. In still more recent times Beccaria (1738–1794) as a jurist, Monti (1754–1828) as a poet and Manzoni (1785–1873) as a novelist, have won for the Milanese a high reputation.
The picture gallery of the Brera, one of the finest in Italy, occupies an imposing palace with a good courtyard by Ricchini. It was built as a Jesuit college in 1651, but since 1776 has been the seat of the Accademia di Belle Arti, and contains besides the picture gallery a library of some 300,000 volumes, a collection of coins numbering about 60,000, and an excellent observatory founded in 1766. The Brera Gallery, the nucleus of which was formed in 1806, possesses Raphael’s famous “Sposalizio,” and many pictures and frescoes by Luini, Guadenzio Ferrari and Brarnantino; the collection of the works of Carlo Crivelli (fl. 1480) affords an instructive survey of his work, which connects the Paduan school with the Venetian, here particularly well represented by works of Paolo Veronese, Paris Bordone, Gentile Bellini, Cima da Conegliano, Bonifazio, Moroni and Carpaccio. Additions are continually made to it.
The Castel Sforzesco, or Castle of Milan, stands in the Parco Nuovo; it was built in 1450 by Francesco Sforza on the site of one erected by Galeazzo II. Visconti (1355–1378) and demolished in 1447 by the populace after the death of Filippo Maria Visconti. After suffering many vicissitudes and being partially destroyed more than once, it was restored—including especially the splendid entrance tower by Antonio Averulino (Filarete, 1451–1453), destroyed by a powder explosion in 1521—in the 15th-century style in 1893 sqq., and it is now a most imposing pile. Some of the fine windows with their terra-cotta decorations are preserved. The archaeological museum is housed here on the ground floor; besides Roman and pre-Roman objects it contains fragments of the 9th century basilica of Santa Maria in Aurona, one of the first examples of vaulted Lombard architecture; the bas-reliefs of the ancient Porta Romana of Milan, representing the return of the Milanese in 1171 after the defeat of Barbarossa; the remains of the church of Santa Maria in Brera, the work of Balduccio da Pisa; the grandiose sepulchral monument of Bernabò Visconti formerly in the church of San Giovanni in Conca; the tomb of Regina della Scala, the wife of Bernabò; the funeral monument of the Rusca family; the great portal of the palace of Pigello Portinari, seat of the Banco Mediceo at Milan, a work of Michelozzo; a series of Renaissance sculptures, including works by Amadeo Mantegazza, Agostino Busti (surnamed Bambaia), including fragments of the tomb of Gaston de Foix. Several of the rooms occupied by the archaeological museum bear traces of the decorations executed under Galeazzo Maria and Lodovico il Moro, and one of them has a splendid ceiling with trees in full foliage, painted so as to cover the whole vaulting, ascribed to Leonardo da Vinci. In the upper rooms is placed a large collection of Milanese and central Italian ceramics, stuffs, furniture, bronzes, ivories, enamels, glass and historical relics; together with a picture gallery containing works by Vincenzo Foppa, Gianpietrino, Boltraffio, Crivelli, Pordenone, Morone, Cariani, Correggio, Antonello da Messina, Tiepolo, Guardi, Potter, Van Dyck and Ribeira.
The finest of the modern thoroughfares of Milan is the Via Dante, constructed in 1888; it runs from the Piazza de’ Mercanti to the spacious Foro Bonaparte, and thence to the Parco Nuovo, the great public garden in which stands the Castello Sforzesco. This park was once a national drilling ground, which was taken over by the municipality with a view to erecting upon it a new residential quarter, rendered necessary by the phenomenal growth of the city during the last twenty-five years of the 19th century. This design was happily abandoned, and around the Parco Nuovo has grown up a new quarter of wide streets, spacious gardens and private villas.
To the north of the castle is the Arena, a kind of circus erected by Napoleon in 1805; while facing the castle on the opposite side of the park is the Arco della Pace, begun by Napoleon in 1806 from the designs of Cagnola to mark the beginning of the Simplon Road, but finished by the Austrians in 1833. Leading east-north-east from the Piazza del Duomo, the centre of Milanese traffic, especially of electric trams, is the Corso Vittorio Emanuele. Connecting the piazza with the neighbouring Piazza della Scala is the famous Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, a great arcade in the form of a Latin cross, with an octagon in the centre, crowned at the height of 160 ft. with a glass cupola; it is roofed with glass throughout, and is 320 yds. long, 16 yds. wide and 94 ft. high. It has splendid façades at each end, and was constructed in 1865–1867 at the cost of £320,000; it is the finest of its kind in Europe.
In the Via Morone near the Piazza della Scala is a collection of art treasures bequeathed to the town in 1879 by a Milanese patrician, the Cavaliere Poldi-Pezzoli. It comprises valuable pictures, textile fabrics, arms, armour and a number of antiquities, and is exhibited in the house once occupied by the founder. In the middle of the neighbouring Piazza della Scala stands Magni’s monument of Leonardo da Vinci (1872). Opposite is the celebrated Teatro della Scala, built in 1778 on the site of a church founded by Beatrice della Scala, wife of Bernabò Visconti. After the San Carlo at Naples it is the largest theatre in Europe, and can seat 3600 spectators. Looking on to the piazza is the fine Palazzo Marino, the seat of the municipality since 1861; it was built by Galeazzo Alessi in 1558, to whom the side façade and the court are due, but was not completed until 1890, when the main façade was erected by Luca Beltrami. S. Fedele by Tibaldi (1569) is close by. Milan has a royal scientific and literary academy with a faculty of philosophy, a royal technical institute, a school of veterinary science, a royal school of agriculture, a polytechnic with the Bocconi commercial school (founded 1898) and numerous other learned and educational institutions. Milan has long been famous as one of the great musical centres of Europe, and numerous students resort here for their musical education. There are many philanthropic institutions, the most interesting of which is the Albergo Popolare, an establishment conducted on lines similar to the houses established in England
- ↑ See F. Malaguzzi Valeri, G. A. Amadeo, scultore e architetto (Bergamo, 1905).
