Tf|e CIXI^ a ^^~Mmem LOJ^ARDY ^SO x>/ico ^^ . *S! i^lj^ 5s^^: (6 ^^ 'love re ^ (CfccC xqamo 'J^\ MonXfv o ^)Mlse ^ Ireviiciiio^ u \re6ciai fan [Jkse/tferSy*-^ feroncL VICL <£^ 4//ajrcLnccL J -f Cefea. lamujcL o \ JjousaJm\ rre^ioo lapuU'o^^J:f^'^<^ W^^^'^'i ,r^^ ^^%^^yy^ 20 60 80 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2008 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/citiesoflombardyOOhuttrich THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY • • • * • • OUTSIDE MANTUA THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY BY EDWARD HUTTON WITH TWELVE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR BY MAXWELL ARMFIELD AND TWELVE OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS NEW YORK THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1912 i •^,^iviv" ;.; CONTENTS I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII. IX. X. XI. XII. Cisalpine Gaul .... The Lakes : Maggiore, Lugano, Como To Milan: Varese, Castiglione D'Olona Saronno The Story of Milan . Milan : S. Ambrogio S. Lorenzo and S. Eustorgio The Duomo . The Sforza Milan in the Sixteenth Century The Galleries Chiaravalle and Feminism in the Thir teenth Century The» Certosa of Pavia . Pavia .... Monza .... Bergamo .... Brescia .... Lago D'Iseo, Lago di Garda and Battlefields . XIII. Mantua Three PAGE I 29 52 58 80 91 98 "3 116 128 136 148 162 169 183 196 206 255435 VI THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY CHAP. XIV. Cremona . . • PAGE . 219 XV. Crema and LODI . . 234 XVI. PlACENZA . . . 243 XVII. The Chilian Way . 262 XVIII. Parma . 268 XIX. Reggio . 283 XX. Modena . . 288 XXI. Canossa . . 297 Index . 305 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR Outside Mantua . San Mamette, Lago Lugano . AZZANO— LAGO DI COMO . CoLONNE DI S. Lorenzo, Milan CittX Alta, Bergamo S. Maria Maggiore, Bergamo . Il Duomo Vecchio, Brescia The Gates of the North Mantua .... Cremona . . . . Montefiorino, Modena . The Top of the World Frontispiece FACING PAGE • 30 . 46 . 80 . 170 . 176 . 190 . 202 . 208 . 226 . 288 . 298 viii THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY IN MONOTONE Map of Lombardy . . . Front End Paper FACING PAGE Salome, by Masolino . . . . -54 From the fresco in the Baptistery, Castiglione d'Olona (Photo, Alinari) The Church of S. Ambrogio, Milan . . .88 (Photo, Brogi) The Duomo, Milan . . . . .98 The Church of S. Maria delle Grazie, Milan . no Head of Christ . . . . . .116 From the painting attributed to LEONARDO DA ViNCi, Brera, Milan. (Photo, Brogi) Certosa di Pavia. . . . . .136 (Photo, Alinari) On the Road The Bridge, Pavia (Photos, R. W. Garden) 148 Victory . . . . . . .186 From the bronze in the Museum, Brescia Palazzo del Comune, Piacenza . . .248 (Photo, Alinari) LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ix FACING PAGB FAf ADE OF THE DUOMO, BORGO S. DONNINO . \ ) 262 FAgADE OF THE DUOMO, MODENA . . J (Photos, R. W. Garden) / Madonna della Scodella .... 278 From the painting by CORREGGio, Gallery of Parma. (Photo, Anderson) Francesco d'Este, Duke of Modena. . . 296 From the painting by Velasquez, in the Gallery, Modena. (Photo, Anderson) THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY CHAPTER I ^ CISALPINE GAUL WHEN I think of Lombardy, there comes back into my mind a country wide and gracious, watered by many a great river, and lying, a Httle vaguely, between always far-away mountains ; a world that is all a garden, where one passes between fair hedgerows, from orchard to orchard, among the vines, where the fields are green with promise or shining with harvest, and there are meadows on the lower slopes of the mountains. And the whole of this wide garden seems to me, as is no other country in the world, to be subject to the sun, the stars and the great and beautiful clouds of an infinite sky ; every landscape is filled with them, and beneath them the cities seem but small things, not cities truly, but rather sanctuaries, hidden in that garden for our delight, reverence and meditation, at the end of the endless ways, where only the restless poplars tell the ceaseless hours. It is my purpose in this book to consider the nature and the history of this country, to recapture and to express as well as I may my delight in it, so that some- thing of its beauty and its genius may perhaps dis- engage itself from my pages, and the reader feel what I have felt about it though he never stir ten miles from I 2 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY his own home. But first it might seem necessary to describe in a way very definite and even rigid the situation of this country, and especially to define its relation, both geographic and historical, to the peninsula of Italy, of which for ages it has politically formed a part. The traveller who, on a day of early spring, descends towards the south from the cruel ice and snow of the St. Gothard, or the barren loneliness of the Simplon, will presently see stretched out before him, as far as the eye can reach, a vast green and golden plain — " the waveless plain of Lombardy " — scattered with many fair cities and broken in the south by a range of faint, far-away mountains. In his first enthusiasm he takes this to be Italy : in fact, it is Cisalpine Gaul. This vast plain, everlastingly defended on the north against the Germanics and less brutally on the west against Gaul by the Alps, is closed on the east by the sea. From Italy it is divided by those far-away mountains — the Apennines. I say that this country between the Alps, the Apen- nines and the sea, does not really form a part of Italy, though to-day it is united to her, and may be said, ever since the Roman Conquest, to have depended upon Italy, and to have drawn all that was really vital in its life from her. Let me explain myself. Peninsulas, one has often remarked it on the map, commonly gain in breadth as they approach the conti- nent, and in Italy this tendency is so pronounced that, roughly, south of the Apennines we have an altogether peninsular, north of them an altogether continental country ; moreover, here the division is marked by a lofty and difficult chain of mountains. It is Nature herself which has shut off all that vast continental plain to the north of the Apennines from the true Italy to the south of them, and men have always felt this difference. For when one comes to examine that plain which CISALPINE GAUL 3 expands like a tree trunk near the ground as it ap- proaches the Alps and sends its roots far back into the mass of Europe, we shall be more than ever impressed by its non- Italian character. We shall find that it is dominated far more by the Alps than by the Apennines, and that it contains a lowland and a river of true continental proportions which Italy cannot match, and for which, indeed, there is no room in that narrow and mountainous peninsula. Nor does the ethno- graphy of this country in any way contradict its geography. The peoples of the valley of the Po are very different from the Italians in their origin, in their history and in their language ; their heroic and violent opposition, first to the Romans and then to the Teutons, is characteristic, and is due not to their Latin, but to their Gaulish blood. For though from time to time the Italians have come over the Apennines, into this plain, even as the Germans have come over the Alps, the marrow of this people is Gaulish still ; they are a military people, a race of soldiers. But if we thus assert that geographic- ally, ethnographically and historically Cisalpine Gaul is not Italy, that even to-day it is Gaulish rather than Italian, how are we to consider its relation to Italy of which politically it has for so long formed a part ? Italy is, and has always been, a place apart and separate from the mass of Europe ; and because of this she has been able to do her work both secular and religious. What has secured her ? Cisalpine Gaul. The valley of the Po, all this vast plain appears in history as the cockpit of Europe, the battlefield of the Celt, the Phoenician, the Latin and the Teuton, strewn with victories, littered with defeats, the theatre of those great wars which have builtj and secured Europe and the modern world. Here, in this Gaulish country, Hannibal waited before he made that great descent upon Italy, in which the Oriental so nearly overthrew Europe ; here Caesar conceived and by 4 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY a single act founded the Empire, which here the Barbarians overthrew; here Charlemagne re-estab- lished it, and here even in our own day Italy founded her unity and once more — ^may it be for ever — the Barbarian was driven out. Yes, if, as we must, we consider Italy as the shrine, the sanctuary and the citadel of Europe, here are her gates : they are three in number, the Alps, the Apennines and the Plain between them, and the greatest of these is the Plain. The mountains look upon it from the north and from the south, the outer and the inner gates of Italy : this is the drawbridge between them ; it bears its scars, as it bears its destiny, upon its forehead. The country which lies thus between the Alps and the Apennines, the inner and the outer gates of Italy, and which, though not Italian, has played so great a part in the fulfilment of her destiny, is for the most part a vast plain, fundamentally divided from west to east into two not unequal parts by a great river, the Po, and everywhere watered and nourished by its two hundred tributaries. To the north of the Po lie two great provinces : to the west LombardJ^ to the east Venetia, separated by the Lago di Garda and the Mincio. To the south lie three smaller provinces, Parma, Modena and Romagna, now gathered into the single new province of Emilia : and these are the more Italian parts of the great plain. To the west of all these, on both sides of the Po, stretches the huge pro- vince of Piedmont at the foot of the Alps. Of these six provinces those of Venetia and Piedmont lie outside the subject of this book ; their history and their development have been very different from those of the rest of Cisalpine Gaul, and though geographically they seem to form parts of it, even the Romans re- cognised that they were controlled by forces outside it and that both racially and politically they were separate from it. Venetia, whose destiny in the Middle CISALPINE GAUL 5 Ages and for long after was determined by that of Venice, was peopled by a race which was always hostile to the Gauls of the upper and middle valley, and which helped the Romans to subdue them ; while Piedmont, which has lately given a king of the Switzer House of Savoy to modern Italy, was, so far as it lies to the south of the Po, included by the Romans in the province of Liguria and largely, so far as it lies to the north of that river, was in the territory of the Inalpini — the mountain folk who were not brought within the Roman power till the time of Augustus.^ We are left, then, with four great provinces, Lombardy to the north, Parma, Modena and Romagna to the south of the Po : these, and especially the first three, were the real Cisalpine Gaul. The history of this vast country before the Roman Conquest, is, as is history everywhere before that event, vague and obscure. But this at least seems certain : before the advent of the Gauls continental Italy, all this great valley of the Po that is, was in the hands of the Etruscans, who built towns here, cut canals and roads, and to some extent, at any rate, cleared the forests. Mantua was a town of theirs and, always saved by its marshes, it remains to this day ; Melpum, as Pliny calls it, perhaps the greatest of their cities, has perished. The Gauls seem to have come into this valley from over the Alps, first as traders and then, according to the authorities which Livy followed, in the reign of Tarquinius Prisons, but at any rate not before the second half of the third century of the City, as invaders and conquerors, such conquerors, in fact, that the most famous date in the early history of Rome is that of their capture of the City in 388 B.C. They were, and still ^ With Venetia I have already dealt in my Venice and Venetia (Methuen, 191 1) ; with Piedmont and Liguria I hope to deal in another volume. 6 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY are, on both sides of the Alps a great military people. "With the Gauls," says Sallust,i "the Romans fought not for glory but for existence." The Gauls, the elder Cato^ tells us, "devote themselves mainly to two things — fighting and debate." They were, too, a pastoral rather than an agricultural people. The advent of the Gauls into the valley of the Po, whenever it may have begun, was a long process, which renewed itself from time to time, notably in the third century before our era, and continued, doubtless, till a comparatively late time. When Rome began to undertake their conquest we find them settled somewhat as follows on either side the Po. To the north of that river, from west to east we find the Insubres, the first comers, settled about Milan and as far east as the Adda ; the Cenomani, who followed them, were settled between the Adda and the Adige about the towns of Mantua, Cremona, Brescia and Bergamo. Both these tribes crossed the Graian Alps by the Little St. Bernard. South of the Po, again from west to east, we find the Boii about Piacenza, Parma and Bologna ; the Lingones, a marsh people, probably the last to submit to the Roman yoke, about Ferrara ; and the Senones, the last of the larger Gaulish tribes to cross the Alps, settled in the country about Rimini and Senigaglia. These three tribes are thought to have crossed the Pennine Alps by the Great St. Bernard. Such were the chief Gallic tribes that settled in the valley ; all were Celtic and all were people of the plain, only inhabiting those parts of the hills which were close to the plain. In Roman history the more formidable of these tribes would appear to have been the Insubres and the Boii ; but all the Gauls were born soldiers, and the Romans from the beginning realist^ this and set apart a treasure in the capitol for the almost perpetual Gallic war.^ 1 Bell. Jug. c. 114. " Cato, Orig. 1. ii. fr. 2 (Jordan). 3 Cf. Appian, B.G., ii. 41, aud Livy, xxvii. 10. CISALPINE GAUL 7 That first sack of Rome by the Gauls in 388 B.C., which makes so picturesque an episode in the legends of the City, was followed, according to Polybius, thirty years later by another invasion of Italy, in which this for- midable people got as far as Alba and found the Romans afraid to meet them. Twelve years later we find them again attacking Rome; but the Romans were ready, and they retreated before the armies of the City and her allies. Then followed a formal peace which the Gauls observed for thirty years ; but it is easy to see how dangerous an enemy these barbarians were to Latium ; how terrible they appeared in the Roman imagination is proved by the legends that the Roman tradition still preserves concerning them, in which, for instance, we see Titus Manlius meeting a Gallic giant in single combat on the banks of the Anio. These Gallic incursions into Italy continued until in the year 296, for the first time, the Romans were able to inflict a signal defeat upon the Galli and the Samnites in Gallic territory at Sentinum, on the north side of the Apennines. Livy tells us that in that fight there fell 25,000 Gauls, a slaughter which later writers vastly exaggerate. Nevertheless, some years later the Senones laid siege to Arezzo, then an Etruscan town under the protection of Rome. It was L. Caecilius Metellus who, at the head of a Roman army, came to its relief. It is said by Livy that the Romans first sent ambassadors to the Senones to induce them to retire, but that these were murdered. However that may be, P. Cornelius Dolabella presently entered the country of the Senones, burning as he went, putting the men to the sword and carrying off the women and children. The fighting men of the Senones were then before Arezzo. There they met Metellus and defeated him. Neverthe- less, Arezzo did not fall, and Dolabella was in 283 B.C. able to give the Senones a complete defeat. Most of them fell in battle, as was their custom, and the 8 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY Romans thus, for the first time, were able to get a footing north of the Apennines and on the Adriatic coast. Here they established a burgess-colony, the first in Gallic territory ; and they called it Sena Gallica to distinguish it from Sena in Etruria. As might be expected, this breaking of the Senones stirred their neighbours the Boii, who, with the frightened Etruscans, began a march on Rome : Rome met them at Lake Vadimon, that is, Lago di Bassano, and cut them to pieces : but they would not be denied. In the next year they gathered all their youth and again with the Etruscans were signally defeated. Rome was learning her business and, pitting order and civilisation against the natural military qualities of the Gauls, won these hard victories. The fear that had hurled the Boii against Rome was well founded. They had seen the burgess-colony of Sena Gallica established in Gaulish territory ; they were now to see set up the Latin colony of Ariminum, that is, of Rimini. They were not slow to understand that Rome intended their total destruction, and great military people as they were, they but waited to recruit their strength and to find allies to renew the war. Their first act was to ally themselves with the Insubres, the greatest of the Gallic peoples, and then with their new friends to invite other Gauls from over the Alps to help them in their fight for existence. In 225 B.C., then, the greatest army the Gauls had yet put in the field entered Italy, to decide, as it proved, who were to be masters. Yet even so the Gauls fought under this disadvantage : that they were not one. For the Veneti (if Gauls they were) and the Cenomani had allied themselves with Rome, and it was necessary to leave a force in Gaul to watch them. Nevertheless, it is said the Gaulish army entered Italy with 50,000 foot and 20,000 horse. Against them Rome was able to bring, for all Italy was alarmed, some 150,000 foot CISALPINE GAUL 9 and 6000 horse. In spite of this formidable army Italy was open so far as Clusium (Chiusi), which the Gauls plundered : then suddenly learning that a Roman force was already outflanking them, they retired on the road towards Faesulse (Fiesole) where a battle was fought in which the Italians were defeated. But Fortune, the great decider of war, was against them. For they had still to reckon with the out- flanking army of the Romans under the consul L. iEmilius Papus ; and then by chance L. Atilius Regulus, the other consul, at this time returned from Sardinia, and, landing his troops at Pisa, went to meet them. The Gauls, who after their victory had taken the level road northward along the Etruscan coast, were thus caught between two great forces. Nevertheless, they were not cast down, but, like the great and skilful soldiers they were, forming two lines of battle they faced both armies near Telamo at the mouth of the Ombrone. There the battle was joined and Rome proved completely victorious. It is said that 40,000 Gauls fell on that day, while 10,000 were made prisoners. *'Thus," says Polybius, "was the most formidable of the Celtic invasions brought to naught after threatening all Italy, and especially Rome, with great and terrible danger." In the following year the Boii submitted along with the Lingones, thus bringing all the territory south of the Po into the hands of the Romans. In 223 B.C. the Roman army was able to cross the Po, which it did near Piacenza, under C. Flaminius, and to meet the Insubres. In the next year M. Claudius Marcellus and Cn. Cornelius Scipio took Acerrae (the modern village of Gera, near Cremona, on the Adda), and finally Medio- lanian (Milan), the chief stronghold of the Insubres, by storm. The Insubres ^bmitted without terms. That great but insecure peace was followed by the foundation in the heart of Cisalpine Gaul of two Roman 10 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY fortresses, each of 6000 men, one at Placentia (Piacenza) on the southern bank of the Po, the other at Cremona, lower down on the northern shore ; Mutina (Modena), too, was defended by walls, and preparations were already on foot for continuing the great Flaminian road, lately advanced to Rimini, through these forts to Piacenza, when a sudden unexpected disaster pre- vented this achievement. In the year 218 B.C., Hannibal and his Orientals made their descent upon Italy. Hannibal doubtless hoped, by marching through the two Gauls, to obtain a great assistance from these brave fighting peoples in his attack upon Italy and Rome. Nor was he disappointed, for when in the early autumn of 218 B.C. he came ir.to the valley of the Po over the Alps,^ his forces diminished and weakened by that great passage, the Boii and the Insubres so lately vanquished had already invaded the colonies of Placentia and Cremona and were engaged in the siege of Mutina. Yet, as always, the Veneti, the Cenomani and the Ligures were on the Roman side, and Publius Cornelius Scipio, the nephew of the conqueror of the Insubres, the son of the conqueror of Hanno and the father of Scipio Africanus, appearing suddenly on the scene, was able, more or less, to cause the Boii and the Insubres to waver. Scipio met Hannibal in the first engagement, an affair of cavalry, on the right bank of the Ticino, not far from Vercelli, and the Roman defeat secured to Hannibal the allegiance of the Gauls, the finest fighting material in Italy and perhaps in Europe, who thenceforth followed the Oriental throughout his Italian campaigns. It might be an interesting question to decide what the fate of Hannibal would have been without his European allies : I mean those Iberian and especially those Gallic troops which formed so great a part of his fighting strength : a question, perhaps, impossible to ^ Mommsen thinks he crossed by the Little St. Bernard, CISALPINE GAUL ii answer. Nevertheless, it was the Gauls who, apart from his own genius, won for him his most famous victory of the Trebia, for the Iberians and the Libyans suffered there but little loss. The Gauls, on the other hand, suffered terribly. We shall speak fully of the battle of the Trebia, which threw all Italy open to the Oriental, when we come to its lonely site in that great loop of the river near Piacenza. Here it remains to be said that the Gauls, some 60,000 foot and 4000 horse, marched with Hannibal over the Apennines into the Serchio valley, into the Val d' Arno, into Italy, and again at Trasimenus bore the brunt of the battle — that was a bloody April day for them, — and at Cannae left 4000 of their number dead upon the field, more than two-thirds of the whole Carthaginian loss. It is well that we should recall that these Oriental victories were, so far as the fighting went, mainly the work of Europeans, of the Gauls. It may well be that these heavy losses at the Trebia, at Trasimenus and at Canna? undid Hannibal in spite of his victories. At any rate, Cannae is his last victory. His communications with Cisalpine Gaul were cut off and he could not replenish the exhausted companies of his most desperate and gallant fighters. Yet it was just what he tried to do ; and it might seem that with his usual omniscience he understood that on his success in getting Gaulish soldiers depended his campaign, as much as on his breaking of the Latin league. In 207, eleven years after crossing the Alps, he caused his younger brother Hasdrubal to follow him by the same road through Gaul. Hasdrubal was successful in finding Gaulish allies ; but by this time luck, as always the greatest factor in war, had deserted the Carthaginians. M. Livius Salinator had been sent to assail Hasdrubal on the Metaurus in Sena Gallica. C. Claudius Nero, the other consul, being with Hannibal in the south, as it happened intercepted a letter from Hasdrubal, li THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY and in a moment turned northward, joined his colleague, compelled Hasdrubal to fight, and overwhelmingly defeated his enemy. In that battle Hasdrubal had posted his Gauls against the right wing of the Roman army where Nero had placed his best soldiers : they fell in thousands, and Hasdrubal's head was ignominiously flung into the camp of Hannibal. If that great man did not despair, it was only because the son of Hamilcar was living and by his efforts he still hoped to recruit the Gauls. In the summer of 205 B.C. Mago landed on the coast of Liguria, seized Genua and gathered -in all the Gauls. For two years he was able to maintain himself in Cisalpine Gaul, but never to reach Hannibal. There, wounded and defeated, he was recalled and died on the voyage home. Hannibal, too, was recalled about the same time ; yet when Scipio followed him to Africa he still had his Gauls with him, such as were left of them, and at the battle of Zama in 202 B.C. a third of his army was, it is said, composed of them. Thus ended the Second Punic War 201 B.C. A kind of guerilla war was still maintained in Cisalpine Gaul, for the Gauls could now expect no mercy from Rome, headed by one of Mago's officers, Hamilcar, who stirred up the Insubres, the Boii and the Cenomani and burnt Placentia and laid siege to Cremona. It is curious to find that these two colonies had been able to maintain themselves all through the great campaign, and it was by finally securing them that the Romans at last were able to stamp out the guerilla war in one battle, in which it is said Hamilcar perished, and 30,000 Boii were slain by the treachery of their uncertain allies the Cenomani. The Boii retreated into the country of the Insubres, where the Romans soon followed them and won a great battle near the town of Comum, which they took. Yet again in 152 B.C., nine years after the end of the Second Punic War, the Gauls were threatening Placentia, CISALPINE GAUL 13 and indeed it was not till two years later that the Boii were finally subdued by wholesale massacre. The two colonies of Placentia and Cremona were then secured, and in 189 B.C. the Romans founded the Latin colony of Bononia (Bologna), and six years later the Roman ^ colonies of Parma and Mutina were settled. Meanwhile, in 187 B.C. the ^Emilian Way had been built from Rimini to Piacenza and the track over the Apennines from Arezzo to Bologna was put into proper order. Thus by the year 183 B.C. we see the whole of Cisalpine Gaul south of the Po in Roman occupation and government. As for Transpadana, that part of it which consisted of the province of Venetia had ever been an ally of the Romans, but with the conquered territories of the Insubres and the Cenomani the Romans dealt other- wise than they did with the district south of the Po. Perhaps they were not ready to settle them ; however that may be, these districts were allowed to retain their national constitution so that they formed not town domains like those south of the Po, but tribal cantons, and no tribute so far as we know was imposed upon them. The policy of Rome here was perhaps what we might call one of peaceful penetration, a gradual Latinising of the whole country, and this process would seem, if we may believe Polybius, to have been so successful that when he visited the country towards the close of the second century before our era, he found only a few villages among the Alps still Celtic. But what we know of the whole of Cisalpine Gaul as a Roman province in the time of the Republic amounts to very little. That it was, in fact, rapidly Romanised we may well believe, and we know that it became one of the most valuable provinces of the Empire. In the ^ Roman colonies (Coloniae Civium Romanorum) were Roman communities and consisted only of Roman citizens. Latin colonies were composed either of Roman citizens or of Latini. 14 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY Social War it took no part and it was probably as a reward that in 89 B.C. the towns north of the Po received the Jus Latinitas, and it is generally supposed that the towns south of the Po at the same time received the Roman civitas and by virtue of the same Lex Pompeia. At this time, of course, Transpadana, and especially that part of it we now call Lombardy, had not the importance to which it later attained. It was only under the Empire that Mediolanum became the chief city of Northern Italy, and the reason of this may well have been its proximity to the Alps. No account of Lombardy, of all that the Lombard plain means in the history of Italy and of Europe, can be com- plete which does not take into account the influence of the Alps upon this great country, which at once they threaten and protect: which they threaten, because their southern escarpment is so much steeper and more difficult everjrwhere than the northern slope ; which they protect because for any civilised army their passage either way is so difficult. These mountains, the greatest in Europe, extend without interruption and in what may be roughly considered as a single range from the Mediterranean, between Marseilles and Genoa, to the Adriatic near Trieste, forming, as Strabo says, a great curve like a bow, its concave side to the south, completely hemming in Cisalpine Gaul and with her Italy from the north, from Gaul and the Germanics. This enormous barrier was, long after the conquest and settlement of Cisalpine Gaul, almost unknown to the Romans, and it was not till the time of Augustus that the tribes which held it can be said to have been subjugated. It is true that many of the passes across the great central chain were so clearly indicated by the course of the rivers which rise there that from the earliest times they had been known to the tribes in their neighbour- hood. Indeed, long before the passage of Hannibal, as CISALPINE GAUL 15 we have seen, the mountains had been crossed by successive Gaulish invaders ; but long after the settle- ment of the great plain, long after Rome bore sway in three continents, the Alps which sheltered her on the north were in all their extent " from one end to the other" filled with unfriendly and barbaric tribes of Illyrian, Rhaetian or Celtic blood, whose conquest had often enough been proclaimed at the Capitol, but who, nevertheless, remained free, and constantly plundered the farmers and merchants of Upper Italy.^ It became necessary at last to cross the Alps in force and to bring the northern watershed into a real subjection, for the tribes were constantly reinforced and urged forward into the plain by the Gaulish or German tribes beyond the mountains. At first the southern slopes and valleys were conquered and held, and then in 15 a.d. the Roman power crossed the passes and established itself in the adjoining country to the northward. This was largely the work of the two stepsons of Augustus, while the Emperor himself went in person to Gaul to superintend the war and to organise the new province. On the height above Monaco, where La Turbie looks so far across the Tyrrhene sea, there yet stands a monument not altogether effaced erected by a grateful Italy to the Emperor for that, under his government, all the Alpine tribes had been brought into the power of the Roman people. From that time, then, we may date the true advancement of Mediolanum and its wide district. As the Romans became thus really acquainted with the Alps they began to recognise that in their physical character they did not in fact consist of one range but of many ; and though Strabo admits, and his descrip- tion fully bears him out, that their geography was still imperfectly known, yet, roughly speaking, the Romans divided them, and rightly, into six great chains or ^ Cf . Mommsen, History of Rome : The Provinces, part i. [Eng. Trs.], p. 15. i6 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY barriers, namely, the Alpes MaritimcB, the Alpes CotticB, the Alpes GraicBy the Alpes PennincE, the Alpes RhcBticcB, and the Alpes VenetcB. The extent of these several ranges the Romans, so far as we know, never very precisely defined, but we may guess at them with fair accuracy in considering that most important feature of all mountains, the Passes. These can best be shown in such a table as the following : — THE MAIN PASSES INTO LOMBARDY IN EACH SECTION OF THE ALPS IN ANCIENT AND MODERN TIMES (a) Maritime Alps. I. The Coast Road (known to Hannibal ; renewed and partly constructed by Augustus; the road of Hadrian and of Christianity) . (/3) Cottian Alps. 1. Mont Genevre (crossed by the Gauls ; road opened by Pompey, finished by Cottius, Prince of Susa, under Augustus; crossed by Constantine (Gibbon)). 2. Mont Cenis (military road in the Middle Ages). (y) Graian Alps. I. Little St. Bernard (crossed by the Gauls, by Hannibal (Mommsen), Hasdrubal and Caesar). (8) Pennine [and Lepontine] Alps. 1. Great St. Bernard (military road by J. Caesar and Augustus, crossed by Charlemagne in 773 and by Napoleon in i8oo). 2. Simplon (military road by Napoleon). 3. Gries (medieval track). 4. Nufenen (medieval track). 5. St. Gotthard (modern), (c) Rhaetian Alps. 1. Spliigen. 2. Julier (known to the Romans; crossed by Frederic 11.). 3. Brenner (the ancient pass over this range ; in part opened by Drusus; a military road constructed by his son, the Emperor Claudius). CISALPINE GAUL 17 Such, then, were the passages that led, though hardly through the outer gates of Italy into her great defence, the vast plain of Cisalpine Gaul that lay before her inner gates, only less strong, the peaked Apennines. We must conceive of them, of such of them as were known and in use,^ as flung open wide but guarded in the great years of the Empire, for the victories of Caesar, who had both the Gauls, Cisalpine Gaul by a vote of the people, Transalpine Gaul by a vote of the senate, for his provinces, the conquests and statesman- ship of Augustus had brought these great barriers within the Roman government and thus gave to Italy, for when Caesar died Cisalpine Gaul was in- corporated into Italy, and by this means, not only security but peace for some four hundred years. The Pax Romana : it is the work of the Empire ; a thing in our modern Europe hard to conceive of, but proper to Christendom, and perhaps if we could but see it even to-day only awaiting our recognition. Those first four centuries of our era in which Christen- dom was founded and Europe appeared, not as we know it to-day as a mosaic of hostile nationalities, but as one perfect whole, have never been rightly understood ; they still lack an historian, and the splendour of their achievement, their magnitude and importance are wholly misconceived or ignored. In our modern self- conceit we are ignorant both of what they were in themselves and of what we owe to them ; and, largely through the collapse of Europe in the sixteenth century and its appalling results both in thought and in politics, we are led, too often by the wilful lying of our historians, to regard them rather as the prelude to the decline and fall of the Empire than as the great and ^ That is to say, in the Maritime Alps the Coast Road, in the Cottian Alps the Mont Gen^vre, in the Graian Alps the Little St. Bernard, in the Pennine Alps the Great St. Bernard, and in Rhcstian Alps the Brenner and perhaps the Julier: 2 i8 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY indestructible foundations of all that is worth having in the world. For, rightly understood, those first four centuries gave us not only our culture, our civilisation, and our Faith, but ensured them to us that they should always endure. They established for ever the great lines upon which our art was to develop, to change, and yet not to suffer annihilation or barrenness. They estab- lished the supremacy of the idea, so that it might always renew our lives, our culture and our polity, and that we might judge everything by it and fear neither revolution, defeat nor decay. They, and they alone, established us in the secure possession of our own souls, so that we alone in the world develop from within to change but never to die and to be — yes alone in the world — Christians. And if the whole Empire thus took on a final and heroic form in those years of the Empire and the peace. Cisalpine Gaul more than any other province then came to fruition. It was there Virgil and Catullus and the Pliny s, to name no others, were born, and if we turn to the province itself, there is scarcely a town in that wide plain that did not expand and increase in a fashion almost miraculous during that period. It was then the rivers were embanked, the canals were made, the great roads planned and constructed, and our communications established for ever. There is no industry that did not grow incredibly in strength, there is not a class that did not increase in well-being beyond our dreams of progress. There is scarcely any- thing that is really fundamental in our lives and in our politics that was not then created that it might endure. It was then that our religion, the soul of Europe, was born, and little by little absorbed us so that it became the energy and the cause of all that undying but changeful principle of life and freedom which, rightly understood, is Europe. Our ideas of justice, our ideas CISALPINE GAUL 19 of law, our conception of human dignity and the structure of our society were then conceived and with such force that while we endure they can never die. But it is at the end of the third century that Cisalpine Gaul begins to emerge into a vast political importance. In 292 A.D., on the partition of the Empire by Diocletian, Milan became the capital of the vicariate of Italy. There Maximus Hercules had his residence and there his successor held a sumptuous court. It was, too, from Milan that Constantine dated his famous edict authorising the practice of Christianity in 313 A.D., and it was Milan that Valentinian made in 364 a.d. the capital of the west, and S. Ambrose (340-397) established as in some sort the rival of Rome, the religious metro- polis of Italy. Nor in this splendour was Milan alone ; all the cities of Cisalpine Gaul shared in her greatness and enjoyed their own, and if a general decline in wealth, and the appearance of civil war in the end of the fourth century began to destroy what had been so splendid, they but exposed the decline and presaged the sudden faU that no one suspected. In that decline Cisalpine Gaul, like the rest of Europe, was to return to its origins and once more to play the part designed for it, that of the cockpit and the defence of Italy and with Italy of Europe. The Empire which it had taken more than a millennium to build, which was the most noble and perhaps the most beneficent experiment in government that has ever been made, was in obvious economic and administrative decay before the beginning of the fifth century. In 401 Alaric and his Goths crossed the Julian Alps ; in that same year Honorius fled from Milan to the impregnable marshes of Ravenna ; in 493 Theodoric and his Ostro- goths had destroyed the last appearance of the imperial power left to western Europe, and it was already obvious that we should not again acknowledge an emperor acclaimed at Ravenna. The only chance left us, then, 20 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY was that we might be reconquered and reorganised from Constantinople. For more than fifty years that chance seemed still possible : it finally and violently passed away when the Lombards crossed the Alps in 568 and established themselves in the valley of the Po. We may well ask why the Empire fell ; but we can expect no very clear answer to that question. If we could answer it, most of the problems that we have to face in Europe to-day would have received their solu- tion. Superficially, the cause was the weakness of the north-eastern frontier. Every invasion that was more than a raid came from the Danube and entered Italy by the passes of the Julian Alps, past the city or the ruins of Aquileia. The imperial army was never strong enough upon that tremendous frontier. But no such excuse can satisfy us. Even though there had been no frontier at all within Europe, even though Latin genius had known how first to conquer and then to absorb the Teuton, one may still doubt whether the Empire could have endured. Not by any effort of the barbarian but by its own weakness the Empire fell. We see the Roman populace contemptuous or in- different to arms, pauperised by the rich, untaxed and amused, nay, almost housed and fed at the public ex- pense. We see the State always eager to restrict its conquests and its influence, anxious rather to keep out the barbarian than to bring him within its influence and jurisdiction. Little by little we see the Emperor who had been in a very real sense the representative of a genuinely popular idea become little more than a military despot and an adventurer. We see a curious decay of moral fibre of which all these things are the result. And when Christianity appeared as the general religion of the Empire it was perhaps already too late to effect its salvation. Yet Christianity, had it inspired the State earlier, could certainly have saved it : its first CISALPINE GAUL 21 necessity was to admit no frontiers, to go into all the world, and especially into the highways and hedges ; it demanded work from all, but made all men equal and free ; it might have been then, as it was later, the very soul of armies. As it was, it saved what could be saved. It was not the Emperor but Leo who met Attila and " as by a miracle " turned him back in the midst of the Cisalpine plain. Already Christianity was absorbing the bar- barian, nor would it have refused the almost pathetic appeal of Alaric to be of service. All this might have befallen, but it did not. The Empire fell. Here in Cisalpine Gaul the only problem we may attempt to deal with, and that but superficially, is that which I have already spoken of, the military problem. The military problem before the Empire had always been that of its two vast land frontiers : — (i) the European ; (2) the Asiatic. They were so ex- tensive and naturally so insecure that it was difficult to hold them at all, and impossible with due economy. Diocletian attempted to solve this problem by dividing the Empire, but the division he made was rather racial than strategic, for under it the two parts of the Empire met on the Danube. The eastern part, by force of geography was inclined to an Asiatic point of view and to the neglect of the Danube; the western was by no means strong enough to hold that tremendous line. Why ? It was not strong enough spiritually or materially. Spiritually it was lacking in patriotism. The army had been professional since the time of Marius, and tended more and more to become an hereditary caste, respecting no authority save that of the general, who, in its view, was always a possible nominee for the throne; moreover, the army was very largely barbarian. Materially it was lacking in numbers. The use of arms was unknown to the mass of the population. Stilicho, 22 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY in fighting Alaric, preferred to enlist slaves rather than the Italian freemen, because the Italian populace was unused to obedience and discipline. There is a third reason, which is of more than military importance, but it is military too. Italy had become impoverished. The government of the Empire was enormously expensive, quite apart from its defence. The methods of taxation were bad, tended to be futile, and were frequently corrupt. Many of the munici- palities were bankrupt and the middle- class capitalist was taxed out of existence and frequently fell into a servile condition. In consequence the population was declining. We must, in fact, admit that civic virtue, health and strength had long been failing. We do not admit that the moral and spiritual condition of the individual had deteriorated. The Empire was Christian when it fell : that is a sufficient answer to the fantastic nonsense that has been written on this subject, which would be absurd were it not too often corrupt. The citizen of the Empire, whatever else he may have been, was, by whatever standard you try him, a better man than the Goth, the Vandal or the Hun. The barbarians were barbarian : their victory, if victory it can be called, does not proclaim their superiority. War is not a test for chastity, frugality, justice and honour any more than it is a test for right and wrong. To think so is itself barbarian, it forces us back to the ordeal. The very virtue of the Roman citizen, his discontent with the world he lived in, the idealism of the saint and the poet is forced into evidence against the Empire when it is in fact the strongest possible evidence in its favour. Society, it would appear, had become enervated, fascinated by the past, enslaved by it and hypnotised by it. Thus the greatest, indeed the only service the barbarians rendered, was a service of destruction. They created nothing. They built CISALPINE GAUL 23 nothing, they contrived nothing; but they destroyed so much that we became sure that there would be no return, we reahsed that the Church had saved what could be saved and was leading us to a new and a higher form of that unity which suddenly in a little hundred years we had seen so ruthlessly destroyed. The attack of the barbarians under which that old unity disappeared but did not die, of which Cisalpine Gaul may be called the cockpit, appears to us in history as several great waves of invasion and one mighty raid. We may note them somewhat as follows : — 1. The Visigothic Invasion ; led by Alaric and MET BY StILICHO In November, 401, Alaric entered Venetia ^ by the Julian Alps and passed by Aquileia without taking it. Honorius fled from Milan to Ravenna. In 402, on Easter Day, Stilicho met him at PoUentia and defeated him, and, following his retreat, broke him again at Asta so that he compelled him to cross the Alps. In 403 Alaric entered Venetia again. Stilicho met him by Verona and once more hurled him back. 2. The Invasion of Radagaisus ; met by Stilicho In 405, Radagaisus invaded Venetia by the same passes, passed Aquileia, crossed the Po and the Apennines without opposition. Stilicho, who was at Pavia, met him at Fiesole and cut him to pieces. The remnant of his army returned through Cisalpine Gaul and fell upon Gaul proper. Stilicho was murdered in 408 at Ravenna. 3. The Second Visigothic Invasion ; led by Alaric In 408, Alaric again invaded Venetia by the Julian Alps and succeeded in crossing the Po and the Apennines. He marched to Rome and pillaged it, to die in 410. Adolphus, his successor, concluded a peace with Honorius ^ At the same time Radagaisus invaded Rhaetia, north of the Alps. Z4 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY and marched back through the valley of the Po into Gaul. 4. The Hunnish Invasion ; met by Leo the Great In 452, Attila, defeated in the previous year in Gaul by iEtius, invaded Venetia, took Aquileia and burnt it with Concordia and Altinum, which henceforth dis- appear from the pages of history. Padua, too, was ravaged and burnt, for she resisted, as did Modena, which shared her fate. Vicenza, Verona, Brescia, Bergamo, Milan and Pavia opened their gates ; they were but spoiled and their inhabitants exchanged death for slavery. When Italy was threatened, Pope Leo set out from Rome to meet Attila, whom he found at Pescheria on the Mincio. He was completely successful in his attempt to save Italy, and Attila consented to return across the Danube and to live henceforth at peace with the Romans. Thus Italy, though not Cisalpine Gaul, was saved. Attila died in 452 and his Empire fell to pieces. The Vandal Raid ; met by Leo the Great In 455 the Vandals under Gaiseric made a raid on Rome from Africa. They spoiled though they did not destroy the City, thanks again to the intervention of the Pope. They departed with an enormous treasure to that fair province of Africa which had boasted more than three hundred cities and which the Vandals, entering by way of Gaul and Spain, had utterly destroyed. 5. Augustine had died in Hippo in the third month of the Vandal siege (430). 5. The Ostrogothic Invasion. In 476, Odoacer had headed the Herulian revolt, and stormed and burnt Pavia, deposed the Emperor and put Romulus Augustulus in his place, only to depose him in the same year in Ravenna. When he became too powerful the Byzantine Emperor encouraged Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, to enter Italy. CISALPINE GAUL 25 Theodoric entered Venetia by the old passes that had seen Alaric and Attila go by, in 489. He came at the head of a nation of some 250,000 souls. He met Odoacer on the Isonzo, at Verona, on the Adige, and later on the Adda, and each time defeated him. He became master of Italy. His reign, with his capital at Ravenna, of more than thirty years gave Italy a peace and prosperity she had not known for a century. On his death in 526 her wounds were fast healing. Indeed, his reign prepared the way for Justinian's attempt to restore the Empire and the unity of east and west by the genius of his generals, Belisarius and N arses. In this enormous and heroic effort, which occupied the years 535-553, the city of Rome was taken and retaken five times : in 536 by Belisarius, in 546 by Totila, in 547 by Belisarius, in 549 by Totila, and in 552 by Narses. In these wars all Italy was devastated. Cisalpine Gaul was turned into a wilderness and a morass. Milan was totally destroyed, and Rome, when Totila had done with her in 546, remained during the space of forty days without a single inhabitant. Nor was all finished, at least in Cisalpine Gaul, when Narses finally secured the City in 552. In the following year the Franks and the Alemanni descended the Rhaetian Alps into the plain of Milan, broke the Roman army at Parma, ravished what was left of the cities and went on through Italy to pillage ; but between Trent and Verona God smote their allies and Narses at last utterly destroyed them in Campania. Narses, the representative of the Emperor at Byzantium, was established at Ravenna and administered above fifteen years the entire kingdom of Italy, though he did not assume the title of Exarch. But it was not for long that Italy was to enjoy the peace Narses had won for her. In 565 Justinian died, and two years later his great minister had fallen 26 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY and, as it is said, to avenge himself had invited his old allies the Lombards into Italy. 6. The Lombard Invasion The sixth and last barbarian invasion, that of the Lombards, was in many respects the most terrible, and was certainly the most enduring in its results, as it was the least resisted of all the barbarian incursions. In par- ticular, its effects upon Cisalpine Gaul were fundamental ; they endure to this day, for in this invasion alone we see a permanent settlement made south of the Alps, a settlement that was virtually an annexation of the whole territory of the plain from the Ticino to the Mincio, so that here alone in all Italy the name of the province is changed and henceforth it bears the title of its conquerors. Cisalpine Gaul becomes after the Lombard conquest Lombardy. It was in 568 that Alboin and his Teutonic multitudes crossed the Julian Alps and descended upon the plain and everywhere found or left it a ruin, incapable of resistance. The lines of their march through and conquest of Italy may most easily be expressed in a table, according to the years of their progress : — In 568 they seized all Venetia except the coast, Padua, and Monselice ; they took Friuli, Vicenza and Verona. In 569 they seized all Cisalpine Gaul and Liguria except Pavia, Cremona, Piacenza, Mantua and perhaps some smaller places. In 570-572 they seized most of Tuscany with the duchies of Spoleto and Benevento. In the latter year Pavia fell after three years* siege, as well as Piacenza and Mantua. After the year 572 and the death of Alboin their successes were less uniform and a certain resistance was forthcoming, but by the year 600 they held all Italy with the exception of Rome and its territory, the Adriatic coast, Perugia, Orvieto, and a good part of CISALPINE GAUL 27 Campania, including Naples, and much of the south, with Sicily and the islands. In Cisalpine Gaul they were firmly established, and all that remained to the Imperial- ists was, the cities of Cremona, Piacenza, Mantua, Padua and perhaps Modena, Parma and Reggio, with Ravenna and the pentapolis, namely, Rimini, Pesaro, Fano, Sinigaglia and Ancona, with the Venetian and Ligurian coast. Indeed, during a period of some two hundred years Italy was unequally divided between the kingdom of the Lombards and the exarchate of Ravenna, the immediate jurisdiction of which was afterwards consecrated as the patrimony of S. Peter, and extended over the whole of what we call Romagna, including the marshes of Ferrara and Commachio. If to this State be added the three isolated provinces of Rome, of Venice and of Naples, which in one way or another acknowledged the supremacy of the exarch at Ravenna, we shall have roughly at a glance the political geography of Italy from the time of the establishment of the Lombards in Italy till the coming and the deliver- ance of Charlemagne in 774 and the restoration of the Empire on that famous Christmas Day in the year 800. Such were the barbarian invasions that destroyed Cisalpine Gaul and brought down the Empire. If we examine the results of these invasions at all closely, several facts emerge from their enormous chaos. In the first place, we may divide the invasions into two periods. The first came to an end with the advent of Theodoric, his establishment of peace, the revival under his rule of Roman Law and municipal life, and, in conse- quence of this, the reconquest of Italy by Belisarius and N arses. That revival not only effaced whatever was fundamentally dangerous in the previous invasions, but plucked the death sting from the far more terrible Lombard domination which fills the second. It permitted Italy to breathe, and ensured the continuance in spite of everything of Latin civilisation. We see 28 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY Cisalpine Gaul in the time of the Lombards a mere wilderness, empty and ruined, surging against the cities ; but many of these cities were and remained Latin, and when the exarchate was really in danger of extinction and with it what remained of the memory of Rome, the Pope called the Franks into Italy, Charle- magne crossed the Alps, and suddenly, as by an in- spiration or a miracle, the Empire reappears. In the awful anarchy that followed Charlemagne's death, the necessary part of that Empire, its soul and its Latin genius, was already safe. The cities and their Latin populace were in secure possession of it. The Frankish counts replace the Lombard dukes, it is true, for a moment, but one hundred years had not passed since Charlemagne's coronation before the Bishops, the captains of the old and indestructible civilisation of Rome, had begun to acquire temporal power and authority in the cities in which they resided in Cisalpine Gaul. In 892 the Bishop of Modena ruled that city, in 904 Bergamo had her Bishop for captain, in 962 all the powers that had been the count's were acquired by the Bishops of Parma and Lodi. It is a revolution that we see, both pojDular and Latin, and it ensured the domination of Latin civilisation and culture, and with them of the rise or return of the commune. Out of the ruins of those five hundred years between Alaric's descent in 401 and the rise of the Bishops to temporal power in the end of the ninth century, it is not so much a new nation that we see emerge as the revival of the old Latin civilisation. Latin Christianity was about to re-establish Europe. CHAPTER II THE LAKES MAGGIORE — LUGANO — COMO ^J OW if a man would see with his bodily eyes, and ^ as it were in a single glance, this country of Cisalpine Gaul whose history I have tried to set forth in the previous chapter, let him enter Italy from the town of Lugano, and, taking boat there for Capolago, and climbing thence a-foot or by funicular the mountain called Generoso, let him stay a day or two in the woods of Bellavista. Nowhere else that I know will he get all at once so firm a possession of the lie of this land. The Monte Generoso stands on the modern frontier of Switzerland and Italy, and the view from Bellavista, just an inn in the chestnut woods, where the wild flowers most abound, and still more from the summit, is not only one of the most splendid in Europe, but one of the widest and most interesting. To the north and west stand the great ramparts of the Alps, and beyond, that tremendous huddle of upreared peaks we call the Bernese Oberland ; to the south lies the vast Italian plain as far as Bologna where the Apennines close its southern border, and on the east as far as Verona where the Alps shut it in. At one's feet, like so many jewels cast down before one, lie the Lakes of Maggiore, Lugano, Como, and the rest, among the foothills of the great mountains. To see and to consider this view is to understand the secret and the history not of Cis- alpine Gaul alone^ but in a very real sense of Italy and 30 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY of Europe, and I can imagine no more propitious and delightful seclusion for such a contemplation of the past and the future of all that Europe stands for than this great thirsty mountain, which in spite of its lack of water, is shrouded so wonderfully in woods and scattered with wild flowers. And then when one is weary of thought, there lie the Italian lakes for our recreation and delight : and yet not all delight. I do not know, nor shall I ever understand precisely what it is that lends to the lakes of Lombardy their unnatural and shining beauty, their air of enchantment, of sorcery. They are a vision of lovely and untroubled youth, of youth that is without conscience and without thought, and they have upon the soul the effect of a singular and half -remembered music. To come upon them veiled in the mist of dawn, or shining in the glory of the morning, to watch them drowsily in the drowsy noon, to see them fade into the silver and blue and gold of the evening, into the violet of the still night, is to experience a fullness of joy that only music is commonly able to bring us : and yet that joy is far removed from happiness. Something forbidden, a sense of spell or sorcery, something too sweet, some- thing too brief, that terrifies us because it is so lovely, involves this paradise in disaster, and we are as full of fear as we should be if by chance we had come upon Dionysus himself on a still noon in the shadow of the vines, or Aphrodite in the long summer dawn on the fringe of the Cyprian sea. Let it be granted there is something pagan in the beauty of these places, but as it seems to me there is also something that I can only call unnatural, for it does not chime with the world we know. And yet one of the first of our thoughts beside these shores will be a thought of death : but I do not think it is that which makes us afraid : it is their beauty. I am not sure that this curious emotion mixed of fear ••.••»• * SAN MAMKTTE, LAGO LUGANO THE LAKES 31 and an exquisite delight does not presently pass away. Certainly it cannot endure beyond a night at Stresa or Luino or Lugano or even Como, where the traveller will be involved at once in every sort of touristry : but if it cannot endure, it may be recaptured again in such lovely and quiet places — places that I have loved — as this of Bellavista, for instance, or S. Caterina del Sasso on Lago Maggiore, or Morcote or Oria, or, better still, Castignola on Lago di Lugano, or Gravedona or Corenno on Lago di Como, or any- where among the oleanders of Lago d' Orta. Yet it is easy to grow accustomed and weary of so strange a loveliness. Men have fruitlessly discussed for ages which is the most beautiful of the lakes in this paradise that lies at the gates of Lombardy among the mountains. One might as well consider whether Winchester Cathedral were more beautiful than Salisbury, or Wells than either. For no one is like another, save that all are to be enjoyed. Lago Maggiore has the gift of the wind, of the wideness of some inland sea and of distance ; Lago Lugano has the gift of shadow, of great hills and of many secret places ; Lago di Como has the joy of richness and of colour, the mystery of woods and the surprise of the snow and of far-away great mountains ; Lago d' Orta has flowers and silence. But of all the lakes, I love best the Larian, Lago di Como, because it is wholly Latin and there I can tread in the ways that are from of old, I can behold places that have always been sacred and remember the history of Europe. Historically, indeed, there can be no doubt that Lago di Como is the most, Lago Maggiore the least interesting of the four greater lakes that lie within our view from Monte Generoso. Lago Maggiore — Lacus Verbanus as the Romans called it, perhaps with a thought of its air of spring — is some forty miles in length between Locarno on the 32 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY north and Arona on the south. It receives from the Alps the rivers Toce, Maggia and Tresa, and there streams out from it southward into the Lombard plain the great Ticino, after the Po the greatest river of Italy. If one approaches Maggiore from the north by the Simplon, he will descend by the Toce valley from Domodossola and strike the lake first in its widest part at Baveno. Baveno and Stresa, which we may see from Generoso, little lake-side villages once, hovering beside the water, are now quite spoiled by the vast and numerous hotels for the rich which have overwhelmed them. Baveno, beyond the beauty of its situation and the general loveliness of the lake, to which it is perhaps the best key, has really nothing to show the traveller : indeed it has not even a villa of much importance unless it be the hideous Villa Clara, where Queen Victoria once stayed. Stresa, at least, has the Villa Pallavicino above the lake and the Villa Vignola, belonging to the Duchess of Genoa, mother of the Queen Dowager of Italy, beside it. Here in Stresa, too, Cavour conceived the liberation of Italy, and, a thing notable for us at any rate, became one of the first organisers of the company that plies its steamers, chiefly in our behalf, up and down and about the lake. Nor is Stresa quite without something to offer us in the way of an excursion. To climb Monte Motterone is both easy and delightful, and the view to be had from the top, though it may not compare with that from Monte Generoso, is sufficiently satisfying to make the climb necessary. For, thence we may see the Alps from the Col di Tenda to Monte Viso, to Monte Rosa and the Or tier and the Jungfrau, the whole of Lago Maggiore, Lago d' Orta and the smaller lakes such as Monate and Varese, while south and west we look over the vast plain of Lombardy with the Sesia and the Ticino gliding southward across it towards Milan. But, after all, Stresa is chiefly famous by reason LAGO MAGGIORE 33 of the view she offers us of the Borromean Islands, Isola Bella, Isola dei Pescatori and Isola Madre, which lie before her in the breadth of the lake not so very far from the shore. I suppose there is nothing else in the world quite like this vision that Stresa gives us, not of fairyland but of the garden of the Hesperides. In the heat of the day they seem far off, wrapt in eternal summer and the drowsy slumbers of noon, and only the sound of their bells comes to you over the shining waters; but at dawn or at evening they come near, they are quite close, you may see their terraced gardens, their trees and flowers, their magic villas, their church towers, and in the quietness the voices of their fortunate inhabitants come to you over the waters as out of a strange and lovely dream. Yes, they are just a vision of what men have always meant by the Isles of the Blest, the Fortunate Islands which no one, till he happened here, ever found. And like those islands of happiness which so many have thought to see, these too may not be approached. If on some morning, sure of your joy, you set out in a little boat, for no one I suppose would hope to come to Paradise in a steamer, they will vanish away, they will utterly change, and what was Isola Bella will have become, when you reach it, a mere bulwark of brick and cement, the gardens an artificial ugliness, the villa a baroque palace of the seventeenth century, the whole in the worst and the crudest taste ; Isola dei Pescatori will seem to you just an Italian fishing village, neither more nor less ; Isola Madre — well, that is the farthest and the best. Indeed, Isola Madre has much charm, and if any traveller be so rash as to wish for a closer acquaintance with these islands in the lazy do- nothing days he must spend at Stresa, it is to Isola Madre he should go. Here, it is true, are gardens in terraces as at Isola Bella, but something of Nature has been left : there are birds here, and the little park and 3 34 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY wood where the camellias grow so plentifully are quiet and delightful. Isola Madre, like Isola Bella, belongs to the Borromeo family, one of the best in Lombardy, whose most famous son was that S. Carlo bom at Arona in 1537 — it is, I think, the one thing Arona can boast of — and known to us all as Cardinal Archbishop of Milan, which tre- mendous office was given him in his twenty-third year. For a further twenty-three years he lived like a saint, dispensing his great wealth, for he had inherited the Borromeo estates, in charity, sleeping himself upon straw and eating bread and water. Every village, every shepherd's hut in his diocese knew him well. And his rule of the clergy and religious of his diocese was such that many became his enemies, and one, a friar, at- tempted to kill him ; but the bullet glanced off the gold embroidery of his cope, and he was alive to minister to his people with wonderful personal devotion in the great plague of 1575. Pope Paul v. canonised him in 1610. The Castle of Anghera, which stands finely over the lake opposite Arona, is another possession of the Borromei. It was of old of very considerable importance, holding all the road to Milan, and the Visconti took a title. Count of Anghera, from it. But the wise traveller will spend but little time in this southern part of the lake, which as a whole is, as I have said, best explored from Baveno. Leaving Baveno on his way northward, the first town he will come upon will be Pallanza, where again there is nothing to see, nothing that is but its own natural loveliness, and that can be as well seen from the boat as from the shore. Nevertheless one should land, if only to walk out on to the promontory north of the town where of old a temple to Venus stood, and where now the church of S. Remigio stands. It is indeed a pretty walk all the way from Pallanza to Intra, where one may again take the boat, LAGO MAGGIORE 35 unless indeed one is bent on exploring the picturesque Val Introgno which here leads up into the hills. From Intra the boat crosses the lake to Laveno, and Laveno is to my mind quite the most interesting place on Lago Maggiore — not for itself alone, but for the country it puts you in possession of. There is nothing to see in the town ; but the great wooded hill to the north, under which Laveno hides, and which makes so beautiful a part of the view from Stresa, is the Sasso di Ferro, and thence you may have a finer view than from Monte Motterone. And there, high above the lake, is the little convent of S. Caterina del Sasso, which I love better than any other in all Lombardy, because it chimes in so lovely a fashion with the rocks and the lake here, and its loggia and tower are so fine from the water. I could never learn how it came to be S. Catherine's, or to which of the many S. Catherines it belongs. It seems that it should be the Madonna's, for the Madonna performed a miracle there of the most strange sort. There is within the church a little chapel, over whose altar hangs suspended, as it seems in the air, a vast boulder, which, crashing down from the precipice. Madonna arrested there w^here you see it. The latest English guide to these lakes tries to explain this stupen- dous fact by natural causes ; but who would be content with such when the supernatural are so obvious ? This, surely, is one of the inexplicable mysteries of the modern mind. Laveno holds the road to much fine country, and many beautiful things which we, who have entered by the Lugano gate, shall find later on our road from Como to Milan. Nevertheless, Varese and its lake, as well as Castiglione d' Olona, may easily be seen from here, and should not be omitted by any traveller who is exploring the lakes and not going on to Milan. From Laveno the traveller will go on by boat to Luino, which is chiefly interesting, in its modern life, for its 36 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY silk factories and for the fact that here one leaves Lago Maggiore for Lago Lugano. It was, however, the birth- place of Bernardino Luini, Leonardo's pupil, and there are still some grand frescoes of his in the parish church. Luini, however, pretty and sentimental as his work always is, is not to be judged by his paintings here. To do him justice it is necessary to go to Saronno on the road to Milan. Opposite Luino, on the farther shore of the lake, stand two ruined castles, their feet in the water : they doubtless once threatened somebody, but who it was I could never learn. In the fifteenth century they served as a retreat for a family of brigands named Mazzardi. From Cannobio, the next place of importance, on the northern shore, the Val Cannobina leads into the wooded foothills of the mountains. In Cannobio itself, near the landing-stage, is a fine early Renaissance church, the Santuario della Santissima Pieta, and over the high altar we find a good picture by Gaudenzio Ferrari of Christ bearing His Cross, the only picture perhaps on the lake ; but here especially Nature makes up for the lack of art. Locarno, at the head of Lago Maggiore, but by no means the most considerable place upon it, is without interest, save that from it open the rich pastures of the Val Maggia and all the loveliness of Val Orsenona, Val Bavena and Val Anzarca. Behind Locarno, too, on a great precipitous rock, stands the convent of La Madonna del Sasso which was founded in 1487. It is a picturesque place, and though to my mind it cannot rival S. Caterina, it is well worth a visit. I said that Locarno was without interest, meaning that it had little to offer the traveller. To the curious student of history, however, it is known as one of the most southern places, for it is not Italian, to side with Luther in the great political and moral revolution of the sixteenth century which we call the Reformation, why, I could never understand, for it formed nothing, LAGO LUGANO 37 but a confusion, though, if you will, it reformed Europe back into its original chaos. The people of Locarno, however, were very eager in this business, and rather than remain Catholics, some two hundred families of them marched through the Alps in the early spring to the Grisons. A romantic tale is told, and I think truly, of the Lady of Locarno at this time, Barbara di Montalto, whom the minions of the papal nuncio came to seize, because she had scoffed at the Mass ; " but she escaped by a secret door leading to the lake, while her pursuers were in the house." Now the traveller who, intent on exploring Lombardy, has set out first to see the Italian lakes, if he shall have crossed the Alps by the Simplon and have come first to Lago Maggiore, will presently leave it for Lago Lugano by the gate of Luino. Luino itself is just in Italy, but such a traveller on his way to Porto Tresa on the Lake of Lugano will soon cross the frontier, and until he leaves that lake at its northern extremity — and in our company — for Menaggio on Lago di Como, he will be in Switzerland, in those Italian cantons of Switzerland that is, which are in their scenery so much more Italian than Swiss, but in their population, so disagreeably, rather Swiss than Italian. No one, however he enter Lombardy, if he is bent upon exploring the Italian plain, should fail to climb Monte Generoso, the only look out in all this country which gives him nearly the whole of it. It is true that to do this he must enter Switzerland ; but he must put up with that. Like most other travellers I find the German Switzer un- sympathetic, to put it gently, and I am willing every time I pass through Switzerland to agree with Lord Byron, who called it " a swinish country of brutes." It is true, too, that all this part of the mountains, naturally so Italian, suffers from these people, and the frontier line is not a true one from a racial point of view. 38 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY Maggiore is little, if any, better than Lugano in this respect ; the people are the same, and it is not till we are well on our way to Como that we are finally rid of them. However, no one is to be prevented from going to the Italian lakes, I hope, because they happen to be peopled by the most ungracious and barbarous of the people of Europe. Nor should anyone on this account fail to visit Monte Generoso. It is true that in the summer there, the mountain is swarming with Germans, and the Milanese of the middle class abound ; never- theless in May, or, better, in June, Monte Generoso is quiet and lonely enough to please us all. And then no place offers the same opportunity of surveying at a glance the Lombard plain, with its cities, its pastures, its corn fields and winding rivers, its straight, interminable Roman roads. Monte Generoso, too, should be visited for its own sake. For it possesses all kinds of scenery, a country of trees and hedges and meadows at its base, forests of chestnut trees, and higher, of wild laburnums laden and weighted down with gold, and about the summit the bare and barren rock of the mountains. And every- where there are flowers, deep beds of lilies of the valley, columbines and white asphodels, golden hawkweeds and the too sweet narcissus, a dazzling brightness beyond which crimson peonies gleam amid the rocks, while in the higher places gentians and ranunculuses blow in the thin and eager air. Indeed, in the early heat there is no more pleasant place in Europe than this dry and lonely mountain which thrusts itself beyond its fellows so steeply into the Lombard plain. On descending from it on our way into Italy it is easy to see what there is to see in the little villages of the Lake of Lugano. The best, the most charming of these I have already named : they are to be loved. But in Lugano itself there is but one famous thing, and that is of secondary importance, I mean the fresco of the LAGO DI COMO 39 Crucifixion by Luini in the fine early Renaissance church, conventual too, of S. Maria degli Angeli by the lake-side. Wonderfully Italian as Lugano seems, it is almost wholly devoid of the Italian charm ; its arcaded ways and byways no longer picturesque, spoiled by the Switzer and the stranger, do not attract us, and even its churches seem to lack some blessedness. Only the idle and the rich will linger there. As for us, we are for Italy ; let us be up and away. So we depart, leaving Monte Salvatore, famous in Germany, unvisited and without a word ; for if by chance we must spend our time on the Lake of Lugano, it is not there we shall be found, but perhaps in the byways or in a little boat under the olives of Morcote or the rosy church tower and cypresses of Oria, or in the warm sunshine under Casta gnola, little places which possess nothing but an indefinable charm and Latin loveliness. So shall we come quickly, or lingering by the way, to Porlezza, and taking the little train there, in a half -hour (or, better, by road) find ourselves by the shore of the Larian lake at Menaggio. Thence, if we are wise, we shall immediately take ship for Bellaggio or that paradise which faces it — certainly of old a very Eden — Cadenabbia, upon the western shore. The Lake of Como, always more important than those of Maggiore and Lugano, for it commands two great passes into the Alps, the Spliigen and the Bragaglia, consists, as it were, of three parts, for it is shaped like a three-pointed star, or, as the local rhymes have it, like a man's body with his two legs. These parts all meet at Bellaggio, which is thus by far the most convenient spot from which to explore and enjoy the whole lake. To the south lies the Lake of Como proper between Bellaggio and the city of Como ; to the north lies that great upper part of it between Bellaggio and Colico, which has no distinct name ; to the east, between Bellaggio and Lecco, lies the Lake of Lecco. 40 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY The Lake of Como, in that upper or northern part of it, just beyond Colico receives, as do the lakes of Maggiore and Geneva, a great river, the Adda, into its bosom, a river which leaves it not at Como, for there the lake has no opening at all, but at Lecco, whence it flows into the Lombard plain to be one of its great barriers and nourishers. Nearly forty miles long from Como to Colico, the Lake of Como is by far the most interesting historically of those three lakes which lie here in this corner under the great mountains. That part of it which lies between Bellaggio and Como has indeed, ever since the Empire began to civilise these parts of Upper Italy, been crowded with sumptuous villas, the most famous of which were those of the two Plinys. The northern arm between Bellaggio and Colico is chiefly interesting because of the part it played in the fifteenth century ; but the old Roman route lay down it, and one landed — Stilicho did, for instance, according to Claudian — at Colico and at Como, not at Lecco, in going from or to Milan. The chief classical interest of the Larian lake, however, is gathered round the Plinys, who were born at Como, and had many villas about the lake, one of the chief oi which stood, as is thought, where the Villa SerbeUoni stands to-day, on the towering promontory of Bellaggio. " You tell me you are building : " the younger Pliny writes happily.^ " That is well, and gives me the countenance I wanted, for I shall be able to justify my building now that we are both in the same boat. Moreover, there is this, too, that while you are building by the sea, I am building by the Larian Lake. I have several villas on its shores, but there are two that are especially my favourites, and at the same time exercise my mind a good deal. One is situated on a rocky spur and overlooks the lake, like the villas at Baiae ; the other is on the margin of the lake, and also after the Baiae ^ Ep. vii. II. LAGO DI COMO 41 fashion. I like to call the one * Tragedy,' the other * Comedy ' because the former is supported as it were by the buskin, and the latter by the sock. Each has its own charm, and each seems the more delightful in turn by reason of its difference from the other. The one has a close, the other a wide view of the lake ; the one commands a single gently curving bay, the other, perched on its lofty ridge, lies between two bays ; in the one there is a long level walk stretching along the shore, in the other a spacious terrace with an easy slope ; the one never feels the waves, the other breaks their progress ; from the one you can look upon the people fishing, from the other you can fish yourself, even from your bedroom, and almost from your bed, as though you were in a small boat. And for these charming reasons I have built on to these villas certain additions which they required. ..." Thus far Pliny. As I have said, his villa "Tragedy " is generally supposed to have stood where now on the summit of the promontory the Villa Serbelloni stands. His villa " Comedy " was probably near Lenno, while others of his houses stood near Torno and Como. Bellaggio, with its far views and command of the three great arms of Lake Como, is a charming and a beautiful place, but beyond the Villa Serbelloni, its gardens and terraces, there is not much to be seen. Its position, however, makes it not only the most delightful but the most convenient spot from which to explore the lake. Perhaps, for the sake of its history, that part of Lake Como between Como and Bellaggio should be first enjoyed, but as that is the best way to Milan, we shall leave it till the last, and begin our pleasure with that part of the lake which lies between Bellaggio and Colico. This arm is by far the largest of the three, though not much longer than the others. Besides the scenery it offers us — and there are no lovelier spots in the lakes of all Italy, than Gravedona with its Baptistery, its basilica 42 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY of S. Vincenzo, its cross of silver inlaid with gems, its chalice and precious ornaments of the fifteenth century ; Corenno, with its ruined castle and memory of Pliny ; Fiona, with its cloisters and Varenna with its rosy face, its graceful towers and stately cypresses — this northern area is chiefly interesting for the strange part that a certain adventurer named Medici (who, in the greatness of his success claimed kinship, without a shadow of reason, with the great Florentine family) played here in the sixteenth century. In the first years of that century, the Valtellina, through which the Adda flows into Lake Como at its northern end, together with Bormio and Chiavenna had passed to the Grisons, and the Swiss Cantons had possessed themselves at the same time of Lugano and Bellinzona ; thus the barbarous mountaineers had spoiled the Duchy of Milan of a rich province which no lord of Milan, whether a Sforza or a French general or a Spanish viceroy, could long tolerate. It was in this state of affairs that Gian Giacomo Medici, II Medeghino, as he was and is still called, appeared. He was a Lombard, the son of a Lombard born in Milan in 1498. His father was a man of humble birth, his mother, however, was Cecilia Serbelloni ; they managed to breed some remarkable children. II Medeghino began as a mur- derer, a brigand, an outlaw and highwayman, he ended as Marquis of Musso, Count of Lecco, Viceroy of Bohemia, and Marquis of Marignano. He was the eldest. His brother, Giovanni Angelo, became Pope Pius IV. His sister Cecilia married a Borromeo, and became the mother of a Saint, S. Carlo Borromeo. I doubt if there is in all history such an achievement as that in a single generation of a single family. II Medeghino began as the merest adventurer : his first act was, as I said, the assassination of a man he hated, this at the age of sixteen. This recommended him to the generals of the Sforza troops, and in that cause he LAGO DI COMO 43 too had success, for he helped to put Francesco Sforza 11. on the Ducal throne of Milan. Perhaps in these fights he had come to know the Lake of Como, and the unsettled state of the Valtellina. At any rate he knew the Castle of Musso there, on the headland south of Gravedona, which, besides the citadel on the precipitous height of the promontory, was furnished with a square fort having bastions and cannon, strong towers, and an easy and safe access to the lake. He applied to Sforza for this place as a reward for old service. Sforza granted it to him on condition that he succeeded in murdering Astorre Vis- conti, Sforza's rival. This II Medeghino achieved. Then Sforza sent him with open letters to the Castellano of Musso to possess the fortress, but with sealed letters in which the said Castellano was ordered to cut II Mede- ghino's throat. The young man opened these letters, laid his plans, and possessed himself of the Castle of Musso. Sforza the viper made no sign ; he was beaten at his own game. Thus began a life of highway robbery in which II Medeghino was almost uniformly successful. First he rendered Musso impregnable, then to keep Sforza quiet he made war on the Grisons. Then with a fleet of boats he made himself master of the lake from Colico to Lecco. Sforza, knowing his man, and fearing the advance of Francis i. of France, the pay- master of the Grisons, made him perpetual governor of the Lake of Como, and of as much else as he could take from the mountaineers. II Medeghino at once took Chiavenna, the key to the great passes ; and may thus be said to have helped to defeat Francis at the battle of Pa via. But a change was coming and II Medeghino saw it. Sforza was falling between France and Spain, In the ruin that followed he played his own hand and came out of it lord of the lakes Como and Lugano and of the town of Lecco and master of all the valleys. His navy blockaded Como, then held by the Spaniards, 44 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY and was able to come to terms with them and to obtain from Charles v. his investment of the Castle of Musso, the town of Lecco and the greater part of the Lake ; with the titles of Marquis of Musso and Count of Lecco. He even coined money with his own name and device upon it. Nor did he cease to prosper. His only check in the following years was in a battle off Menaggio when Sforza, now back in Milan, worsted him. But he recovered himself, and, if he had ever held Como, might have made his own terms without question. As it was, he was able at the last to retire with all the honours. He got 35,000 gold crowns for Musso and the marquisate of Marignano. He even took service with Spain, became a field-marshal in that army, was employed in the Netherlands, and, later, entered Bohemia as a Spanish viceroy. His last act was to distinguish himself in the Senese, when Charles v. was busy creating the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. It was then he claimed to be de' Medici, and as he was a good friend and a bad enemy, and, moreover, having a brother who was Pope, his claim was allowed. And when he died, he was buried in the Duomo of Milan and Leone Leoni of Menaggio built for his corse his masterpiece, the magnifi- cent tomb we see to-daj^. Lecco, of which II Medeghino made himself lord, has given its name to the south-eastern arm of the Lake of Como. This part of the lake is rougher and more lonely than the other two, but not, I think, less lovely. What is there better in all this district than Villa Giulia, than Limonta or Roman Liema ? Yet what history there is gathers round Lecco itself. Etruscan, Celtic and Roman, Lecco is to-day a characteristic Lombard town, full of business and energy after the sufferings which, being in Lombardy, it has had to bear. We are told that S. Mona of Milan converted the Lecchesi to Christianity in the third century and we may be sure that in the Dark Ages it sank back LAGO DI COMO 45 into barbarism, for it was on the frontier of the Rhaetians and the Alpini, half-tamed peoples who had no root in Latin civilisation. But in the great reconstruction it had its part, and in 1161 Barbarossa, when he had destroyed Milan and divided Lombardy into six provinces, made Lecco the head of one of them and it received an imperial viceroy. Nothing of all this time remains to the busy little town to-day ; its earliest visible memories being of the fourteenth century, when Visconti was ruling in Milan and Azzone Visconti took and fortified the town, surrounding it with a vast towered wall and building the great bridge we still see over the Adda, which here leaves the lake to water and to nourish a great part of Tuscany and to lose itself at last in the Po. But delightful though the lake is between Bellaggio and Colico and between Bellaggio and Lecco, there can be no doubt that its most beautiful, and its most frequented and famous part, is that which lies between Bellaggio and the city of Como — the Lake of Como proper. The special and enchanted beauty of the Italian lakes is here at its best, and all that is most characteristic in the strange lavishness of their beauty seems here to have found its best expression. And to add to our pleasure it is here, too, that the historical interest of this part of Lombardy reaches its climax. Here the Latin world is secure and we feel ourselves in the country of Pliny and Virgil. Opposite Bellaggio, and not truly in this southern arm of Lake Como at all, stands Menaggio, where the Visconti had a castle of which nothing but a few ruins remains. Close by is the village of Nobiallo, and above it the beautiful sanctuary of La Madonna della Pace. On our way southward, however, we shall not pass these which lie in the northern arm of the lake, but are most conveniently visited from Bellaggio and deserve a day to themselves. 46 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY Quite opposite Bellaggio and south of Menaggio stands Cadenabbia which may be called the head- quarters of the English on Lake Como, as Bellaggio is of the Germans. Cadenabbia is almost as good a centre for exploring the lake as Bellaggio, and the plain Englishman will be happier there out of the way of the Teuton. From Cadenabbia one may walk southward by the lake to Tremezzo, or better, perhaps, row thither, for the villas have grown so thick hereabout that walking is no longer the happiness it was. The best of these villas is the Carlotta, the property of the Duke of Saxe- Meiningen : its gardens, woods, roses, magnolias, azaleas and terraces of lilies are a joy for ever. Beyond Tremezzo we come to Lenno with its beautiful old Baptistery of fine Lombard work now desecrated and above in the Val Benedetto, the lovely sanctuary of the Madonna del Soccorso, and the Acqua Fredda, a Cistercian monastery, with its cypresses of the twelfth century, now in the hands of French monks. At Lenno, Pliny, according to Giovio the great historian of the Larian lake, had his villa " Comedy," and some remains of the Roman time may still be seen there beneath the waters ; while on the southern promontory that shuts in Lenno, stands the deserted but magnificent Villa Arconati, perhaps the loveliest place on the lake. Opposite Lenno and a little farther south stands Lezzono in its gorge : Lezzono della mala fortuna D' invemo senza sol, d' estate senza luna. And, indeed, Lezzono is so hidden away that in the winter it never sees the sun, nor in summer the moon. Opposite Lezzono we see the only island on the lake, the Isola Comacina. The name of this island takes our thoughts back over a thousand years and more of history. Here, as is supposed, Caninius Rufus, one of Pliny's o LAGO DI COMO 47 correspondents, had a villa. " How is Como looking," Pliny writes to him, " your darling spot and mine ? And that most charming villa of yours, what of it, and its portico where it is always spring, its shady plane trees, its fresh crystal canal and the lake below that gives so lovely a view ? " Yet it is not of Pliny that we think there but of a later time than his, the time of the disaster. For here, alone perhaps in all Lombardy, the Latin tradition and perhaps the Latin art were preserved during the in- vasion and the rule of the barbarian Lombards. From the middle of the sixth century until Europe was well re-established in the twelfth, this little island stood for Europe, a refuge for civilisation from barbary, holding ever to the Imperial cause. When at last after a sixth months' siege it capitulated, it was with honour, for in every real sense it had achieved its end ; it had, during some six hundred years, borne witness for civilisation and upheld the European tradition. And remembering this, it is fitting that for centuries a miracle play which represented the life and death of S. John the Baptist, the witness and the forerunner, should have been played here upon his festa in June. The Isola Comacina may well be called S. Giovanni. Who shall describe the way from Isola Comacina to Como: is it not one of the most luxurious beauties of the world ? Argegno with the Valj d* Intelvi, Nesso with its waterfall, what can be said of them ? It is only when below Nesso, in a great bay on the eastern bank, we come to the Villa Pliniana, majestic in the shadow and silence under the cliffs where the cypresses stand on guard, that we are recalled to that old world which seems so real to us and about which Pliny gossiped so delightfully. For the Villa Pliniana, though now an affair of the sixteenth century at farthest, is undoubtedly the site of another of those retreats that Pliny had in so great a plenty by the Larian shore : 48 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY and it possesses a remarkable intermittent spring which he describes and begs Licinius Sera ^ to explain to him : — " I have brought you as a present from my native district a problem which is fully worthy of your pro- found learning. A spring rises in the mountain-side ; it flows down a rocky course, and is caught in a little artificial banqueting-house. After the water has been retained there a time it falls into the Larian Lake. There is a wonderful phenomenon connected with it, for thrice very day it rises and falls with fixed regularity of volume. Close by it you may recline and take a meal, and drink from the spring itself, for the water is very cool, and meanwhile it ebbs and flows at regular and stable intervals. If you place a ring or anything else on a dry spot by the edge the water gradually rises to it, and at last covers it, and then just as gradually recedes and leaves it bare, while if you watch it for any length of time you may see both processes twice or thrice repeated. Is there any unseen air which first distends and then tightens the orifice and mouth of the spring, resisting its onset and yielding at its withdrawal ? We observe something of this sort in jars and other similar vessels which have not a direct and free opening, for these, when held either perpendicularly or aslant, pour out their contents with a sort of gulp, as though there were some obstruction to a free passage. Or is this spring like the ocean, and is its column enlarged and lessened alternately by the same laws that govern the ebb and flow of the tide ? Or, again, just as rivers on their way to the sea are driven back on themselves by contrary rivers and the opposing tide, is there anything that can drive back the outflow of this spring ? Or is there some latent reservoir which diminishes and retards the flow while it is gradually collecting the water that has been drained off, and increases and quickens the flow when the process of collection is complete ? Or * Ep. iv. 30. LAGO DI COMO 49 is there some curiously hidden and unseen balance which when emptied raises and thrusts forth the spring, and when filled checks and stifles its flow ? Please investi- gate the causes which bring about this wonderful result, for you have the ability to do so ; it is more than enough for me if I have described the phenomenon with accuracy. Farewell." From Argegno, indeed, to Como it is villa and garden and grove all the way. Who is there that knows Como that has not floated at evening under those balconies heavy with roses, those terraces stately with cypresses and myrtles, those hanging gardens of azaleas and lilies and geraniums, where the magnolias shine in the twilight and the night is heavy with sweetness ? Perhaps the best known of these palaces beside the lake are the Villa Taverna at Torno and the Villa d' Este, now an hotel, where the unfortunate Queen of George iv. passed so much of her time, at Cenobbio. But if these are the most famous, they are not exceptional, in their beauty, and even the cypresses of the Villa d' Este can be easily matched at the Villa del Pizzo near Torriggia. No one, I suppose, comes to Como, that shining city under the Brunate at the lake's head, for history. There is plenty of it if one does ; but apart from the fact that it is the last place in which to find any leisure, for the country around, the olive-clad hills, the entrancing byways and the lake itself, entice one to be ever up and about, what time one can save from these is given, and I think without any hesitation, to the Duomo, which Street so unaccountably failed to appreciate, but which has plenty of lovers nevertheless. The Duomo and the Broletto, an earlier work of black and white marble, beside it, make up a group of buildings as picturesquely lovely as any in Lombardy, and few there be who do not straightway fall in love with them. As for the church, it is, I suppose, one of the finest examples of married Gothic and Renaissance 4 50 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY — a Gothic perfectly developed yet without fantastic excess, a Renaissance sober and sweet and without stiffness — an5^where to be found in Italy. The Gothic church, begun in 1396, remains in the nave of the present building, where the pillars are purer in form than those of Milan and the fa9ade is as charming as can be. The rest of the church is a work of the fifteenth century ; the beautiful south portal, dating from 145 1, together with the three windows there and the cornice being the actual work, it is said, of Bramante. Bramante, however, is not the chief architect we think of here, for the design of the Renaissance church is due to Tommaso Rodari, a local master who together with his brothers, Bernardino and Jacopo, designed and built and decorated the whole church. The Rodari to whom we thus owe so much were born at Maroggia, a little village under Monte Generoso not far from Campione, and whether indeed it be true that the Magistri Comacini had greater skill than others in the arts, and this because of the lingering Latin culture and tradition hereabout, due to the noble defence of the Isola Comacina, or whether their talents were more individual, their immense success here in Como cannot be doubted. They have produced one of the loveliest buildings anywhere to be seen. It is said that when, as was the custom, Tommaso Rodari submitted his design of the church for public criticism, Cristof oro Solari, the famous Lombard sculptor, would have none of it, but bade him try again. This he is said to have done with the success we see. The beautiful apse, which dates from 15 19, the lovely north doorway, the Porta della Rana, dating from 1505-9, are Tommaso's work, while the noble sculpture that everywhere abounds is due to him and his brethren. It is difficult to speak without a rare enthusiasm of the master works of the Porta della Rana, both inside and out, or of the splendid canopies supported by naked LAGO DI COMO 51 fauns (under which we find two earlier statues of the Plinys) of the western fa9ade. But the whole church within and without is peopled with the statues and reliefs of these brothers : the exquisite S. Sebastian of the Lady Chapel comes from the same hands as that series of Atlantes in the upper cornice without, which form gargoyles, that have thrown off all grotesqueness, and with it all of their meaning, though not their use. The Duomo thus so lovely was not only on the part of these brother builders a work of love, for the people of Como and its diocese subscribed the money to pay for it ; and we hear of some princely gifts from bishops and magistrates and guilds, the Marchese Giacomo Gallic alone bequeathing 290,000 lire, and one of the Benzi 10,000 ducats for this purpose. Within the Cathedral is as lovely as without, in spite of its gaudy vaulting ; and the few unimportant pictures in the chapels, works by Bernardo Luini and Gaudenzio Ferrari, remain to it in the places for which they were painted. The Duomo, indeed, may well absorb all the time one can spare from the byways ; but the traveller should not by any means miss, if he can help it, the Romanesque church of S. Fedele with its beautiful five-sided apse not far from the Cathedral, and the old basilica of S. Abbondio, a building chiefly of the eleventh century, but originally founded by the Lombards in the eighth. CHAPTER III TO MILAN VARESE, CASTIGLIONE d' OLONA, SARONNO THE most direct road from Como to Milan is by way of Fino and Cesano, a distance of some twenty-five miles; but that route has little interest for us, and save by the hurried traveller, who will be well advised to take the train, it should be discarded. For the wanderer afoot, or better, as I think, in Lombardy, though not in Tuscany, in automobile, that is a good way which leads him first eastward just south of the frontier through Olgiate to Varese and then due south through Saronno to Milan. By this way, which is three good days afoot, one sees not only Varese and its lake, Saronno and its pictures, but Castiglione d' Olona also, where one of the greatest of Tuscan masters has left us in the church and baptistery there some wonderful evidence of his genius. And there is more than this. Few days' journey anywhere in Lombardy will prove half so delightful as that over the hills from Como to Varese, for it holds every sort of surprise and every sort of beauty, of hill and valley and mountain, of vineyard and olive garden, of shadowy stream and country town and village. It is little known to strangers. No great spectacle lies upon that way where all is so fair, and it is not till one comes to Varese itself that one is reminded of the tourist and all that he brings with him. Even in Varese, if one is lucky one may forget such things as these. For Varese, to tell the truth, is not itself very charming. 52 VARESE 53 A very little place, its arcaded streets are in fact its only attraction, unless, indeed, the ancient Baptistery, in the small Piazza by S. Vittore, may be said to be such. What makes Varese so popular a town are its delicious environs, that Italian countryside which might stand for a picture or a symbol of all that is best in Europe, and of which we can never have enough. Of the Lago di Varese, too, small as it is, it is not easy to tire ; for of all these Lombard waters, it has, I think, the wildest and most abundant vegetation ; of vines and maize and wood and grove. It is a place of flowers, and possesses certainly the most splendid view — all the Alpine range from Monte Rosa, including Monte Cervano, to Monte Viso, that pyramid — that any lake in Italy has to offer us. If Varese be dull then, the countryside of which it is the key is delicious. Besides the lake, which itself lies some little distance from the town, no one who comes to Varese should fail to visit the Sacro Monte with its shady chestnut trees, its exquisite chapels and its picturesque church and shrine at the summit — La Madonna del Monte. The fifteen chapels which line the steep paved way to the church are as it were a visible rosary. The fifteen mysteries, joyful, sorrowful and glorious, of the life of Our Lady being there expressed in terra-cotta, a chapel to a mystery. The church, as are the chapels, is a work of the seventeenth century ; but it would seem that some shrine has always existed here — for ** Her foundations are upon the holy hills," — since in the vestibule of the church there remains a relief of the Madonna dating from the thirteenth century ; while an old convent, certainly of the fifteenth century, stands close by. What, however, will be more generally appreciated than these works of piety is the view to be had from the hill -top : it embraces the Lake of Varese, the smaller lakes of Comabbio, Biandronno and Monate, and parts of Lakes Maggiore and Como, while to 54 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY the south and east lies the fruitful Lombard plain, golden and happy in the sun of afternoon. There are many other happy places about Varese, but the traveller, already anxious for Milan, will scarcely linger here, more especially as the best of all lies on his way. That best is the road to Castiglione d' Olona, and Castiglione itself. You go, if you are wise, through Bizzozero, climbing the hills, with wonderful views of the Alps and the lakes all the way, and then descend through delicious woods by Lozza to the little town of Castiglione, partly in the valley of the Olona, a pleasant stream, and partly on the steep hill above it. The Castello, which belonged to the noble family of Castiglione, on the hill above the little town, or rather village, had by the beginning of the fifteenth century become ruined, and there Cardinal Branda da Castiglione built the church we see dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary, to S. Lorenzo and to S. Stefano, together with a little Baptistery separate from the church and to the north of it. Here by the utmost good fortune one of the greatest Tuscan painters of that day was employed to adorn these buildings in fresco. Branda da Castiglione was Cardinal of S. Clemente, and it was there, doubtless, he had seen the work of Masolino and liked it. So he bade him paint his own Church of the Rosary with some of the joyful and glorious mysteries which that crown of prayers celebrates, and to-day we find in the choir the result of this commission. There we see the Marriage of the Blessed Virgin, the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi, the Assumption and the Coronation of Our Lady in six compartments with Our Lord in benediction in the midst ; while on the north wall we find the story of S. Lorenzo ; on the south, the story of S. Stephen ; but these are almost perished. In the Baptistery close by we find many scenes, far better preserved than those in the church, of the hfe of S. John Baptist, . • J » J J SALOME MA SOLI NO Frf.ito in the Haptixtery. Casli^lione ft'Oloiiii CASTIGLIONE D' OLONA 55 master-works of the great Tuscan whom Cardinal Branda da Castiglione found at work in S. Clemen te in Rome. The first modern critics to write of these paintings were the almost infallible Crowe and Caval- caselle.^ Vasari does not mention them, and, as it seems, they were quite unknown when in the end of the eighteenth century, the church being very dark, they were covered with whitewash and were only uncovered in 1843. It has been reserved for a critic of our own time to make a further discovery. For, as it happened, Mr. Berenson came to Castiglione not long ago and found in the Palazzo Castiglione here a great frieze running round the great hall consisting of four frescoes from the master's hand. Three of these had been white- washed, but in that which had escaped he found one of the finest and one of the most surprising things in all Tuscan art of the quattrocento : " nothing less than a vast landscape, a sort of panorama of the Alps, with a broad torrent rushing down to the plain." Was it Cardinal Branda, who so loved those great hills he could see from his house, or Masolino himself, who, Tuscan as he was, looking upon them for the first time, gave himself suddenly to them and recorded here for ever his sudden and overwhelming joy ? We shall never know : only, as Mr. Berenson says, " let us cease talking about the late date at which in Italy landscape began to be treated on its own account." It is hard to tear oneself away from so charming and quiet a place as Castiglione d' Olona, nor are the Masolinos there, even in the matter of works of art, the only things to be seen and to be loved. In the Church of the Rosary is the tomb of Cardinal Branda by Leonardo Griff o, made in 1443. Then that steep, stQuy and delicious way in the shadow of the walls of gardens which leads down from the CoUegiata, where ^ See Crowe and Cavalcaselle, History of Painting in Italy (Ed. Hutton, 1909), vol. ii. p. 218. Originally published i860. 56 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY the old castello stood, into the village brings us to the Chiesa di Villa, a charming Renaissance building, having outside two huge statues in stone of S. Christopher and S. Antony the Hermit. Within is another Castiglione tomb, that of Guido, who died in 1485. But the true delight of Castiglione is the country, those wooded hills and valleys and streams that abound there, the byways that are as lovely as any in Lombardy, and the fragrant simplicity and honesty that one meets everywhere thereabout. Yet the road calls and we must follow it, at first to Venegono and then, either afoot or by train, to Saronno and to Milan. Saronno, which lies in the plain about half-way between Castiglione and Milan, is known to all Italy for its cheese, but to us wayfarers for its Santuario della Madonna di Saronno, at the end of an avenue of planes, where Luini and Gaudenzio Ferrari painted their best and most charming works. The church itself is an early Renaissance building by Pietro dell' Orto, and has a charming bell tower by Paolo Porta ; its facade, however, is baroque of the seventeenth century. It is for Luini and Gaudenzio Ferrari, however, that we are come. Let us make no mistake about it, we shall not dis- cover in the pictures or series of pictures of the Lom- bard painters any of that delight we are wont to feel in the work of the Tuscans or of the Venetian masters. Lombardy expressed herself in architecture rather than in painting, and the pupils of Leonardo the Florentine are the very last to whom we should go to find what painting really amounted to in Lombardy. Gaudenzio Ferrari, it is true, suffered perhaps less than the rest from Leonardo's overwhelming genius, but though he manages to keep something of the energy of the moun- taineer, of his coarse strength and original virtue, he succumbs at last to that disease of prettiness from which all that company suffered so grievously. Nor is Luini himself exempt : rather is he the chief among SARONNO 57 the sick. His intellect seems to have lost itself under the weight of Leonardo's ideas which he could not understand, and nothing but his gentleness and love of fair women have saved him from an affected mediocrity. How pretty and how charming they are with their sweet, wan smiles, those girls he shows us as Salome or S. Catherine or the Blessed Virgin herself. These people are the ghosts of a ghost seen between sleeping and waking, but the life and the life -giver died with Leonardo. Saronno is the first town on our road that is truly of the plain. The thirty miles between it and Milan lead us farther and farther from the hills, till all is lost in the immensity of that waveless plain which is Lombardy. As the traveller pursues his way — it may be towards evening, towards sunset, and on into the twiHght — into this emptiness, nothing will impress him so much as the infinity of this vastness all about him, without features of any kind, without the silence of the mountains or their exaltation, but with something of their mastery and their opposition. Nor can any other experience he may have teach him so well the character of the plain as this thirty-mile walk from Saronno to the capital. It is true that from Monte Generoso the greater part of this tremendous plain is spread out before his eyes, but from that high place he but knows it with his mind : on the road he will suffer it, and his weariness, unrelieved by surprise, or the exaltation of the hills, will teach him, as nothing else can, the brutal strength of this unexpected bastion which guards Italy between the mountains and the mountains. In the dusk the beafuty of the way, of the fields, of the vine- yards is lost, and nothing but the sense of space, of emptiness and an incredible distance remains to him. It is so I would have him come to the iron city of Milan. CHAPTER IV THE STORY OF MILAN OF the origin of Milan, ever so tremendous and so strong, whose sound is the sound of iron upon iron, we are as ignorant as we are of the origin of her name. Livy tells us that the city was founded by the Insubres, a village, perhaps, before the Roman conquest, and others speak of two barbarian chiefs, Medo and Olano, who gave her her name Mediolanum; but others, again, derive this from the sudden impression of spring that comes into the heart when having crossed the Alps, out of the northern winter, we come into Mayland, the country of May. The question is undecided and will remain so, for we know as little of the early history of Milan as we do of her foundation or the derivation of her name. Milan — Mediolanum — enters history in 221 B.C., when the Romans conquered the Insubres, the Cisalpine Gauls of this great district, by the hands, as we have seen, of Cornelius Scipio and Marcus Marcellus ; but her real importance only begins at the end of the third century, when in the long administrative decadence of the Empire, on the partition of it by Diocletian in 292 a.d. , Milan became the capital of the vicariate of Italy. There Maximinius Hercules, who surrounded the city with a wall, had his residence and there his successor held a splendid court. It was from Milan, too, that Constantine dated his famous edict which permitted to all the exer- cise of Christianity in 313 a.d., and there S. Ambrose THE STORY OF MILAN 59 had his archiepiscopal throne. S. Ambrose (340-397) indeed made of Milan, as it were, the rival of Rome itself, when he faced Theodosius and appeared suddenly at the door of S. Ambrogio as the avenger of Justice, and still more when by the organisation of his diocese he gave her a real independence, a shadow of which may be said to remain even to-day. S. Ambrose, in fact, appears as the first great master of the city, and under him Milan, which since the coming of Valentinian in 364 a.d. had been the capital of the west, became for a moment the religious centre of Italy. This era of splendour, greatness and prosperity was suddenly interrupted by that appalling series of catas- trophes which were repeated during near three hundred years, which would indubitably have destroyed any other civilisation, but which the Empire survived because it was Christian. We have gone as fully as may be into the causes and the results of these disasters in a previous chapter : here we shall only, and very briefly, take note of them as they directly affected Milan. From this point of view they may be briefly summarised as follows : the raid of Alaric into Italy in 401 which caused Honorius to flee from Milan to Ravenna, and there to establish himself ; the passage of Attila in 452 ; the passage of Belisarius, followed by the sack and destruction of the city in 539 by the Goth Uraias. That appalling horror, in which everything that might have seemed permanent in the city was destroyed, confirmed her fate, already prophesied in the flight of Honorius. Henceforth her importance passed to the following cities, her neighbours in turn : Ravenna, Pa via, Monza and Verona. So utterly was Milan deserted as a capital that she was not even visited by Charlemagne when he brought that great deliverance, and it is not till the Church was able through his act, which she had prompted, to begin the slow re-establishment of Latin power, and we see the 6o THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY rise of the Bishops to civil domination which, rightly understood, is the birth of the commune, that Milan was rebuilt in 808 by Bishop Anspert, who became the protector of the city, the rebuilder of her walls and the recons true tor of her monuments. Nothing surprises us more, yet nothing should surprise us so little, as the rapidity of that resurrection, which had, in fact, been prepared during some five hundred years and by the Papacy. Nor should its success and its endurance cause us astonishment ; for we know that we have in us the seeds of an eternal life, and that Christendom alone in the world can change and yet not pass away. As for Milan, we see her in 945 as the seat of the Diet which proclaimed Lothair King of lidly, and only fifty- five years later, in the year 1000, her Bishop is able to profit by the troubles which kept the Emperor in Germany to affirm, rather than to declare merely, the independence of his diocese, and this in the face of the Papal as well as of the Imperial claims, and thus to give back to Milan her greatness and her past. With this act we enter upon the new life of Milan. If the first act of the Papacy, of the Catholic Church, as the soul, the saviour and the conservator of Europe, after the administrative destruction of the old Empire, was to secure the feudal idea, and the lordship of the Archbishop, her second was the logical develop- ment of this, the constitution of the commune. It is true that this was not achieved all at once, that it was a gradual and even a contested development, but it was achieved, and by the age-long conservation and contrivance of the soul of Europe, the Catholic Church. For the genius of the Church had been " feudal " even from the beginning, and when we see Charlemagne suddenly gather up and apply this system to Europe, it is not in fact an original conception of his own, or even of his time, but rather the application of an idea THE STORY OF MILAN 6i fundamental in ecclesiastic government which he found there already tried and ready to his hand. Now feudalism is the framework and the fundamental structure of Europe from his day at least to the Re- formation : it stands there and bears up the government and the civilisation of Europe as the arches and buttresses bear up a Gothic cathedral, when all that is merely useful or decorative is swept away : it stands the integral skeleton of the whole, the necessary thing, as these pillars and arches and buttresses would stand, a vast and splendid skeleton, if the walls of a Gothic church, the windows and everything merely accessary were suddenly swept away. Feudalism — this is what in the way of government, of the structure of society, the Church was able to save and to contrive out of the administrative decadence and destruction of the old Empire. The first secular appearance of this is to be found in the establishment of the civil rule of the Bishops : by them the Church declares to the world the new system which was to endure for a thousand years. It is a profound mistake to think of the rise of the commune as the contradiction of this idea : it affirms it and develops it. The commune marks merely the entry of the people into the feudal system ; nothing more : and the ruin of that system in the fourteenth century means the ruin of Italy. I say all this was saved and continued by the Church : but not all at once, nor without many misapprehensions. In Milan in th^ year looo the Bishop had dreamed of an independent government. His successors suffered for his fault, and had not his strength or force to recom- mend them. They dissipated their authority in paltry quarrels about interior discipline in Church government, and had not the great Hildebrand sat in Peter's throne they might have thrown all northern Italy back into the old chaos : but the Pope destroyed them and with them their anarchy. The quarrel began in the matter 6a THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY of the marriage of the clergy, which the Ambrosian Rule permitted with restrictions. This Hildebrand was determined to destroy. The quarrel became a civil war, tumultuous scenes daily occurred in the churches and one of them had terminated in the assassination of Archbishop Guido by the Patarini — the heretics — in 1066. When Hildebrand became Pope in 1073 he took the matter in hand and ended it at a blow, for- bidding for the future the marriage of priests, but tolerating those already married. What chiefly resulted from the years of anarchy and this submission, however, was valuable, for Milan lost her great position as the centre of religion in northern Italy : it became evident that the Church would not tolerate the power of the Bishops to grow so strong and so independent as to threaten the common structure of Europe, which she had built, and this attitude of hers prepared the way for the new development, the rise of the communes. The continual and healthy growth of the civil power was more and more assured by the security which was come again to Milan, and with it material well- being, and the need not only of a definitive but of a popular organisation. For the population, which increased daily, numbered already in the eleventh century some 300,000 souls, and certainly in the Patarini tumults had become self-conscious. The Emperor was busy in Germany and both nobles and people were ready to receive a civil and lay constitution, by which they should themselves guarantee their rights and their security. The Milanese Republic which now came to be established was governed by consules named by three orders of electors : the capitani, which were the great nobles; the valvassori, which were the lesser nobility; and the cittadini, which were the better class of the people. Thus we see a new lay government established upon the model of the ancient ecclesiastical system, that THE STORY OF MILAN 63 society which had been the only fixed and immutable thing in all the hurricane of change which had swept over western Europe. Like all new societies the young republic was strenu- ously pugnacious. One of its earliest acts was to demand and to receive recognition from the archbishops, and in this it would receive the toleration if not the encourage- ment of both Pope and Emperor. But it soon became so strong that it not only attempted and achieved conquest, but was ready to flout the suzerainty and the rights of the Emperor. Its dream was independence, but for independence there was no opportunity in the system that reached its full expression in the thirteenth century. We see the young republic, strong in its youth and but half understanding the necessities of its existence, presently exercising authority outside the walls of the city. We see the Milanese pillage Lodi, seize Como, at war with Cremona and triumphant over the Pavesani at Marcignago. What we really witness is the attempt of Milan to form a state within a state, to establish her independence as the head of a state outside the feudal system, outside the structure, that is, of Europe. This neither Pope nor Emperor could, for the sake of Europe, tolerate. It is true the conquered or threatened cities about Milan protested, and one of them, Lodi, certainly appealed to the Emperor, but it was not that appeal alone, or even chiefly, which caused him to act. It was necessity. A young and ardent man, eager for every distinction, Barbarossa was by no means reluctant to intervene. He was the Emperor, the head of the civil state of Europe, and if that state were not to be a mere idea, he must be obeyed. The heresy of Milan was obvious when, in the presence of his Legate, the consules tore up his letter. Barbarossa crossed the Alps with an army, and what is known as the Lombard war began. 64 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY This war lasted for twenty years. Roughly, it may be said that those cities which were strong enough to hope to establish their independence sided with Milan, those which were menaced by her and without hope of such independence were against her and with the Emperor ; and, again, those cities which were at the mercy of the latter cities sided with Milan, because they hoped she would remember and deliver them from their nearer and more powerful neighbours. ^ All wars are fought from the merest self-interest. The Lombard war, far from being an exception, is one of the best examples of this. In the first campaign, that of 1153, the advantage was with Milan. Barbarossa never dared to attack her, but succeeded in burning Tortona her ally. Now Tor- tona was her ally because Pavia, which stood up between her and Milan, was her enemy. Five years later the Emperor came again with 115,000 men and laid siege to Milan, which had made the Naviglio, the moat which still encircles the older city, for a defence, but after a month took himself off, only insisting that he should have the right to confirm the consules chosen by the city. At the same time, he wished to impose upon all the Italian cities the presence of an ofiicer to represent his authority. This, though a new, was a logical demand. Milan refused it, and the third cam- paign began. It lasted two years. In 1 1 61 Barbarossa destroyed and took up his winter 1 Pavia and Milan were the great and leading rivals, after them Cremona appears as the third strong, independent centre. Pavia attacked Tortona ; Milan, Lodi and Novara. Each smaller city sought succour of the great city which it had least reason to fear. Cremona attacked Crema, therefore Crema stood with Milan, as did Tortona. Pavia, Cremona and Lodi with Novara are allied against Milan. Then Brescia, fearing Cremona, joins Milan ; but Asti, hating and fearing Tortona, joins Pavia. It is to be noted, that of the more distant cities Parma and Modena are usually for Milan ; Piacenza and Reggio for Pavia. THE STORY OF MILAN 65 quarters in Pavia. For Pavia, ever faithful to the Imperial and the aristocratic cause, stood for it in Northern Italy even as Milan now, and probably always, even in the Dark Age, stood for the Latin and the popular. There, in Pavia, Barbarossa prepared himself. In 1162 he went round about Milan cutting off her supplies, to such good purpose that by March i deputies were sent him from the city to announce its surrender. On the i6th of the same month he ordered the Milanese to abandon the city. This was done within ten days, and on the 26th he marched at the head of his army into the deserted city, and there published an edict ordering the utter destruction of Milan, the execution of which he confided to the soldiers of her neighbours and rivals. ^ It is easy to imagine with what joy the men of Pavia, Cremona and Lodi set about this task. Everything but the churches was destroyed, and Milan found herself as desolate as she had been six centuries before when Uraias the Goth had done with her. Nevertheless she persisted, she did not die. On the contrary, the Milanese went through Italy seeking enemies for Barbarossa. They found the best in Pope Alexander iii., who now came forward to restore the fabric once more, and grouped under his banner all who feared the Imperial barbarian. For the excesses of Barbarossa had alarmed not only his enemies, but his friends and allies. Within three years of the destruction of Milan we see all Lombardy united against him, and within ten years we see the rebuilding of Milan by this new League. In 1167 the delegates of the Lombard cities met at the monastery of Pontida and formed the famous and glorious Lombard League under the Pope, 1 It was now that Barbarossa rifled the tomb of the Magi in S. Eustorgio and carried their bones to Cologne, where they are to this day. He also took the Iron Crown of Lombardy from Milan to Monza, where it remains. 5 66 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY by whose favour, according to Villani, the city of Milan was rebuilt by the following year, when it was already so strong that Frederick, coming again into Lombardy, did not dare to attack it. But this was not all. The League established a permanent and a federal fortress which was called Alessandria, after the Pope, a place naturally stronger than Pa via ; ^ and when in 1177 Barbarossa made his last descent into Italy the League was ready for him and waiting : it defeated him at Legnano, and Pope Alexander at Venice received the submission of the Emperor in the porch of S. Mark's Church. The Peace of Constance in 1183 finally closed the struggle. By this peace the Lombard cities gained the Imperial permission to establish a republican form of government, but the old Imperial rights, which had never been in dispute, were maintained. The treaty shows us the Church as the guardian both of these concessions and of the Imperial rights : for the Bishop in all cases of contested regalia was to name two arbitrators. The victory of the League, however, successful as it was, in removing the common and exterior enemy, left the field open for internal dispute. Indeed, from the very moment of the Peace of Constance the history of Milan changes in character. Revolution succeeds foreign war, and once more the question of organisation comes to the front now that that of liberty had been decided. What we see during the next hundred years is the ruin of the republic. This was caused, super- ficially at any rate, by the rivalry of the nobles and the people. Her government, so numerous and so unwieldy, representing little but class and even racial distinctions, 1 The city of Alessandria was built to watch and to crush Pavia, which was always against Milan and the Latins. The Pope, on his side, gave it a bishop, deposing the Bishop of Pavia and taking away from him the dignity of the Pallium and the^Cross. Cf. Villani, lib. v. cap. 2. THE STORY OF MILAN 67 invited discord, and by no possibility could have produced harmony. It is not surprising, then, that the middle classes, now growing so wealthy, used their votes to call a man into power who was indifferent to all parties and able to guarantee peace. This man was a foreigner, Uberto Visconti of Piacenza, and he was elected podesta for a year, in 1186, and ruled, indeed, as a dictator. Both he and his successors appear to have governed with success, but their presence as servants of the State was only an expedient, they pointed the way inevitably to a permanent lordship, not of an individual but of a family. This result, certain from the first, came about when Frederick 11. intervened in 1226 and proposed to convoke a Diet at Cremona. This threat divided the Lombards into two camps, Guelph and Ghibelline, which did not lack captains. In Milan the people rallied round the family of Delia Torre ; the nobles called Ezzelino da Romano, Frederick's vicar in Northern Italy, to their aid. Him the Guelphs defeated at Ponte di Cassano in 1259 ^^ ■3 « MILAN : S. AMBROGIO 89 work of the tenth century, the other figures of the twelfth. Beyond the sanctuary and the lovely baldacchino in the dim light of the tribune the great mosaic shines. Under it, in the choir, we have the only relic, save his body, of S. Ambrose in the church, his archiepiscopal throne. On that very throne the great archbishop sat surrounded by his eighteen suffragans. Above shines the mosaic in its dim gold : Christ enthroned in the midst between the two archangels Michael and Gabriel, and on either side His throne S. Gervasius and S. Protasius, and beneath it half- figures of S. Marcellina, S. Satiro, the sister and brother of S. Ambrose, and S. Candida. On either side appear S. Ambrogio of Milan and the Cathedral of Tours ; in the one S. Ambrose is saying Mass, in the other he appears as he did in a vision at the funeral of S. Martin. This part of the church would seem certainly to be of the ninth century, and it is interesting, and perhaps instructive, to note the mixed Greek and Latin of the inscriptions in the mosaic. The lovely marble screen of the choir might seem, too, very early work, while the exquisite baldacchino upheld by four Roman pillars of red porphyry, which, together with others here, are said to have come from the old Temple of Jupiter that stood once where Corso di Magenta now goes, is probably of the twelfth century. This baldacchino, perhaps the loveliest thing in the church, is exquisitely carved in the Byzantine manner, and adorned with bas-reliefs of Our Lord enthroned, who gives an open book to S. Paul and the keys to S. Peter, of S. Ambrogio, of the Blessed Virgin, of S. Gervasio and S. Protasio, with figures of other saints. I said that the baldacchino was perhaps the loveliest thing in the church. I had forgotten — had T forgotten ? — the palliotto of gold and of silver which encloses the altar and is itself enclosed in a case or safe of steel, 90 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY locked by twelve keys, two for each door, and so precious that it costs no less than five lire even to see it. It was made more than a thousand years ago by the gold- smith Vuolvinio, and given to the church by the Archbishop Angilbertus ii. The front of this marvellous casket is of solid gold ; it covers the whole front of the altar, and is held by a frame or moulding of pure silver : it is covered with enamels and set with precious jewels uncut. In the midst in a mandorla is Our Lord, and above, below and on either side, as in a cross, are set the beasts of the Four Evangelists ; on either side of the cross thus formed are four compartments in each of which are three apostles. Thus the great central panel is formed. On either side of it is another panel almost equal to it in size, in which are set scenes, twelve in all, of the life of Our Lord, beginning with the An- nunciation and ending with the Ascension. At the back the palliotto is of pure silver, as it is at the sides, and the scenes there set out are for the most part con- cerned with the life of S. Ambrose. Here, too, are some small enamels of the heads of eight saints, perhaps earlier than the palliotto itself, which is here signed WOLVINV. MAGiST. PHABER. Nothing, I suppose, left to us in the world of the work of the goldsmith is half so precious as this astounding and lovely casket. Beneath the high altar, so marvellously cased and adorned, lie in a modern shrine of silver in the crypt the bones of the great archbishop and saint between those of S. Gervasius and S. Protasius. It is interesting as commenting upon these relics to read a letter written by a friend to Cardinal Newman in September 1872 : ** I was accidentally allowed to be present," writes this correspondent, ** at a private exposition of the relics of S. Ambrose and the SS. Gervasius and Protasius. I have seen complete every bone in S. Ambrose* body. There were present a great many clergy, three medici, and Father Secchi, who was MILAN : S. LORENZO 91 there, on account of his great knowledge of the Catacombs, to testify to the age, etc., of the remains. ... On a large table surrounded by ecclesiastics and medical men were three skeletons. The two were of immense size and very much alike, and bore the marks of a violent death ; their age was determined to be about twenty-six years. When I entered the room Father Secchi was examining the marks of martyrdom on them. Their throats had been cut with great violence, and the neck vertebrae were injured on the inside. The pomum Adami had been broken, or was not there ; I forget which. This bone was quite perfect in S. Ambrose ; his body was wholly uninjured ; the lower jaw (which was broken in one of the two martyrs) was wholly uninjured in him, beautifully formed, and every tooth, but one molar in the lower jaw,^ quite perfect and white and regular. His face had been long, thin, oval, with a high arched forehead. His bones were nearly white ; those of the other two were very dark. His fingers long and very delicate ; his bones were a marked contrast to those of the two martyrs.** S. LORENZO AND S. EUSTORGIO The oldest church in Milan, though without the famous memories of S. Ambrogio, the church of S. Lorenzo, which stands close to those astonishing Roman columns in the Corso di Porta Ticinese, is certainly one of the most beautiful monuments in Italy, a building of the sixth century, reconstructed on the ancient model ^ This one tooth was extracted as a relic by Archbishop Angil- bert of Milan in 826. He wore it in his episcopal ring. One day he lost it ; but found it, as an old woman prophesied, in the mouth of the dead archbishop. He then buried it, and erected the magnificent golden palliotto we see to-day, at a cost of 38,000 gold pieces. 92 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY in the eleventh and again at the end of the sixteenth century. It is said originally to have stood within those Thermae to which it has been thought these Roman columns bear witness, but a later and perhaps a better opinion would show us in S. Lorenzo one of the earliest Christian buildings in Milan, coeval as we see it with S. Vitale of Ravenna. However that may be, the church was restored in the eleventh century, and this so thoroughly that the Corinthian capitals of the old pillars were used as bases ; and though the re- storation of the sixteenth century was careful and reverent, it has left its indelible mark upon the building. Of its three annexes, S. Aquilino on the right is un- doubtedly a part of the original building ; S. Sisto on the left is a later addition, built probably as a baptistery ; S. Ippolito, behind S. Lorenzo, in part seems to have belonged to the primitive building. But when all is said, S. Lorenzo remains in many ways the loveliest and certainly the most characteristic building of still Roman Milan. And the power of Rome and Roman things, in spite of every disaster, remained instinct and living here, in its tremendous appeal to the imagination and to the mind of man. We find nearly all the greater architects of the Renaissance to have studied and to have been influenced by this church. Sangallo inspires himself here, Leonardo da Vinci studies it, and it is, after all we find, this church of S. Lorenzo which engenders in the mind of the greatest builder of that period, Bramante, the divine plan, the most beautiful design of modern architecture, that for S. Peter's in Rome, which the Reformation ruined and brought to nothing. S. Lorenzo is octagonal in form and is covered by a dome ; the four main sides are closed by semi-cupolas borne by two stories of colonnades consisting each of four columns. Nothing at once more serene and more joyful can be imagined : the church is full of the sun, MILAN : S. LORENZO 93 and the eye is continually and irresistibly drawn upward to the height of the dome. Interesting, however, as S. Lorenzo is, in its architecture recalling the Pantheon and in its spirit the spirit of the Empire, its chief attraction for us lies perhaps in the Cappella di S. Aquilino, which stands to the right of the church and is quite the most ancient part of it. There in the apses we find mosaics of the sixth century where Christ sits enthroned surrounded by His twelve apostles ; and two richer and symbolically more inter- esting works in which we see the angel staying the hand of Abraham about to sacrifice his son, and the angel appearing to the shepherds to announce Christ's nativity with the Gloria in excelsis. Both these mosaics are of the sixth if not of the fifth century, and it is possible that here in S. Aquilino we are really stand- ing in one of the smaller halls of a Roman building, perhaps the Thermae to which the great columns in the Corso are thought to bear witness, a hall which as early as the fourth century was converted to the use of Christianity and adorned with Christian symbols, though not altogether, for the antique doorway shows us a Bacchante riding a goat. But this chapel of S. Aquilino contains something that for the merely human traveller, apart from the artist, puts S. Lorenzo at once on the same level senti- mentally as S. Ambrogio. For if in S. Ambrogio we seemed to find, in the memory and presence of S. Ambrose there, something of the glory and the nobility of those great Roman days of the fourth century, here in S. Lorenzo we may perhaps understand the Fall as we stand beside the great stone tomb of Ataulphus, king of the Goths, the successor of Alaric. For there in a Roman and a Christian sarcophagus lies the barbarian who had made the great raid with Alaric, had thundered at the gates of Rome, had partaken of his glory and had stood beside his monstrous and inviolate tomb, whose 94 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY secret was kept by the murder of a multitude. He saw that river of Southern Italy, the Busentino, turned aside by the walls of Consentia. He saw the royal and barbarian sepulchre hewn out of the river bed by the labour of a captive multitude, and adorned with the splendid spoils and trophies of Rome. He saw the river returned to its course, and ordered the inhuman massacre of those who had known how to build so marvellous a tomb. He has looked on the face of Alaric. As king of the Goths, the barbarian who lies so securely now within sound of the life of modern Milan had a career not less astonishing than that he had enjoyed before Alaric's death. After a courtship as barbarous, as astonishing and as romantic as any recorded in the history of the world, this savage married the daughter of the great Theodosius. And just as Alaric had been awed by the majesty even of the Rome he violated, so Ataulphus, with the astounding prize of the daughter of the Emperor, the sister of Honorius, in his hands, quailed and bowed his head. For we read that when the day of their nuptials was celebrated in Narbonne in Gaul, " the bride, attired and adorned like a Roman Empress, was placed on a throne of state ; the king of the Goths, who assumed on this occasion the Roman habit, contented himself with a less honour- able seat by her side." Ataulphus was in 415 assassin- ated in the palace of Barcelona, and Galla Placidia, whom he had so much loved and honoured, " con- founded among a crowd of vulgar captives," was compelled to march on foot before the horse of the barbarian who had murdered her husband. Her mar- vellous alabaster tomb, empty now, shines under the night-blue of the mosaics at Ravenna, but Ataulphus lies here in the chapel of S. Aquilino in Milan. In the Cappella di S. Ippolito too, here at S. Lorenzo, we have a building of the far-off time : but it contains the grave of a later lord than Ataulphus the Goth ; MILAN : S. EUSTORGIO 95 for here lies Giovanni Maria Visconti in a tomb by Marco Agrate (1559). From S. Lorenzo one passes again under those Roman columns on one's way outside the walls of the medieval city to the church of S. Eustorgio, where one still has in mind the later Empire. For it was here that Con- stantine presented to S. Eustorgius, Archbishop of Milan in the earlier years of the fourth century, what for eight hundred years remained the great treasure of this church, the bones of the Three Magi, which another barbarian, Frederick Barbarossa, when he sacked Milan and de- stroyed her in 1162, gave as spoil to Archbishop Rinaldus of Cologne ; and in the Cathedral of Cologne these relics remain to this day. The empty tomb, however, is still here at S. Eustorgio, and bears witness to a theft which carries us well out of the Dark into the Middle Age. But it is in fact of the Middle Age that the church has most to say to us. For S. Eustorgio, though a foundation of the fourth century, was rebuilt entirely in 1278 and restored in the seventeenth century, while its facade is quite modern. Indeed, apart from its early foundation and that tomb of the Magi, S. Eustorgio is to be valued only for its Medieval and Renaissance treasures : the Gothic shrine of S. Peter Martyr, a work of the fourteenth century by the Pisan Giovanni di Balduccio, and the exquisite Cappella Portinari, a work of the Renaissance by Michelozzo, which contains it. S. Peter Martyr, born at Verona in 1205 of parents infected with the astonishing heresy of the Cathari, a sort of Manichees, at a time when Lombardy and all the plain was full of heresies that had found their opportunity in the misery and discord of the times, was educated by a Catholic schoolmaster to whom his father sent him as he was desirous to have a learned man for a son. S. Peter spent his whole life in upholding common sense and in combating the monstrous and insane notions that in a truly pitiful ignorance the 96 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY heresiarchs had sown broadcast. One has only to consider the pathetic nonsense, wholly anarchical and obscene, of which Guglielmina and her friends were guilty to understand what a necessary and useful mission was that of S. Peter Martyr. He was able to convert an incredible number of such heretics in the Milanese, in Romagna, in Ancona, Tuscany and the Bolognese, as a Dominican friar. In 1252, being in Como, he had on April 6, Dominica in Albis that year, set out for Milan. Certain ruffians determined to take him on the road, and one, Carinus by name, gave him, as we may see in the great picture in the National Gallery, two cuts on the head with an axe and killed him as he went through the woods, and also stabbed his companion, Fra Domenico. The saint was then forty-six years old. His body was borne to Milan and laid in the Church of S. Eustorgio, then newly made and Dominican. His throne presently became the most sought after in all Lombardy, and, more wonderful still, Carinus his murderer, who had fled to Forli, was presently struck with remorse, renounced his heresy and put on the habit of a lay-brother among the Dominicans. S. Peter was canonised in the year after his death by Innocent iv., who appointed April 29 as his feast day. The tomb which Balduccio of Pisa built at the behest of the Archbishop Giovanni Visconti, protector of the Dominicans, for the body of the saint — his head is kept apart in a golden casket — is among the finest shrines in Italy. The same artist made the pulpit of S. Casciano near Florence, but it gives no idea of his genius. Only here in S. Eustorgio does he seem really to have expressed himself, in a work not only imposing and of a fine type and great charm, but of marvellous execution, beside which everything else of the time in Milan becomes insignificant.^ It is ^ The exquisite triptych now in the Chapel of the Magi is said to be from the hand of Balduccio. It is worthy of him. MILAN : S. EUSTORGIO 97 probable that the beautiful chapel was built by Michel- ozzo for Pigallo dei Portinari, the treasurer of Ludovico il Moro, to contain this masterpiece, which originally stood in the body of the church. On the walls of the chapel Vincenzo Foppa has beautifully painted the story of the saint's life. The tomb of S. Peter Martyr, though by far the loveliest monument in the church, is not quite alone there. In the fourth chapel on the right we find the beautiful Gothic tomb of Stefano Visconti, a fourteenth- century work, perhaps by Bonino da Campione, while in the sixth chapel are the monuments of Gaspare Visconti and his wife, works of the fifteenth century. Beside the high altar are some fourteenth-century reliefs of the Passion of Our Lord. With the monuments of S. Eustorgio we come out of the Milan of the Empire and the Dark Ages into the Milan of the Middle Age and the Renaissance, but before finally leaving the city of those earlier times, we shall note a few churches which still retain some memory of them. There is the Church of S. Vincenzo in Prato, for instance, first built by Abbot Gisalberto in 833. It seems to have been rebuilt, however, in the eleventh and restored first in the fourteenth century and again in our time. It possesses still, nevertheless, its old forms, its lofty crypt, and a few pillars and capitals from the original church, and, from without, its apse is especially lovely. About the same time or a little later the Church of S. Satiro was founded by Archbishop Ansperto. It has not, however, the interest of S. Vincenzo, for it was entirely rebuilt in the Renaissance. In the eleventh century was founded the Church of S. Babila, which still retains much of its Lombard aspect, as do S. Simpliciano and S. Sepolcro. Nor should that remnant of a later time be forgotten, the Palazzo della Ragione or del Podesta, a building 7 98 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY of the thirteenth century, erected in the Piazza dei Mercanti, the centre of the medieval city, by the Podesta Tresseno. It is the last building of free Milan. From it we pass to the astonishment of the Cathedral which stands, in all its foreign splendour, the creation of Giovanni Galeazzo Visconti. THE DUOMO The Duomo of Milan, the most famous and the greatest Gothic building in Italy, was projected and built by the Visconti, and first by Gian Galeazzo Visconti in 1386, and therefore at a time when the Gothic style had already begun to show signs of de- cadence and exhaustion. It is in no sense an Italian building. It was not Milan which built it, as Florence and Siena built their cathedrals, but the tyrant Visconti. It was not a Latin idea or a Latin enthusiasm which conjured this vast and astonishing thing out of the mountains and the soil of Italy : the Duomo of Milan is the result of a particular, probably foreign, and certainly belated fancy for Northern work. It was conceived by Gian Galeazzo Visconti, who had been a great traveller. All-powerful in Lombardy, the ambition of this strong and unscrupulous tyrant was to place upon his head the crown of Italy and to dominate the whole peninsula. With this hope in his heart, he undertook the building of the greatest of all Italian churches, and he fashioned it after the manner of those he had seen in the monarchies of the North. As we see it to-day, the Cathedral of Milan is the result of a collaboration between German, probably south German, architects and Italian engineers, the chief of the latter being Simone da Orsenigo ; and, as we shall see, what is chiefly to be admired and loved ». • '.» • THE DUOMO, MILAN MILAN : THE DUOMO 99 in the building is due to what these Latins were able to make of German work. It is amusing, in reading any history of the building of this enormous church, to watch the ebb and flow of the German influence. During many years, we see German masters one after another called to Milan. Each condemns the work of his predecessors, each in a few months is himself dismissed. So hard it is to kick against the pricks! For if a cathedral is to live, it must be an expression of national consciousness, not of individual desire. That the Cathedral of Milan is a living thing we owe to the Italian engineers who followed the German architects. When the last German was gone, these men took their plan, and competitions were opened for the erection of the building ; and during the construction we see each victor in these competitions in turn take charge and become engineer-in-chief. The steps in this achievement would seem to have been somewhat as follows. On May i, 1392, the plan we see was accepted and that of Arler di Gmiind rejected and that master dismissed. Ten years later the choir and transepts were built and the final form of the church fixed. As we see it, the Cathedral has five naves, and this, as I understand it, is necessary to the fundamental Latin desire that makes of the church, in spite of the Germans and the style, a really Latin and a living thing : the desire for space. Yet even Orsenigo does not seem to have understood or felt this, for with the true Italian disregard of inherent construction, he designed to build walls between the chapels : only the Latin consciousness of the people prevented him, and he was obliged to leave the nave the glorious and tremendous thing it is to-day. So much for the plan and the building itself. The Gothic detail and ornament are very different matters. 100 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY These are quite inanimate, without expression or charm, as dead everywhere as the work of our own day, and indeed they might be the very work of our hands. This hopeless mediocrity is thought by many to be saved from all the baseness of its effect by its very profusion, which, it is said, prevents our perceiving the sterility of ideas and the feebleness of execution every- where apparent on close examination, more especially perhaps in the termination of the choir, the facades of the transepts and the arbitrary forms of the cupola, " an offering of the Renaissance upon the tomb of Gothic architecture." I at least cannot see the validity of any such excuse. What saves the Cathedral from barbarism is not the profuseness of its weakness, but the nobility and splendour of its spaciousness and the beauty and spiritual effect of just that. I have spoken of the feebleness of the facades of the transepts : the main fagade was begun in the end of the Renaissance and was finished by order of Napoleon in the Gothic style. An old model which one finds in the Duomo behind the choir shows us that originally there were to have been towers : perhaps they might have done something to save it. As it is, the fagade is a complete failure. It gives one no idea at all of the lofty and noble church behind it, and indeed there is no one who has entered there for the first time but has been astonished and dumbfounded by what, without any sort of warning, he sees. The effect of the Cathedral without is in fact altogether false, vulgar and disappointing. In the sunlight it appears not like " a mountain of marble," but like an immense bridecake; yet sometimes in the moonlight it is extraordinary, like a fairy palace. It expresses no idea, and always in the daylight one remains miserable before it and has to console oneself with the ironical assurance that there is nothing like it in the world. Its true splendour within, its sense of space and height are MILAN : THE DUOMO loi utterly lacking without. In spite of its thousand unbroken shafts, its myriads of perpendicular lines, it is without any suggestion of height as seen from the Piazza, yet it might seem to miss it by a miracle. It fails in this necessary thing, as it fails to convince us of its sincerity of construction and simplicity of purpose. If, without, the Duomo of Milan, lost in its confusion of detail, its thousands of statues, its restless fretwork and innumerable pinnacles, fails to win from us any- thing but wonder, within, let us confess it at once, it overwhelms us altogether by its sheer grandeur and nobility. The true height of the roof is not only at once apparent and even exaggerated by the fact that it is upheld by giant pillars which rise unbroken to the vaults, without either triforium or clerestory ; but the vast size of the church is understood at once, its nobility not of height only but of breadth and spaciousness. Cruciform in shape, with five naves and aisled transepts, it is 486 feet long, the main nave is 157 feet high,^ the facade is 219 feet across and the transept 292 feet. The church covers an area of 14,000 square yards and will hold 40,000 people. Thus it is, I suppose, the largest Gothic church in existence. Its contents, however, save for a few tombs and the works collected in the sacristy, are of meagre interest, and in this respect it is probably the poorest cathedral in the world. One of the earliest of the few interesting tombs which it contains is that of Archbishop Aribert (1018-45) in the right aisle, above which hangs a gilded crucifix of the same period. This tomb, of course, came from ^ To compare Milan Cathedral with English churches : Win- chester, the longest church remaining to us, is 560 feet, but Old St. Paul's was 690 feet, and Glastonbury Abbey 600 ; West- minster Abbey, the loftiest Gothic church in England, is 103 feet from floor to vault in the nave, is with Henry VII. Chapel 513 feet long, has a transept of 200 feet and nave and aisles of 75 feet in breadth. 102 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY the old Church of S, Maria Maggiore, which stood here in the days of S. Ambrose. Close by is the monument of Ottone Visconti, who died in 1295, and of Giovanni Visconti, who died in 1354, both archbishops of this see, who lie in the same tomb, which was built for the first of them by the Knights of S. John. This tomb also comes from the old basilica. The first tomb in this aisle which was built for the present church is that of Marco Carelli, who died in 1394, perhaps by Niccolo d' Arezzo the Tuscan. Turning into the right transept, we come on the west wall upon the monument erected by Pius iv. to the brothers Giovanni Giacomo and Gabriele de' Medici of Milan — that is to say, II Medeghino^ and his brother, who were the brothers of the Pope. The tomb is the work of Leone Leoni in 1560. On the eastern wall is the Lady altar with reliefs by the Milanese master Agostino Busti, II Bambaia (1480-1548). Close by is a statue of S. Bartholomew, a horrible anatomical study of the saint flayed with his skin over his arm, by Marco Agrate (1562) . This work is typical of too much of that which we find in the Duomo of Milan. Lombard sculpture, and especially the work later than that of Agostino Busti, is wholly insignificant in character. Marco Agrate worked much here in Milan and at the Certosa of Pa via ; all his work is feeble, but not always as disagreeable as in this statue of S. Bartholomew. Something better awaits us in the door of the ambulatory, a work of the end of the fourteenth century, and in the sacristy, where many treasures from the old basilica, the enamelled Evangelium of Archbishop Aribert, certain diptychs of the sixth century, some Byzantine carvings, an ivory cup, a golden Pax, are to be found, beside the statue of Our Lord by Cristoforo Solari, a work made after that sojourn in Rome which ruined him as an artist. Nothing of much interest is to be found in the 1 See supra, pp. 42 et seq. MILAN : THE SFORZA 103 ambulatory, unless it be the great black marble tomb of Cardinal Marino Caracciolo by Agostino Busti. Making our way, then, into the north transept, we find in the midst the great bronze candelabrum of seven branches, French work, it is said, of the thirteenth century ; it is one of the loveliest things in the church. Under the dome, before the choir, in a crypt called the Cappella di S. Carlo, lies the great Archbishop S. Carlo Borromeo, to whom Milan owes so much. In the north aisle is an altarpiece in which we see S. Ambrose absolving the Emperor Theodosius : it is a work of the seventeenth century. Close by, in the third chapel, is a wood crucifix that belonged to S. Carlo Borromeo. Near by is a monument to three archbishops of Milan, all of the Arcimboldi family of the sixteenth century, and better far against the wall eight statues of Apostles which seem to be work of the thirteenth century. The most ancient thing in the church greets us £LS we leave it, I mean the font, which is an ancient basin of porphyry, probably as old as the fourth century. It is said to have come from Rome to Ravenna, and so hither. It seems to mske all one. THE SFORZA Now, when the Visconti were done with at last, when Filippo Maria was dead and the people of Milan began to lift up its head, a grave question had to be decided and that quickly, for on every side Milan found herself surrounded by enemies at once envious and unscrupulous. What government should Milan give herself ? Should she confide herself again to a t5n:ant or to a dynasty ? Or should she build once more within her walls the old Republic that men still called Ambrosian ? At first she leaned, it appeared, to this last solution, and the man who directed this democratic movement was 104 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY Antonio Trivulzio, with two of his friends. That high hope, as we know, failed before the treachery of Francesco Sforza and the envy of Venice and the Medici. Never- theless, it remained in the hearts of the Milanese as an everlasting thought, something to be won, some time and somewhere, and though it was never really attained it remains for us in the name of Trivulzio one of the noblest memories of the city. In that corner of the city which lies between the Corso di Porta Romana and the Ospedale Maggiore, a fine Renaissance building of 1457, one of the earliest and best works of the Sforza tyrants, there stands as it were the shrine of the Republic that was never realised, the Church of S. Nazaro, which contains the tombs of the Trivulzi family. The heroes lie in the sepulchral chapel of their house, a strange octagonal chamber built in 15 18 by Girolamo della Porta. The founder of this chapel was the soldier Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, the overthrower of II Moro : here he placed the tomb of Antonio his father, who had attempted to establish the golden Ambrosian Republic, and of his two sons, Niccolo and Francesco, with their wives and children. The tombs are placed high up on the walls, as though to avoid desecration, and they make one of the few shrines in Milan that a patriot may visit without an afterthought. Their antithesis, and in a measure their defeat, is expressed in one of the great wonders of the city, the splendidly restored Castello of the Sforza, a city as it were in itself, which stands in the Nuovo Parco, a bastion on the walls. The first fortress and citadel built here was the work of Galeazzo Visconti, but Antonio Trivulzio and the people destroyed it when they hoped to found the Republic. The first work of the freebooter and adventurer of Cotignola, whom we know as Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan, was to rebuild it. MILAN : THE SFORZA 105 Francesco Sforza is perhaps the best example that is anywhere to be found of the wonderful success that in the fifteenth century not infrequently awaited a man who took up arms as a profession, enlisted a band of followers and outlaws and sold his services to the highest bidder. Few, however, have had so great a success with so little legitimate claim to government, but then few had his talents. There was Piccinino, for instance, but he was not vulgar enough to succeed as Sforza did, for indeed he was a gentleman. Francesco Sforza, however, by no means a better soldier, was a more vigorous and more unscrupulous man : he was determined to succeed and at any price. He had his wish. For years before he thought of Milan he had wandered up and down Romagna and the Marches looking for a lordship, fighting in any cause that paid him, the hireling of the Pope, of Venice, of the Medici, of Florence. He had managed to establish himself in the March of Ancona, when circumstances turned his thoughts towards Milan, where the breakdown of the Visconti dynasty and rule was obvious. First like a beggar, then like a blackmailer, he presumed to demand the hand of Visconti's illegitimate daughter. Visconti laughed at him, but Sforza was persistent, and at last by threats and every disgraceful means known to the swindler and the assassin he got what he wanted. On this marriage he founded his claim to the succession of the Duchy. But he was the last man in the world to depend upon such a claim. Francesco Sforza was a realist. On the death of Filippo Visconti, he entered the service of the Republic very much in the same way as he had entered the family of Visconti — that is to say, by con- temptible and importunate begging and by threats. No sooner was he the servant of the Republic than he plotted to betray her, and only bided his time to seize the city, which at length by a series of the most barefaced io6 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY and impudent hypocrisies he starved into surrender. Blackmailer he was born and blackmailer he died, and till their extinction this was the amazing and amusing trait which distinguished all his family. It is entertaining to us to know, and confirms us, if confirmation were needed, in our estimate of Sforza, that when, having got possession of Milan, he deter- mined to rebuild the Castello of Galeazzo Visconti, he announced he would set this up for the embellishment of the city. Every soul in Milan must have known that he had but one intention, namely, to overawe the people ; yet this is but one example more of the extra- ordinary childishness of Italian diplomacy at that time, and indeed for long both before and since. In any consideration of it, however superficial, one is continually asking oneself who can have believed the amazing and obvious lies that passed for diplomacy, whom could they have deceived and what purposes were they supposed to serve ? These are unanswerable questions. Yet, 8 f ter all, time brings about its revenges, and though Sforza built the Castello for his own security and to overawe the turbulent democracy of Milan, we have rebuilt it exactly for the reason he, lying, gave, namely, as an ornament to the city of Milan, a purpose it is excellently fitted to fill. For in the Castello, even as we now see it, the history of Milan from the time of Francesco Sforza to our own day is as it were mirrored. Each Sforza as he succeeded added to the original fortress-palace, decorated it with paintings and planted it with gardens. Then came the Spaniards, the French, the Austrians, who used it only as a fortress, till when their time was overpast the Milanese, sure of themselves at last, decided, and in our own day, to preserve the old instrument of their servitude, with that tolerance which security gives, and very much in the same spirit, I suppose, as an MILAN : THE SFORZA 107 English schoolboy preserves the birch with which he was flogged : and so the Castello, restored out of all recognition and planted about with a fair park, became a Museum — the tomb, that is, of all that glorious and miserable past which lends the city to-day the so various interest she has for us. It would, indeed, have been a shame upon Milan to have destroyed in vulgar anger and relief this building, in part the work of Bramante, in which Leonardo looked into the dark face of II Moro, and watched Bianca Maria as she passed from room to room, and played upon that strange lyre shaped like a horse's skull and made of silver with which he first charmed the Viper. Instead, the Milanese have honoured themselves as the foolish Perugians were too ignorant to know how to do, by taking such care of the CasteUo that it is now one of their most splendid museums, and one of the most interesting buildings in their city. For in those long corridors where, as we know, Lucrezia Crivelli, Cecilia Galerani the poetess and the Duchess Beatrice went so light, the Milanese have set out their treasures, the contents of the old Museo Civico and the Museo Archseologico. There, in the Corte Ducale, the new palace of the Sforzas, amid a crowd of curious and a few beautiful things, we find the tomb of Bernabd Visconti, from whom Giovanni Galeazzo wrested the city in 1385.^ Here, too, are a beautiful pulpit by Michelozzo with sculptures that recall Donatello, and the monument of Gaston de Foix, the unfinished masterpiece of Agostino Busti, which Francis i. ordered in 15 15. It was once in the cloister of S. Marta, and was later removed to the Brera. Beside the Museo Archaeologico, lately in the Brera, ^ This monument was erected in the Church of S, Giovanni in Conca in Milan in Bernabo's lifetime, and is probably the work of Bonino da Campione, a pupil perhaps Of Giovanni di Balduccio the Pisan, who made the shrine of S. Peter Martyr. lo8 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY the Milanese have gathered here in the Loggetta, added to the Castello by Galeazzo Maria Sforza, the Museo Artistico Municipale. Here, amid some dull bric-a-brac and some interesting early views of the city, is a small gallery of paintings by Milanese and Lombard masters, which contains nothing of very vivid interest. If we want to realise what in the way of painting was being done in Milan in the time of the Sforzas, we shall leave the Castello and make our way to S. Maria delle Grazie, and there in fact we shall find the best excuse for the Sforza rule. Illegitimate and oppressive though the rule of the despots was wherever it obtained, and not least under the Sforza of Milan, this at any rate is to be said for it, that it encouraged art and employed artists in a way that no democracy has ever known how or cared to do. It is sometimes asserted that the art of the Middle Age, and especially the architecture of that incomparable time for building, was the work of the people. In a sense that may be true, but only in a sense very limited and partial. Westminster Abbey, the crown and jewel of our English churches, was the work not of the people, nor of a religious Order, but of the King, and it owed its splendour, incomparable even in decay, to him and to him alone. In Italy it was the Pope or the Medici who for the most part caused to be painted or carved the wonderful things we know. When for a moment Florence, under the evil influence of the Ferrarese Savonarola, expelled the Medici, she also expelled the artists and burned their work. It was in the beginning of this confused democratic movement in Florence that Leonardo da Vinci left the city of the Lily and came to Milan, according to Vasari, as a musician with "a lute which he had himself constructed almost wholly of silver and in the shape of a horse's head, a new and fanciful form calculated to give more force and sweetness to the sound. When playing this instrument, Leonardo MILAN : THE SFORZA 109 surpassed all the musicians who had assembled to per- form before the Duke ; he was, besides, one of the best improvisatori in verse existing at the time ; and soon the Duke became enchanted with the admirable con- versation of the young Florentine artist." We shall never hear that music, or the rhythm of those verses or the words which so charmed the Moor, but it might be thought that here in Milan we might certainly hope to look upon many of the works of the first painter in Italy. In fact, there remains in Milan but one paint- ing from his hand, and that, time, war and restoration have alike combined to ruin, I mean the great wall- painting of the Last Supper in the refectory of this Dominican Church of S. Mary of the Graces. " For the friars of S. Dominic at S. Maria delle Grazie," says Vasari, ** Leonardo painted a Cenacolo, a Last Supper, which is a most beautiful and admirable work. To the heads of the Apostles in this picture the master gave so much beauty and majesty that he was constrained to leave that of Christ unfinished, being convinced that he could not impart to it the divinity which should belong to and distinguish an image of Our Lord. But this work remaining thus in its unfinished state, has been ever held in the highest estimation by the Milanese, and not by them on^ly, but by foreigners also ; Leonardo succeeded to perfection in expressing the doubts and anxiety experienced by the Apostles and the desire felt by them to know by whom their Master is to be betrayed ; in the faces of all appear love, terror, anger, or grief and bewilderment, unable as they are to fathom the meaning of their Lord. Nor is the spectator less struck with admiration by the force and truth with which, on the other hand, the master has exhibited the impious determination, hatred and treachery of Judas. The whole work indeed is executed with inexpressible diligence even in its most minute part ; among other things may be mentioned the table- no THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY cloth, the texture of which is copied with such exacti- tude that the linen cloth itself could scarcely look more real. "It is related that the Prior of the convent was ex- cessively importunate in pressing Leonardo to com- plete the picture ; he could in no way comprehend wherefore the artist should sometimes remain half a day together absorbed in thought before his work, without making any progress that he could see ; this seemed to him strange waste of time, and he would fain have had him work away as he could make the men do who were digging in his garden, never laying the pencil out of his hand. Not content with seeking to hasten Leonardo, the Prior even complained to the Duke, and tormented him to such an extent that he was at length compelled to send for Leonardo, whom he courteously entreated to let the work be finished, assuring him nevertheless that he did so because im- pelled by the importunities of the Prior. Leonardo, knowing the Prince to be intelligent and judicious, determined to explain himself fully on the subject with him, although he had never chosen to do so with the Prior. He therefore discussed with him at some length respecting art, and made it perfectly manifest to his comprehension that men of genius are sometimes producing most when they seem to be labouring least, their minds being occupied in the elucidation of their ideas, and in the completion of those conceptions to which they afterwards give form and expression with the hand. He further informed the Duke that there were still wanting to him two heads, one of which, that of the Saviour, he could not hope to find on earth, and had not yet attained the power of presenting it to himself in imagination with all that perfection of beauty and celestial grace which appeared to him to be demanded for the due representation of God incarnate. The second head still wanting was that of Judas, which also MILAN : THE SFORZA iii caused him some anxiety, since he did not think it possible to imagine a form of feature that should properly render the countenance of a man who after so many benefits received from his Master had possessed a heart so depraved as to be capable of betraying his Lord and the Creator of the world ; with regard to that second, however, he would make search, and after all — if he could find no better — he need never be at any great loss, for there would always be the head of that troublesome and impertinent Prior. This made the Duke laugh with all his heart, and he declared Leonardo to be completely in the right ; and the wretched Prior, utterly confounded, went away, to drive on the digging in his garden, and left Leonardo in peace. The head of Judas was then finished so successfully that it is indeed the true image of treachery and wickedness ; but that of the Redeemer remained, as we have said, incomplete." There can be no one, I suppose, who comes on an autumn afternoon into that beautiful refectory and looks upon the ruin of one of the greatest works of all time who does not recall that excellent and immortal story of the artist and his patron. And indeed the tale is a godsend, for it helps to relieve us in our grief at the ruin of so marvellous and beautiful a thing. This ruin is not altogether the work of soldiers and restorers. To Leonardo himself, in his insatiable desire for experiment, is due much of the destruction we see. For the master did not here employ the old and tried method of fresco, in which his countrymen had excelled for ages, and much of which is still almost as fresh as the day on which it was uncovered. He employed a method of his own, painting, on a damp and humid wall, in oil, so that he might return again and again, to the most inestimable of his works. This would have doomed it even in careful hands ; as it is, the convent has been subjected to every sort of rough usage, both in peace and war. The soldiers of Francis i. are in part to blame, but to the 112 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY cleaning and repainting of restorers we are even more indebted for the ruin we see, while the friars seem to have thought so little of the precious thing they held in trust for humanity that they drove a door through it in the midst. Little thus remains to us but the composition of Leonardo, and that is of an incomparable beauty and rhythm. Vasari twice asserts that the head of Christ was left uncompleted by Leonardo, yet it seems to us to be as perfectly finished as those of the Apostles, which Vasari asserts were completed by Leonardo himself. It is probable, then, that another hand has been at work here from very early times, and that the head of Christ, which still seems to us a miracle, a ghost seen through the wall, is but Leonardo's in general outline and suggestion. Even so, it is one of the most marvellous and moving apparitions in all Italy. The chief interest in S. Maria delle Grazie is of course to be found in this work of Leonardo's, but the church should by no means be neglected. The facade and the nave, the earliest parts of it, were new in Leonardo's day, they are in the Gothic style of 1470, but the choir and the cupola are work of the Renaissance, and it would seem partly from the very hand of Bramante. Bramante's first work in Milan was the transept of S. Maria presso S. Satiro, his second was the choir and cupola of this Church of S. Mary of the Graces. The lower half of the choir and transept only is certainly the master's work, but the plan and composition of the rest are his, though the work has been badly carried out, and all is covered up with modern plaster within. Without, however, we see a work of the early Re- naissance in all its charm, and are reminded once again that however eager we may be to denounce the iniquity and brutality of the Sforzas, it is after all to them we owe the presence in Milan of these two great artists, Leonardo da Vinci and Bramante d' Urbino, without MILAN IN THE CINQUECENTO 113 whom our pleasure in her would be how much less full than it is. MILAN IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY In the work of the strangers, Leonardo da Vinci and Bramante d' Urbino, Milan not only received the most beautiful works of art she possesses, but in those brief thirty years from 1472 to 1500 she was more famous than she was ever again to be in the history of Italian art. The period of invasion, war, disaster and confusion, which caused the fall of the Sforza dynasty and reduced Milan to a foreign yoke, may not have interfered very greatly with her growth, or even with her mere material prosperity, but it was barren of great buildings and of works of art, and when the city finally emerges as the property of a foreign Government the old and gracious time has passed away, and it is a new spirit we see in all the profuse work that was then begun, and which even yet so largely gives Milan her sumptuous if melancholy character. In 1527 a new circle of walls was built about her ; in 1549 y^^ another was begun, but it is in the palaces, courts and churches of the Perugian Alessi (1512-72), of Vincenzo Seregno (1509-94) and of the Bolognese Pellegrino Tibaldi (1521-92) that we recognise the Milan of the sixteenth century, the Milan of S. Carlo Borromeo. The beautiful Palazzo Marini, now the Municipio, is perhaps the most charming of these buildings, and is one of the best things Alessio ever achieved, possessing as it does in its fagade and its court something of the allure of the early Renaissance. The church of S. Vittore, built in 1560, with a simple exterior, and the fagade of S. Maria presso Celso, are imposing, but have not the same delight. 8 114 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY It is the Genoese and less lovely work of Alessio that is recalled to us by the work of Seregno in the Palazzo della Giustizia, the Palazzo dei Giurisconsulti, and the CoUegio de' Nobili in the Piazza de' Mercanti, built in 1564. But the architect of Milan in the time of S. Carlo was Pellegrino Tibaldi, the creator of the fa9ade of the Cathedral, which, as he designed it, was so much finer than the Later Gothic which surrounded it. To this master we owe the beautiful Church of S. Fedele, a work of almost classic beauty which had a great influence then and later, an influence we see in the Church of S. Gaudenzio at Novara. But S. Fedele does not stand alone in Milan ; we may place beside it as the work of this master the round Church of S. Sebas- tiano, built in 1576, a plague church, and one of the courts of the Episcopal Palace, which is simple and severe, as indeed S. Carlo wished it, and to some extent the Palace itself as we see it. At the same time, Giuseppe Meda was also working in Milan, and to him we owe the beautiful court of the Seminario. S. Carlo, to whom in Milan the second half of the sixteenth century, the period of the Catholic Reaction, may be said to belong, died in 1584, and after an interval of eleven years he was succeeded by his nephew, Cardinal Federigo. To the second Borromeo archbishop Milan owes what she possesses of the baroque, but her chief debt to him lies in the fact that he founded the Am- brosian Library. The Biblioteca Ambrosiana was built to contain the collection in 1603 by Fabio Manzone, to whom we also owe the Palazzo del Senato. The library is one of the most important in Europe, not only for its priceless collection of MSS., its autograph letters of Petrarch, Lucrezia Borgia, Ariosto, Tasso and Galileo, its volume of drawings by Leonardo, its Virgil annotated by the hand of Petrarch, but also for its splendid incunabula. Here, too, on the ground floor, are parts of the beautiful tomb of Gaston de Foix, other MILAN IN THE CINQUECENTO 115 parts of which are in the Castello, and a fresco by Luini of a Christ crowned with Thorns in the hall of the Con- fraternity of the Holy Crown, which used to meet here. For the ordinary traveller, however, the chief interest of the Ambrosiana will be found in the Pinacoteca on the first floor, where, amid much of purely Milanese or of mediocre interest, will be found a Madonna and Child with Angels (72) by Botticelli, a Madonna enthroned with Saints and Angels by Borgognone (54), a Portrait painted in 1554 by Moroni (312), Raphael's cartoon for the School of Athens in the Vatican, and best of all the famous Portrait by Ambrogio de Predis of Bianca Maria Sforza, and the unfinished Portrait of a Young Man which matches it so delightfully. It is a very various collection of pictures we find here, and as such is extraordinarily indicative of the con- ditions of art in Milan, where almost all the greatest work was done by foreigners for the reigning foreign houses of Visconti, Sforza, France and Spain. The Latin population of Milan, always so great in energy and life, might seem to have expressed itself in art very little or not at all. We see its work, perhaps, in the earlier great churches, such as S. Lorenzo and S. Ambrogio, and certainly its influence in the spaciousness of the Cathedral, a true Latin delight victorious there in spite of everything; but in painting as in sculpture Milan has little to give us, and like all Lombardy for that matter, nothing at all of the first class. We may explain this how we can, the fact remains. The two greatest masters whose work is to be found in Milan are Leonardo and Bramante. Leonardo undoubtedly founded a school, but it came to nothing and produced nothing of any real importance, possessed of any real life. His advent in Milan was as disastrous as the advent of Handel in England. It was much the same with Bramante; he came and he went, leaving behind him a few lovely and priceless things, and a tradition which ii6 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY no one who was Milanese knew how to follow or to use. It is for the most part the beautiful work of Italy we admire and search after in Milan, for Cisalpine Gaul has scarcely expressed herself there. She is dumb in this great and tumultuous town, for in truth she is afar off, singing in the fields under the limitless sky. THE GALLERIES When we consider Cisalpine Gaul, and note the riches of the great plain, its deep and fertile meadows, the number and splendour of its cities, the energy of its inhabitants, we might expect to find there one of the most flourishing schools of art in all Italy, for painting especially must have had every encourage- ment in a country so wealthy and so civilised as this ; and in the city of Milan, the true metropolis of this country, the greatest and the richest city between the Alps and the Apennines, we might have expected to find the citadel and the home of a school of painters at least as flourishing as those of Florence or Siena. What in fact we find is that neither Milan nor all Lom- bardy ever produced a painter of the first rank at all. If we try to explain this fact, we are compelled to do so on first principles. An examination of the works of the Lombard painters forces us to the conclusion that the reason why Lombardy never produced a great school of painters was that she was almost entirely lacking in artistic sense. What she achieved in art was not essentially artistic : it was realistic, it was decorative, it was charmingly pretty by turns, but as art pure and simple it had no life in it. On the very threshold of our inquiry we are met by the fact that no great personality appeared within her borders, as Giotto did in the north and Duccio in the south of Tuscany, to inspire, and to direct the national HEAD OF CHRIST ATTRIBUTED TO LEONARDO DA VINCI nrera, Milan MILAN : THE GALLERIES 117 genius, and to determine what its future was to be. In Lombardy there was no national genius that naturally expressed itself in painting, and the first painters we find between the Alps and the Apennines are the merest provincial followers of Giotto, and indeed we may go so far as to assert that there does not exist a single picture in all this country which does not owe its origin to Florence, if it be living and not dead. Without any genuine native talent for art, without what we may call artistic temperament, and, for this reason, unable to produce a great artistic personality and tradition, Lombardy of necessity fell back upon Giotto — that is to say, upon a genius and an influence foreign to her. What followed might seem to have been inevitable. Cisalpine Gaul was not Italy, and therefore was not able to make as much use of what was being done in Tuscany as, for instance, Umbria was. Without a real and native artistic impulse, she imitated what should have inspired her, and treated living principles as a dead code to be rigidly kept or a dead beauty to be brutally copied. If, before coming to the specifically Lombard school, we glance at the earlier North Italian masters, this will be at once obvious in their work. The first of these was Altichiero of Verona (1330-95), an imitator of Giotto, a master whose work is bewilder- ing, because, almost like an amateur, his virtues will not chime with his faults, his work is often too good to be as bad as it is, his faults are so fundamental that we are astonished at his virtues. Nothing of his remains west of the Mincio. His follower, Pisanello of Verona (1385-1455), had the excellent good fortune to come under the influence of the Umbrian Gentile da Fabriano. A great and an individual genius, he was the first man to found a school in such a world as this of North Italy. In the man as we know him he is a court painter, and lovely as his work ii8 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY is, it is not really of the Renaissance at all : it comes to us with all the beauty and the appeal of a reminiscence, and has no life of its own. His work seems radiantly to prophesy of a future that never happened. Meanwhile Squar clone of Padua (i 394-1474) had felt the influence of a Florentine master, one of the greatest, Donatello. So far as we are able to judge (for very little of Squarcione's work remains to us — a Madonna in Berlin, the design of a Polyptych executed by assist- ants in Padua, and perhaps a Madonna, a tondo, in Paris) , the greatest work of this antiquary was Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506), whom he adopted and brought up in his shop. With Mantegna we come upon the greatest genius of the North Italian schools, but a genius again wholly individual, capable of receiving life but not of giving it forth. Immersed in antiquity, he is saved from being a mere archaeologist by the living art of Donatello and Jacopo Bellini, yet all his pictures look like a translation, more lovely perhaps than the original ever was, but still a translation which has no life in itself. Milan possesses five of his works. In the Brera we find the large altarpiece (200) in many com- partments with S. Luke in the centre, a work of 1454, painted for the Church of S. Giustina of Padua; the marvellous Madonna surrounded by a glory of singing angels (298), and the Dead Christ (199), a later work. In the collection of Prince Trivulzio is a Madonna in Glory with four saints painted in 1497, and in the Poldi Pezzoli Gallery a late work, a Madonna and Child (625). None of these works shows Mantegna in his most characteristic mood, but they are enough to tell us of what his genius was capable and of the faults which hampered him so strangely. Such were the painters of Verona and Padua. Padua, in fact, had become the art centre of Northern Italy, and it was there that a line of painters was formed, which, as I understand their work, expresses better than MILAN : THE GALLERIES 119 any other what there was of native and national genius for art in Cisalpine Gaul. These men were Ferrarese; they were formed in Padua upon the work of Donatello, and their names are Tura, Cossa, Roberti and Costa. Cosimo Tura of Ferrara was born in 1430 and died in 1495 ; his ancestors are Squarcione, Donatello and Mantegna, but his rugged figures of stone, hewn out of the rock, immobile as statues, but statues that are already in the rude grip of life, seem to one at once terrible and pathetic in the energy of their conception, in their desire for expression. He has communed with his own heart fiercely and without mercy, and has brought forth an adamantine son, grotesque as an heraldic monster, but living and passionately eager to be free. In his fierce determination to express himself he has forsaken the colours that Mantegna loved and forsook too at last, and has put beauty away from him, clinging only to life, that he may express it and find in it that harmony which he alone has known how to strike out of his own soul with the hammer of his genius. Milan possesses two of his works, a Christ on the Cross (1447), a fragment in the Brera, and the figure of a Bishop (600) in the Poldi Pezzoli Gallery. His twin was his countryman Cossa (1435-80), whose S. John Baptist and S. Peter (449) in the Brera is the only work Milan possesses from that iron brush. In the earlier work of Ercole Roberti (1430-96), their fellow- townsman, we find much of the same austerity, but with a certain loss of conviction and sincerity. Yet something more we find too — a sweetness and a solemnity that their harshness and fierce passion had not known or had not known how to express, for Roberti has passed under the influence of the Bellini. His work in the Brera, a Madonna enthroned with Saints (428), painted in 1480, is not among his best works perhaps, but in those monochrome decorations we seem for a moment to have found something of the terrible 120 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY energy that consumed his masters and forced them to utter only the syllables of life. In Lorenzo Costa (1460-1535) we have the decline and the dissolution of this school, which might perhaps in better circumstances have done so much. The pupil of Cossa and Roberti, he became the partner of Francia of Bologna, and at last court painter at Mantua. One picture from his hand is to be found in the Brera, an Adoration of the Magi (429), painted in 1499, which I think relieves us in thinking of him, assuring us of certain " happy moments " between his youth and his old age. I said that Costa became the partner of Francia (1450-15 17), who was a Bolognese educated as a gold- smith, and who practised painting, it might seem, on the advice of Costa, who on coming to Bologna began to instruct him in his art. How far are we in Francia's prettiness from the founders of the Ferrarese school ! The Annunciation (448) of the Brera and the S. Anthony of Padua (601) of the Poldi Pezzoli Gallery in Milan might seem to be Umbrian rather than North Italian pictures. It is fortunate that one of the works Milan possesses of Timoteo Viti (1467-1523), the pupil of Costa and Francia, should be as good as anything that Francia has to show us ; but the true importance for us of Viti is that as the master of Raphael he serves as a link between Tura and the greatest master of the high Renaissance. Such artistic talent as North Italy possessed may be said to have been exhausted in the production of the painters I have named, and when we turn to Milan we find only a complete sterility. We have, it is true, certain followers very provincial and far off of Giotto and Pisanello, but of native masters none at all. Foppa, the true glory of Lombardy, was a Brescian, while the two artists who are most closely connected with Milan are absolute foreigners — Leonardo, a Florentine, and MILAN : THE GALLERIES 121 Bramante, born in Urbino and educated in Florence. Milan, like Rome, was barren in art. Those frescoes in the Duomo of Milan which recount the life of Queen Theodelinda may well stand as the masterpiece of Milanese art in the fifteenth century ; they are the work of some follower of Pisanello, and they are prettier than anything he deigned to do. And just that might seem indeed to be the note of the whole school, the inevitable note of the copyist who has no original impulse of his own and is only eager to reap where he has not sown. There remains to be considered Foppa. Vincenzo Foppa of Brescia was born in 1427, and lived on till after 1502. He was the founder of the Milanese school, but that school might seem to consist only of himself and of his great pupil Borgognone. An artist of great and original powers, he was educated at Padua in the school of Squarcione. His was a lonely, starved temperament in a world that was artistically barren and dead. He seems later to have understood that he had something in common with Bramante, but his real love was, I think, given to Giovanni Bellini, whose good fortune he must have envied. His works in Milan are happily plentiful, two frescoes and an altar- piece in many compartments (307) being in the Brera, and three frescoes and two pictures, one a Madonna (305), in the Castello, while we probably see one of his late works in the Madonna and Child (643) of the Poldi Pezzoli Gallery, and the Palazzo Trivulzio holds another. The Portinari Chapel of S. Eustorgio is covered with his designs, and in the Church Fathers we see his very hand. That Madonna in the Palazzo Trivulzio gives us, I think, his secret — his love of Giovanni Bellini ; and if in the SS. Sebastian of the Brera and the Castello we see something at once stronger and more completely his own, they are, it must be confessed, impressive works. Of Butinone (1454-1507) his pupil what can be said. 122 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY or of Zenale (1436-1526), whose work in the Griffi Chapel of S. Pietro in Gessate in Milan was done in partnership with Butinone, save that the one is a " whim- sical," the other a "skilful" craftsman ? We pass at once to a painter more worthy of his master, Borgognone (1450-1523), Poppa's pupil, a man excellent as an artist and full of subtle harmonies in his landscape, and yet not without a strength and almost country roughness found in his figures. Borgognone's work in Milan is extraordinarily plentiful. It greets you in the churches of S. Ambrogio, of S. Eustorgio, of S. Sempliciano, of S. Maria presso Celso, and of S. Maria della Passione. Six pictures and four frescoes are to be found in the Brera, two pictures in the Poldi Pezzoli Gallery, and the Borromeo collection boasts no less than five, the Castello two, the Ambrosiana Gallery three, including the early Madonna and Child with Saints and Angels. Little by little, I think, as we get to know him better, the study of his work becomes a study of backgrounds. Those delicate and delightful little scenes he would paint perhaps from real life or from a wonderful memory of some glimpse he had had of a city street, or the reach of a canal, or a byway in the country, and his certainty of vision as of touch in these things is magical and beyond praise, something that Mr. Berenson compares with Whistler. But with Borgognone the school of Milan, if it can be said ever to have existed, comes suddenly to an end. Bramante appears, and after Bramante Leonardo. They were only not| an utter disaster for Milan because there was nothing really to destroy. The native artistic genius that they might have killed had never existed, and their schools consist, as we might suppose, of copyists and prettifiers : Ambrogio de Predis, whose two portraits we have already seen in the Ambrosiana, and who has another portrait in the Poldi Pezzoli, a Portrait of Francesco Brivio MILAN : THE GALLERIES 123 (641) ; Boltraffio, whose charming works overflow the private collections of Milan, who painted the Ivy- crowned Boy (42) of the Borromeo Gallery, the Man and Woman Praying (281) and the Girolamo Casio (319) of the Brera, the two Madonnas of the Poldi Pezzoli Gallery (642, 660) and the Portrait of a Man there (57), some works in the Castello and the frescoes in S. Maurizio ; Luini, the subtle sensualist whose eyes are brimming with tears, who smiles and smiles at himself, considering his likeness to Leonardo, who has tried to express everything prettily in self- admiration and self-pity. His work runs over in the Brera, the churches of Milan are full of it, you find it in the Poldi Pezzoli Gallery, in the Ambrosiana and the Borromeo collections. And there is nothing to say about it. It wears its heart upon its sleeve, and one passes on with a smile. And after him comes Ferrari, who was a kind of repetition with an accompaniment of lyres and flutes, and Solario who is all for fair women. We turn from them, from the two last always reluct- antly, to that Brescia which had bred Vincenzo Foppa, where they made armour, and we find as it were just before evening three painters, not of the first order, but at least men with something to say and a power of expressing themselves. These men were Romanino, Moretto and Moroni. They were contemporaries of the great Venetians and passed under their influence. Romanino, born in Brescia in 1485, lived till 1566. The Madonna in the Brera (98) which is his, the only work of his in a public collection in Milan, gives one some idea of his richness, but his more characteristic work is at Brescia. Moretto (1498-1554) has three pictures in the Brera, a Madonna with SS. Jerome, Francis and Anthony Abbot (91), an Assumption of the Virgin (92) and a S. Francis, delightful things, but they, no more than the similar works at the Ambrosiana and the Castello, 124 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY give you the whole man, who was a great artist, and who is seen to better advantage in London, and of course in his native city. Of his pupil Moroni (1520-78) the Brera gives us a much better idea. He was a portrait painter pure and simple, and the Ambrosiana has one, the Brera two and the Castello one of his portraits. His masterpiece is that delicious Portrait of a Tailor in the National Gallery, and in that he comes nearest to his master, and Milan cannot match it. But happily for the traveller, the works of the North Italian schools by no means fill the Brera and the other public galleries of Milan. Many a masterpiece is to be found there of the true Italian schools, as well as a few pictures from the North, and to these we shall now turn our attention. To begin with the Brera. Here some seven rooms are devoted to pictures of the Venetian school. In the first of these (Sala III) some of Moroni's works are also hung, as well as the Madonna and Child by Romanino. The earliest Venetian master represented is Alvise Vivarini, with a Dead Christ adored by two Angels, an early work of the master ; but that excellent pupil of the first Vivarini, Carlo Crivelli, has a room almost to himself, in which are hung no less than six of his works, including the Madonna and Child with Saints (283), painted in 1432, and another Madonna and Child (193), a late work. Gentile Bellini, who, like Crivelli, was influenced by the Paduans, is repre- sented here by the Preaching of S. Mark (168), a late work, finished by his brother Giovanni Bellini, by whom there are three works here, an early Pieta (284), a Madonna and Child (261) and another Madonna and Child (297), painted in 1510, a late picture: the first two are exquisite specimens of his work. A pupil of Alvise Vivarini, Cima, is very largely represented in the Brera by no less than seven pictures; indeed no other gallery is so rich in his work — I especially note MILAN : THE GALLERIES 125 the S. Peter with SS. John Baptist and Paul (174) ; while Carpaccio, a pupil and follower of Gentile Bellini, has three pictures here, S. Stephen Disputing (288), painted in 1514, and two late works (307 and 309), which are only his in part. Another pupil of Alvise Vivarini, Lorenzo Lotto, who came under the influence of Giovanni Bellini and of Giorgione, has here three Portraits (253, 254, 255), all late works, and a Pieta (244), painted in 1545 ; and another disciple of Giorgione, Bonifazio, is represented here by the Finding of Moses (209). By the greatest of Giorgione's pupils, Titian, we have a portrait here, Conte Antonio Porcia (2886), and a late painting, a S. Jerome (248), painted probably after 1550, and originally in S. Maria Nuova at Venice. As for the portrait, it has so much affinity with Titian's works of 1540-43 that it must be given to that period. It was formerly in Castel Porcia, near Pordenone, and was presented to this gallery in 1892 by the Duchess Litta Visconti. There are three works here by Tintoretto: a Piet^ (217), a S. Helena with Three Saints and Donors (230) and an early work, the Finding of the Body of S. Mark, of which the last is by far the finest. By the Verona and Vicenza masters we have here a work by Michele da Verona (160) and another by Liberale, a S. Sebastian, as well as a beautiful Madonna enthroned with Saints and Angels (165), one of the best works of Bartolommeo Montagna, painted in 1499. By other Northern masters we may note the works by Dosso Dossi, the two works by Rondinelli ; but the chief of them is, of course, the Adoration of the Magi, an early work by Correggio in his Ferrarese style, a notable picture. A whole room (XXVI) is given over to the Late Bolognese masters, but these will not detain us, though our fathers would have spent much time there. We turn with a real eagerness that they would have failed 126 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY to understand to the pictures of Gentile da Fabriano, Piero della Francesca, Luca Signorelli, Giovanni Santi, Benozzo Gozzoli and, once more at one with our an- cestors, Raphael. The splendid Polyptych by Gentile da Fabriano (497) is an early work: the Coronation of the Virgin with two saints on either side, and below in the predella delightful scenes from the life of the Virgin, the death of S. Peter Martyr, S. John Baptist praying, S. Francis receiving the Stigmata, and S. Dominic. Another great master, one of the greatest Italy ever produced, is well seen in the splendid Madonna enthroned in a beautiful Bramantesque hall amid saints and angels, with Duke Federigo of Urbino kneeling before her. This picture comes from the Church of S. Bernardino at Urbino, and though it lacks perhaps the charm of the National Gallery pictures, it is a monumental example of Piero della Francesca' s art. Piero's great pupil, Luca Signorelli, is represented here by three pictures, a Madonna and Child with Saints (505) and another Madonna and Child (477), and a Flagellation (476), which probably once formed a single panel. The first picture, painted in 1500, is signed and inscribed ; it comes from the Church of S. Francesco at Arcevia ; the other two (the Flagellation is signed) come from S. Maria del Mercato at Fabriano. A picture by Benozzo Gozzoli, S. Dominic restoring a Child to Life (475), painted in 1461, is also rather an Umbrian than a Florentine work. We come into the real Umbria indeed with the work of Giovanni Santi, the father of Raphael, who has here a charming picture of the Annunciation (503) ; and to the most perfect expression of that school in the glorious picture by Raphael, one of his few really successful subject panels in the Sposalizio. It is a priceless treasure that cannot be matched, but it is so well known that to describe it would be absurd. MILAN : THE GALLERIES 127 Two works, at any rate, by Northern masters, the great and beautiful Rembrandt, so rare a thing in Italy, a Portrait of his sister (614), an early work, and the Portrait of the Princess Amalie by Vandyck, should not be missed. While our eyes rest upon the Rembrandt all Milan seems to be nothing but make-believe, and all but three or four works here in the Brera the merest pretence. The great Dutchman comes among these Italians even in Milan like an emperor, and it is they who seem to us as strangers. What we chiefly miss in the Brera is the schools of Tuscany, and this is to some extent made up to us in the Poldi Pezzoli Museum. Here we have a delightful Madonna and Child by Botticelli (156), a good early copy of an Annunciation (436) by Francesco Pesellino, a work probably by that rare master Andrea Verrocchio, the profile of a Young Woman (157), an astonishing and exquisite thing, and a Triptych (477), a masterpiece painted in 1500 by Albertinelli. We have also a Madonna and Child with Angels (593) by Pietro Lorenzetti of Siena. Piero della Francesca is to be seen here, too, in a panel of S. Thomas Aquinas (598), while the true Umbria is found in a beautiful panel of the Madonna and Child (603), perhaps by Pietro Perugino, or more probably by Lo Spagna. But what we return to again and again are those Tuscan pictures which we miss in the Brera, and which seem here to hold out a promise and to beckon us over the far-away Apennines. CHAPTER VI CHIARAVALLE AND FEMINISM IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY SOME three miles outside the Porta Ticinese, to the south of the city of Milan, there stands a deserted monastery that is at once a shrine and a sepulchre, the shrine in Lombardy of S. Bernard, for he founded it, and the sepulchre of one of the most amazing heresies that have ever sought to destroy Holy Church. The place is well worth a visit, and on a spring or autumn afternoon is still fair enough to attract us for its own sake ; it is called Chiaravalle. When S. Bernard was on his way back from the Council of Pisa in 1135 he came on his way to Milan, and they would have made him Archbishop, as would many another city ; but he would not, for he was a monk and the chief of his Order, and his home was at Clairvaux. Nevertheless, looking about, he spied the little village of Rovegnano, and liking the place, and doubtless be- sought by the Milanese to do something for them, he consented to found there a monastery of his Order and to name it in memory of his home. Thus Rovegnano became Chiaravalle. We know that figure, the one really divine presence in all the years of the twelfth century, S. Bernard, who for us at least is less a mystic than a man of action, a missionary rather than a monk, a true captain of the Church. We see him " in ejus clarissima et carissima 128 CHIARAVALLE 129 valle " at Clairvaux; we see him overcome Abelard, and send Louis vii. on his disastrous crusade ; we see him toiHng over the hard and endless roads of Europe, and we know his songs. Well, here at the gates of Milan is an abbey which he himself founded and named after that valley bright and beloved which was his home. In 1159, the date of the foundation of Chiaravalle, the Cistercian Order was already more than sixty years old. The first branch, the first reform of the great Order which S, Benedict had founded, and which had in some sort saved and civilised Europe, was that of Cluny, celebrated for its school and designed for that " luxury for God," the splendour of His services. Cluny had been established in 910, and nearly two hundred years later, in 1098, we see the reaction from all that it had especially desired in the foundation of Citeaux in the desert of Beaune by Robert, Cluniac Abbot of Molesme. The Cistercians, as they were called, desired above all things "to be poor with Christ, who was poor " ; they did not give themselves to learning, they refused every luxury for their churches, their desire was to live by manual labour, to be poor and humble, to possess nothing either for themselves or for their house or for their Order. The " importunate poverty of Citeaux " became a proverb, and like the same claim of the Franciscans later, was a rock of offence to all who were not their brethren. Indeed, so greatly did this poverty offend the time that Citeaux, in spite of the saintliness of its third Abbot, the Englishman Stephen Harding, was on the verge of collapse and ruin when in 11 13 S. Bernard knocked at the door. Three years later, at the age of twenty-five, he was sent with twelve brethren to found the monastery he called Claire Vallee, which we know as Clairvaux, where he lies buried before the altar of Our Lady, as indeed is most fitting, for was it not he who dared to add the 9 130 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY three magnificent vocatives at the end of the Salve Regina ? — O Clemens, O pia, O dulcis Virgo Maria ! Ora pro nobis, sancta Dei genetrix : Ut digni efficiamur promissionibus Christi. The Cistercian Order, established firmly by S. Bernard, was thus an austere institution vowed to poverty and simplicity of life : to this Order the Abbey of Chiaravalle belonged.^ Barbarossa took the place under his protection, and it had many privileges from other emperors. The Milanese, too, were devoted to it, and many of the rich families in the city made it gifts ; but it chiefly flourished by the industry of the monks, who cultivated the land they had drained, so that in the thirteenth century it possessed some 400 acres of land. It thus, it might seem, proved false to the intention of its founder and the rule of its Order, so that we are not surprised to learn that presently it became famous not for its industry and agriculture alone, but for its learning, and was visited for this by the highest personages in the country, who were used to sojourn there. Among these was the Archbishop Ottone Visconti, who died in the monastery, where, too, the flower of the Milanese nobility went to meet Beatrice d' Este when she came to marry Galeazzo Visconti. Indeed, the place was so entrenched in the traditions of Milan that it was here the archbishops were 1 The inscription on the door between the church and the cloister may still be read : — " An. Grat. mcxxxv xi K1. Febb. constructus e hoc monasteriu a bto Bnardo — abbe clave vel mccxxi cosecrata e eccla ista a do. Henrico Mediolanensi archiepo vi nonas Mali in onoe see mar careval." That is to say, " In the year of grace 1135, on twenty- second January was built this monastery by Blessed Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux. In 1221 was consecrated this church by the Lord Henry, Archbishop of Milan, on 2nd May, in honour of S. Mary of Clairvaux." CHIARAVALLE 131 used to sleep on the night before they made their solemn entry into Milan by the Porta Ticinese. Such was the monastery of Chiaravalle which S. Bernard had founded. In the end of the thirteenth century, however, a very strange adventure befell it. Lombardy was in that century the unfortunate home of a host of heretics, among them the Oriental sect of the Manichees, who asserted a double Cause in the creation of the world, a good and an evil. Among these sectaries there appeared one day a woman with a child, which shortly afterwards died. It was said of this woman that she was a fugitive nun from her native land, which she had left because a monastic life did not agree with her amorous inclinations. Her name was Guglielmina,^ and she was a Bohemian : she claimed to be the daughter of the King of Bohemia. For a time she lived at Porta Nuova, then at S. Stefano in Borgagna, then at S. Pietro all' Orto. She was known as extraordinarily good to the poor, and it seemed as though all her joy was in comforting the afflicted ; indeed, she appeared so honest and her charity so great that she entered the best Milanese society, made the acquaintance of the most distinguished families, of priests, of nuns and monks, and at last of those of Chiaravalle. She was also received by the Suore Umiliate, the most exclusive company in Milan, and she was seen to be particularly friendly with a certain Andrea Saramita, who had a sister and a daughter in the Umiliate. No one seems to have aught but good to say of her ; yet, and here is the astonishment, this woman was a most pestilent heretic, suffering the most horrible delusions, insane, and last but not least, a kind of thirteenth-century 1 Wilhelmina. It has been asserted by the author of the Annates of Colmar that she was an EngHshwoman : he empha- sises her beauty : but she was not English. Cf . Muratori, Antichitd Italiana (Milano, 1751), torn. iii. p. 309, diss. 60. The reference is wrongly given in Milman, Hist, of Lat. Christ. 132 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY feminist or " suffragette." Just as the Manichees had asserted that God was both evil and good, so she taught that He was male and female ; and therefore she sought to establish a woman Pope over against the successor of S. Peter, and a priesthood of women over against the successors of the Apostles. She attempted this, and in a sense she achieved it in the city of Milan in the thirteenth century : what she taught was still more blasphemous and obscene, yet wonderful to relate she died in her bed, unharmed, though she must have smelt furiously of the faggot. That price, however, was paid later by her woman Pope and others. But let us return to Guglielmina, for her story is like a monstrous fairy tale.^ Briefly, what she asserted was as follows : — She declared, first, that she herself, daughter of Con- stance, Queen of Bohemia, was the Holy Spirit incarnate in the feminine sex. Secondly, that even as the Archangel Gabriel had announced to Mary the Incarnation of the Divine Word, so the Archangel Raphael had announced to Queen Constance the Incarnation of the Holy Spirit, and this on Whitsunday, on which day also, a complete year after, she, Guglielmina, had been born. She asserted, thirdly, that as Christ was true God and true Man, so she was true God and true Woman (true Man in the feminine sex), and that she had been born for the salvation of Jews, Saracens and Heretics, even as Christ had been born ^or the salvation of Christians. Fourthly, that she must die according to the flesh, but not according to her Divine nature, even as Christ. 1 Muratori {ubi cit.) examined all the contemporary docu- ments in the Bib. Ambrosiana : " II Process© autentico d' essa, formato 1' Anno 1300 e la Storia de' siioi errori, compilata del Puricelli, e scritta a penna." The Processo is entitled " Contra Guilelmam Bohemam, vulgo Guilielminam, ej usque Sectam." Cf. also F. Tocco, Guglielma Bohema e % Guglielmiti (Roma, 1901). CHIARAVALLE 133 She insisted, fifthly, that she would rise again with a human body of female sex before the day of the final Resurrection, and would ascend into heaven in the sight of her disciples. Sixthly, that as Christ had left S. Peter as His vicar on earth to rule His Church, so she also left as her vicar on earth Mayfreda of the Umiliate. Seventhly, she asserted that this Mayfreda, in imitation of S. Peter, would celebrate Mass at the Sepulchre of the Holy Spirit Incarnate, and that she would solemnly repeat the same Mass in the Metropolitan Church of Milan and in Rome. Eighthly, she asserted that Mayfreda should be a true Papessa, endowed with the power of the Pope himself, and that even as the Pope and the Papacy would give way to and be abolished by this Papessa, so would be baptized Jews, Saracens and other peoples who were without the Roman Church. Ninthly, to the Four Gospels would succeed four new Gospels that Guglielmina would order to be written. Tenthly, that as Christ after the Resurrection per- mitted Himself to be seen by His disciples, so would she be seen by hers. Eleventhly, she ordained that all should visit the Monastery of Chiaravalle, where she would be buried, and that all would thus gain indulgences equal to those to be won by going to Jerusalem to the Holy Sepulchre. She asserted that pilgrims would come to visit her sepulchre from all parts of the world. Finally, she proclaimed that to all her disciples perse- cution and death would come, even as they came to the Apostles of Christ, and that one of these, like Judas, would betray them into the hands of the Inquisition. Such was the farrago of nonsense that distinguished this thirteenth-century feminist. It is certainly more blasphemous than many of the claims put forward to-day in the twentieth century, but not inherently more absurd. 134 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY Then as now there were many who took these things for good sense, who believed in them and were ready to go to the stake for the sake of such things. Then as now the good sense of the world finds itself amused by them, but incapable of considering them seriously. The most extraordinary thing about the matter of Guglielmina is that she was not interfered with. She died in 1281, and was buried, as she had foretold, in the Monastery of Chiaravalle, though she was first interred at S. Pietro all' Orto. Nor was this interment a secret business, rather it was very honourable. One of the monks spoke her Panegyric, praised her holy life, and attributed miracles or something like them to her. Lamps and tapers were burnt about her tomb. Three times in the year her feast was celebrated by her devotees at the monastery, and the common people called her Saint. Perhaps during her lifetime her blasphemous asser- tions founded only a secret cult ; perhaps only her good deeds and not her heresies were known abroad ; how- ever it may be, she died unmolested and had honourable sepulture at Chiaravalle. It was not till the year 1300, nineteen years after her death, that the Church began to notice this new sect. It was then at once completely stamped out. During these years Mayfreda had celebrated blas- phemous Masses in her house, her followers were used to kiss her hand and to receive from her a ridiculous benediction. But this could not go on for ever. In the year 1300 the Church seems to have discovered the sect. Guglielmina's bones were taken up and burned, her selpulchre was destroyed, and Andrea Saramita and the Umiliata Mayfreda were condemned and burned also. It is an amazing story. One wonders, after all, whether it can be true. Were these people really guilty of this horrible and monstrous impiety, or were they the victims of vulgar gossip or worse ? CHIARAVALLE 135 Muratori certainly accepts the whole story as absolutely genuine, and his opinion is not lightly to be questioned. And since we too must accept it, it might seem that even the most anticlerical among us will be compelled to think of such a man as S. Peter Martyr, of such an in- stitution as the Inquisition, as necessary to the sanity of the world, and after all on the side of sweetness and light. Chiaravalle, with its memories of S. Bernard and its strange connection with Guglielmina, was suppressed in 1797. The church as we see it is nobly picturesque and beautiful, but is falling into decay. Little is to be seen within : the tomb of Archbishop Ottone Vis- conti, who died here, and little beside. As a piece of architecture the church is interesting because it has a central tower. What T think is, in its own way, quite as interesting, however, is the stemma or coat of the monastery, a relief of which may still be seen on the door. It is a stork which bears in its beak a pastoral staff. For Roberto Rusca tells us that the monks of Chiaravalle assumed the stork for their stemma because " this pious bird seeing its parents old and featherless, took them into its own nest, brought them food and stripped itself to cover their nakedness. And so monks shall use this bird for a sign that they are to be charitable to the poor and afflicted." However that may be, we know that the whole territory of Rovegnano was covered by numerous colonies of storks, and must have been exceedingly liable to floods before the monks drained it. One misses them there to-day, the passing of their white figures, their unhurried footsteps, their friendly lights, their soothing and consolatory chants, their humanity and their confirmation to us of Europe. Here in Chiaravalle there is only emptiness, and what S. Bernard built remembers him now no more. CHAPTER VII THE CERTOSA OF PAVIA AT Chiaravalle, as we have seen, we have, though in ruin and decay, an abbey of the Cistercian Order, founded by S. Bernard himself : it is something quite different we find at the Certosa, the Certosa of Pavia. Here we have a Carthusian priory, the most sumptuous in the world, founded not by a saint but by a tyrant, and not for joy but in expiation of a monstrous crime. It is true that the Carthusian Order, like the Cistercian, was a reform of the Benedictines, and that Robert, Cluniac Abbot of Molesme, who had founded the Cis- tercians, may be said to have launched the Carthusians and that while he was still at Molesme. For it seems that S. Bruno, born at Cologne in 1030, and educated at the famous episcopal school of Rheims, was on account of his austerities much persecuted by his Bishop, so that he determined to flee the world, and to this end sought out S. Robert of Molesme, who sent him to S. Hugh, Bishop of Grenoble, who in 1086 led him and his six companions to a desolate spot on the Alps, more than 10,000 feet above the level of the sea. Here S. Bruno built an oratory, and set about it seven tiny huts, in which he dwelt with his companions. Thus was founded the Grande Chartreuse and the Carthusian Order, an Order of hermits who dwelt together and ate in common. These early Carthusians would seem to have followed the rule of S. Benedict, only they observed a 136 THE CERTOSA OF PA VIA 137 perpetual fast, never ate meat, and divided their time between manual labour, learning and prayer. They said matins and vespers together in their oratory, but the Little Hours alone each in his hut. Gradually certain customs which grew up among them came to have the force of a rule, till in 1368 these were gathered up and written out, and being approved, became the Statutes of the Order. The Carthusians recognise two classes of monks, the Fathers and the Conversi or Lay Brothers, and among these are again three degrees — to wit, the pro- fessed, the novices and the postulants. Each monk, as at the foundation of the Order, still lives in a separate hut of five small rooms set about a tiny cloister opening on a little garden. The rule, which is very hard, but which conserves the individual privacy of the monk, has never been altered or reformed. The monasteries of the Carthusians are found in all countries, and are known in France as Chartreuses, in Italy as Certose, in Spain as Cartuje, and in England as Charterhouses.^ It is, then, to a house of this Order, and that the most sumptuous and splendid in the world, that we come when, on our way from Milan to Pavia, we leave the train at the wayside station of Certosa. All the greater Carthusian houses look like walled villages, but the Certosa of Pavia looks like a city, and it is indeed different in many ways from every other monastery of the Order. To begin with, the Certosa of Pavia, for all its appear- ance of solitude, is not built in a waste or desert place like the Grande Chartreuse, or like the first house of the Order in England on the verge of a forest : it is estab- y 1 The Certosa of Pavia was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin on her Nativity, September 8, 1396. In England before the change of religion there were twelve Carthusian Houses. To-day, so far as I know, there is one at Parkminster in Sussex. 138 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY lished within a few miles of the city of Pavia, one of the most important and famous capitals of Lombardy, and in this it follows the later custom of the Order, which on occasion was used to establish houses in or near great cities or towns, as the Charterhouse in London, and the Certosa in the Val d' Ema, close to Florence. In the second place, it has nothing about it of the harsh simplicity of the Grande Chartreuse or the rural seclusion of modern Parkminster ; it is one of the most sumptuous monasteries in the world, and though built in the monotonous plain is surrounded by riches. Lastly, it owes its foundation, as I have said, not to a saint but to a murderer, a man with a monstrous crime upon his soul, the worldlj. benefits of which he was then enjoying, Giovanni Galeazzo Visconti. In the year 1354, when the great Archbishop Giovanni Visconti died, he was succeeded in his great lordship by his three nephews, Matteo, Bernabo and Galeazzo. The first ruled in Bologna, Lodi, Piacenza, Parma and Bobbio, the second in Cremona, Crema, Brescia and Bergamo, but Galeazzo held Pavia, Como, Novara, Vercelli, Asti, Tortona and Alessandria. The two great cities of Milan and Genoa the three governed in common. In 1355 Matteo died, and his brothers ruled the whole lordship together, Galeazzo holding his court at Pavia and Bernabo at Milan. Galeazzo died in 1378, and was succeeded in his part of the Visconti domain by his son, Giovanni Galeazzo. There now began one of those brutal internecine struggles which are so common among the ruling families of Italy. Bernabo and his sons determined to get possession of Gian Galeazzo's estate ; on the other hand, he made up his mind to supplant his uncle and to unite the whole Visconti dominion in his own person. Physically the THE CERTOSA OF PA VIA 139 man was a coward, and he did not disguise the fact : he shut himself up in Pavia and plotted his way to victory. Immersed as his enemies thought in religious exercises, he but prepared his treason. In 1385 he made known his intention of going on pilgrimage to Our Lady of Varese. Leaving Pavia with a bodyguard of Germans, he passed near Milan, his uncle and cousins coming forth to meet him. When he saw them in his power he spoke quietly to his Germans, who surrounded the unsuspecting company and took them prisoners. Then he suddenly marched into Milan, proclaimed himself Duke, and poisoned his rivals in the dungeon where he had cast them, at the castle of Trezzo. This is the man, a criminal, a coward, but a great ruler, to whom we owe the foundation of the Duomo of Milan, and in expiation of the crime which got him his power, the foundation of the Carthusian monastery of Pavia. The Certosa was suppressed as a religious house first in 1782 by the Emperor Joseph 11., and then, after a brief restoration in 1843, finally with the rest of the Italian religious houses in 1866. It is now a national monument, and it costs a franc to enter it, as it does to enter the Ufiizi Gallery or the Brera. It is a national monument, and of all the robberies the Italian Govern- ment has perpetrated under the cloak of justice and popular government this seems to me to be the most justified. At least, I think we resent it less than we do the shameful theft of S. Francesco at Assisi, or any of the thousand crimes that have left the convents of Italy desolate and turned them into barracks or post offices or worse. For the Certosa of Pavia might seem never to have been a true monastery at all. Its fame and its incomparable and lavish beauty have almost nothing to do with religion. It is not the house of God and of His servants we see there, but the magnificent, proud and boastful mausoleum of the Visconti lords and of their more pretentious successors the Sforza. Pathetically 140 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY insolent even in death, they lie there in all their painted splendour uncontrite and unashamed, and the only prayers that can ever have been said there must have begun with an invocation of their clemency, and the only chants must have sung their fulsome praise. Nowhere in the world has the pride of men — and of such men — faced God out with so strange an effrontery : not at the Escorial, where the Spanish kings for all their cruel pride, frozen into silence amid those peaks, have laid themselves down at last in all humility; certainly not at S. Denis or Westminster, where in the whispering aisles men still pray and the dead are a little beloved, for they were our own. But these were kings, and their royalty demands of us at least the splendour of beauty. At the Certosa, more sumptuous by far, men have in- terred in marbles so precious that they can never be broken a succession of bandits who knew no faith and who get no reverence, whom no one ever thinks of with kindness, enthusiasm or pride, whose crimes are all that they have written on the page of history. Here in unregarded splendour lies unremembered till the Day of Judgment il Gian Biscione, Gian Galeazzo, murderer and coward, the founder of this mausoleum ; here is quenched the blood-thirst of Gian Maria of the same house ; here, in the remorseless locked marble, Filippo has hidden his vices and his cunning ; Francesco Sforza and his treason are imprisoned here, and Galeazzo Maria with his vanities and his lusts ; and over them all hovers the dread they had of the assassin's knife, the terror of their end, the pestilence, the cruelty, the oppression, the fraud, the labyrinthine plots, the murder and the broken faith by which they lived and died. In all this cold and cruel and sumptuous place, where art seems for all its joy and health and wealth and willingness to have died on the threshold and worked with ghostly and inhuman hands, you will not find a touch of human dignity : these bourgeois, with commonplace, vicious THE CERTOSA OF PA VIA 141 and cunning faces, heavy features, bloated and stupid, these are their kings in Lombardy, and all the genius of Italy has not sufficed to make them noble. The gate of the Certosa di Pavia, so picturesque in itself and beautiful with the fading frescoes of Bernardino Luini, stands more than half a mile from the station. It opens on the great courtyard which stands before the western fagade of the church, one of those gorgeous frontispieces so peculiarly Italian, having, architec- turally, little or no relation to the building which lies behind, but in themselves complete works of art. Every Carthusian monastery is dedicated to the Virgin Mother of God, nor is the Certosa of Pavia an exception, for here across this fagade of rich and elaborated marbles, amid delicate arabesques and numerous bas-reliefs, we may read the inscription invoking the protection of Mary the Virgin, at once Mater et Filia et Sposa Dei. Those bas-reliefs, which rather enrich than decorate a frontispiece already too elaborate and confused, relate for the most part the story of the founding of the monastery and the funeral of the founder, who was borne hither from Marignano in November 1443 — the triple murderer, Giovanni Galeazzo Visconti. But among the more important of them we may trace certain smaller plaques, on which are to be found scenes from the life of the Blessed Virgin, of S. John the Baptist, who so frequently shares with Our Lady the dedication of a Carthusian house, but here would seem to stand as the patron of the founder ; and of those true Milanese heroes, S. Ambrose and S. Siro. This extraordinarily rich and beautiful work, perhaps the finest thing of its kind that the Renaissance con- ceived, was begun in 1491 by Giovanni Antonio Amadeo. It was for long attributed to Borgognone the painter, and indeed the whole has rather the effect of painting than of architecture. 142 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY The church is built in the form of a Latin cross, with a very beautiful cupola, a delightful and lovely inspiration, above the crossing. Within, the church consists of three Gothic naves, with fourteen side chapels, divided from the nave, as are the Renaissance transepts and choir, by elaborate bronze gates. But rich as the interior is, one is continually forced to agree with Street when, in speaking of this building, he says : " It is hardly possible to scan or criticise the architecture of such a building ; ... it is better to follow the guidance of the cicerone, and to look at the pictures behind the many altars set round with precious stones and enclosed within reredoses made of such an infinite variety of marbles, that, with some degree of envy, one thinks how precious such an array would be on this side the Alps, even though it were spread through fifty churches." Following his advice, we come to the first chapel on the left, in which is a Renaissance fountain by the two Mantegazza, Antonio and his more talented brother Cristoforo. In the second chapel is the upper part of that altarpiece, one of the master-works of Perugino, which is one of the greater treasures of the National Gallery. As we see it here in the Certosa, this altarpiece of six compartments consists entirely of copies, save the upper central panel, of God the Father, which is the original work of Perugino. At the sides of this of old stood two panels representing the Annunciation, which have disappeared, and below was the triptych we know so well in London, the Virgin adoring her Infant Son, with S. Michael on one side and S. Raphael with Tobias on the other. According to Vasari, Perugino painted this altarpiece for the monastery, which in 1786 is said to have sold that part of it now in London to one of the Melzi family ; but the Certosa was suppressed in 1782, so that it seems more than likely that this nefarious traffic was the work rather of the Austrian Government than of the monks. However that may be, the Melzi family THE CERTOSA OF PA VIA 143 by hook or by crook possessed themselves of it and sold it to the National Gallery in 1856. Close by this mutilated altarpiece we have a noble work by Borgognone, the Four Great Church Fathers ; and in the sixth chapel there is another work by this great Lombard master, S. Ambrose and Four Saints, dated 1490, which with the following year, 1491, marks the period of Borgognone's work here, although this master painted some five works for the Certosa. Perhaps the most remarkable and gifted of the true Lombard masters, Borgognone was the follower of Foppa, and though his talent is a limited one, he at least escaped that blight of prettiness which overwhelmed so many of his countrymen and his contemporaries. His real signifi- cance as a religious painter has never properly been allowed for or understood ; but it remains true neverthe- less that when most of his contemporaries all over Italy were wholly without the religious sense he was in possession of it, so that it informs and distinguishes all his art as it had done that of Angelico, and as it was doing that of Perugino, but with the Lombard in a less divine fashion. As a painter pure and simple, he is as near to being a great master as any that Lombardy ever produced, and his reputation must continually increase, for his strong, sensitive and exquisite work remains as something real and sincere in our minds when we are weary of the sweetness of Luini and the prettiness of Gaudenzio Ferrari. But with him the tradition of sincerity and strength which Foppa had established in Lombardy comes to an end. Nowhere better than here shall we be able to appreci- ate Borgognone's work, surrounded as it is by the achievements of Leonardo's hapless Lombard pupils. Northern Italian art, to be sure, has nothing more lovely to show us than the Coronation of the Virgin with the kneeling figures of Francesco Sforza and Ludovico il Moro. The beauty of the landscape, of the figures, of 144 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY Mary and the Apostles, convinces us of the high place to which the art of Borgognone had been called, and reminds us that if nothing but his work remained to us we should know that Lombardy had produced at least one master. Here, too, we have two beautiful fragments, the recumbent figures of Ludovico il Moro and Beatrice d' Este, by Cristoforo Solari, the brother of Andrea, the pupil of Leonardo. The monument from which these statues come was that erected to Beatrice by her husband in the apse of S. Maria delle Grazie in Milan. It was early mutilated and removed to one of the aisles there, and about a hundred years later was broken up and sold. Oldrado da Lampugnano bought these two statues for the Certosa, and we can thus see this famous Duke and Duchess of the Sforza house as they lived. For these works are not only faithful and living portraits, but the highest achievement of Lombard sculpture and the master- works of that Solari called " II Gobbo," for he was a hunchback, who carved the Adam and Eve on the fagade of the Duomo of Milan and the Christ at the Column in the sacristy, works which give no real idea of his genius. We shall never see the tomb so brutally destroyed, and yet it had a sentimental interest as great as its artistic beauty. For it was by this tomb of his wife that II Moro watched all through the night before his escape from Milan on the approach of the French. *' She had been a support to him in previous hours of danger, and this was a last and touching proof of the attachment which he had always shown her while living, by associating her name with his in all public acts and inscriptions, and by causing her portrait to be always painted with his own. Had she lived he might perhaps have been spared the loss of his kingdom and those eight weary years of captivity in the castle of Loches." To the east of the north transept and to the left of the THE CERTOSA OF PA VIA 145 choir stands the old sacristy. Over the door are fine medallions by Amadeo of the Dukes of Milan. Here is a curious ivory altarpiece with sixty-seven reliefs and eighty small statues of prophets and personages from the Old and New Testaments by the Florentine Bal- dassare degli Embriachi, a work of the fifteenth century. On the left is a picture of S. Augustine by Borgognone. In the choir, before the high altar, is a beautiful relief, a Piet^, perhaps by Ambrogio Volpi, who built the altar. But the chief splendour here is the choir stalls with inlaid figures of Apostles and Saints, designed by Borgognone, but executed by Bartolommeo dei Polli in the end of the fifteenth century. To the right of the choir stands the Lavabo, entered by a beautiful door having seven portraits in relief of Visconti and Sforza duchesses over a relief by Amadeo of Christ washing His disciples' feet. Within, to the left, is a fresco by Luini, the Madonna and Child with a Carnation. The most beautiful thing here, however, is the fifteenth-century glass by Cristoforo de' Mattei. From the Lavabo one may reach the cemetery. Turning now to the right transept, we come upon the great monument to the founder of the monastery and of the Duomo of Milan, Giovanni Galeazzo Visconti. This tomb, all of Carrara marble, was begun in 1490 from a design of Galeazzo Pellegrino, but not completed till 1562. As we see it, it is the work of many artists, among them Galeazzo Alessi. There we see the un- scrupulous son of Galeazzo, a physical coward but one of the boldest minds in Italy, stretched upon the precious marble under a rich canopy of the sixteenth century. About the tomb are set six fine reliefs, in which we see Gian Galeazzo receiving the baton of command from his father ; created Duke of Milan by the Emperor Wenceslaus ; founding the Certosa ; building the Castello of Milan ; defeating the Imperial troops at Brescia in 1402 ; and establishing the University of 10 146 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY Pavia. These are commonly stated to be the beautiful work of Amadeo. The inscription, however, would seem to attribute the whole tomb to Gian Cristoforo Romano, which is certainly untrue ; for the statues of Fame and of Victory at the extremities of the tomb are certainly the work of Bernardino da Novi ; that of the Madonna and Child is by Bernardino de' Brioschi. This monument is not a tomb. Gian Galeazzo Visconti died at Marignano in September 1402, and was buried in the Duomo of Milan with much pomp. Forty years later his body was removed to the Certosa, but when, fifty years after that, this monument was begun, no one was able to recall where he had been interred. He was completely forgotten. ''L'oubli et le silence sont la punition." On the vault at the end of the transept is a fresco by Bramantino, in which we see Gian Galeazzo and his family kneeling before the Virgin. He is offering her a model of the church ; Filippo is behind him, and Gio- vanni and Gabriele Maria, his two other sons, are opposite. Fontana's two great bronze candelabra and the fine glass in the windows complete what is, I suppose, the finest corner of this church. Close by is the Sagrestia Nuova, reached by a door over which is a fresco of the Madonna enthroned with saints and angels, by that rare master Montagna, between pictures by Borgognone. The large altarpiece here is the work of Andrea Solario, and represents the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin. Proceeding now into the aisle, we find in the third chapel perhaps the loveliest picture in the church, I mean Borgognone's splendid altarpiece of S. Siro and four saints. Another work, a Crucifixion, by the same master, greets us in the next chapel, and the Four Evangelists about Maderno's altarpiece in the sixth are also the work of this great Lombard. One should, if the guides that infest the church will THE CERTOSA OF PA VIA 147 allow it, return to the south transept, and from it enter the Chios tro della Font ana, the Small Cloister with its frescoes by Crespi and its terra-cotta frieze of children playing upon instruments of music. The doorway into this cloister is the work of Amadeo. It is a cold but lovely place, and offers us the best view we can get of the church. The refectory is to be reached from it, a fine room with a cornice by Borgognone. From the Chiostro della Fontana, too, we may reach the Great Cloister, surrounded on three sides by the cells of the monks, empty now, each consisting of four rooms on two floors and a tiny garden. Such is the great Certosa of Pavia, a place famous in history, and one of the most sumptuous buildings in the world, now as dead and as empty as the Italian Government can make it. One wonders, as one is led about this extraordinary mausoleum, how anyone can ever have prayed there, it is so cold and so proud in its immortality. How often when I have lingered, hoping at evening for a sign and finding none, have I longed for the ruins of my own land, where a kinder because a less vulgar fate has overtaken all such places as this. For there comes back into my mind the stillness and the holiness of that hillside in Somerset where I have so often dreamed away the hours amid the early English arches covered with ivy and golden lichens and all manner of flowers, that is Hinton Charterhouse, wrapped in a lovely sleep, guard- ing our past, and still to be named Locus Dei. CHAPTER VIII PAVIA PAVIA, " La Dotta," the learned, the City of the Hundred Towers, lies on the northern bank of the Ticino, some four miles to the south of the Certosa. On the right bank of the river lies the small suburb of Borgo Ticino, which is connected with the city by a remarkable covered bridge, built in 1351 by Gian Galeazzo Visconti. This place has always stood out- side the city, or rather the fortress proper of Pavia, which, with its tremendous walls and towers, for many centuries was the strongest place in all the Lombard plain : Verona, which held the northern gate, being its only rival. Ticinum, as Pavia was anciently called, has a long and an illustrious history. It took its name from the river on which it stands, some five miles above the junction of that stream with the Po, and according to Pliny it was originally of Gaulish foundation. It is almost certainly, indeed, later than the time of Hannibal, who must have crossed the Ticino in the immediate neighbourhood of the present town, and it is highly probable that the ford here created the place, which thus even in its genesis was a fortress. The earliest mention of Ticinum in history is to be found in Tacitus,^ who tells us that Augustus, on the death of Drusus, the father of Germanicus, advanced " as far as Ticinum " to meet the funeral procession. It must indeed about this time have become of some importance, * Ann. iii. 5. 148 ON THE ROAD tlh HKllJuK, PAVIA PAVIA 149 for the great highroad from Piacenza to the foot of the Alps passed through it, and not through Milan, though later, when the latter city had become the second capital of Italy, it was customary to proceed thither, instead of following the more direct way. But it was not till after the fall of the Empire that Ticinum rose to the position it occupied all through the Dark Ages. Its fame began with the disaster of 452, when Attila took and sacked it; but Theodoric, struck by its position, rebuilt it, and erected there a royal palace, finally making it so strong that it became what it long remained, the most formidable citadel in this part of Italy, in which the royal treasure was deposited.^ When the Lombards broke into Italy, the city, which they called Papia, offered an heroic resistance to Alboin, and was not taken till it had been besieged for more than three years. It was, however, under the Lombards that it reached the zenith of its fame, for it then became the capital of the kingdom of Italy, a position which it held till 774, when Desiderius, the last of the Lombard kings, was compelled to surrender the city by Charlemagne, after a blockade of fifteen months. Charlemagne appears before Pavia in answer to the call of Pope Hadrian from beleaguered Rome, as the saviour of Europe in one of the most tremendous moments in our history. All great things become as a tale that is told — best of all in verse — and this too : — It is a tale of Charlemagne, When like a thundercloud that lowers And sweeps from mountain crest to coast, With lightning flaming through its showers. He swept across the Lombard plain, -"^ Beleaguering with his warlike train Pavia, the country's pride and boast. The City of the Hundred Towers. ^ Cf. Procopius, De Bella Gotico, ii. 12, 25, iii. i, iv. 32. 150 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY Charlemagne himself, with a great part of that sleepless army to which we owe all that is precious to us to-day, crossed the Alps by the Mont Cenis, the rest of his troops making their way into Lombardy by the Great St. Bernard. The army of Desiderius, which had intended to meet him in the narrow defiles, fled at his approach, and the last Lombard king shut himself up in his great fortress of Pavia to await the coming of the Iron King — ^with what presentiments and expecta- tions let the ballad tell, for it is very glorious : — Olger the Dane and Desiderio, King of the Lombards, on a lofty tower Stood gazing northward o'er the rolling plains. League after league of harvests, to the foot Of the snow-crested Alps, and saw approach A mighty army, thronging all the roads That led into the city. And the King Said unto Olger, who had passed his youth As hostage at the Court of France, and knew The Emperor's form and face : "Is Charlemagne Among that host ? " and Olger answered: " No." And still the innumerable multitude Flowed onward and increased, until the King Cried in amazement : " Surely Charlemagne Is coming in the midst of all these knights ! " And Olger answered slowly : " No, not yet ; He will not come so soon." Then, much disturbed, King Desiderio asked : " What shall we do. If he approach with a still greater army ? " And Olger answered : " When he shall appear. You will behold what manner of man he is ; But what will then befall us I know not." Then came the guard that never knew repose, The Paladins of France ; and at the sight The Lombard king, o'ercome with terror, cried : " This must be Charlemagne ! " and as before Did Olger answer : " No, not yet, not yet." And then appeared, in panoply complete, The Bishops and the Abbots and the Priests Of the Imperial Chapel and the Courts ; PA VI A 151 And Desiderio could no more endure The light of day, nor yet encounter death, But sobbed aloud, and said : " Let us go down And hide us in the bosom of the earth, Far from the sight and anger of a foe So terrible as this ! " And Olger said : " When you behold the harvests in the fields Shaking with fear, the Po and the Ticino Lashing the city walls with iron waves, Then may you know that Charlemagne is come.*' Now, even as he spake, in the north-west, Lo, there uprose a black and threatening cloud Out of whose bosom flashed the light of arms Upon the people pent up in the city ; A light more terrible than any darkness ; And Charlemagne appeared : — a Man of Iron I His helmet was of iron, and his gloves Of iron, and his breastplate and his greaves And tassets were of iron, and his shield. In his left hand he held an iron spear. In his right hand his sword invincible. The horse he rode on had the strength of iron And colour of iron. All who went before him, Beside him, and behind him, his whole host. Were armed with iron, and their hearts within them Were stronger than the armour that they wore. The fields and all the roads were filled with iron, And points of iron glistened in the sun And shed a terror through the city streets. This at a single glance Olger the Dane Saw from the tower, and turning to the King, Exclaimed in haste : " Behold ! this is the man We looked for with such eagerness ! " and then Fell as one dead at Desiderio's feet. Thus came Charlemagne into Italy to deliver Europe from the barbarian and to restore the Empire. He came at the behest of the Pope Hadrian, who sent him a messenger whose name was Peter. This Peter — such was the state of Italy in the hands of the barbarians — travelled by sea to Marseilles, and so up the Rhone 152 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY valley, to find Charlemagne on the Moselle near Metz. The great king heard the Pope's summons, and determined to deliver us out of our distress. He set out with his invincible armies, crossed the barriers of the Alps and swept down upon Pavia, which after fifteen months' siege flung open her gates on a Tuesday in June 774. The domination of the Lombards was ended by that act. Charlemagne, who as it seems never entered Milan, used Pavia as the centre of his power in Italy. A royal residence was built in the neighbourhood on the Olona, and called Corteolona. But with the failure of the Carolingian power Pavia decayed, and became what it ever after remained, a provincial city. Yet it was in S. Michele Maggiore at Pavia that Berenger of Friuli and his successors down to Adalbert 11. were crowned kings of Italy. In the reign of the first Berenger Pavia was sacked by the Hungarians, but in 951 it was the scene of the marriage of Otto i. and that Adelaide whom he had crossed the Alps to rescue and to marry ; and in this romance was established once more the often broken Empire. Fifty years later, however, when the succession of the crown of Italy was in dispute between the Emperor Henry 11. and Arduin of Ivrea, Pavia took the part of the latter, and in 1004 was laid in ruins by Henry, when on the night of his coronation in S. Michele Maggiore he was attacked by the people. Nevertheless, it rose from its ruins, and in 1026 was even ready to close its gates against Conrad the Salic. The eleventh and twelfth centuries show us a growing jealousy between Pavia and Milan, which in the general amelioration of the world and the growing power of the Latin population of Italy could have but one end, the ruin of Pavia. To save herself, Pavia turned to the Emperors, and indeed remained attached to their cause till the end of the fourteenth century. This availed her very little, however, for by 1360, when PAVIA 153 Galeazzo Visconti was appointed Imperial Vicar by Charles iv., the city had become a mere possession of the ruling Milanese family, without life of its own or any sort of independence. Henceforth Pavia is merged in the Duchy of Milan, and it has very little real importance even in the local history of Lombardy till we come to the year 1499, when it revolted against the French garrison. For this in the following year it paid the penalty, and in 15 12, after the French victory at Ravenna over the Papal and Spanish armies, which cost Gaston de Foix his life, Pavia was tamed, and as a sign of fidelity presented Louis xii. with a magnificent standard. The victory of Ravenna, however, and the death of Gaston de Foix closed the good fortune of the French in Italy. For all its promised fidelity to the French, by 1525 it had been fortified so strongly that it was able to defy Francis i., who was utterly beaten in the neighbourhood on February 24 in that year, the king, after fighting with heroic valour and killing seven of the enemy with his own hand, being taken prisoner. So utterly without hope did that defeat leave the French that Francis wrote to his mother, Louise of Savoy, Regent of France in his absence, that letter in which occurs the famous phrase, "Tout est perdu, fors I'honneur." All was not lost, however, for two years later Lautrec was able to avenge that famous defeat and to put Pavia to the sack during seven days. During the years of Spanish rule, after the Duchy of Milan in 1540 was annexed to the Spanish crown, life in Pavia was what it was everywhere else in Lombardy, till in 1655 Prince Tommaso of Savoy, at the head of a French army of 20,000, laid siege to Pavia, but after fifty-two days raised it and withdrew. In all this, and in the events of the years which followed, Pavia suffered as a part of Lombardy the common misfortune. It was continually occupied and reoccupied by the 154 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY Austrians (1706), the French (1733), the Spaniards (1743) ; the Austrians finally holding the whole field (1746-96). In the May of 1796 Napoleon appeared before the city, took it and pillaged it during three days. The hope he brought of an Italian kingdom failed, and in 1814 Pavia with the rest of the sometime kingdom was in the Austrian power again. But the apparition of Napoleon had prophesied a new future, which the nineteenth century was to see realised. After the glorious revolution of 1848, which was crushed with an extraordinary brutality by the Austrians, and the University closed, in 1859 Savoy was in the field, and Pavia with the rest of Lombardy passed, as we may expect, permanently to that standard, to form the strongest and most formidable part of that new State and nation we know as United Italy. Pavia appears to us to-day, not as a great industrial capital like Milan, but as one of those old-world pro- vincial cities which are the strength and the glory of Italy. Her very famous past may, largely, be still read in her aspect and in her stones and buildings, and at least we may note there the various periods of her history, and remember in the modern city all that has gone with so much rumour and sound before us. The oldest church in Pavia, one of the most re- markable churches in Lombardy, is S. Michele Mag- giore, which stands not far from the Ticino, in that part of the city that is farthest from the railway station. All along the Via Emilia, between Venetia on the north and Tuscany and the Apennines on the south, between the Alps and the Adriatic, there may be found a whole series of buildings, certainly of the North, belonging to a style of architecture which we call Lombard, but which it would be an error to merge altogether in the larger title of Romanesque. Perhaps PAVIA 155 the most remarkable of these buildings, among which we may name Borgo S. Donnino, the monastic church of Chiaravalle and S. Fedele at Como,^ is the Church of S. Michele at Pavia, which is certainly one of the earliest, dating as it does from the last years of the eleventh century. Its true plan is that of a basilica 190 feet long by 45 feet wide, but short transepts have been added to it. The main building is of massive stone, and is ornamented and broken without by small open galleries crowning the apse and the facade. The doors are round-arched, decorated with mouldings and all sorts of imagery, bands of which are carried across the fagade, and, as medallions, break the monotony of the walls. The windows, like the doors, are round, and the whole is at once massive, savage and restless, a true barbarian work — that is to say, the work of a barbarian who has been brought in contact with Latin work and has been unable to use or assimilate it. Something rude and uncouth we find in all this, of course, for that is the fundamental nature of it, but how full of energy and life it is, too, how restless, daring and unhappy. And indeed the whole building seems to express a sort of disappointment, most of all with itself, as though its builders had seen a vision which they could not recall, or had heard some sudden good news which they could not remember. It is well to remember that the church is dedicated to the warrior-archangel S. Michael, and that everywhere it speaks of deliverance — deliverance perhaps from the helpless misery and dis- orderliness of the forests, of the roadless lands hidden in the twilight of the North, that here on the sunny side of the great mountains had been left behind for ever, but still remained as a kind of uneasy and ever recurrent dream. The souls of the men who built these churches were haunted by an unconscious recollection of ^ We shall come upon others in S. Maria Maggiore at Bergamo, the Duomos of Cremona, Piacenza, Modena and Parma. 156 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY barbarism, from which suddenly and by a kind of miracle their fathers and they themselves had been delivered. So over the main portal of the church they built to S. Michel e they carved the great archangel and deliverer battling with the Devil ; over the south door they carved S. George victorious over the Dragon ; over the north door Jonah saved from all the restless desert of the sea by the whale, which might, for us at least, well stand here for Latin civilisation, which was to preserve the barbarian really by swallowing him whole and altogether. This haunting dread, and an overwhelming sense of deliverance from it, are expressed not only in these carvings over the doors, but everywhere in S. Michele. The belts of carving along the walls, the medallions, and the figures on the jambs of the arches represent dragons, griffins, sphinxes, centaurs, snakes and eagles, a whole menagerie of doubtful creatures from whose ^power here in Italy one had escaped, that Christianity certainly had once and for all disposed of. It is the same within the church, and indeed here in S. Michele Christianity appears in the eleventh century as it appeared to the men of the primitive Church, as a refuge from a whole world of danger, disorder and ennui, as a refuge most of all, perhaps, from oneself ; a philosophy, a faith, a revelation upon acquiring or receiving which depended the safety of the whole world and of one's own soul. It is possible here in this strange and lonely church to understand that ultimately there is no such thing as Europe, that there is only Christendom, since it is upon what is in the mind and the soul the present and the future of man depend. Within, the church, restored in the middle of the last century, is supported by eight pillars, from which rise double round arches along the nave, while the crossing is covered by an octagonal dome. Here the crypt PAVIA 157 under the choir is probably older than the church as we see it, and may well date from the seventh century or earlier. To pass from S. Michele to the Duomo in the midst of the city is to pass from the greatness of Pavia to its provincial splendour under the Visconti and the Sforza. The Duomo was begun by Galeazzo Maria Sforza in 1488, and was still unfinished when Ludovico il Moro went into captivity, as it remains to-day. It is not a pleasing building, and if we may judge by the modern model within the sacristy, had it been finished we should have liked it less even than we do. The beautiful old doorway between the campanile and the main building is the only relic of an earlier building that stood here or ever the Sforza came, under the old invocation of S. Siro, whose body lies in the crypt in a marble tomb enclosed in a splendid shrine. From the Cathedral one proceeds up the Corso to the Piazza d' Italia and the University, which it is said Charlemagne founded in 774. However that may be, the University of Pavia owes almost everything to Gian Galeazzo Visconti, who endowed it with many privileges in 1390 and is regarded as its founder. Nevertheless, Pavia was able to boast of learning and philosophy before the Visconti were thought of. Is not Boethius her son, and did he not write here in his captivity the De Con- solatione Philosophiae that our King Alfred loved ? And was not Lanfranc, Norman William's Archbishop of Canterbury, born here, and did he not make the legal and philosophical school of Pavia famous through all Europe ? To Giovanni Visconti we owe, however, the presence here of Petrarch, who was so often his guest ; and the Visconti foundation can at least boast of a name famous through the world, for in 1447 Christopher Columbus was at the University here. For all this fame, there is little to be seen of the old buildings of the University : it all seems to be of the 158 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY eighteenth century and to be due to Maria Theresa or the Emperor Joseph. More interesting is the church behind the University, dedicated to S. Maria di Canepanova, begun in 1492 by Galeazzo Maria Visconti in the style of Bramante, that true Italian way of building with space and light and harmony. On the western side of the University, and about as far from it as S. Maria di Canepanova, is the Church of S. Maria del Carmine, or as some have it, S. Pantaleone, a beautiful Gothic building of brick, unlike anything else I know in all Lombardy, and with a very lovely campanile. From this delicate and un- Italian thing, like a strange wild flower, unexpected and beautiful, we turn back into the Corso, and pursuing our way come at last to the gloomy Castello on the verge of the city. This horrid place is said to stand upon the site of the palace of the Lombard kings : it is itself, however, a building of 1460, and it has faced all the French, Spanish and Austrian invasions till 1796, when the French to make it more impregnable removed the roof and covered it with earth, and finally left it the ruinous thing we see. It is now an artillery barracks and well worth seeing, gloomy and dilapidated though it be. The great treasure of Pavia, however, is to be found in that church close to the Castello which is called S. Pietro in Ciel d' Oro, which with its magnificent west front and polygonal tower is itself a wonder, but is altogether glorious because it is the casquet — as far as the body of the church goes a poor one — of one of the five great shrines of Italy — that of S. Augustine — comparable in splendour with those of S. Peter Martyr in S. Eustorgio at Milan, of S. Domenico at Bologna, of S. Donato at Arezzo, and of Our Lady in Or S. Michele at Florence. The body of S. Augustine, with the fall of the Roman Empire, was brought in 430 from Hippo in the province of Africa, then in the hands of the Vandals, to Cagliari in PAVIA 159 Sardinia by the Catholic clergy whom King Thrasmund the Vandal and Arian had banished. Originally the body had been buried in the Church of S. Stefano at Hippo ; it was reinterred in the Church of S. Saturnio in Cagliari, where for more than two centuries it remained, till indeed Sardinia was overrun by the Saracens and it was found impossible to protect the pilgrims to the shrine. Then the great Liutprand, King of the Lombards, bought the body of the infidel for 60,000 golden crowns, and in 710 had it borne to his Church of S. Pietro in Ciel d' Oro in Pavia, where he placed it in the custody of the Benedictines, who then held the church and monastery, and when he came to die he looked for nothing better than to be buried at the feet of the great Doctor and Saint, and so it was. In 1220 the church passed from the Benedictines to the Canons Regular of S. Augustine, and a hundred years later, in 1327, the place was given into the part keeping of the Canons of the Eremitani di S. Agos- tino. In 1350 the latter, it is said, began the work of erecting a great shrine to hold the body of the Saint, probably in competition or imitation of the Dominicans, who by the hands of Balduccio had just built the marvellous shrine of S. Peter Martjn: in S. Eustorgio of Milan. The work at Pavia, it now appears certain, was given to one or more of those pupils of Balduccio who were numerous in Lombardy, probably to Matteo and Bonnino di Campione. It is probable that Gian Galeazzo, uneasy about the murder he contemplated, both before and after its accomplishment, supplied the Eremitani with a large part of the necessary money ; other sums, as we know, came from the faithful and pilgrims, and indeed we hear in the course of a dispute, finally settled by the Holy See, of a sum of 4000 gold crowns being given by one person. With the decay of religion and the horrors of the wars i6o THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY the shrine seems to have fallen into decay, the church became a military hospital, and it was at length proposed to transfer the tomb to the Cathedral. Nothing was done, however, till towards the end of the eighteenth century the shrine was taken down and carried off to the Church of the Gesu, whither the Eremitani had been transferred. Then, in 1799, the Eremitani were suppressed altogether, the Church of S. Pietro, save the tower and fa9ade, was demolished, and in the out- cry which followed the shrine was remembered, dfawn out of its obscurity at the Gesu and re-erected in the Cathedral. In 1902, however, the Church of S. Pietro having been rebuilt, the shrine was replaced as we now see it. In appearance the shrine is a vast oblong tomb covered by a canopy borne by square piers. The whole is of marble, and in every part is elaborately carved and niched and set about with statues and reliefs. On the top of the tomb, beneath the gabled canopy, the marble efftgy of the Saint lies in a linen pall upheld by angels. The whole is perhaps a triile heavy and compares badly with Balduccio's work in S. Eustorgio, but it is in itself a marvellous and precious monument, an everlasting witness to the nobility of the age which produced, and to the men who desired and loved such a work as this. It is easy to measure the enormous abyss which separates our time from theirs, and us from them, when we realise that nowhere in the world could such a work as this be carried out to-day ; but then we no longer hold the Christian philosophy and have so far ceased to be European. It is little wonder, then, that when we would build a monument we erect such a vulgarity as the Victoria Memorial, or such a heavy ineptitude as the Admiralty Arch at Charing Cross, and this though no saint that has ever existed is capable of exciting in us the love and reverence we had for PAVIA i6i Queen Victoria. Nor are we alone in this : industrialism has set its loathsome seal upon all our hearts, that without love or speech or sight or hearing we may pass gloomily through a gloomy and unhappy world without hope and without beauty. II CHAPTER IX MONZA SOME ten miles to the north of Milan, still in the plain but within sight of the hills, stands Monza, which in its memories, its beautiful relics, its thirteenth- century Broletto, recalls for us the earlier Lombardy, for it was here from the eleventh century, in the first city within the Italian border, that the emperors-elect were crowned kings with the " iron crown of Lombardy," still holy and still preserved over the high altar of the Duomo, before they set out on that long march to Rome, there to receive the Imperial title and consecra- tion from the hands of the Pope. But Monza, Imperial as she is, as might be expected, is far older than the eleventh century. She seems first to have become important in the time of Theodoric the Goth, who is said to have built a palace here, perhaps a summer residence ; but her real and great fame dates from the sixth century, when that romantic Queen with the beautiful name, Theodolinda, made the place her residence and her capital. Autharis, King of the Lombards, an Arian and perhaps a pagan, had already when we find him king asked for and obtained the promise of the hand of Chlodosinda, daughter of Brunichildis, sister of Childebert, King of Austrasia. But when news reached Gaul of the con- version of Recared of Spain to the Catholic Faith, Brunichildis, who was herself a convert from Arianism and a fervent Catholic, broke off her daughter's engage- ment to Autharis and betrothed her to Recared. 162 MONZA 163 Thereupon the King of the Lombards turned his thoughts to a nearer neighbour, and determined to woo Theo- dolinda, daughter of Garibald, Duke of the Bavarians, of whose beauty he had heard many rumours, for she was very fair and slender. Taking, therefore, a few of his followers, he set out for the Bavarian Court in disguise, determined to be his own ambassador. To an old and trusted courtier was given the apparent leadership and the opening speech of greeting, and then Autharis himself, incognito, came forward and said : " My master Autharis has sent me that I may behold the face of his betrothed, our future mistress and Queen, and may make report of her beauty to my lord." Garibald then brought forward his daughter, and as Autharis gazed in silence on the beauty of Theodolinda he found himself in love. Thereafter he said to the Duke : "In truth we see that your daughter is well worthy to be our Queen. Command therefore, I pray, that we may receive from her hands a goblet of wine, as we hope often to do in years to come." And Theo- dolinda brought the goblet and offered it first to the old man as chief ; then she offered it to Autharis, all unwitting that he was her future husband. And he in returning the cup secretly intertwined his fingers with hers, and bending low to drink, guided them over his face from forehead to chin as it were a caress. When the embassy was gone, Theodolinda, not without shame, told her nurse of the strange behaviour of the Lombard. But the old dame in her cunning perceived the truth, and said : " Assuredly this must be the King thy suitor, for only he would dare to do so to thee. But let us not speak of this, lest thy father hear of it and be angry. In truth this Lombard is a comely person, worthy of the kingdom and of thee." She was right. The ambassadors were dismissed : no sooner did they reach the confines of Italy than l64 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY Autharis, raising himself on his horse, darted his battle- axe against a tree with incomparable dexterity. ** Such," said he to the astonished Bavarians, " such are the sti:okes of the King of the Lombards." Not long after, Bavaria was invaded from Gaul, and Theodolinda fled to Italy to her lover. They were married in the palace at Parma. But their happiness was destined to be brief. At the end of a year Autharis died, and Theodolinda, who had endeared herself to the Lombards, became their Queen, able to bestow with her hand the sceptre of the Italian kingdom. She married Agilulf, and made Monza her home. There she built a splendid palace, where after seven years of married life she gave birth to a son, Adaluald, who was baptized into the Catholic Faith. For indeed the great and noble work of Theodolinda was the conversion of the Lombard barbarians, lost in paganism or the Arian heresy, to Christianity; and in this she was the protegee of Gregory the Great, who loved her, for she was indeed the main agent in that great change which at last brought the Lombard nation into line with the other Teutonic monarchies of Europe. She died soon after the murder of her son in 628. The palace of Theodolinda, like the palace of Theodoric, stands no more in Monza; even its ruins have been destroyed. But she founded there something more enduring than a royal pleasaunce, that in some sort remains to us to this day, the great Church of S. John the Baptist, which she built in 590, and which was replaced by a Romanesque church in the twelfth century, and was again rebuilt in the fourteenth by Matteo da Campione. Monzia terra bona civili digna corona : Monzia cunctorum dives et plena bonorum : Monzia dat drapos cunctis mercantibus aptos : Monzia stat damnis precibus defensa Johannis. So sings, in his uncouth way, Buonincontro Morigia. MONZA 165 Standing on both banks of the Lambro, with its suburbs of Brugherio, S. Ambrogio and La Santa, Monza is a fair city. If the ancients knew her not, for she is a city of the Fall, to the men of the Middle Age she was as famous as any town in Italy, and the great church which Theodolinda, the Apostle of the Lombards, built beside her own palace remained through all its re- buildings the one true coronation church that has ever been erected south of the Alps. It is impossible here to tell all over again the history of Italy, or even of the Lombard kings who reigned in Monza until Desiderius was broken by Charlemagne, who is said to have come hither to Monza to receive the Iron Crown amid the most splendid ceremonies. What remains to us in Monza of that time is to be found in the great church. This, as I have said, is as we see it mainly a building of the fourteenth century by Matteo da Campione, yet even so it has been sadly spoiled in modern times. The fagade, which has been very largely restored in our own day, as Matteo da Campione built it was the model for the fagade of the Duomo of Milan. Over the main portal, upheld by serpentine columns resting upon lions and surmounted by a gilt figure of S. John Baptist, is a very curious relief from the earliest church, representing the Baptism of Christ, for the church is dedicated to S. John Baptist. There we see the Holy Spirit in the likeness of a dove, holding a vase in its mouth from which water falls upon the head of Our Lord ; an angel holds His garments, and near by stand the Blessed Virgin, S. John, S. Peter and S. Paul. Above, we see Theodolinda herself offering a jewelled crown to S. John Baptist, and with her her family: her husband Agilulf, her son Adaluald and her daughter Gundiberg. Adaluald holds in his hand a dove, a symbol perhaps of his purity and youth. This is all that remains without of the time of Theodolinda. The brick cam- i66 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY panile is of the sixteenth century, and the ineffective fa9ade is largely work of the restoration. Within, the church is spoilt by paint and restoration. In the right transept is a relief of the time of Otho ill., representing the coronation perhaps of that Emperor, with the six Electors and the Count of Saxony holding the sword of Charlemagne. Upon the altar are the treasures of Queen Theodolinda. In the chapel to the left of the choir in a large monstrance in the shape of a cross is preserved the holy and famous Iron Crown of Lombardy, which it is said Gregory the Great gave to Theodolinda. It consists of an inner circlet of iron beaten out of one of the nails of the Cross : this precious relic is encased in a circle of gold and jewels. It is one of the most sacred and priceless treasures — even from a merely historical point of view — to be found in Italy, for it has circled the brows of Theodolinda, of Charlemagne, of Frederick Barbarossa,^ of Charles v. and of Napoleon i. In itself it seems to bind Europe indissolubly into one ; and if ever the Empire be re-erected it is with this majestic and holy symbol we shall crown our Emperor. Not with it has the modern Italian kingdom been consecrated, a newer and a more brittle ring of gold suffices it. This symbol of iron, as old and as indestructible as Europe, awaits, let us believe it, him who shall make us one. And here in this holy place under the crown lies she who brought light and strength to her kingdom, the 1 So say the historians, but Cantu points out that Guntherus sings, in the 8th Book of the Ligurinus : " Turn demum victus Federicus ab urbe recessit, Medio cumque potens, prisco dignatus honore lUustrare locum, sacro diademate crines Induit et dextra gestavit sceptra potenti : " which means that he showed himself there in the crown. In the five days that Frederick spent at Monza were consumed a thousand wagons of wood for his kitchen, and a hundred Imperial lire. MONZA 167 Apostle of the Lombards, Queen Theodolinda, the friend of Gregory. Her tomb, a sarcophagus resting upon four pillars of marble, is a work of the fourteenth century, and the four frescoes of scenes from her life are of the fifteenth, restored in our own day. More interesting are her gifts to the church — the few that remain — in the treasury : a hen with seven chickens of silver-gilt, her crown and comb of gold filigree and fan of painted leather, and best of all, the " precious Gospel book" and cross which Gregory gave her when her son was baptized : it was his last gift before his death. Nothing else of any interest remains in the church, save the Sacramentary of Berengarius, who resided here in 903 and generously endowed the basilica, and the pastoral cross used by the emperors-elect at their coronation. In 1045 Archbishop Aribert, fleeing from Milan, took refuge in Monza, and almost caused the destruction of the city. In 1158, however, Monza was restored by Barbarossa. In the wars between Frederick and the Milanese, Monza at first, and naturally, sided with the Emperor, who enriched her church, surrounded the borgo with walls and founded a palace here. After the Peace of Constance, by the Treaty of Modena, in February 11 85, Monza was ceded to the Milanese. Then, in 1218, Frederick 11. forced the archpriest of the basilica to crown him with the Iron Crown. Nor is Frederick 11. the only famous bandit who has forced his way into Monza. In 1259 Ezzelino da Romano, crossing the Adda, laid siege to Monza; but Martino della Torre of Milan relieved and saved it. In 1274, however, the Torriani seized the treasure of the basilica and used it to pay for their wars. It was, however, recovered in 1319, when Matteo Visconti gave it into the personal keeping of the Canons. In 1311 Henry vii. had freed Monza from the Milanese for a payment of 5000 florins of gold made by the inhabitants. He i68 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY remained some days in the city, and not finding the Iron Crown, which, as we have seen, had been stolen by the Torriani, ordered one like it, with which he was crowned in S. Ambrogio of Milan. After 1312 Monza followed the fate and the fortunes of Milan. Little beside the Basilica of S. John Baptist remains worth seeing in Monza. The picturesque Broletto brings back to us the turbulence of the thirteenth cen- tury, and the fa9ade of S. Maria in Strada the work of the fourteenth. The Palazzo Reale, beyond the town, has nothing at all to attract us. CHAPTER X BERGAMO THERE is a corner of Italy — ^let us confess it, it is only a corner — where that accursed disease of Industrialism, the cancer that is eating away our virility, has unfortunately taken root : that corner I seemed to leave behind me at Monza. At least, I know I was altogether in another country when one autumn evening I came to the beautiful city of Bergamo, on the hills, over against the mountains, upon which the snow was lying far away, very pure and white ; against which, in her girdle of ancient walls, the city stood up lofty and splendid, her towers all shining in the setting sun. Bergamo, as we know it, consists of two separate parts which might seem to have nothing really in common : there is the Citt^ Bassa, anciently the Borgo, in the illimitable plain at the foot of the hills, an almost com- pletely modern town^ and quite separate from it the true Bergamo, the old Etruscan, Gaulish, Roman and Italian city, on the hill-top, the Citta Alta, as beautiful a place as is to be found in all Lombardy, and almost completely of the Middle Age and the Renaissance. In the Citt^ Bassa there are a few churches which either for their own sakes or for what they contain are of interest to us. Such are S. Alessandro in Colonna, which is dedicated to the patron of Bergamo, and contains a fine picture of the Assumption by Romanino ; S. Bartolommeo, which contains a great altarpiece by Lorenzo Lotto and some fine choir stalls of the sixteenth 169 170 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY century ; S. Spirito, a church of the Early Renaissance, which contains a large and beautiful altarpiece by Borgognone, and a Madonna with Saints and Angels by Lotto ; S. Bernardino in Pignolo, with another altarpiece by Lotto ; S. Alessandro della Croce, with a Madonna by Moroni, and in the sacristy a portrait by the same master and a picture of the Trinity by Lotto. Apart from these churches, the Citta Bassa has little interest, and is indeed a rather miserable place, a little infected by the modern disease of which I have spoken. It is far different with the Citta Alta. There every- thing is old and beautiful, full of honour, virility and en- durance. Unsuited to the modern restlessness and hurry, unapproachable by the railway, the true Bergamo still dreams on her fair hill-top of all we in our foolishness have forgotten, and, deserted by the Gadarene herd, who long since have rushed down her steep hillside into the mire of the plain, she still keeps her dreams about her, content to await every even the curfew from the Torre Comunale, and to ask for the protection of her two patrons, S. Alessandro and the Blessed Virgin, at sunset. I have said enough to tell the traveller that something unique and lovely awaits him in Bergamc, but no amount of description can hope to convince him of the virile beauty of the place, the magical beauty of the Piazza Maggiore to which all those steep, narrow, winding ways lined with great palaces seem to lead, the picturesque and virile beauty of the grand old tower that rises over it, the charm of the Broletto built upon arches, as at Como, through which one has glimpses of the splendour beyond. Here in Bergamo there is nothing frowning, miserable or unhappy ; she is gay and yet stately, bright, noble and sure of herself. There is nothing in all Lombardy better and lovelier than she. Her history is a tale that is told. Known to the Romans as Bergomum and held strongly by the Lom- bards in the Dark Age, from 1264 to 1428, she came into J " » BERGAMO 171 the power of Milan, and then, after falling to a condottiere, Pandolfo Malatesta, the father of Sigismondo, she gave herself to Venice, and remained Venetian till 1797. It is not, however, of history one thinks in Bergamo, but of beauty and of art. Through the mud and squalor of the Citt^ Bassa, one is borne nowadays in a few moments from the station to the Citta Alta in an electric tram and a funicular railway. A better way, for those who have leisure to indulge it, is perhaps to take the road through the wide and unordered Foro di S. Alessandro, where every year in August a great fair that lasts a month has been held now for a thousand years, and following the Via Nuova, to enter the true Bergamo by the Porta di S. Agostino, whence we may see so far across the plain, even to the towers of Milan and Monza, the passes of the great Alps, Monte Rosa and the pyramid of Monte Viso, and southward the Apennines across the great river, with Crema close by and Cremona not far away. Nothing can make up, I think, for the loss of this view, which in itself explains so much of the nature of this country, so difficult to traverse for all its flatness. It is one of the unexpected gifts Bergamo has in keeping for us, but the best of these is herself. She gives you herself utterly at that moment when, emerging from the narrow ways between the taU, rugged houses, you come into the Piazza Maggiore, paved with brick, with a ruined fountain in the midst, and on one side the stateliness and beauty of the Broletto on its arcade of columns, on the other the Palazzo della Ragione, which Scamozzi left unfinished. Through the arches of the Broletto you catch glimpses of the magni- ficent portal of S. Maria Maggiore and the fagade of the Cappella Colleoni ; but it is never by this way I prefer to approach these wonders, but by a devious way from the east past the Palazzo delF Ateneo, with its early Renaissance fagade and flights of steps, so that 172 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY what I see first may be the apse of S. Maria, with its lovely semicircular open arcade, its flight after flight of roof and gallery and tower up to the pointed steeple which crowns the whole. But however you come to S. Maria Maggiore, you will be enchanted. Coming to it from the Piazza under the arches of the Broletto, you will have before you the noble porch of the church and the superb fagade of the Cappella Colleoni on your right, the Baptistery which Giovanni da Campiglione built " in imitation of the antique " in 1340, and on your left the Duomo with its fine cupola built by Scamozzi in 1614. But the noblest church in Bergamo is that of S. Maria Maggiore, the better and more ancient parts of which date from the twelfth century, and resemble in their beauty the Church of S. Michele of Pavia, while the later portions on the north are the achievement of Giovanni da Campiglione in 1360. A church has stood on this spot under the dedication of S. Maria certainly since 774. In 1133 we learn that a most terrible drought afflicted the city and contado of Bergamo. Upon this followed famine, and after the famine came pestilence. In her desolation and extremity Bergamo turned to the Mother of Mercy, and in 1135 determined to raise to her a shrine in testimony of her devotion. A Deputazione delta Fahrica was created, and the plans of Maestro Fredi were adopted for the building. On August 15, 1137, the Feast of the Assumption, the Bishop Gregorio of Bergamo laid the first stone of the basilica. With the foundation of this church the city seems to have given itself to the Madonna, very much as Siena did. On the Feasts of Our Lady it was customary to light a bonfire on the top of the Torre Comunale. On the evening of September 7, i486, the Vigil of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, we find that the roof which used to cover this tower resting upon wooden columns was burnt, and the bells BERGAMO 173 gravely injured. The city rebuilt this belfry in stone, and so in spite of many injuries from wind and lightning it remained till the year 1639, when the roof was re- moved and the tower crowned by a great wooden statue of the Madonna. On June 15, 1685, however, this statue was struck and consumed by lightning and the tower burnt out. The statue was not replaced, but the tower was then restored as we see it. The Church of S. Maria Maggiore thus built in the twelfth century in honour of the Madonna is, as I have said, one of the finest Lombard buildings in Italy. Its greatest beauty is undoubtedly the lovely apse with its round-headed windows and open arcade, which so much resembles that of S. Michele at Pa via. But two exquisite porches on the north and south were added about the middle of the fourteenth century, that on the north by Giovanni Campiglione, and that on the south by his son. The styles of these two perhaps do not much diifer. The northern porch beside the Cappella Colleoni, carved and fretted with sculpture, is of three stages. Above the round arch of the porch itself, which rests on two lions couchant on the top of a flight of steps, within three arches are three statues, S. Alessandro on horseback between SS. Barnabas and Proietizio. On the base on which the horse of S. Alessandro stands is written : " Magistri Jo. Filii M. Ughi de Campleone fecit hoc opus mcccliii,'' Above these, under a canopy, is a statue of the Madonna and Child between S. Esther and S. Grata. These works are later than the S. Alessandro, and are probably the work of Andreolo de Blanchis, whose noble work we shall find again within the church. The southern portal is less rich, and has not the two stories of statues above its porch. Instead, we find there a sort of spire of pure Gothic style, executed about the middle of the fourteenth century by Antonio d' Alemanna. Enclosed in it we find the sculptured 174 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY figure of God the Father enthroned, with the Blessed Virgin on one side and the Archangel Gabriel on the other. To the right of this porch, towards the Piazza, is another covered with reliefs of the Birth of the Virgin. Within, the church has been spoilt by restoration and modernisation. Near to the western door, however, there remains the fine but restored tomb under an arch of Cardinal Longhi degli Alessandri in alabaster, a work of the first years of the fourteenth century by Ugo da Campione, while to the right of the northern door are remains of old Lombard frescoes, the Tree of S. Bonaventura. The fine stalls, carved and inlaid, are noble work of the sixteenth century, and in the sacristy is a magnificent Crucifix, the work of that Andreolo de Blanchis who carved the Madonna and Child over the northern porch of the church. Close beside S. Maria Maggiore stands the Cappella Colleoni, which was built by Amadeo in 1470 in the early Renaissance style, richly adorned with various marbles. The Colleoni, the family of the famous condottiere in whose honour Verrocchio founded the great equestrian statue in the Piazza di SS. Giovanni e Paolo in Venice, for he had served the Republic, were natives of Bergamo. Bartolommeo the condottiere, however, was born at Scolza, close to the city, in the year 1400, for the Visconti had driven them out of Bergamo. At first they had taken refuge in the Rocca di Frezzo, on the banks of the Adda, but there the Visconti found them out, and Bartolommeo' s father and elder brother were murdered by their very kindred, who were there their hosts. His mother, however, and himself were spared, and at last succeeded in escaping, only to be taken by another tyrant, Benzone of Cremona. Bartolommeo at length was set free, and entered the service of the tyrant of Piacenza, where he served under the great Umbrian captain, Braccio da Montone. He soon became the greatest military leader of his day, and presently BERGAMO 175 succeeded Gattamelata in the service of Venice. After many adventures and imprisonments, he retired from active service, and spent the last eighteen years of his life at Bergamo (where his house the Luogo Pio Colleoni may still be seen), and in his various castles round about, always guarded by six hundred veterans and surrounded by learned men and artists, in whose society he delighted. The chapel he built here at Bergamo, one of many, would seem to endorse all we hear of his love of learning and art, for in its ornament it is a strange confusion of pagan divinities and Christian saints. Unfortunately, it has been relentlessly restored in the eighteenth century. Within, the great commander, who died in 1475, lies in the tomb which Amadeo had designed for him, and which Sixtus Siry of Nuremberg in 1501 crowned with a gilded equestrian statue. To the left of the founder lies his daughter Medea, who died in 1470, in a very beautiful tomb, recalling that of Ilaria at Lucca. This too is Amadeo' s work, but it was originally erected in the Church of Basella. About the chapel are fine inlaid stalls, but perhaps its greatest beauty is its ceiling paintings by Tiepolo. There we see this great master almost at his best, and though his work has not alto- gether escaped the vandal hand of the restorer it remains the joyful and splendid thing we are learning to recognise and to love so well. Beside the Cappella Colleoni stands the delightful Baptistery of Giovanni Campiglione, wholly restored in 1850, and opposite the Baptistery stands the Duomo of S. Alessandro and S. Vicenzo, which has been so often rebuilt, finally by Fontana. In the choir is a fine painting of the martyrdom of S. John Baptist by Tiepolo, and a picture reputed to be by Giovanni Bellini, a small Madonna and Child. What remains to be had in the way of sight-seeing in Bergamo may be briefly described. The Church of S. Andrea has a fine picture of the Madonna enthroned 176 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY with four saints by Moretto. But what is finer here is the glorious view over the plain to the hills and the mountains. Then we come to the Church of S. Michele at Pozzo Bianco, which the sacristan of S. Andrea opens for us, where there are some good frescoes by Lorenzo Lotto of the life of the Virgin. But after the wonderful group of buildings about the Piazza Grande, the chief interest of the traveller in Bergamo lies in the picture gallery, the Accademia Carrara, perhaps the best in Lombardy outside the city of Milan. The Accademia Carrara of Bergamo, just outside the Porta Santa Caterina, consists of three collections, one of which is very famous. These three collections are the Galleria Carrara, the Galleria Lochis and the Galleria Morelli. The Galleria Carrara, bequeathed to Bergamo in 1796 by the Conte Giacomo Carrara, consists for the most part of a collection of Bergamesque and North Italian pictures, only one or two of which are of really first-rate importance. There we find three works by Lorenzo Lotto : the Betrothal of S. Catherine (66), painted in 1523, a partly spoiled, but a fine picture ; a Martyrdom of S. Stephen (356) and a magnificent Portrait of a Lady (357), with a fine landscape under moonlight. The collection possesses, too, a single Mantegna, a Madonna and Child (153), painted in tem- pera, a fine picture ; a Crucifixion (154), painted in 1456 by Foppa ; five portraits by Morini, 80-83 and 355, of which 81 is an early work and 82 is the best work by the master in this gallery ; a Miracle of S. Dominic (358), by that fine painter Borgognone; a Massacre of the Innocents (137), by Caroto ; and several works by Previtali, Cariani and Fra Vittore Ghirlandi, masters who can be studied really nowhere else. The Lochis collection, bequeathed to the city by Conte Lochis in 1859, i^ more numerous, but not more important, though it possesses a picture by Raphael, an S. MARIA MAGGIORE, BERGAMO BERGAMO 177 early work, a bust of S. Sebastian. By Giovanni Busi of Bergamo, called Cariani, we have in this collec- tion eleven works, of which the Portrait of a Physician (187), Benedetto Caravaggio, is perhaps the most notable. It is here in his native city that this pupil of Giovanni Bellini and Palma, who was influenced by Carpaccio and Giorgione, can best be studied. By the founder of the Milanese school, Foppa, whose Crucifixion, painted in 1456, we have just seen in the Carrara collec- tion, there is here an early work, a S. Jerome (225). By his great pupil Borgognone we have four pictures : a Head of S. Ambrose (53), the picture of a Procession, really S. Ambrose and Theodosius (219), the Madonna giving fruit to her Child (229) and an early Madonna and Child (131). From Borgognone, whose magnificent Polyptych, painted in 1498, in S. Spirito, in the lower city, is one of the greater glories of Bergamo, we pass to Moretto, the Brescian, by whom we find three pictures here : a Samson Sleeping, in a landscape (71) ; a Christ with the Cross, worshipped by the Donor (177), painted in 1518 ; and a later picture, a Holy Family, with S. John the Baptist (55)- While by Bonsignori of Verona v/e have a portrait of a Gonzaga (154). The school of Ferrara is represented by a Madonna and Child (233) by Cosimo Tura, that adamantine master; and the school of Vicenza by a notable work painted in 1487 by Montagna, the Madonna with SS. Roch and Sebastian. Interesting as these works are for the student, they have not the same attraction for the traveller as those examples of the Venetian school which are here more plentiful than might be expected. The earliest and most notable Venetian whose work is to be found here is Giovanni Bellini, whose picture of the Madonna and Child (210) is one of his early works. His contemporary, Carlo Crivelli, is also represented by a picture of the Madonna and Child (219). From him we 12 X78 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY pass to the true Venetian line, with the Holy Family and S. Catherine (185), by Lotto, painted in 1523, with which it is delightful to compare the Marriage of S. Catherine in the Carrara collection (66), painted just ten years earlier. His three sketches, containing the story of S. Stephen (32-34), are charming and delightful. A late work by Palma Vecchio, the Madonna with two Saints, and certain Vintage Scenes by Paris Bordone, the pupil and follower of Titian, may be said to bring the great school of the Bellini to an end ; but Venice may still be said to speak in the delightful sketch here by Tiepolo (24), and in those pictures of Guardi, which seem to bring the city itself to us from far away. These two collections, the Carrara and Lochis galleries, would be enough to bring renown to any city half as lovely as Bergamo. But, as it happens, they are but the smaller part of her dowry. In the year 1891, the great art critic and connoisseur, Giovanni Morelli, died at Milan, and bequeathed his magnificent collection of pictures to his native city. These three collections, well arranged by the Director Signor Frizzoni, were, till the year 1911, the delight of every traveller who entered Bergamo. In that year a rearrangement of the three collections was entered upon, and the gallery was closed for a time. What the new arrangement may be we cannot say, but it is to be hoped that the Morelli collection will still be shown as a thing apart ; for it is fully characteristic of the wise sympathies and know- ledge of the great critic and of his triumphs of con- noisseurship. The strength, if not the delight, of the Carrara and Lochis collections lies in the many pictures they contain of the Bergamesque and North Italian schools, and, after them, in their Venetian pictures. But the Morelli Gallery can boast of many fine Florentine works with a few pictures of the Umbrian school, and, on the principle of serving the best wine first, let us begin with these. BERGAMO 179 One can expect here, of course, nothing by Giotto or his pupils, nor must we look for anything by the great reviver of that deathless tradition, Fra Angelico. But we have here a beautiful example of the work of his contemporary, Lorenzo Monaco, the follower of Agnolo Gaddi and the Sienese, in that picture of the Dead Christ (10), a small panel in which we seem to find some- thing which prophesies of Fra Lippo Lippi. Nothing by that great and vital master is to be seen here ; but we have two pictures by his pupil Pesellino : the delicious and fairy-like panel, the Story of Griselda (9) and the Florentine arraigned before the Podest^ (n) ; the third work attributed to him is according to Mr. Berenson, who has written an illuminating study of this collection,^ a copy of Pesellino' s picture at Altenburg by Pier Francesco Fiorentino : it represents S. Francis and S. Jerome (36). A greater pupil of Fra Lippo, Sandro Botticelli, is to be seen here in a single panel, the Story of Virginia (25). Its companion is now in Boston. The Salvator Mundi attributed to him is only a school piece, but the Giuliano de' Medici is the work of that master Mr. Berenson has called Amico di Sandro. ^ A painter who was in his later life influenced by this master, Francesco Botticini, is represented here by a very lovely picture of Tobias and the Angel (33), and a fellow-pupil of his in Verrocchio's hoUega, Lorenzo di Credi, is seen here in a poor Madonna and Child, but a Nativity (42), ascribed to him, is, as Mr. Berenson shows, by his pupil "Tommaso." Albertinelli is seen here in two panels (32) of S. John and S. Mary Magdalen, and Bacchiacca by a picture of the Death of Abel (62), while by Pontormo and his 1 See B. Berenson, " The Morelli Collection at Bergamo," in The Connoisseur, vol. iv. No. 15 (Nov. 1902), and vol. v. No. 17 (Jan. 1903). * See B. Berenson, The Study and Criticism of Italian Art (Bell, 1901), p. 462, etc. i8o THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY pupil Bronzino we have, from the first, a Portrait of Baccio Bandinelli (59), whom Cellini hated so devoutly, and, by the second, a Portrait of Alessandro de' Medici (65). Of the Umbrian school we have several pictures, notably three small paintings by Luca Signorelli of S. Roch (19), the Blessed Virgin (20) and S. Sebastian (24). Signorelli is, however, as much a Tuscan as an Umbrian master ; but we come upon the true Umbrian in a rare work by Niccolo da Foligno, the Head of a Saint (6). By Fiorenzo di Lorenzo of Perugia we have a S. Jerome in the Desert (37), and by Matteo Balducci a panel, the Flight of Clelia (46), while the school, if school it can be called, closes with Bernardino Mar- riotto's Piet^ (55). Turning now to the Venetians, we find two fine pictures by Giovanni Bellini, the first painted about 1478, a Madonna and Child (27) ; the second, also a Madonna, is dated 1495, and in it we find a delicious landscape. Cima too is found here in an early work, a Madonna and Child in a beautiful landscape with far - away mountains (57), and Marco Basaiti with a good half- length Portrait of a Man (61), painted in 1521. The school as represented here is fortunately closed by the masterpiece of Pietro Longhi, an astonishing picture, the Portrait of a Girl (94). From Venice we pass to Verona, and of this school there are some fine examples, beginning with the noble portrait of Leonello d' Este (17), by that very rare master, Pisanello. Here also is a late picture, the Widow's Son (45), by Francesco Bonsignori, the pupil of Bartolommeo and Alvise Vivarini, who was in his later life so much under the influence of Mantegna and Liberale of Verona. By a pupil of that last master, Francesco Caroto, we have a Judgment of Solomon (2), which should be compared with the Massacre of the Innocents (137), painted in 1527, in the Carrara Collec- BERGAMO i8i tion, and the Adoration of the Magi (170), in the Lochis Collection here. By another pupil of Liberale, Niccolb Giolfino, we have a Madonna and Child (105), and by his contemporary, Francesco Morone, again a Madonna and Child (52), which should be compared with the Madonna and four Saints (188), painted by the same master in 1520, in the Carrara Collection. By another pupil of Domenico Morone, the father of Francesco, Girolamo dai Libri, we have a wonderfully haggard vision of S. John reading (50), and by his contemporary and fellow-pupil, Cavazzola, a fine Portrait of a Lady (64). From Verona we pass to Brescia. The Morelli Col- lection boasts of five fine works of this school : a Shrine with the Annunciation (3), by Civerchio, the founder of the school ; a Portrait of an insolent Young Man (98), by Romanino ; two works by Moretto, a Christ and the Woman of Samaria (loi), in a lovely cool landscape, an early work by the master, and a Madonna and Child with S. Jerome (96) ; and a good Portrait (85) by Moroni. By the Bergamo masters we have two works by Cariani, a life-size Bust of a Man (99) and a Santa Conversazione in a delicious landscape. While the school of Cremona is represented by a Holy Family (104), by Sofonisba Anguissola ; this is an early work, signed and painted in 1559. So we pass to the Milanese, and first to Borgognone, the greatest master of the school, in a fine work of his middle period, a S. Margaret (43), and in a S. John (40). Borgognone had been the pupil of Foppa, and had come only very slightly under the influence of Leonardo at the end of his life. Ambrogio de Predis, however, who has here a fine picture, the Head of a Young Page (26), and perhaps another picture, the Portrait of a Man (28), was altogether formed under the influence of Foppa and the disastrous great Florentine. Luini, whose l82 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY charming picture of the Madonna with the Child and the little S. John is a delight, was even more at the mercy of his understanding of Leonardo's mighty art, though he had passed through Borgognone's hands. And in Boltraffio we find indeed a mere imitation of Leonardo, yet his bust of Christ, crowned with ivy, is one of the most astonishing pictures in North Italy and one which compels our respect. To end the Milanese we have two pictures by the Sienese, Sodoma, whose art — and he was a very great craftsman — was also overwhelmed by Leonardo. His fantastic Portrait of a Man (66) Mr. Berenson takes to be Sodoma* s portrait of himself : it certainly reminds one of Vasari's account of him ; while his Madonna and Child (60) is what we might expect. Beside the pictures of which I have spoken, Morelli possessed several good works of the Ferrara-Bologna school and two masterpieces by northern painters, a Portrait of a Woman, by Rembrandt, and a Portrait of a Young Man, by Franz Hals, which should not be missed. Nor should one by any means fail to see the three splendid terra-cottas by Quercia, Donatello and Benedetto da Maiano, which are alone sufficient to make the Acca- demia Carrara famous. When all is said, however, the true delight of Bergamo will always be found in Bergamo herself : in her winding, steep streets, her narrow ways, her windy piazzas, her shady ramparts and marvellous views of blue, far-away mountains, so often covered with snow, and of the valleys and the plain, green and silver and gold, and the glory of the setting sun. CHAPTER XI BRESCIA THERE is no more delightful and consoling road in all North Italy, south of the mountains, than that which leads at last from Bergamo to Brescia. This book does not propose to deal with the mountains, the Bergamesque and Brescian Alps, for they deserve and shall have a book to themselves; therefore I say nothing of such places as Alzano and its Lottos ; it is the plain with which we are concerned, the true Cis- alpine Gaul and the true Lombardy, and I know not where in all that vast country you will better the thirty miles that lie between Bergamo and Brescia. For the way is by no means a monotony of flatness, but is broken by low hills and downs, and little passes and valleys about the feet of the mountains, and there, on the hill- tops or beside the rivers, stands many a fair town worthy of remembrance, to say nothing of the castles, shrines and churches which are often worthy of Tuscany, and of Tuscany at its best. And this is especially the reward of him who will go slowly, loitering by the way. There is nothing at all, for instance, to see in Seriate, some three miles out of Bergamo, but it is the key to a fine country away to the south, where, by tramway, you may reach in no time the great Castle of Malpaga which Bartolommeo Colleoni, the condottiere, built, and which the Martinenghi inherited from him and held until the middle of the nineteenth century. I said there were castles on the way. Indeed, no castle to be 183 i84 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY found in all Italy is more splendid than this, or less spoiled by the hands of fools. It is worth almost any trouble to see, and since it may be had in a single day there and back from Bergamo, it is amazing that it is not better known. The ten miles between Seriate and Gorlago are, I confess it, nothing to boast of ; but they are, as it were, the threshold to the rest, which will well repay the walker. For at Gorlago the scenery begins to be fine, to be uplifted with hills terraced with vines and broken by little valleys. As for Gorlago itself, it is a treasure that none even take the trouble to see. Yet in its Parish Church are two pictures by Giovanni Battista Moroni, the pupil of Moretto, an Adoration of the Magi and a picture of Three Saints, S. Gottardo, S. Lorenzo and S. Caterina. And then, scarcely two miles away, to the south stands the Castello Costa di Mezzate, where are three portraits by the same master, and a Lorenzo Lotto, a Marriage of S. Catherine, painted in 1522, to say nothing of the fine armoury, with its memories of the great days of Brescia, and the marvellous view to be had thence over mountain and plain. From Gorlago, too, Trescore may easily be reached, a place in the hills celebrated from of old for its hot springs, and there in the Suardi Chapel of S. Barbara are some fine frescoes by Lotto, painted in 1524, of the life of that Saint. Then we come under Monte del Castello to Chiudino, a very pretty small town with a fine tower, the hills as a near background, and all to the south the immensity of the plain ; and so to Grumello with its great square battlemented tower, and Caleppio beyond it, and then to Palazzuolo, happy places. Palazzuolo sulF Oglio, which stands on both sides of the river which forks about its citadel, was the great disputed fortress of the Bergamaschi and the Brescians. And here perhaps the traveller will be wise to take the tram into Brescia, for all before him is only the large- BRESCIA 185 ness of the plain, too vast for walking and too mono- tonous for enjoyment, that the motor-car alone can make a delight. Brescia — Brixia, as the Romans called it — ^was, accord- ing to Catullus, the mother- town of his Verona — "Veronae mater amata meae." It began apparently as a town of the Cenomani, and after the Roman conquest flourished exceedingly. The old Roman town as Catullus knew it was traversed by the river Mela — " Flavus quam molli percurrit fiumine Mela " — which now flows a mile to the west of it, Brescia standing indeed on a much smaller stream, the Garza. Yet excavation and the ruins still above ground would seem to prove that the Brescia we know stands upon the same site as the Roman city. These ruins are of very considerable importance, the most remarkable being the Temple called of Hercules, though it is doubtful whether this was not rather a basilica. Part of a theatre may also be seen, and certain Corinthian columns supposed to be part of the Forum, together with a host of fragments and one superb work of art, the bronze Victory, the greatest treasure of the city. A factory of arms, the very name sounds like the swish and song of a sword, Brescia r Armata was plundered by the Huns under Attila in 452 ; but, like most of the other towns so dealt with, she recovered from this disaster, and under the Lombards became one of the principal of their towns, the capital of a duchy. In the twelfth century Brescia produced one of the forerunners of the Revolution in Arnold of Brescia, who was educated in France under Abelard. He became a monk, and returning to Brescia strove to rouse the people against the Bishop, then virtually the ruler of the city. The Lateran Council of 1139 banished him from Italy. He returned to France, and came face to face with S. Bernard, the supreme opponent of the movement which Abelard and Arnold stood for. Like Abelard he was worsted, and retired to Ziirich, where he remained for i86 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY five years. The insurrection of 1143 found him in Rome, however, where he no less than Rienzi strove to found a Republic on the ancient model, in vain, for again he was confronted by a great man in the person of the English- man Nicholas Breakspear, Hadrian iv., who laid Rome under an interdict, broke Arnold's party in pieces and drove him from the city into Campania. On the arrival of Frederick Barbarossa in 1155, Arnold was arrested, brought to Rome and hanged ; his body was burned and thrown into the Tiber. The Emperor Frederick Barbarossa had known how to deal with this Brescia's most famous son, but Freder- ick II. found Brescia itself a harder business. In 1238 he besieged the city for two months in vain, and retired without capturing it. This feat, however, was accom- plished by Ezzelino twenty years later, and a reign of terror followed. Those who opposed him this devil chained to a block of stone in an open field and left to perish of hunger. Nevertheless, Brescia avenged herself. It was a Brescian sword in the hands of a Brescian that in 1259, ^^ ^^^ Bridge of Cassano, ended that life which had turned all this country into a hell. Brescia then fell to the Scaligers of Verona, and, with the fall of their house, came to Milan and the Visconti. After the Peace of S. Giorgio, however, in 1426, Venice acquired Brescia, just as two years later, after the Peace of Ferrara, she got Bergamo. The city, however, fell to the French at Cambray, but after the battle of Ravenna and the death of Gaston de Foix in 1512, Brescia, with the rest of the mainland possessions of Venice, returned to her of their own accord. The French indeed held the place, as we should say, at the point of the bayonet. Among the most glorious memories of the city is the rising against Chevalier Bayard and Gaston de Foix, in which it is said some 20,000 were slain. The horrors of that time can never be forgotten. The French cut the children out of J ' * J* » • J m i VICTORY Hronze in the Museum, F BRESCIA 187 their mothers' arms even in the sanctuaries of the churches. On the other hand, many a chivalrous story is told of the Chevalier, sans peur et sans reproche, by the Loyal Serviteur. But the fact remains that Brescia was the ruin of the French cause in Italy ; for, as the Loyal Serviteur declares, " they gained so much there that a great part of them returned home, forsaking the war, and were vastly missed later at the battle of Ravenna." It was an almost depopulated city that placed herself again in Venetian power in 1512, not to leave it till 1797. When Austria was re-established in Lombardy the German rule was found to be as great a curse in Brescia as it has proved always everywhere else in Italy. Verona was ruined; Brescia was compelled to close her armouries because the Austrians sent their orders to Germany. In the war of 1848 Brescia rose, though all Lombardy and Venetia were under a relentless praetorian rule. She resisted for ten days, till the butcher Haynau crushed her with atrocities I dare not write of, whose horrors rang through Europe : for by this you may know the German, there is always blood upon his feet. If Haynau was an incarnate devil, Radetzky was even worse, indeed his truly German nature was too much even for the Austrians, who tried to curb him though they dared not break him. Ten years later Austria was on the run, and the Germans were sent back to their lairs on the north of the Alps, where may God secure them for ever ! The city of Brescia, which has thus known so many agonies, is a quiet little place, crouched like a mouse, hid under its Castello at the foot of the great hills. And if we except the Roman ruins, and the old Cathedral and the Broletto, the town for us is really just a delightful picture gallery, where one wanders at random from church to church in search of the pictures of the native school of painting. The greater i88 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY of her masters were, of course, Romanino and Moretto, but they were not the first. The school was really founded by Foppa, or at least he was the master of the two painters who may be said to have founded Brescian painting : Civerchio (c. 1470-1544) and Ferramola, whose pupils were the two great artists whose names stand for Brescia through the world to-day. We shall come to the works of these men scattered everywhere through the city, like flowers on our way. Let us first turn to the Roman work left here and then to the Cathedral. If we do so, we shall come first quite through the city to the Museo Civico in the old Temple or Basilica on the hillside, which was excavated in 1822, and which inscriptions tell us was erected by Vespasian in A.D. 72. Beautiful and picturesque in its ruin, it is built upon a lofty crypt, and must once have been a great and formidable piece of work. Even to-day, eighteen hundred years after its foundation, it aston- ishes by its size and the beauty of its columns. Within we may see something of its original pavement; but its great treasure is the magnificent statue of Victory in gilded bronze, nearly seven feet in height, which was found here in 1826. This is undoubtedly, for its beauty of form, for its grace and its majesty, one of the most perfect reproductions ever contrived from a great original. It stands there like a Deity ; may it be the Divine Genius of a restored Italy. Not far away from these ruins are others of the Curia and a few traces of the Theatre, but that marvellous statue has put us out of sympathy with mere curiosities ; we seek beauty, and we shall find it in the other Museum of the town, the Museo Medioevale. This was of old two, or rather three churches, one, S. Salvatore of the eighth, the other, S. Giulia of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. We come first into the sixteenth- century building, which contains a host of curious relics of Lombard times and a few beautiful things, notably the BRESCIA 189 Cross of Galla Placidia, certainly of eighth-century workmanship, decorated with gems and with portraits of the Empress herself and of her brother Honorius and her son Valentinian. Close by, however, we see some- thing older, indeed of the fifth century, in those ivory reliefs which recall to us the names of Boethius and Lampadius ; and in the sides of a reliquary, arranged in the shape of a cross, we seem in truth to have work of the fourth century. The fifteenth-century church, with its sixteenth-century tombs, from the Church of S. Cristo, and its beautiful lectern, is worth seeing, as is certainly the eighth-century S. Salvatore, which lies below and beyond it, with its lovely capitals and carvings. These two museums, a temple and three churches, will be enough to make any traveller in love with Brescia ; yet the city still remains to be seen, and if these have enticed him to remain, Brescia herself shall entrance him. The centre of Brescia is the Piazza del Comune, where stands the beautiful Loggia of Fromentone of Vicenza (1492), finished by Palladio and Jacopo Sansovino, who completed it with a lovely frieze of putti. The octagon above is a work of the eighteenth century. To Fromentone is also due the Archivio close by. Opposite La Loggia, over an arcade, stands the Torre deir Orologio, almost a copy of that at Venice ; and to the front of it a little to the right in the Piazza stands the memorial to those Martyrs of Liberty who fell in the rising of 1849. The Piazza is closed on the south by the Monte di Pieta, a lovely building of the later fifteenth century. We leave the Piazza by the Via de' Spadaji to the south, and, taking the first street on the right, come at once into the Piazza del Duomo. Before us stands on the far left the Broletto, a heavy building dating origin- ally from the twelfth century, and until the fifteenth the Municipio ; and above it the Torre del Popolo, which has soared there for seven hundred years ; and 190 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY the two Cathedrals, the Duomo Nuovo and the Duomo Vecchio of S. Maria or La Rotonda. Here in this massive round church we see united three distinct buildings, the Rotunda, the Crypt and the Presbytery. The Crypt is certainly of the ninth century, the Basilica di S. Filastro. It is upheld by forty-two columns, and consists of five naves with three apses. It is a building of the eighth or ninth century ; and we know that in 838 the Bishop Ramperto transported hither the body of S. Filastro. The Rotunda itself is a building of the early years of the twelfth century, and probably stands on the site of a building we hear of as burnt in 1097. The question remains whether we are to account for its shape by the Crusades, that is to say, whether it was built in imitation of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, or, as seems much less likely, whether it was a copy of the Pantheon in Rome. The interior of the Rotunda has been much modernised; the choir was added in the fifteenth century and the chapels in the sixteenth ; much, too, has been changed even of these additions in modern " restoration." Nevertheless, we may get a general idea of the church even as it is. The nave was circular, formed by a colonnade of eight pillars, which uphold the round arches which, with the vast walls, bear the dome. The medieval tombs of four Bishops of Brescia also remain. In the choir is a fine picture of the Assumption by Moretto, painted in 1526, and at the sides a Presentation in the Temple and a Visitation by Romanino. The Duomo Nuovo, from which one generally enters La Rotunda, is a great church of the seventeenth century, built in the form, then so popular, of a Greek cross, with a lengthened choir. In a tomb by the third altar on the right now lie the remains of S. Filastro, with those of S. Apollonio, brought here from the crypt of La Rotunda in 1674. We now set out to see the churches and the many • • .• . • •• BRESCIA 191 pictures they contain. On leaving the Piazza del Duomo by the street between the Duomo and the Broletto we have in front of us the Biblioteca Queriniana, with its fine library, given to the town in 1747 by Cardinal Querini. Following the Via di Torre d' Ercole, we take the Via di S. Clemen te, the fifth turning on the left, and come to the Church of S. Clemen te, where there is not only the tomb and monument of Moretto, but also five of his works. Over the high altar is a magnificent picture of the Blessed Virgin with her little Son in a bower, and below, S. Catharine, S. Dominic, S. Clement, S. George and S. Mary Magdalen. In the second chapel on the right we have another masterpiece, a picture of the Five Wise Virgins, S. Cecilia, S. Agatha, S. Lucy, S. Barbara and S. Agnes. Opposite, at the first altar, on the left, is a picture, by the same master, of S. Ursula and her com- panions. While at the third altar we have the Virgin and Child on high, between the two Saints Catherine, and below S. Paul and S. Jerome. Over the fourth altar is a picture of the Offering of Melchisedec. Not far away is S. Maria Calchera, which contains two of Moretto's pictures and one of Romanino's. Over the first altar, on the south, is one of Christ at the House of Simon the Pharisee, and in a small chapel, by the pulpit, a Pieta with S. Jerome and perhaps S. Dorothy : these by Moretto. Over the third altar, on the north, is a splendid work by Romanino of S. Apollonius celebrating Mass, attended by S. Faustinus and S. Jo vita, while four figures kneel in adoration. From S. Maria Calchera one returns to the Piazza del Comune and then proceeds down the Corso past the Torre della Pallata to S. Giovanni Evangelista. This is a great twelfth-century tower, erected in the second circuit of the walls to defend the old gates of S. John. The church possesses some of the finest pictures in the city. There we see, over the third altar in the north aisle, an early work by Moretto, the Massacre of 192 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY the Innocents, and in the choir behind the high altar a great altarpiece of the Madonna and Child in the midst, with God the Father above, and about Madonna, S. John the Baptist, S. Zacharias, S. Augustine and S. Agnes. In the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament close by we see on the right some frescoes, early work by the same painter, and there, too, a touching Pieta by the shadowy master of Moretto, Civerchio, with a beautiful lunette of the Coronation of the Virgin by Romanino, who painted also the frescoes here on the left. While in the baptistery is a notable work by Francia of the Blessed Trinity adored by Saints. Not far from S. Giovanni is S. Maria del Carmine, a beautiful Renaissance church with a fresco of the Annunciation, by Ferramola, the founder, with Civerchio, of the Brescian school, and in the third chapel, on the south, a ceiling painting of the Fathers of the Church, by Foppa. At the end of the Via S. Rocco, which we crossed to reach the Carmine, stands S. Maria delle Grazie, a church of the Gerolimini, begun in 1522, but with a portal of the fifteenth century brought hither from some other unknown sanctuary. Here over the first altar on the Gospel side we have another work by Foppa, a Madonna in Heaven with four saints below. Over the high altar is a splendid picture, the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, by Moretto, and in the chapel, to the right of the choir, another fine altarpiece by this master, a Madonna in Heaven with S. Sebastian, S. Ambrose and S. Roch below. From S. Maria delle Grazie we proceed northward quite across the city to SS. Nazaro and Celso, an eighteenth- century church which, however, possesses some magnifi- cent pictures. And first let us turn to the great polyptych over the high altar, a veritable work by Titian, the finest picture in the city, painted and signed by him in 1522. This BRESCIA 193 magnificent work, though so different, was painted at the same time as the Entombment now in the Louvre. It was the gift of Altobello di Averoldo, Bishop of Pola and papal legate of Venice, to the high altar of this church. Titian took three years to complete it, and one must confess that though evidently the greatest care has been expended upon it, it is not wholly satis- factory. One divines that the painter is not wholly to blame for this : that the variety of the subject imposed upon him was alien to him. Because the Bishop wished a series of scenes that could not be combined, Titian was forced to use the form of the polyptych. There we see five pictures, not one. The centre panel, the Resurrection, fills the whole height of the altarpiece, but the side panels are divided into two unequal parts, the two upper and smaller contain half- figures of the Madonna and the Angel of Annunciation ; the lower panel on the left shows us S. Nazaro presenting the donor to the risen Christ ; in the lower panel on the other side we have a truly titanic figure of S. Sebastian, which might stand for Prometheus. This panel alone might seem to account for much in the work of the Brescian school. Three pictures by Moretto should not be missed. On the second altar on the Gospel side is a beautiful Corona- tion of the Virgin with Saints — of all Moretto' s altarpieces the one I love best. Opposite, on the Epistle side of the church, over the third altar, is a spoilt Nativity with Saints, by the same master, and in the sacristy we find the predella of this last. Nor is this all, for on the organ shutter is an Annunciation by Foppa, and over the side door at the west end of the church a huge painting of the Martyrdom of SS. Nazaro and Celso, ascribed to the same master. The church is worth lingering in, and the small sanctuary of the Madonna dei Miracoli in the Corso close by, with its lovely fagade and fine domes, is perhaps the 13 194 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY most charming Renaissance building in the city. Yet on no account should the traveller fail to visit another church in this neighbourhood, S. Francesco, where a fine altarpiece by More t to leads us to Romanino's masterpiece, over the high altar, in which we see the Madonna and Child enthroned between six saints, while two child angels hold up a canopy over her head. There are many other churches in Brescia which the more leisurely traveller will delight to visit. Among such is S. Agata, which is said to have been founded by Queen Theodolinda ; S. Alessandro, formerly belonging to the Servites, where there are still a Pieta by Civerchio, and the most beautiful early picture in Brescia, an Annunciation, perhaps by Jacopo Bellini, an altogether adorable and lovely thing; and S. Pietro in Oliveto under the Castello, with its beautiful old convent and fine Renaissance doorway. But of them all I suppose S. Afra is the only one that must not be omitted. Here over the high altar is an Ascension by Tintoretto, and a fine Venetian picture sometimes ascribed to Titian of the Woman taken in Adultery. Over the second altar, too, on the Gospel side, is a Paolo Veronese, the martyrdom of that S. Afra who names the church. And for those who are in love with those two great Brescian masters, Moretto and Romanino, there remains to be seen the Ateneo Martinengo, the picture gallery where several of their best works have been collected. It is with their silvery tones and quietness that we shall be wise to pass our days in this little city at the foot of the mountains, where so many heroic actions have been achieved, and so much that was worth doing has been done. If this seems to require confirmation and proof, let the traveller go with me, as he shall do, and that largely afoot, to Mantua across the battlefield of Solferino. That was but the latest of those heroic feats of arms and BRESCIA 195 resistance which Brescia has known how to achieve in the cause that is Europe ; they began when the bar- barians broke in in the fifth century, and who shall say that they are ended, though, indeed, after Solferino the barbarians have been driven home. CHAPTER Xn LAGO D' ISEO, LAGO DI GARDA AND THREE BATTLEFIELDS THERE are two excursions that are easily made from Brescia, and neither should on any account be omitted : I mean a visit to the Lago d' Iseo and a visit to the Lago di Garda. The Lago d' Iseo, within an hour of Brescia by train and but fifteen miles by road, though by far the least known, is by no means the least beautiful of the lakes of Lombardy. The Lacus Sebinus of the Romans, it would seem to have been as little known to them as it is io us, for Pliny is the only writer who speaks of it. It owes its beauty, indeed, to its narrowness, and the height and shape of the mountains which everywhere surround it, while the clarity of its waters and their colour add to its delight and make of it, indeed, such a jewel as once seen will be sought for again and again. For it is a very precious relic of the south, here on the northern thres- hold, with all the luxuriant vegetation of a really southern country given to it by its situation, sheltered from every wind but the south wind and the west, by the greatness of its hills, which hold up the still greater mountains. In its midst, a little nearer its southern shore than its northern, stands up the lofty island called Mont' Isola, two miles long, with the village of Peschiera Maraglio on its southern beach, the village of Siviano a little inland on the north. ,96 LAGO D' ISEO 197 Iseo itself, the town at which, coming from Brescia, we reach the lake, is a busy little old walled place with a fine old fortress ; but the most interesting town on the lake is not Iseo, but Lovere, at the northern end. On the v/ay thither we pass Tavernola, which, amid its vines, is perhaps the loveliest spot on the lake with the loveliest view. At Lovere, on the quayside, you may see the true life of this corner of Paradise, and find, as is meet and right in such a place, pictures by Ferramola and Moroni in the church. But if you come for pictures, an absurd desire in so far away a spot, you can have your fill of them here at the Palazzo Tadini, where you will find works by Civerchio, Domenico Morone, Parmigiano, Badile, Brusasorci and Calisto, and, what is better, a view of the lake which is worth all the troubles of the journey from Brescia to see. Nor if you come by steamer and train should you omit to return at least from Pisogne by road, for it is one of the loveliest I know. From Brescia to Desenzano, on the Lago di Garda, is a little farther than from Brescia to Iseo, but the train service is better. The Lago di Garda, however, is an altogether bigger affair than the Lago d' Iseo. Garda is formed by the Mincio as Iseo is by the Oglio. It is the largest lake in Italy, though in length it is inferior to Como and Maggiore. The Romans called it Benacus and knew it well ; Virgil speaks of it, its roaring waves, in the Georgics; Pliny has much to say of it, including of course a theory of its origin, and he asserts roundly that the Mincio flows right through it without allowing its waters to mix with those of the lake ; while Catullus, we know, spent much of his life at Sirmio. The southern shores of the Lago di Garda are low and even marshy, but as one goes north the hills arise, and the northern arm of the lake is enclosed by great and grandly precipitous mountains, but there we are within the Austrian frontier. 198 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY Desenzano, a tiny little place of some four thousand inhabitants, will not keep the traveller long. Never- theless, its old Castello in the higher part of the town is worth a visit, though it be now merely a modern barracks, for it is founded upon the ruins of Rome, and owes its strength probably to the defence made here against the Hungarians in the tenth century. As for its churches, Desenzano has them in abundance, but her ancient Pieve was destroyed in 1480, and the Church of S. Maria Maddalena, which now stands in its place, is a building of the end of the sixteenth century. Its chief treasure is a picture of the Last Supper ascribed, and I think truly, to Tiepolo. Close to Desenzano, on a barren little hill, stands Maguzzano, with its old Benedictine church and monas- tery, founded and destroyed in the first years of the tenth century, rebuilt and re-established in the middle of the twelfth, and again in the end of the fifteenth century. Certain vestiges of frescoes remain from that far-off time, as well as a cross of silver-gilt orna- mented with precious stones. The monastery of Maguzzano was the most famous on the lake. In the sixteenth century it had its poet, the monk Teofilo Folengo, called Merlin Cocai. But neither Desenzano nor Maguzzano will keep us long from Sirmione, of which Catullus sang so divinely in the most perfect of his Carmina : — Poeninsularum, Sirmio, insularumquc Ocelle, quascumque in liquentibus stagnis, Marique vasto, fert uterque Neptunus ! Quam te libenter, quamque laetus, inviso ! Vix mi ipse credens, Thyniam atque Bithynos Liquisse campos, et videre te in tuto. O, quid solutis est beatius curis ? Cum meus onus reponit, ac peregrino Labore fessi venimus larem ad nostrum, Desideratoque acquiescimus iecto. Hoc est, quod unum est pro laboribus tantis. LAGO DI GARDA 199 Salve, o venusta Sirmio I atque hero gaude : Gaudete vosque, Lydiae lacus undae : Ridete, quidquid est domi cachinnorum. Nor is Catullus the only poet who has sung of this place ; though one may believe he, rather than Sirmione, was the cause for instance of these perfect verses : — Row us out from Desenzano, to your Sirmione row ! So they row'd, and there we landed — " O venusta Sirmio ! " There to me through all the groves of olive in the summer glow. There beneath the Roman ruin where the purple flowers grow. Came that " Ave atque Vale " of the Poet's hopeless woe, Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen hundred years ago, " Frater Ave atque Vale " — as we wandered to and fro Gazing at the Lydian laughter of the Garda Lake below Sweet Catullus's all-but-island, olive silvery Sirmio 1 Tennyson wrote these lines at Sirmione in 1880 ; and his son tells us that the poet liked the place " the best of anything we had seen in our tour." Sirmione is like a jewel set upon a sceptre : that sceptre is the tiny low peninsula which is thrust far out into the lake from the mainland marsh. From there, indeed from anywhere almost on the south, it has not a very striking appearance, but from the lake it is unique and beautiful. Catullus, as we have seen, likens it to an eye; another poet has called it the Queen of the Naiads ; Carducci speaks of it as a flower upon a stalk. Three hills, Cor tine to the south, Mavino in the midst, and the Grotte to the north, make the three corners of the little place separated by tiny valleys. On the highest of the three — that is to say, upon Cortine — is placed the Roman ruin of which Tennyson speaks. Two gates of this fortress still remain, and one of them surely holds a memory of Catullus ; though legend connects him rather with the northern hill, the Grotte, where his villa is said to have stood. Not far from the Roman ruin upon Cortine, the queen of Desiderius in the eighth century founded a 200 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY Benedictine church and monastery, dedicated to S. Salvatore. Little, however, remains to remind us either of the Queen or of the Benedictines. But one relic at least remains to us of that fierce time in the Church of S. Pietro in a lovely olive-clad spot on Mavino, for it was rebuilt in the fourteenth century, and still retains certain rude frescoes. With the rise of liberty in the twelfth century Sirmione possessed herself of a Podesta, but soon came under the rule of the Scaligers, who in the end of the following century surrounded her with walls and built the Castello, the best preserved on the whole lake. Sirmione seems to have been a headquarters for the Patarini in the beginning of the fourteenth century ; but here, as elsewhere, they were turned out. It is to the following century we owe the Cathedral, which, however, contains nothing of interest. If we set out from Sirmione for the tour of the lake by steamer we shall return to Desenzano and thence proceed to Salo, the Roman Salodium, past the strange headland of Manerba, which was once crowned, it is said, by a Temple of Minerva, that in the Middle Ages became not a church but a fortress, and the olive-clad islands of S. Biagio and Lechi. Salo is lovelier than Sirmione, though it has not its memories. Memories of its own, however, it possesses in abundance — of its long loyalty to Venice, at a great cost, and of its Lords the Martinenghi, whose palace is there to-day. There remains also in Salo a very beauti- ful church, the Duomo, a Gothic building begun in October 7, 1453, and dedicated to S. Maria Annunziata. The western door is, however, a fine thing by Sansovino. The interior consists of a nave with aisles upheld by twelve pillars, a transept and choir with polygonal apse. Over the western door is a large Gothic ancona, con- sisting of ten niches, in each of which is a carved wooden figure gilded ; above, the Risen Christ, with two saints LAGO DI GARDA 20i on either side, below, the Madonna and Child, with four saints attendant. Here, too, is a fine picture by Romanino of Saints with Donor, and another by Torbido, on the right wall of the choir, of the Holy Family adoring the Holy Child. In the cupola we see the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, said to be the work of Palma Giovane. In the Church of S. Bernardino are two works by Paolo Farinati of Verona, a Nativity in the choir and an Annunciation, and a Romanino, S. Bonaventura with Saints and Donor. Salo is the key to and the capital of that part of the shore of Garda known as the Magnifica Patria della Riviera, the favourite spot in which is undoubtedly Gardone, where Germans most do congregate. Indeed, as far as that goes, the whole lake is infested with Teutons, and but for the scene before our eyes, we might well imagine ourselves to be in the heart of the Fatherland. Gardone is pretty enough among its olives to attract us, in spite of the barbarians, and since there is no place on the Lake of Garda that is not in their occupa- tion it is useless to avoid it. After Gardone we come to Maderno, which has not much to show us beyond its Piazza with the Venetian column surmounted by the Lion of S. Mark and its old Church of S. Andrea, a small basilica dating from the tenth century. From Maderno we steam on to Gargnano, past Tosco - lano, with its noble walks, its cypresses, sanctuaries and stony valley, Valle delle Camarate. Gargnano is a big place, but there is not much to be seen there ; the Franciscan convent, however, should be visited for the sake of its delicious cloister, and the next place, Tremo- sine, will repay a brief visit by reason of its magnificent rocks and cliffs ; but these are well seen too from the boat. Indeed, the whole lake is rather to be enjoyed than explored in a search for art treasures ; its true 202 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY treasure is itself, its landscape and waters and moun- tains and olive-clad slopes and mighty cliffs. You may search for a week, if you want pictures, and find nothing more honourable than the Madonna and Child, with three saints, by Torbido, at Limone, just beyond which is the Austrian frontier. Between Limone and Riva the shore is magnificently precipitous, and the winding roads a joy to traverse. But Riva itself, lovely as it is, I never found worth visiting save, indeed, that it affords a better bed than any of the neighbouring places. It is, however, the key to Trent and to much fine country and astonishing sights, as that of the Castle of Arco, which rises high and sheer on its great hill out of the wide valley some four miles from Riva. On the return down the eastern shore of the lake, after leaving Torbole crouched under its cliff, we pass Malcesine, with its beautiful towered headland, and Torri, where there remains something of the vast castle the Scaligers built there in 1383, and then the walled village of Garda comes in sight as we round the beautiful headland Punta di S. Vigilio, where S. Michele built a villa : but Garda has nothing to show us, nothing, that is, but one of those great and silent battlefields which lie deserted about Europe, and haunt the memory of those who happen upon them, but which the world has for- gotten. An hour's ride from Garda on a great plateau there stretches out the field of Rivoli, where Napoleon so decisively defeated the Austrians in 1797. The Corsican who, in 1796, had been appointed to the command of the army of Italy by the Directory, had found the French army, about 36,000 strong, distributed between Nice and Savona, facing 20,000 Piedmontesi and 38,000 Austrians, He at once attacked the centre of the allied line, broke the Austrians on April 12, and the Piedmontesi on the following day, and the day following that broke the Austrians again. In the following month, : '. '' i !*-»; ••.'. !•*•*•- LAGO DI GARDA 203 on the nth, at the Bridge of Lodi, he again defeated the Austrians and entered Milan. When in the next year Austria attempted to recover Lombardy, Napoleon broke her armies successively at Areola, Rivoli and Mantua, and thus secured his march into Austria. He reached Leoben in April 1797, and Austria sued for peace. So always may the Latin sword flash victoriously in the sun of these mountains. With these thoughts in my head I set out from Gar da, and in a little time was in Peschiera. I saw nothing on the way but an old and beautiful castle of the Scaligers at Lazise, a notable and lovely spot, for I was bent on another battlefield more glorious than Rivoli, and one in which a worse barbarian got the same desert. I mean the famous field of Smooth-sliding Mincius, crowned with vocall reeds. For at Peschiera the Mincio issues from Lago di Garda, and it is there, as has been thought, that Pope Leo in 452 faced Attila, and turned him back from Rome. That was one of the great victories of the world. The barbarian king had upon his side all material power, but he was a barbarian ; Pope Leo had not a single soldier, but he was the soul of Europe, and what he had achieved when Attila left him was the certain endurance of Europe and the future of Christendom. There, " where the river is crossed by many wayfarers," Leo, our captain, saw the prophecy of the Psalmist fulfilled : Sicut deficit fumus, deficiant : Sicut fluit cera a facie ignis. Sic pereant peccatores a facie Dei. And not twice only but three times was Italy to be delivered beside this stream, and the third time the battle broke at Solferino. Now to reach Solferino from Peschiera is no great matter, for the road lies straight enough south and a little west, past the village of the Madonna del Frassine, 204 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY the hamlet of Pozzolengo to Solferino among the little hills eastward of Castiglione. When Austria in the summer of 1859 launched her ultimatum against little Piedmont, she suddenly found herself without a friend in Europe. Piedmont, so lately despairing, laughed for joy: "This," said Cavour, when the Chamber rose, "This is the last Piedmontese Chamber; the next will be that of the kingdom of Italy." It is true that the following week might have seen Turin in the hands of the enemy, that defeat meant annihilation; but that is all the Latin cause ever expected from the barbarians it has faced these three thousand years : it asked nothing better, for Italy cannot die. The war opened on April 26, and three days later the Austrians began to cross the Ticino into Piedmont. Their business was to crush the Pied- montese before the troops of France arrived. They outnumbered the Italians by nearly three to one, and their success must have seemed certain. What pre- vented it was what one always finds in a barbarian army, lack of decision in the leaders. Italy held the triangle between the Po and the Tanaro, and was not to be moved. Meanwhile, as of old, across the Alpine passes, swiftly from Genoa on the old highways, France poured the treasure of her sons, twenty thousand a day, and blunder after blunder saved the Italian cause, till the dazzling game of Garibaldi — the body of the French army having come up — opened the way to Magenta, where the heroism of the French guards won at nightfall, and Victor Emmanuel proclaimed the annexation of Lombardy to Piedmont. Then Modena fled, and Parma and Austria stood within the Quadrilateral behind the Mincio. In the van of the Italian advance upon this went Garibaldi and his red-shirts, but when the main army was come up, he was sent off to clear the Valtelline and hold the passes. France and Italy took up a position about Castiglione, SOLFERINO 205 to the south-west of the Lago di Garda. The Austrians, hoping to cut off the French divisions which were advancing from Lombardy, recrossed the Mincio on June 23, and occupied the hills of Solferino and S. Martino. In the dawn of S. John the French found the whole Austrian army before them, and the battle opened. The French took the centre in front of Solferino, the Piedmontese attacked the heights of S. Martino on the left, on the right Niel held the plain about Medole. The French advance on the centre lasted all day with terrible loss, and the heights were not won till evening : but they were won. The Piedmontese carried S. Martino five times, and for fourteen hours failed to turn the Austrians out of Pozzolengo : but they turned them out. To-day at S. Martino *' della Battaglia " a vast tower com- memorates the heroism of that fight, in which the French lost some 12,000 men killed and wounded and the Piedmontese loss was relatively nearly as heavy. From Solferino it is but a step, and not much more from Castiglione, to Medole, where Titian's son Pom- poneo Orazio in 1530, while still a boy, was granted by the Duke of Mantua a curacy. Later, the painter's nephew held this cure, and in his old age Titian painted a Christ in Glory appearing to the ascended Virgin Mary in the parish church. The picture remains there over the high altar. Behind Our Lord, stepping back into the shadow, are Adam holding the Cross and Eve ; between Christ and Adam we also see Abraham and Noah. This is a work of about 1554, and worth any trouble to see. Thence on the road to Mantua we cross the Mincio at Goito, where indeed the Austrians crossed it, and so through Marmirolo and Porto Mantovano through a world of mists come into Mantua, CHAPTER XIII MANTUA OF Mantua, forlorn upon her lakes, where over the pale green waters the red sails of the fishing boats pass, how languidly, under the casements, we have often dreamed in the winter over the fire in England, while turning the pages of the Mantuan. . . . primus Idumaeas referam tibi, Mantua, palmas Et viridi in campo templum de marmore ponam Propter aquam, tardis ingens ubi flexibus errat Mincius, et tenera praetexit harundine ripas. Nor is she less lovely than our dreams of her. A city of silver, her campanili shining in her ample sky, forlorn among her sedge and her still lagoons, she is even to-day the city of Virgil : Mantua, vae miserae nimium vicina Cremonae — " Mantua, too near to wretched Cremona " — but it is not as the neighbour of Cremona that an Englishman is used to regard her, but as the close neighbour of Verona, the city to which Romeo came when he was banished after Tybalt's murder. The road by which Romeo came, though so few of us ever trouble to take it, is still open and still to be found. Dickens knew it, and has described it so well that it is a pleasure as well as a duty to recall his words. " Was the way to Mantua as beautiful (he writes) 206 MANTUA 207 when Romeo was banished thither, I wonder ? Did it wind through pasture land as green, bright with the same gleaming streams, and dotted with fresh clumps of graceful trees ? Those purple mountains lay on the horizon then for certain ; and the dresses of these peasant girls, who wear a great knobbed silver pin through their hair behind, can hardly be much changed. Mantua itself must have broken on him in the prospect, with its towers and walls and water, as it does now. He made the same sharp twists and turns perhaps over the rumbling drawbridges ; passed through the like long curved wooden bridge ; and leaving the marshy water behind, approached the rusty gate of stagnant Mantua." It is almost the same to-day if you can be persuaded to come on foot or by carriage. And Mantua remains one of the most forlorn cities of Italy. Something of the still- ness and silence of her lakes seems to have fallen upon this city of large and level spaces, of sunlight and shadow and all quietness. Gradually, imperceptibly, she is decaying in the damp of her lagoons, and is passing from us slowly, softly, little by little, bit by bit, as a dream passes. Here is surely no place of abiding. Yet Mantua is very old. It existed certainly long before the establishment of the Gauls in Italy, and Virgil, who knew all its legends and traditions, insists that it owed its origin to the Etruscans, which is certainly borne out by its name, derived, as is supposed, from the Etruscan divinity Mantus, though Virgil seems to have derived it from a prophetic nymph of the name of Manto. However that may be, it is certain that Mantua was of Etruscan origin, and, what is more, retained its Etruscan character long after the other cities of Cisalpine Gaul had lost it, by reason of its position entrenched behind its inaccessible marshes. When the Gauls came into Italy Mantua probably found itself within the power of the Cenomani, but it seems to have remained largely apart, and no mention of 208 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY - its name is to be found in history, nor do we know when it passed under the Roman dominion. Mantua, indeed, owes its fame under the Roman Empire entirely to Virgil, who was born here ; he cele- brated the city in several passages of his works, and its name is familiar on this account to many of the later Roman poets. With the fall of the Empire Mantua became more important on account of its old inaccessibility ; for with the advent of the barbarians, barbarian conditions were restored and a place was valued not because it was easy to get at, but because it could not be reached. It fell, however, into the hands of the Lombards under Agilulf, and became a Lombard city. With the advent of the Franks into Italy, it was governed by the Counts of Canossa. In 1115, when the house of Canossa became extinct on the death of the great Matilda, Mantua constituted itself a free commune, par- ticipated in the wars of the two Lombard Leagues and suffered the assaults of Ezzelino da Romano, who threw down its walls, which were rebuilt in 125 1. • Like every other city in Italy at this time, Mantua was the scene of violent internal struggles between the nobtli and the popolo and the Guelphs and the Ghi- bellines, till in 1276 the Buonacolsi seized the power, established a lordship, which had lasted, however, only some fifty years when in 1328 the Gonzaga turned them out. This family endured and succeeded in governing Mantua till 1708, first with the title of Capitani, but later as Marquises, and at last as Dukes. The first ruler of the house of Gonzaga was that Luigi who, leading the insurrection against Rinaldo Buonacolsi, had established himself in his place, and who in 1329 became Imperial Vicar for Louis the Bavarian. In his time Mantua numbered some 30,000 inhabitants, and ruled over an extensive contado. Guido Gonzaga, fF ^« i • . • . ' >il' ^ m n ^ "«r -1 " ■ i i 1 i • f^ III MANTUA 209 Luigi's son and successor, was the friend of Petrarch, whom he more than once entertained in Mantua, and this was but the beginning of a long patronage of the arts and a friendship for artists which endured as long as the Gonzaga House. The Decameron was printed in Mantua in 1472 ; about the same time Alberti was there at work on S. Andrea ; later Bembo, Ariosto and the father of Tasso were among those who claimed the friendship of the Gonzaga. The last Gonzaga was Ferdinando, a most inglorious prince, who fled to France during the war of the Spanish Succession. Mantua then came into Austrian hands. The town, always a strong fortress, was taken by the French in 1797 after a siege of eight months, but two years later was recaptured by the Austrians, who held it till 1801, when they were again obliged to cede it to the French. In 1814 the Austrian domination was once more established, and remained until October 3, 1866, when by the Peace of Vienna, Mantua, free at last, was annexed to the new Italian kingdom. The centre of life in Mantua remains, where it has been for ages, in the Piazza delle Erbe, over which frowns the Gothic Palazzo della Ragione and the Torre dell* Oro- logio. Opposite, in the little Piazza Andrea Mantegna, stands the Church of S. Andrea, the greatest church in Mantua, begun in 1472 by Leon Battista Alberti, con- tinued a hundred years later by Antonio Viani, who built the choir and transepts, and finally covered with a dome in 1732. S. Andrea stands upon the site of an oratory built in 804 in honour of that apostle. In 10 17, the German Bishop Isolfo built beside this oratory a little monastery for the Benedictines, and in 1046 Beatrice of Canossa, the wife of Bonifazio of Tuscany, erected a fine church upon the site of the oratory in commemoration of the birth of her daughter Matilda. This church suffered many vicissitudes. In 1244 it was taken by assault 14 210 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY by a faction of the citizens and ruthlessly spoiled ; in 1370 a fire destroyed part of it ; and finally, in 1392, it was restored ; and in 1465 enriched with many works of art. In May 1413 the first stone of the Campanile was laid. Then, in 1472, by order of Lodovico Gonzaga, Leon Battista Alberti was set to build here one of the most beautiful churches of the Renaissance. From 1472 to 1494 the nave was built and completed. Then nothing was done for a hundred years, when in 1597 Viani added the choir, the crypt and the transept. A hundred years later, in 1697, these additions were vaulted, and in 1732 Juvara began the cupola. The church, which is in the form of a Latin cross with- out aisles, is of good proportions, about 300 feet in length. The fa9ade of white marble might be that of an ancient Temple, and the old Campanile of 1413 stands in curious contrast to it. Within the church there is little to detain us. In the first chapel on the north side are sixteenth-century frescoes by Francesco Mantegna, and here is the tomb of the great painter Andrea Mantegna, and two of his paintings, spoilt by restoration, a Holy Family and a Baptism of Christ. Andrea Mantegna, after " repeated and urgent " invitations from Lodovico Gonzaga, came to Mantua in 1459, and remained there till his death. He seems to have been treated with the utmost kind- ness and consideration, was given a liberal salary, lodgings and perquisites, but the irritable old master was never satisfied, and Lodovico had constantly to listen to complaints about money or the rascality of his tailor or the wickedness of the Mantuans. The following letter ^ serves to show the noble and kindly attitude of the Marquis towards the old man : — "Andrea," he writes, *'we have received a letter from 1 Cf. Julia Cartwright, Isabella d'Este, 1 474-1539 (Murray, 1903), vol. i. p. 27. MANTUA 211 you which it really seems to us that you need not have written, since we perfectly remember the promises we made when you entered our service, neither, so it seems to us, have we failed to keep these promises or to do our utmost for you. But you cannot take from us what we have not got, and you yourself have seen that when we have had the means (Mantua was then in the grip of the plague after a long and costly war) we have never failed to do all in our power for you and our other ser- vants, and that gladly and with good will. It is true that since we have not received our usual revenues during the last few months, we have been obliged to defer certain payments, such as this which is due to you, but we are seeking by every means in our power to raise money to meet our obligations, even if we are forced to mortgage our own property, since all our jewels are already pawned, and you need not fear but that before long your debt will be paid gladly and readily.'* The second chapel on this side of S. Andrea contains a grievously injured picture by Lorenzo Costa of the Madonna and Child with Saints. On the other side of the church we find the true reason of its foundation. For here is the Cappella di S. Longino, he who pierced Christ's side with his spear, the disciple of S. Andrew who brought hither, as it is said, the Holy Grail. The frescoes, which are said to have been de- signed by Giulio Romano, represent the Crucifixion, and the Finding of the Precious Blood. In the right transept is the tomb of Bishop Giorgio Andreassi, by Prospero Clementi, and on the left the tomb of Pietro Strozzi, brought here from another church. Returning into the Piazza delle Erbe and so into the Piazza del Broletto, we come under the Torre della Gabbia into the Piazza Sordello, better known as the Piazza di S. Pietro, for here is the Cathedral, the Bishop's Palace a^d the Palazzo Ducale. 212 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY Here in the Piazza Sordello are two old Palaces of the Buonacolsi, the Palazzo Cadenazzi with the Torre della Gabbia, and the Palazzo Castiglioni adjoining the eighteenth- century vescovado. The Torre della Gabbia, like the palace to which it belongs, is a building of the end of the twelfth or be- ginning of the thirteenth century. It is so named by reason of a gabbia or cage which is affixed to it near the top. This, however, did not originally belong to it, but was placed there by Guglielmo Gonzaga (1549-1587), who had condemned prisoners exposed in it. Close to it is the Torre dello Zucchero, probably dating from the twelfth century, and occupying the site of the old imperial palace. Near to the Torre della Gabbia stands the private chapel, Cappella Buonacolsiana, of the first capitani of Mantua. The Cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul is a curiously various building. On the left of the entrance is an ancient Lombard sarcophagus of the twelfth century, and this is also the date of the tower. The interior of the church, however, as we see, is a remodelling of the older building done in 1545 by Bertani, it is said, from designs by Giulio Romano ; but the Cappella dell' Incoronata and the Cappella dello S. Sacramento are buildings of the middle of the seventeenth century, and the fagade of the church dates from 1756. Nothing that it possesses is of much interest. In a chapel on the left is a picture of S. Margaret by Brusasorci, a pupil of Caroto, and in the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament a S. Martin by Farinata. By far the largest and by far the most interesting building in the Piazza is the vast Reggia or Palazzo Ducale, which stretches away from here to the Lago Superiore. This enormous building was begun in 1302 by Guido Buonacolsi, called Botticella. In 1328, when the Gonzaghi succeeded the Buonacolsi as lords, they MANTUA 213 continued the work on this palace. The fagade, with its portal, is in the Gothic style, but within we find the Renaissance, in the splendid apartments of Isabella d' Este, which have largely escaped the vandalism of the Austrians, though several other rooms were destroyed by them and redecorated for the Viceroy Eugene Beauharnais in the style of that miserable time. We see what the extraordinary barbarism of these foreigners achieved almost at once on entering the Reggia. For there on the ground-floor only the so-called Scalcheria remains, with its pagan hunting scenes and grotesques by Giulio Romano, of all the Appartamento della Grotta which that extraordinary craftsman decorated for Isabella. Here " in the fair Cortile della Grotta, with its slender marble columns and pavement of majolica tiles, each with a separate device and meaning," as Bembo describes it to the Duchess of Urbino,^ Isabella had gathered all her treasures of sculpture and painting. Here were the grisailles of Mantegna, as well as his Parnassus, one of the glories of the Louvre to-day. Here were the allegories of Correggio, the works of Costa, the old court painter, a Holy Family of Giovanni Bellini's, a Romance by Dosso Dossi, and some wonderful Titians, more than one Holy Family and some marvel- lous portraits. Here were the antique sculptures that Isabella had collected with so much pains, and the putto which Michelangelo had carved and Cesare Borgia had sent her. Nor was this all. For in the Grotta Isabella had placed the alabaster organ which Castiglione had sent her from Rome, vases of Murano glass chosen by Leonardo from the collection of Lorenzo de' Medici, mirrors of crystal, cabinets of porphyry and lapus lazuli, and lutes inlaid with ivory, ebony and mother-of-pearl, and viols by Lorenzo da Pa via. Here, too, was her library, the precious manuscripts we shall never see, Aldines tall and clean and new from ^ Cf. Julia Cartwright, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 377. 214 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY the press, French and Spanish romances, an illuminated Boccaccio, the very book of verses Petrarch had left behind him. From the Scalcheria one is led up a great seventeenth- century staircase to the upper floor, and so through the vast series of state apartments. How mysteriously lovely they are in the falling light of late afternoon ! One feels like a ghost among ghosts, and expects at every moment the clouded mirrors to give up some vision of the beauty they have reflected and cannot altogether have lost. One passes almost stealthily along for fear of intruding upon the dead, under the glorious and fading paintings of Lorenzo Costa the younger, and one hastens as the guide whispers huskily : Here Eugene Beauharnais used to sleep, or here Napoleon all weary flung himself down to rest. And if this is so in all those great shadowy rooms with their fading mirrors, their emptiness and silence, it is a feeling almost impossible to describe that assails one in the Apparta- mento del Paradiso, those four little rooms that were Isabella's own, with their early Renaissance decoration, the work of her own time, still fit to be seen. How graceful they are, and since she loved them and spoke of them so much and always with a smile, how lovely they appear ! They were her home, the most present thing and perhaps the dearest in all that long and vital existence. " Nee spe, Nee metu," she can write there — as who should say, Here is happiness and contentment ; and she repeats the motto several times — was it for reassurance ? How often did she stand, I wonder, in that inner room looking over the garden and the lake, gay enough then, so hopeless now, and waiting there perhaps for the cool evening, question herself of this and of that and of her thoughts about it all. They are all gone into that deep pool where she watched one evening, when the moon shone, the petals of her lilies heavy with perfume falling and sinking one by one, MANTUA 215 till one of her dwarfs called her to play, and she passed through the Hall of the Mirrors to watch the masques in the great room where hung Mantegna's cartoons for the Triumph of Julius Caesar, and to greet her guests. But later, as we see, that assurance was eclipsed, and in another room we read the very secret of the indecision of her heart graven everywhere, " Forse che Si, Forse che No," many times. It is to an earlier generation of Gonzaga princes that one is recalled in the Castello di Corte, the old Castle of the family, built for them in 1395 by Bertolino da Novara. This strong fortress is reached generally from the Reggia, but it is, though it belongs to the earlier history of the Gonzaga House, always shown last. Here, in what is now the Archivio, we may see, in the Camera degli Sposi, a few of Andrea Mantegna's frescoes which once adorned a large part of the Castello. That must have been a great day for Mantua when, on Sunday, August 24, Francesco Gonzaga, the young Cardinal Legate^ Ludovico's son, made his solemn entry into the city, bringing in his train Leon Battista Alberti the architect, Angelo Poliziano the poet, and I know not who else, beautiful, famous or full of learning. So great an event indeed did Ludovico think it that he bade Mantegna paint it in fresco about his bed- chamber in the Castello. This small and rather grim room in a corner tower of the old fortress has by the genius of Mantegna been formed into a garden or bower. On one side we see the Duke of Wiirtemberg's ambassador come to ask for the hand of Ludovico's daughter Barbara in marriage. The Marquis and his wife are seated under a loggia on a terrace, surrounded by their children and grand- children, their retainers, dwarfs and pets. On the wall opposite we see the arrival of Cardinal Francesco — it is the moment in which his father meets him — and with him are his sons, Federigo and Gian- 2i6 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY francesco, and his two little grandsons, Sigismondo and Francesco, the future husband of Isabella. In the distance lies a city on the hills — is it Rome, from which the Cardinal has just come ? — one might think so, it is so noble and fair ; and certainly there are Roman emperors on the ceiling, and in the spandrels all the gay make- believe the Renaissance held so dear, of paganism, those delightful and unfortunate gods ! and none more charming than those Cupids who by a trick of genius seem to look down on the happiness of the Gonzaga family from a lofty terrace surrounded, as is but right, by fair ladies and girls of silver and of gold. It is of another Isabella we think, in what is the last wonder of Mantua, the Palazzo de Te (Te from Teietto, as it is thought), outside the Porta Pustierla. This palace is to the Reggia, to compare small things with great, what Versailles was to the Louvre or Hampton Court to St. James's, the suburban house of Federigo ii., who built it by the hands of Giulio Romano in 1525- 1535- It is not Isabella d' Este we meet here on the threshold and with whom we may pass through the vast deserted rooms, but Isabella Boschetti, the beautiful wife of Francesco Gonzaga of Calvisano, the beloved mistress of his kinsman, Federigo 11. of Mantua. It was for her Federigo had built the beautiful Palazzo, now Palazzo di Giustizia, in the Via Poma, within the gates ; but it is here in his own pleasure-house that she seems to live even yet in Mantua, not only because Giulio Romano has painted her as Psyche among the Bacch- anals in the second room of the Palace, but because it is she who has most truly lived here and informed the whole rich and fantastic place with her presence, her strange smile, her languid and perverse beauty. The other Isabella, Isabella d' Este, the mother of Federigo, hated her, and not without excuse, since in her eyes she had ruined Federigo* s life. This young prince on his return from France in 15 17 had married by proxy MANTUA 217 Maria Paleologa, daughter of the Marquis of Mon- ferrato, and when the Marquis died in the following year and was succeeded by his son, a delicate boy of five, it seemed possible that Federigo through his wife might claim the lordship. All this was doubtless noted by the ambitious lady at the Reggia. In 1524 it was time for Federigo to bring home his bride to Mantua, but to the astonishment of all, and especially of his mother, this is just what he declined to do. For meantime he had fallen in love with Isabella Boschetti, and had made her his mistress, a son being born to him in 1520. In 1528 a conspiracy was discovered to poison Isabella, and it was found that her husband, Francesco Gonzaga, was concerned in it. He fled to Mantua, where Federigo had him murdered. But the Marquis suspected others beside the wronged husband, and especially he suspected his mother-in-law, Anne d'Alengon. Therefore he per- suaded the Pope to annul his marriage with Maria, and succeeded in winning his reluctant consent. For this cause, then, Isabella d* Este hated Isabella Boschetti, and would sit lonely in the Reggia, while Federigo rode with his mistress gaily through the city on a gala day surrounded by courtiers and ladies. Every- where in the rooms of Isabella at the Reggia we see a strange device displayed, a many-branched candlestick ; and this has puzzled so many that I may perhaps note here that Mrs. Ady, who has given such loving care and study to all that concerns Isabella d' Este, tells us that it was in her misery at this time, face to face with the other Isabella, that she adopted it. Paolo Giovio explains why. " The device," he writes, " Madama caused to be painted in her rooms of the Corte Vecchia and on her villa of Porto, and I who was always her loyal servant gave her the motto, Sufflcit unum in tenebris, which recalls Virgil's line, Unum pro mulHs.'* How dreary is the Palazzo del Te now, and how for- lorn, the most forlorn thing in forlorn Mantua, a palace 2l8 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY of faery that arose out of the mists of the lagoons and might seem already to be dissolving into mere damp and desolation. Yet once it seemed to be the wonder of the world, and that to Vasari, too, who had seen so much of what was best worth seeing ever37where in Italy. He writes a page full of curious enthusiasm on what he considers Giulio Romano's painting in the Sala dei Giganti in the Palazzo del T^. But the room which was decorated by Rinaldo Mantovano is rather fantastic than beautiful. No. Mantua once the glorious is now the forlorn. Robbed as she has been of her pictures, there remain little more than these two palaces, or the two churches that Albert! designed, with the fading frescoes of Man- tegna and Giulio Romano to see. Only the memories of two women beautiful and rare, of the same name, haunt us still in her fantastic silences, her burning sun- shine and the awful damp of her autumn nights. Over her gates seem to be engraven the words, "Ave atque Vale,*' and over her tomb those which repeated the in- decision of a woman's soul, over and over again to itself, " Forse che Si, Forse che No." CHAPTER XIV CREMONA THE way from Mantua, forlorn upon her lakes, to the beautiful and harmonious city of Cremona, takes you first through Curtatone, on the Lago Superiore, out of the Porta Belfiorc, where, on May 29, 1848, a very bloody action was fought between the Austrians and the Tuscan allies of Carlo Alberto of Piedmont. A great monument rising out of the marshy Seregna commemorates the noble deed. Nor is this the only sanctuary upon this road, for, not much farther on, about three and a half miles from Mantua stands one of the most astonishing pilgrimage churches in all Italy. S. Maria delle Grazie was first built in 1399 by Francesco Gonzaga, who wished to render thanks to the Madonna for having freed the city of Mantua from the plague. He therefore decided to build this new church, which was completed and consecrated in 1406 upon this site, anciently sacred to the Blessed Virgin. In 1419 the place was enlarged and became one of the most im- portant religious houses in Lombardy. The whole place is a shrine of the Madonna, full of every sort of votive offering, from cannon-balls that fell harmless into Mantua in the famous siege of 1522, and which Federigo placed here, to piles of crutches, shoes, wax arms and legs, silver hearts and the usual litter of a shrine. More amazing is it that not so much the worshipped as the worshipper is represented here in effigy. For, on coming into the church, you find yourself in an avenue 219 220 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY of figures, life-size, and dressed in every sort of costume, in niches along the walls. These are they whom the Madonna has heard and answered here in her Church of the Graces. Among these favoured petitioners we find figures of Pope Pius ii., the Emperor Charles v. and the pillager of Rome, the Constable Bourbon, whom Cellini swears he shot. Beneath each figure the story of his petition is told in rude verse, evidently of local manu- facture. Here, amid all this amazement, lie the princes of the House of Gonzaga : and among them the pattern of courtiers, Baldassare Castiglione, the author of II CortegianOy which in those happier days was as eagerly read in the best and most cultured society through- out Europe as the French novel is on the Continent, or the Daily Mail newspaper in England to-day. For the tomb of this man, who was literally the first gentle- man in Europe, Bembo composed this epitaph, for the body of Castiglione had been brought at his own desire all the way from Toledo, where he died, in order that it might be laid here in the tomb of his young wife. Non ego nunc vivo, conjux dulcissima : vitam Corpore namque tuo fata meam abstulerunt ; Sed vitam, tumulo cum tecum condar in isto, Jungenturque tuis ossibus ossa mea. Hippolytae Taurellae, quae in ambiguo reliquit, utrum pulchrior an castior fuerit. Primos juventae annos vix. Bal- dassar Castillion insatiabiliter moerens posuit ann Dom. mdxx, S. Maria delle Grazie is a little off our true road, which lies along the great highway to the south of it. Pushing on our way we come first to Castellucchio, some three miles from S. Maria delle Grazie, and there is the old castle of Marcaria, where we cross the Oglio, and come presently to the old republic of Bozzolo. And hence certainly, if not from Mantua, I advise the train. These Lombardy roads, good for a mile or two, are far too monotonous for the joy of walking if they are merely CREMONA 2«i of the plain. There is, too, next to nothing to be seen on the road between Mantua and Cremona that cannot be easily seen from these cities, where it is a pleasure to linger and draw out the days. Whereas, on the road in Lombardy if it rains you are involved in a sea of mud indescribable, and if the weather be dry for long you are overwhelmed and utterly brought to nothing by the desert of dust which the plain then becomes. The best season for the walker and automobilist is an early but not a rainy spring, or a late but not a wet autumn. Even then there are risks to be run, but the country is worth them, for if you be lucky the plain is only a vast garden full of delight, inexhaustible and lovely, and especially commendable to the automobilist. I can never make up my mind which is the most beautiful city in Lombardy, whether it be Bergamo, Mantua or Cremona, but I know that I love Cremona best. Picture to yourself a city like a pale rose growing in the midst of the great green plain, that, when the mulberry flowers, is all a sea of white blossom. You enter this city and find it silent but not forlorn, smiling though the grass grows in its beautiful great Piazza and the wide streets which the sun fills with gold ; the great palaces are often deserted, the tall and beautiful towers that here and there rise to watch the plain are crumbling and make no sign, for Cremona is very old, the oldest Roman town in all the plain, and, in truth, here in Cisalpine Gaul she seems in her nobility like a stranger, some old centurion still on guard amid the dykes and the endless ways, in the service of the Senate and the Roman people. Cremona, as we have seen,^ was the first colony the Romans established north of the Po. It was a fortress established at the end of the Gallic war in 225 B.C., only seven years before Hannibal crossed the Alps and by his astonishing act revived the Nationalist hopes, 1 See supra. 222 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY as it were, of all the Gallic peoples whom the Romans had just, as was thought, finally vanquished. In the year 225 Rome settled two colonies of 6000 men each in Cisalpine Gaul, one at Piacenza on the Italian side of the great river, the other, the more adventurous establish- ment, was made at Cremona to the north of the Po : they were doubtless very strong, and entrenched places defended by art, and chosen, in the first place, for their natural strength, Cremona lying not only in a marsh but in close relationship to the Po and the Adda, which ran into it not six miles to the westward. This colony had not been founded seven years when Hannibal crossed the Alps and persuaded the Gauls, the Boians and the Insubrians to enter his service. In the war that followed, however, neither of these two fortresses fell; they remained during all those critical years the only hope of Rome north of the Apennines ; but in the year 200 B.C., when Lucius Furius finally defeated the Gauls under the walls of Cremona, it was found that the colony had suffered so severely that in 190 B.C. a fresh body of colonists was sent to her, and six thousand new families were divided between Cremona and Piacenza. From this time till the civil war, which followed upon the death of Caesar, we know little or nothing of Cremona beyond the fact that she flourished exceedingly. In that unhappy contest she had the misfortune to side with Brutus, and it is to this that Virgil alludes in the line about Mantua — Mantua vae miserae nimium vicina Cremonae. For it seems that some territory of Mantua, as well as all that of Cremona, was confiscated after the war and assigned to the veterans of Augustus. Cremona, how- ever, continued to flourish, and it was not till the civil war of 69 A.D. that her prosperity was seriously affected. In that war Cremona was burned to the ground ; nothing CREMONA 223 seems to have escaped, and Vespasian, when he had estab- lished his power, was compelled by public opinion throughout Italy to rebuild the city ; which never seems, however, to have recovered her old prosperity, though she appears to have remained a military port of importance. That Cremona suffered with the rest of the cities of the plain in the invasion of the barbarians in the fifth century is certain, though we have few records of her story in that appalling misfortune. We know that Narses incorporated her with the exarchate, and then with the advent of the Lombards comes the first real break in her history. Cremona alone had been able to resist the assaults of Alboin ; for thirty-three years she withstood these barbarians, till Agilulf came with a ponderous multitude furnished with towers, catapults, engines and battering-rams against her, and destroyed her with her neighbour Volturnia in the year 603. Her people, such as escaped this barbarian deluge, hid themselves, as the refugees farther east had done, in the lagoons, in the islands and marshes and woods, and thus came into existence those little places we know, Aguanegra, Bagnolo, Le Isole, Le Fosse ; and the territory of Cremona, abandoned to the barbarians, became desolate, the Po and the smaller rivers and streams overflowed the fields about her and left her silent in a vast lagoon. But the position of Cremona forbade that, like Aquileia, it should be utterly abandoned and forgotten. It was presently repopulated and rebuilt, and in the ninth, the tenth and the eleventh centuries it presented one of the first examples of the rule of the Bishop, the revolt of the merchants and the feudatories, and the rebellion of the plebs, which took place in every city of Lombardy, and which we know as the establishment of the Commune. This struggle, which began in 916, terminated in 1080, when we find the Commune established with its magis- trates and consuls, independent of the Bishops and the Counts, with its own army, its treasury and its Carroccio. aa4 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY There followed here, as elsewhere, two centuries of munici- pal contests, while her exterior relations are extraordin- arily complex. In 1109, Cremona is allied with Lodi against Milan and Brescia, who sacked and burned her. In 1 1 21 she is allied with Milan, and sends a contingent to help the Milanese against Como. There followed the bitter wars with Crema, the neighbouring city, which Cremona wished to subjugate to her secular dominion, for Crema had been within her ecclesiastical rule. This brought Milan against her, and Brescia and even Parma and Piacenza. When Frederick Barbarossa came into Italy she sided with him for her own sake, and took a great part in the destruction of Crema in 1160, and of Milan in 11 62. But she soon grew weary of the tyranny of the Imperial vicars and joined the Lombard League, assisted to found Alessandria and to rebuild Milan. In 1 175 she elected her first Podesta, for a year and six months. The city was governed by consuls, a general council of nohili and popolo to the number of more than a hundred, and a restricted and secret consiglio di credenza. It was divided into quarters, that took the names of the gates,^ and numbered at this time some 16,000 combatants. It was during this communal period, in 1107, that the Cathedral was built, and ten years later the Baptistery. The Palazzo Comunale was begun in 1206 and the Torrazzo in 12 19. This heroic period was here, as else- where, brought to an end by the madness of the factions, the accursed] quarrel of Guelph and Ghibelline, which, however, was not so fiercely contested in Cremona, for Cremona was almost altogether Ghibelline, because 1 These were Porta Postumia, Porta Natali, Porta Ariberti and Porta Pertusa : each had its own standard — a blue Hon on a gold ground, a gold lion on a blue ground, a red lion on a white ground, and a white lion on a red ground, respectively. Cremona grew very much during the twelfth century, and a new circle of walls was built to include the borgo in 1 169. CREMONA 225 Milan, her arch enemy, was Guelph. She favoured Fred- erick II. with all her heart, and in return he showered privileges upon her, called her his " beloved and chosen city," and used her as his general quarters in his Lombard wars. But when Frederick was dead, Cremona fell into the hands of Ezzelino, and the reaction which naturally followed left her at the mercy of the Guelphs. Against this party Henry vii., when he came into Italy, moved in 1310. Marching on Cremona with his whole army and with the Ghibellines round about, he took the city and gave it up to be burned and sacked, in spite of the prayers of three hundred citizens who went out to meet him at Paderno and prayed him to spare the city. The ruin of Cremona was such that when, in 1322, Galeazzo Visconti saw his chance and took it, he had little diffi- culty in incorporating Cremona in his vast dominions. All roads in Cremona lead at last to the centre of the city, the beautiful Piazza del Duomo, about which are grouped the great buildings which lend to Cremona her special charm and character : the Cathedral and Baptistery, the Torrazzo and the Palazzo Comunale opposite to them. Let us begin with the Cathedral, which is one of the most remarkable buildings in Lom- bardy. The Cathedral of S. Maria Assunta in Cremona, like the cathedrals of Modena, Parma and Piacenza, with which it should be compared, is a magnificent and austere basilica in the Lombard style, flanked by the Torrazzo, the noblest tower in all this country. Begun on August 15, 1109, on which day the Bishop Gualtiero of Cremona laid the first stone, the Cathedral was scarcely finished when it was utterly ruined by an earthquake in 11 17. This seems to have given pause to the people of Cremona, and it is not till May 1 190 that we read of the church being consecrated with much pomp by the Bishop Sicardo Casalano. This church was undoubtedly a pure basilica, the 15 226 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY nave being vaulted, but not the aisles, which were added later ; the northern about 1288, the southern later still ; the vaults we see are of the fourteenth century. We know nothing of the architects of this church, but the transepts are the work of Giacomo da Camperio and Bartolino Bragerio. The fa9ade of the church, one of the most striking anywhere to be seen, was in its origin of pure Lombard style, such as we see in one of the intarsias of the choir, or on medals conserved in the Museo Civico. But it was divided into three compartments corresponding to the three naves, the loggia to the left, under the Torrazzo, being added in the end of the fifteenth century from the design of Lorenzo Trotti. It was at this time that the fa9ade of the cathedral was largely modified by Alberto Severo di Carrara, who, being a Tuscan, with little understanding of the Lombard style, spoilt it as a work in that manner, but made of it the pictur- esque thing we see. Ten years later his work was heightened and the pediment and frieze of fine statues beneath it were added : these statues represent S. Pietro Martiro, S. Marcellino, S. Imerico and S. Omobono. The great rose window of the fa9ade, however, is a fine work of the thirteenth century by Giacomo Porato da Como. As we see it then, the fagade has three doors : the great door in the midst is the work of Porato da Como. It is furnished with a fine portico, the work of Sebastiano Nani in 1560. This is borne by two columns resting on the backs of two lions in red Verona marble, which themselves lie upon great pedestals, while above the porch are four other little lions bearing the Loggia, in which, between two saints, Madonna stands on a pedestal, with her child in her arms. These statues are also by Sebastiano Nani. The frieze beneath these statues should be especially noticed. It repre- sents the people at work at home and in the fields, according to the seasons, and bears the signs of the CREMONA 227 zodiac with the emblems proper to them. In the midst, exactly under the statue of the Madonna and Child, the figure of a bishop is carved in high relief, by some thought to be S. Barnabas, to whom legend assigns the foundation of the Church of Cremona. The two porticoes, or logge, on either side the central door, were added in 1497, and in 1758 the statues of saints upon their parapets were placed there. Within, the church is disappointing : it is 67 metres and more in length, and the breadth of the nave is more than 30 metres, while the two transepts are 67 metres long and more than 21 wide ; yet spacious as the church is, it does not look half its size. The nave, too, has been completely modernised, except in the vault and the triforium. The whole interior is a vast field of colour and gilding, the church being covered with frescoes by the painters of Cremona. In the nave, on the left, above the arches, Boccaccio Boccaccino of Cremona, a distinctive artist, who seems to unite in himself much of the prettiness of the later Milanese with the colour sense of the Venetians, after some provincial manner of his own, has painted in fresco certain scenes from the Life of the Blessed Virgin, the Nativity of our Lord, the Circumcision and Christ among the Doctors. In the apse, too, we find the work of this painter in a fresco, perhaps the best work of his in the church, of Christ and the four patron saints of Cremona, S. Peter Martyr, S. Marcellino, S. Imerico and S. Omobono : and again an Annunciation ; these painted in 1506. On the right wall of the nave, at the eastern end of it, we see the Last Supper, and scenes from the Passion of our Lord, frescoes by the Cremonese pupil of Romanino, known as Melone. Romanino himself appears in the frescoes that f?)llow : of Christ bound to the pillar and Christ before Pilate, and we probably see his hand in the two frescoes just assigned to Melone, the Crown- 228 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY ing with Thorns and the Mocking of Christ. The last three frescoes here, with the Crucifixion, are by Pordenone, as is the Crucifixion over the main door and the Deposition to one side of it. On the other side of the main portal is a fresco of the Resurrection by Bernardo Gatti, painted in 1529. To this painter is due also the famous Assumption over the high altar ; it was his last work, and he left it unfinished at his death, when Sammachini of Bologna completed it. The intarsia work of the stalls of the choir, which should not be missed, is by Platina (1484). The two pulpits are adorned with reliefs of the Massacre of the Innocents, from an old altar by Amadeo. Turning now to the chapels : in the first chapel, on the right, is a picture of the Madonna and Child, enthroned between S. Dominic and S. Paul, with Donor, painted in 1522. The Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, to the right of the choir, is most elaborately painted in fresco by Giulio Campi, with pictures of the Last Supper, and the Gathering of the Manna, which prefigured it. The similar chapel to the left of the choir is also painted in fresco by this Cremonese master, with scenes from the life of S. John Baptist, his Preach- ing and the Baptism of Our Lord. In the left transept, too, we find a S. Michael from his hand, and in the right transept a series of frescoes, the History of Esther. To the south of the Cathedral stands the lofty octagonal baptistery founded in 1167. It once had three doors, but only one remains, that on the north towards the Piazza. This has a fine porch supported by columns resting on the backs of lions. Within, the baptistery is bare and austere ; the very noble font, hewn out of a single block of red Verona marble, was erected here in 1520. To the north of the Cathedral stands the Archivio, and behind this rises the great and beautiful Torrazzo, the noblest tower in Lombardy, and, as is said, the CREMONA 229 loftiest in all Italy : it rises to a height of 396 feet. It was built, probably, on the site of an earlier tower destroyed in the earthquake of 11 17, in 1284. In the thirteenth century it stood alone, and since the sixteenth century it has consisted of three stages, the first four- sided, the second octagonal, the third again octagonal, covered by a lofty spire. Nothing can be more graceful and lovely than these open octagons, superimposed the one upon the other. An enormous clock, placed here in 1594, still tells the hours. Opposite the cathedral, on the other side of the Piazza, stands the battlemented Palazzo Comunale, supported on lofty pointed arches, and built in the first years of the thirteenth century. Within is a small cloister, and in the upper floor the Pinacoteca. Close by is the Palazzo dei Gonfalonieri, dating from 1292. All one's time in Cremona seems to be spent in and about the Piazza and the Cathedral, and rightly so. For whether you come there by day or by night, at dawn when the first light catches the lovely lantern of the Torrazzo, or at evening when the whole city resounds and thrills to the ringing of the Ave Maria, there is nothing at once as spacious and ordered and as pic- turesquely delightful as this square, in which the whole story of old Cremona seems to have been gathered and to live. Yet, if you be a devotee of the North Italian schools of painting, there is plenty to see in Cremona beside the Duomo ; for in her quiet way Cremona too had a school of painting, which if we leave Boccaccino's works in the Cathedral on one side, might seem to consist so far as Cremona is concerned of the works of Giulio Campi (1502-72), the pupil of Romanino and the disciple of Giulio Romano, his brothers Antonio and Vicenzio and his cousin Bernardino. The churches of Cremona abound in their works, and a lazy day or two, with the 230 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY beautiful Piazza as a kind of refuge and refreshment, may be very happily spent among these neglected wild- flowers of the Lombard by-way. But before proceeding to explore the churches of this charming city, I suppose it is one's duty to visit the Museo, where the spoil of too many of them has been gathered, chiefly after all for our delight. The Museo Civico, in the Via Ala Ponzone, is found in the Palazzo Reale. There is a fine altarpiece of the Madonna and Child enthroned between S. Anthony and S. Stephen, painted in 1518 by Boccaccio Boccaccino, and a host of curiosities beside, a few Ferrarese pictures, notably a Madonna with S. Peter and S. Andrew, a late work by Mazzolino, the pupil of Ercole Robert i, and two pictures of the Nativity by Bernardo Parenzano, that eclectic painter of the last decades of the fifteenth century who followed so many masters, Ercole Roberti, Domenico Morone, Mantegna and Buonsignori. But it is not here we shall really find the Cremonese. We do come upon them, however, feebly enough, in the neighbouring Church of S. Pietro al Po, built by Ripari in 1549, where over the third altar on the right stands a picture of the Madonna and Saints by Gian Francesco Bembo, and on the ceiling some rich if feeble decorations by Antonio Campi and his friends. But the most delightful and simple shrine left to us in Cremona is to be found in the fourteenth- century Church of S. Agostino, a building of rosy brick with a grass- grown piazza before it. Here, in the first chapel on the right, is a Pieta by Giulio Campi, and in the last chapel but one on the same side of the church a miracle indeed, a Madonna- and Child with S. James and S. Augustine, painted in 1494 by Pietro Perugino. On the throne is inscribed : petrus pervsinvs pinxit mcccc lxxxxiiii. Crowe and Cavalcaselle believe this picture to have been painted in Florence, but there is just a chance that the Umbrian master may have painted it in Cremona itself, CREMONA 231 for in 1494 he was in Venice, as we know, and Cremona is but a little way thence. The picture is one of great beauty. Within one of the arches of the Palazzo Comunale, as it were. Madonna sits enthroned, perhaps before her own beautiful Cathedral, her Divine Child in her lap. On either side stand S. James and S. Augustine, S. James with a pen in his hand and a book, S. Augustine with crozier and mitre. Nothing more surprising and more welcome is to be seen in all this country. Opposite this divine vision from Italy, between the third and the fifth altars on the north side of the church, we find two portraits of Francesco Sforza and his wife, Bianca Maria, the natural daughter of the last Visconti. We leave S. Agostino with regret, and proceeding down the Via Guido Grandi we come to the little Church of S. Margherita that Giulio Campi built and painted about 1547. This church was originally under the dedication of S. Pelagia, and in 1542 the Cremonese poet Monsignore Girolamo Vida was its rector. He became Bishop of Alba, and in 1547, wishing to rebuild his church in Cremona, employed Giulio Campi, his fellow-townsman, to carry out the work, which he did, both building the church and enriching it with frescoes. We find more of the work of this artist in the Church of S. Agata in the Piazza now named after Garibaldi, originally built in 1077, and rebuilt in 1495, where in the choir we find four large frescoes of the Martyrdom of S. Agatha. Quite on the other side of the city, by the Porta Venezia, we come upon Campi' s work again in the Church of S. Abbondio, with a beautiful tower. Here, behind the high altar, is one of his best pictures, the Madonna and Child with SS. Nazaro and Celso. A later work, a Cruci- fixion, is also to be seen in the neighbouring Church of S. Michele. But the most interesting Cremonese church is not after all to be found in Cremona, but some two miles 232 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY outside the Porta Venezia, on the road to Casalmaggiore. S. Sigismondo, as we see it, owes its existence to Francesco Sforza. That astute and extraordinary adventurer, who always seems to me to be the most modern figure in all the fifteenth century, began his life, as we know, as a free lance, a soldier of fortune, a condottiere with a band of brigands to sell to the highest bidder. By hook and by crook he gradually managed to possess himself of the city of Ancona, of which with the March he made himself lord. This, however, but whetted his appe- tite. He was a great unscrupulous adventurer, and just as to-day in England or America we should have found him engaged in finance, so in fifteenth-century Italy we find him busy with the nobler affair of arms. But it was not by arms alone that he hoped to establish himself among the lords of Italy. He had more than once rendered some service to the Visconti of Milan, and when the opportunity offered again he asked as reward the hand of Bianca Maria, Visconti' s natural daughter, for he had no legitimate offspring. Visconti was at length compelled to promise him Bianca, but for many years he refused to fulfil his bargain. Then, in 1441, Visconti found himself unable to make headway against Venice, and generally threatened by the Floren- tines, in whose pay Sforza then was. In his hour of need he turned to the ablest man he knew, Francesco Sforza, his prospective son-in-law, and begged him to act as arbiter between Venice and himself. Sforza agreed, but when he drew up the treaty he included a clause which forced Visconti to give him Bianca Maria. This time Visconti could not get out of the bargain, and as a marriage portion he bestowed upon Bianca Cremona and Pontremoli. He gave Cremona because he could not hold it successfully, for it lay too far on the border-land of the Veneto, and its acquisition had long been desired by the Venetians. He gave Pontremoli because it, too, was far and upon the Florentine border. CREMONA 233 The marriage was celebrated upon October 26, 1441, in the Church of S. Sigismondo, outside the city of Cremona, on the road to Casalmaggiore ; and the bride and bridegroom made a triumphal entry into Cremona, where many of the Marchigiani had gathered at Sforza's orders to greet him and his bride. The little church in which they had been married had been founded by the Benedictines in 990 and dedi- cated to SS. Giacomo and Filippo. In 1253 Innocent iv. had given it to the Vallombrosans, who had dedi- cated it to S. Sigismondo. Francesco Sforza, however, was not satisfied that the church which had seen the fulfilment of so many of his ambitions should remain the magnificent place it was. Therefore in 1463, when through his marriage he had actually possessed himself of the Visconti lordship, he pulled down the little church and built in its place by the hands of Barto- lommeo Gazza the rich and sumptuous temple we see. He also rebuilt the monastery. As we see it to-day the church of S. Sigismondo is the shrine of Giulio Campi, just as the Arena Chapel at Padua is of Giotto. It is covered with his frescoes, and on the high altar stands one of his most precious works, in which we see the Madonna appearing to Francesco Sforza and his bride. Nor is this all, for around the western window he has painted the Annunciation, and indeed in nave and transept he has left us a rich legacy, in which we see the work of himself, his brothers and his cousin Bernardino. It is impossible to leave Cremona without reminding oneself what an harmonious and musical city it is; that it is the birthplace of the Amati, the great Stradi- varius and of Guarnerius, who here made their violins, the necks of which were like the necks of rare and lovely birds, and which even to-day are softer and sweeter than any other instruments. CHAPTER XV CREMA AND LODI WHEN one does pluck up courage to leave Cremona at last, to forgo quietness for the noise of the railway, and the sunshine and delight of that exquisite town for the chances of travel, it must, of course, be for Crema that one sets out — Crema that has almost no history worth knowing, but that remains one of the dearest and most hidden places in all this wide and beautiful Lombard country. I often wonder now I am set down to write about Lombardy, as I did when I made my way along the Lombard roads, whether we who go our ways up and down from city to city, from church to church, from one building to another, ever really are aware how beautiful a country Lombardy is under its wide, incomparable sky, half lost in its own vastness. It is easy to see Tuscany ; the Umbrian valleys draw you on, and from day to day in the Veneto you pass and repass from the plain to the mountains, from the mountains to the plain. But Lombardy is hard to see, difficult to find out and impossible to possess oneself of, without much fatigue, weariness, mud and dust. The roads are all endless there, the cities always far away, and often when they are but market towns worse than nothing — places from which one hurries away in the first train that comes by, places that one tries to forget. Such are many of the towns that hold, it may be, just one thing one longs to see, and because they are many and 234 CREMA AND LODI 235 come to loom large in the memory, more than half of our pleasure in Lombardy is ruined by them. But the country : I think, indeed, no one ever sees that here in the great plain. It is too big, too vague, too empty to allure us from the security and curiosity of the towns ; yet it is a background full of peace to all those peaceful and lovely places : Cremona in the green meadows, Mantua amid the quietness of the lagoons, and last but not least Crema, where the white oxen gather in the streets at evening drawing their great creaking carts laden with all the wealth of the purple vintage that shall presently, by the winepress, stain the streets and perfume the whole city. Crema is a little place, no one goes there, yet it is easy to reach from Cremona by train to and fro in a day if you will, and it is very well worth seeing. Besides, if you have the heart, you might do many worse things than walk thither, you might give up going at all, and lest you should indeed do that, I state here once and for all : it is easy to go to Crema and back from Cremona by train in one day. There is no church more beautiful in all Lombardy than the Cathedral of Crema, and it has a campanile crowned by a lantern that is as graceful and as airy but not as tall nor as strong as the Torrazzo of Cremona. Yet it is a thing to love and to be proud of, and the people of Crema justly hold it high in their affections, for it is not only beautiful and full of daring, it is also unique : there is nothing quite like it anywhere else in the world. As much in the way of originality cannot be said for the beautiful facade of the Cathedral of Crema. Fine as it is, it must be confessed that it is very like all the other Lombard fagades we have seen : it has nobility, grace even, and some splendour, but it is unmistakably of the family, and especially by this should we know and recognise it, for it has no relation at all to the church 236 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY which it suddenly and as it were by brute force closes and ends. Just where it might have been astonishingly original, so that its fame would have been blazed in every guide-book of the world, it has with a certain becoming humility followed the tradition — alas ! a bad one — and taken after the family. Within, however, the Cathedral has something to show us, namely, a picture of S. Sebastian between S. Christopher and S. Roch, painted in 1518 by Civerchio, the founder, with Ferramola, of the Brescian school : this over the second altar on the north. There is one other church in Crema that has something to offer us in the way of painting : this is SS. Trinita, where over the third altar on the north is a Madonna and Child enthroned between S. Peter, S. Paul, S. Sebastian and S. Roch, painted in 1535 by Calisto Piazza da Lodi, the follower of Romanino. If there is little for the mere tourist in the streets of Crema — and I have said nothing of the fa9ade of S. Maria Maddalena, which is of the early Renaissance, and now fronts a theatre — there is undoubtedly a church without her walls that will astonish him : I mean the round church of S. Maria della Croce, which is rather polygonal than round after all, and built of brick in the true Renaissance manner, and reminds one of nothing so much as of that heavenly building Raphael saw in the background of his picture in the Brera. It is a work by Giovanni Battagio of Lodi, a disciple of Bramante's. I say it reminds one of nothing so much as of Raphael's temple there in his picture of the Sposalizio. Well, it has just the tranquillity, the lightness, and the graceful dignity of that visionary building, and it stands under its clustered domes and cupolas really like something in a dream, something not made with hands, that would actually be impossible in any other land but this. And if it be true, as Pater has told us, that " all art aspires towards the condition of music," CREMA AND LODI 237 here, I think, for once it has been completely successful. For it is as though suddenly, as we listened, some Magnificat by Palestrina or Marenzio had taken visible shape and " materialised itself," as we say, before our eyes in a temple not made with hands, in which it might please the Queen of the angels a little to abide our coming. From Crema, it is not far — there is a tramway beside the road all the way — to Lodi, where it is very good to come if only to see the beautiful church of the Incoronata, another building by Giovanni Battagio, who was born here. The city known as Lodi to-day, however, and set on the right bank of the Adda, is not the ancient city which the Romans called Laus Pompeia, perhaps after Pompeius Strabo, who conferred the rights of Latin citizens upon the municipalities of Transpadane Gaul. The ancient town was set in the plain some five miles to the west of Lodi, and is known — for there is there to-day a considerable village — as Lodi Vecchio. Lodi Vecchio, which is not worth a visit, has a very strange and tragic history. A city of the Gauls, situated in Roman times sixteen miles south-east of Milan, on the high road between Milan and Placentia, it had, according to Pliny, been a stronghold of the Boii. It figures not at all in Roman history, we know nothing of it save that it existed, but in the end of the Dark Ages Lodi had become important, and by the end of the tenth century an independent republic. Now in those days, as everj^here in Italy, but nowhere so fiercely and so persistently as in this Cis- alpine plain, the cities fought for land and power and wealth and the harvest, the one with the other, and the nearer neighbour the greater the foe. The two captains of this formless and confused and continual civil war were Milan and Pavia, for they were the two strongest, 238 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY and therefore, and because they were close neighbours, they were deadly foes. They did not directly attack one another — at least, in the beginning they did not, for they would not risk everything in a single throw; but they each warred against their feebler neighbours, so that in a brief space the whole plain was divided into two leagues or parties headed by these two cities. Cremona, which was at this time the third city in the plain, was ever the enemy of Milan ; it desired greatly to conquer Crema, and therefore Crema held to Milan, yet in the year iioo Crema fell. Milan then looking around assailed Lodi and Novara; and Pavia, not to be outdone, attacked Tortona. The thing was a sort of game, but a bloody one, in which the weak, unless they could win help, were without hope, and therefore each terrified city attached itself to that great city of which it had least apprehension : Crema and Tortona looked to Milan ; Pavia and Cremona joined hands, and Lodi cried aloud to them for help, as did Novara. Brescia, however, because she was near to Cremona, looked to Milan, as did Parma and Modena, while Piacenza and Reggio stood with Pavia. It is impossible for us to conceive of the state of things which followed. A kind of border war, private war and piracy ensued, in which no man's property or life was safe ; nor could any man be sure of the harvest, or indeed of anything but danger. At any moment the great bell might ring in the Tower, and all the able-bodied citizens would gather round the carroccio and go forth to battle. If you fell you were dead, but God help your wife and your children ; if you were taken prisoner, you were subject to the most amazing insults, as that which the Milanese in 1108 inflicted upon certain of Pavia whom they had come by in battle. These they first stripped naked, and when they had brought them into the Piazza, they affixed lighted torches to the least noble part of their persons, CREMA AND LODI 239 and hooted them out of the gates. Every war did not, however, end in so harmlessly farcical a fashion. In the year 1107 the league against Milan was less united than it should have been, and Milan, seeing her chance, attacked Lodi, her nearest foe. This war lasted for four years. Lodi was sometimes victorious, but she had not the population of Milan, and when her harvests were taken or burnt year after year, in spite of assistance sent by Cremona and Pavia, Lodi began to despair, and in this despair was taken by assault in the year mi and utterly destroyed, the houses levelled with the ground, the walls thrown down : Milan left not one stone upon another. As for the Lodesi, they were all reduced to a kind of serfdom and distributed among six villages, where they were kept in order. The fate which overtook Lodi stands alone in the history of Lombardy, as does her resurrection. In the year ii54,Frederick Barbarossa, Emperor-Elect, descended into Italy, ostensibly to put an end to the appalling state of anarchy and civil war which obtained there and which had already cost Lodi her life. In the previous year, 1 153, at Constance, where he had presided at a diet, two citizens of Lodi had made their way through the throng of princes and nobles and had cast themselves weeping at his feet, beseeching him to release them from the tyranny of the people of Milan. They bore, publicly at least, no commission from their fellows, but Frederick immediately sent an officer to Milan to bid the Milanese to renounce their jurisdiction over the Lodesi and to render to them their ancient lands. ** The Imperial messenger," we are told, " was sent first to the Lodesi to acquaint them with the nature of his mission. In vain they regretted the inconsiderate rashness of the unauthorised appeal that had been made ; they dreaded lest the Milanese should reply to the mandate of the Emperor by burning their houses and crops ; they pointed out that it would be at least a year before the 240 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY Imperial troops could arrive to protect them ; already they had endured servitude for two generations. ..." In spite of their protests, the envoy went to Milan. The consuls received him in a full meeting of the people ; but the crowd, beside itself with passion, snatched the missive from the hands of him who read it and trod it underfoot. The Emperor was defied, and it was only with difficulty his messenger escaped with his life. The Lodesi are said to have taken to the woods ; but in a calmer moment the Milanese themselves grew afraid, and with the other cities of the plain sent delegates with the customary donation to the new Emperor. Pavia and Cremona, however, were not slow to accuse her, nor she, as answering them, to invade their territories. It was thus into a veritable pandemonium that Frederick descended when he entered Cisalpine Gaul in 1154. He came down the Adige valley to Roncaglia. There in comitia he decided what to do — namely, to support the weaker of the two factions in Lombardy : that is to say, the faction led by Pavia, to which Lodi belonged. The first town to feel the weight of his arms was Tortona. He took it after a brave defence of sixty- two days, and when its people had departed burnt it to the ground. He then marched to Pavia, where he received the Iron Crown, and so to Rome to receive the Golden Crown from the Pope, and returned over the Alps, having achieved nothing but a threat. Meanwhile Milan, knowing what to expect, tried, in the year 1158, to make friends with the Lodesi ; but the Lodesi would not, for they knew that Frederick was on his way back into Italy. At or near Brescia he held diet, and there forbade private war and summoned the Milanese deputies to come before him. They came, and tried to bribe him with money and to befool him with excuses. He refused the bribe and would not hear the excuses. War was declared upon Milan. But first Frederick crossed the Adda and laid the foundation- CREMA AND LODI 241 stone of the new city of Lodi. The village chosen for this honour was known as Monteghezzone. What recommended it was its situation on the river, well defended, and, as Frederick believed it to be, the key to Lombardy. This new city thus founded is, of course, the Lodi we know. There is not perhaps very much to see in Lodi — a few churches, and here and there a picture — but a spot so famous is well worth a visit ; nor indeed is it without interest for us to-day, and for this cause that it was at the passage of the Bridge of Lodi, on May 10, 1796, that Napoleon led his grenadiers not without heroism. But now let us see what this little town so strangely famous has to offer us. And first there is the Duomo. This, so far as the exterior goes, is a building in the Lombard style, probably modelled on the mother church of old Lodi. The porch is fine in the usual Lombard manner, borne by pillars resting upon two lions. Within the church has been quite modernised ; but it contains certainly a relic from the mother city in a relief of the Last Supper, which is probably older than the advent of the Lombards into Italy. Here, too, is a polyptych by Calisto Piazza da Lodi, painted in 1529. No one who visits Lodi should omit to visit the Church of S. Francesco, a Gothic building of the fourteenth century, for it has some old frescoes; but the really great sight in Lodi is, as I have already suggested, the Church of the Incoronata, a work of Giovanni Battagio, who built the Sanctuary of the Madonna outside Crema. The Incoronata was begun in 1476. It is an octagon in form, and though not, I think, so fine as the Sanctuary outside Crema, is an exquisite and delightful thing. It is, too, very charmingly decorated and has a beautiful carved cantoria, while Calisto Piazza da Lodi has covered it with his paintings. This follower of Romanino has left us over the entrance door an Adoration of the 16 242 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY Magi. In the chapel of S. John Baptist are four scenes from the life of that saint — the Preaching, the Baptism of Christ, the Feast of Herod and the Decapitation of S. John. In the chapel of the Crucifixion are five scenes from the Way of the Cross — Christ taken Captive, the Flagellation, the Way to Calvary, the Nailing to the Cross and the Crucifixion. In the chapel of S. Paul we have the Conversion of S. Paul, which is his in part, and in the chapel of S. Lorenzo a fresco of the marriage of S. Catherine that is doubtfully his. Other works, too, are to be seen here. But when all is said and done,Lodi is chiefly interesting to us for its curious foundation and for that terrible fight on May lo, 1796, in which Napoleon bore so fine a part, in which he utterly defeated the Austrians, and was able therefore five days later to enter Milan. Surely Lodi, if she was not avenged in 11 62, was avenged then! CHAPTER XVI PIACENZA IT is but twenty- two miles, less than an hour's journey in the train from Lodi, through Casale Pusterlengo and Codogno, and so across the Po for the first time in our journey, into Piacenza, an old and a famous city of the Romans. Even though one comes by train that crossing of the Po impresses itself upon the mind, while by road the passage is never to be forgotten, for you make it by a bridge of boats, with the swirling, cruel river within a few feet of you, and horribly strong and overwhelming. And it is well that this should be so ; for, by crossing the Po, we leave Lombardy proper and come into that part of the new province of Emilia which, since the sixteenth century, has been known as the Duchy of Parma, over which ruled the House of Farnese. I say that the province is now known as Emilia, nor is this name in any sense a new one ; for all this country south of the Po, between Piacenza where it ended and Rimini where it began, was traversed and fed from the end of the Second Punic War by the great Roman high- way, the Via ^Emilia, so called after M. ^milius, the consul who constructed it. Piacenza, or Placentia, as the Romans called it, was the true terminus of this road, and the true nodal point of all this country from which various roads departed again, north, south, east and west, crossing Cisalpine Gaul with highways. Why was this ? To answer that question we must say something of the history of the city. 243 244 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY No traveller, no observant traveller at any rate, can come to Piacenza to-day without being impressed by two things about it : first, that it is situated in an open plain, sandy and liable to flood, and open to all the winds of heaven ; second, that strategically its position on the right bank of the Po, with two great loops of that river thrust forward on either side before it, and flanked on the west by the Trebbia and on the east by the Nure, is enormously strong. It will not, therefore, surprise him to learn that Placentia was the first fortress the Romans established upon the Po after the end of the Gallic War in 219 B.C. ; they placed 6000 colonists within it and gave them Latin rights, and bade them hold it against all comers. It was doubtless their intention to proceed from this strong place, and from Cremona to the north of the great river, which they founded about the same time, to the conquest and the administration of all Cisalpine Gaul. They were already busy with plans for the road which should connect Piacenza with Rimini, through Mutina (Modena), a strong place of the Gauls already in their hands, when a tremendous disaster prevented them. That disaster was the advent of Hannibal into this plain, scarcely quiet and certainly not pacified after the long war. Hannibal's advent, as might be expected, put new heart into the Gauls, and the rising of the Gauls put new heart into the Carthaginians. The former attacked Placentia and ravaged its territory, and drove many of the colonists to take refuge in Mutina ; but the city held out bravely none the less, and became the head-quarters of the army with which Scipio meant to face Hannibal. It might seem that the genius of Hannibal, the unpre- cedented daring of his great march from Spain through Gaul and over the Alps, had taken the Romans utterly by surprise. The troops that were on the Po were there not to face a great army, but to keep the irregular and PIACENZA 245 broken Gauls in order. When they rose at the rumour of Hannibal's approach, the praetor, Lucius Manlius, who held the chief command at Rimini, hastened up with a single legion to relieve Piacenza if he could, and at least Mutina. He was unable to do either, for he was surprised in the woods, surrounded, and only able to defend himself in his camp by submitting to a siege till Lucius Atilius, with a second legion, then on his way from Rome to support him, reached him, as he did, and relieved both the camp and the fortress of Mutina. It was not till the autumn that Rome, now thoroughly aware of Hannibal's achievement, sent Publius Scipio with a Roman army, though a weak one, to meet him. Scipio crossed the Po at Piacenza and marched up stream to find his enemy, who had already captured Turin and was on his way east and south. It was on the plain, not far from Vercelli, that the Roman cavalry, which was weak, got into touch with the Carthaginian horse, and there followed the first battle of the Second Punic War, an affair solely of cavalry, in which the Romans were beaten. Scipio then, though severely wounded, recrossed the Po very cleverly under the eyes of the enemy, broke down the bridge, and, though this cost him 600 men, succeeded in retreating on Piacenza, where he took up his position in the plain with the Trebbia and the city behind him. This position, however, he was not able to hold, for the Gallic insurrection breaking out again, with the approach of Hannibal, the Roman was forced to put himself upon the hills behind the Trebbia, that is to say, he crossed the river, and thus came into that great natural quadri- lateral which to this day makes Piacenza so strong. Then when this was done, and all made safe, Scipio seems to have felt his wound, which was no light matter, and for the time the consul Tiberius Sempronius took the command. His term of office as consul was to expire in a few months, and he knew that if he were to get 246 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY the credit of victory he must act at once. In these cir- cumstances Scipio's tactics did not appeal to him, and Hannibal, who had his spies everywhere, knew it. There- fore the Carthaginian laid waste the Gallic villages that were faithful to the Romans, and in the encounters of cavalry that happened in consequence, he allowed the Romans to find themselves victors. Then on a raw and rainy day he suddenly developed his plan; what had looked like a skirmish developed into a general engagement : the Romans seemed to be winning ; the Carthaginians retreated over the Trebbia, the Romans followed ; suddenly the vanguard, which had crossed the river, found itself face to face with the Carthaginian army, and on a field chosen by Hannibal. Nothing could save it but the advance of the main body, and this Sempronius was forced to send. It struggled across the swollen river, and in spite of every disadvantage the infantry more than held their own, when it was dis- covered that it was not only the Romans who had ad- vanced across the stream. On his side Hannibal had secretly advanced looo foot and looo horse under his brother Mago, and these suddenly fell upon the Roman rear, already half in confusion, slipping in the mud churned up by the main body and crushing to the advance. A frightful scene followed, in which we see a broken and surprised army, trampled under foot by elephants, sliding and slipping in the mud, return upon itself and endeavour to recross the river where two thousand of the enemy remained to deal out slaughter to it ; a certain number in utter disarray managed to regain the camp. Meanwhile, however, 10,000 of the best Roman infantry had cut their way obliquely through the enemy and had reached Piacenza. Such was the battle of the Trebbia, fought in the rain in the autumn of 218 B.C. As Mommsen rightly says, ** Few battles confer more honour on the Roman soldier than this on the Trebbia, and few at the PIACENZA 247 same time furnish graver impeachment of the general in command." Thus Piacenza enters history as the scene of one of the great battles of the world. We hear curiously little of it after the end of the long war, even though it then became the terminus of the Via ^Emilia, but in Caesar's time it seems to have always held a great garrison, for which its position as the nodal point of all the great roads running north and west would especially fit it, apart from its own strength. Tacitus speaks of it as one of the most flourishing and populous cities in this part of Gaul, and S. Ambrose tells us that it suffered with the rest in the last years of the fourth century. It survived, however, all the ravages of the barbarians, and was only taken by Totila in 546 by famine, after a year's siege, in which it is said the inhabitants had been reduced to eat human flesh. But it soon revived, and, partly owing to its position on the Po, was one of the first cities to enjoy the revival of commerce in the early Middle Age : even in the tenth century its fair was perhaps the greatest in Italy, and it soon organised itself as an independent commune. In the beginning of the twelfth century, Piacenza and Reggio sided with Pavia against Parma and Modena, who stood with Milan ; but after the destruction of Milan, it took part in the war of the League against Frederick, and indeed became one of the principal members. In the middle of the thirteenth century it fell into the hands of Uberto Pallavicino, then into those of Charles of Anjou, who, in 1290, was followed by Alberto Scotti. In 1313 the Visconti held it, and, broadly speaking, it remained in their hands and in those of their Sforza successors — Francesco Sforza plundered it in 1477 — till 1499, when it fell to the French, and, a century later, after the battle of Ravenna, the Pope got it, and, save for a short interval, when it was in the hands of Francis i.., 248 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY it remained papal, at any rate from the time of Leo x. till Paul III., the Farnese who raised it to a duchy and gave it to his bastard, Pierluigi Farnese, who, in 1545, united it to Parma. Piacenza can never claim to be, I think, one of the more beautiful cities of Lombardy, yet it is one of the most picturesque by reason of its colouring and its vast, empty piazzas, churches and palaces, the beautiful vistas of its streets and the sense of space and bigness everywhere. The most famous thing in it is its great Piazza — Piazza de' Cavalli — which seems so large, so romantic and so like something on the stage, or in a dream, with its magnificent Palazzo del Comune thrust out into it on one side, the modern Palazzo delle Preture on another, the weirdly uncompromising fa9ade of S. Francesco on a third, and everywhere long vistas of streets opening out of it on all sides and at every angle and corner. Nor is this all. The Palazzo del Comune is perhaps the finest palace of the sort in Italy : yet how much its effect here in this Piazza is enlarged and added to by the great bronze equestrian statues which rear before the great fa9ade — " insignificant men, exaggerated horses, flying drapery " — yes, as baroque as you please, but splendid here, both in gesture and in colour — vivid green against the terra-cotta — and placed there by a master. Nothing in Piacenza is half so well worth seeing as this Piazza seemed to me to be on an autumn evening after rain. It then literally is a vision that slowly vanishes away in the twilight, from glory down to glory into the blue night : and this once seen can never be forgotten. But when we return in the morning sunlight, though the Piazza still remains magnificent, it is no longer a vision : all its poor details stand out in the hard glitter of light, that nevertheless, I think, alone can reunite us with those PIACENZA 249 affected equestrian statues of the Dukes Alessandro and Ranuccio Farnese, seventeenth-century work from Tuscany, all but the colour and gesture of which is veiled by the evening. Duke Alessandro (1562-92), who seems here to be reining up his steed, while his successor, Ranuccio, is in an attitude of command, was the great-grandson of Pope Paul III., whose unspeakable bastard, Pierluigi, the Pope had made Duke of Parma and Piacenza, though he had no provable right to either of them. Pierluigi was very rightly murdered by his enforced and long-suffering subjects, and his son, Ottavio, never reigned in Piacenza, though he did in Parma. Aless- andro, however, his son, who succeeded him in 1562, got Piacenza as a Spanish fief, as a reward for services in the Low Countries where he was governor, of which services the reliefs on the pedestal of his statue speak, among them of his interview with the envoys of our great Elizabeth in 159 1, when he tried near Ypres to negotiate peace. Alessandro, who, for all his spurious ancestry, was a man, was succeeded by his son, Ranuccio, in whom Pope Paul iii. seems to have come to life again. "A gloomy and suspicious man, he was at once courteous and cruel and a coward, and if Piacenza can tell many a tale of horror of which he was the author, Parma can speak of that 19th of May 1612, in which, with savage joy, he watched the work of his headsman before his palace, during four hours, ridding him of his nobility." From the ridiculous statues of the Farnese we turn to the noble Palazzo del Comune. This was built when Piacenza was a free city. It dates from 1281, and is one of the earliest and noblest Gothic buildings in Italy. Below is an open arcade, in which pillars of marble, supporting pointed arches, support the palace proper, consisting of brick with six round-arched windows of terra-cotta, and over all a marble cornice and battlements, with a 250 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY tower at the angles. Opposite to it stands the Palazzo del Governo, a modern building ; but to the right, behind the marble statue of that Romagnosi who drew up the code for the Napoleonic kingdom of Italy, is the church of S. Francesco, a Gothic building of brick, begun in 1278, an excellent thing in itself. Passing S. Francesco, the Via Venti Settembre brings us to the large Piazza del Duomo. Here stands the great Lombard church that is now the Cathedral of Piacenza. It was consecrated by Pope Innocent 11. in 1133, but was added to later. The superstructure is of the thirteenth century, and the central porch dates from the sixteenth, while the whole building has suffered restoration in our own day. Taken as a whole, the Duomo is reverend rather than noble ; it cannot com- pare with the cathedrals of Pavia or Cremona, or with S. Michele at Monza. Indeed, within, the effect is almost completely Gothic rather than Lombard, or rather it is like a church of the transition, and it fails where Pisa has succeeded in the problem of the cupola, which here is altogether without assurance or harmony. The whole church is heavy and without life. Under the choir is a vast crypt, borne by a hundred columns, consisting of a nave and double aisles, and a transept with single aisles. The dome is without assurance or harmony, I said, but it contains some admirable frescoes by Guercino of the Prophets and Sybils and Angels, and in the arches before the choir Ludovico Caracci has painted angels strewing flowers, and in the vault of the apse a very fine picture of the Madonna and Child, with angels and saints. The choir stalls are of the fifteenth century. Other work by Ludovico Caracci is to be found in the Chapel of S. Martin to the left of the choir, where he has painted S. Martin sharing his cloak with a beggar. In the chapel, on the right, is an amazing picture of ten thousand crucified martyrs — a whole Roman PIACENZA 251 army miraculously converted and martyred under Hadrian. Over the main door appears a magnificent carved altarpiece that once stood over the high altar here. Originally that altar was, of course, isolated, approached on all four sides, as is the high altar of S. Peter's in Rome to-day. Later, from the north was introduced the fashion of these great and beautiful carved altarpieces which, in their turn, gave place to pictures and statues, as here at Piacenza. But this great church was not always the Cathedral of Piacenza ; the seat of the Bishop was of old at S. Antonino, a church founded in 324 upon the very spot, as it is said, where S. Barnabas had preached to the people of Placentia. The present church dates mainly from the twelfth century, with additions of the fourteenth and sixteenth. Here the Lombard League met in 11 83 to approve the peace of Constance. The church is a curious building, remarkable for its great north Porch or Paradise, built in 1350, above which rises the old tower borne by eight great round columns. A church, not as old as S. Antonino, but still dating as far back as the tenth century, is that of S. Savino, on the other side of the Duomo ; here the crypt would seem actually to belong to the original church ; the rest of the building is, however, of the sixteenth century. From S. Antonino it is easy, before going farther on our way, to visit the church of S. Agostino hard by, built by Vignola ; but more interesting, perhaps, is the church of S. Giovanni, to which the Strada del Teatro will lead us. This was founded by the Templars, and in the cloisters are the remains of early frescoes. From S. Giovanni we return to the Strada Garibaldi, behind the Piazza, and proceeding to the right along it, at the fork, take the Via di Campagna, which brings us presently on the right to the church of S. Sepolcro, a fine specimen of Bramante's brick churches, and, a 252 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY little later, to S. Maria di Campagna, which the same artist originally designed, but which has been ruthlessly altered. But we must forget the hurt of Bramante, for here is, as it were, the shrine of Pordenone. This younger contemporary of Lotto, always impetu- ous, full of aristocratic prejudices and worldly, was his complete opposite both in his life and in his art. Born at Pordenone in 1483, he died at Ferrara in 1539. He has been compared with Rubens, both on account of the vivacity of his temperament and his love of colossal and well-developed forms. But, as Morelli rightly reminds us, while the Fleming was prolific, prudent and cal- culating, the Italian was '* passionate, excitable, ill- regulated and swayed by pride and ambition." It is certain that he never attained the position of ease and luxury which Rubens won, but at the same time he never sunk into conventionality. " Original, highly gifted at times, even strikingly grand, he at one period sought, not unsuccessfully, to rival Titian." His great strength lay in fresco painting, and his most interesting frescoes are, I think, these in Piacenza ; at any rate they are more accessible than those near Conegliano and those at Treviso. We see something of his gifts in the curious figure of S. Augustine by the entrance, and more in that splendid Adoration of the Magi in the first chapel on the north side of this church, in the Nativity in the lunette, and on the wall the Birth of the Blessed Virgin, and above it the Flight into Egypt ; and again in the Chapel of S. Catherine, which he entirely painted, even the altar- piece of the Marriage of S. Catherine being from his hand. But what are we to say of those marvellous Prophets and Sibyls on the cupola, but that there fresco painting actually passes into a kind of glorious music, into movement, colour and light. Hard to see as these works are, badly as they have been treated, they remain masterpieces that we come back PIACENZA 253 to again and again, that return to the mind when one is far away, as indeed do all his admirable works in this church. Piacenza is to be loved for them ; and because of them we are not too sorrowful that the Church of S. Sisto here no longer holds that " Sistine " Madonna which Raphael painted for it in 15 15, and which was sold in 1753 for 20,000 ducats to the King of Poland, who was also Elector of Saxony, and which remains at Dresden. No visitor to Piacenza will omit to visit the dilapidated palace of the Farnese Dukes — from a window in which Pier Luigi's murdered body was shown to the shouting populace before it was hurled into the ditch below — which is now a barracks ; but one is likely to miss the Museo Civico because it is but newly opened, and since it possesses more than one fine work it should on no account be overlooked. Besides the tapestry, which is precious and Flemish, the Ecce Homo by that rare master, Antonello da Messina, should be noticed, and a Madonna and Child with Angels by Sandro Botticelli. I cannot refrain from speaking here of one of the true patrons and benefactors of Piacenza, I mean S. Roch, whose life is so exquisitely told by Voragine. When leprosy became less prevalent, then the plague, at least in Lombardy, became often epidemic, and this might seem to have been especially the case at Piacenza, which lies so low beside the river among the marshes. S. Roch was the great deliverer from this pestilence, and his presence in Piacenza is one of the great events in the life of the city. If the traveller will go some three miles along the Lodi road he will come to S. Rocco al Porto. This was the hermitage of S. Roch, where the beasts came and bowed to him gravely, all of which Voragine tells us far better than I can hope to do. Therefore hear him : S. Roch, or S. Rocke, as Voragine calls him, was, according to the Golden Legend^ born in Montpelier of noble parentage. "After many desert places he came 254 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY to Rome, but tofore he came into a town called in Latin Aquapendens, wherein'was a common and hard pestilence, which when Rocke knew of many by the way, he desirously went into the hospital of that town called Water-hanging and gat with great prayers and labour of one Vincent, which had the rule of the hospital, that he might there, day and night, serve the sick people. Vincent was afeard, and dreaded lest Rocke, which was a young flowering man, should be smitten with the pesti- lence. But after he came, them that were sick he blessed in the name of Christ, and as soon as he had touched the sick men they were all whole. And they said and confessed as soon as this holy man Rocke was come in. All they that were vexed and sick, and the fire of pestilence had infected, he extincted it and delivered all the hospital of that sickness. And after he went through the town, and each house that was vexed with pestilence he entered, and with the sign of the Cross and mind of the Passion of Jesu Christ he delivered them all from the pestilence. For whomsoever Rocke touched, anon the pestilence left him." S. Roch stayed three years in Rome with a Cardinal whom he had healed, and when this Cardinal was dead of age he forsook Rome and came to Rimini, which he delivered from pestilence. " And when that town was delivered he went to the city of Manasem (? Mantua) in Lombardy, which was also sore oppressed with sick men of the pestilence, whom with all his heart he served diligently, and by the help of God made that town quit of the pestilence. And from thence went to Piacenza, for he understood that there was great pestilence. And so an whole year he visited the houses of poor men, and they that had most need, to them he did most help, and was always in the hospital. And when he had been long in the hospital of Piacenza and had helped almost all the sick men therein, about midnight he heard in his sleep an angel thus saying : ' O Rocke, most PIACENZA 255 devout to Christ, awake and know that thou art smitten with the pestilence; study now how thou mayst be cured.' And anon he felt him sore taken with the pestilence under his both arms, and he thereof gave thankings to Our Lord. And he was so sore vexed with the pain that they that were in the hospital were deprived of their sleep and rest of the night, wherefore S. Rocke arose from his bed and went to the utterest place of the hospital, and lay down there abiding the light of the day. And when it was day the people going by saw him and accused the master of the hospital of offence, that he suffered the pilgrim to lie without the hospital, but he purged him of that default, saying that : The pilgrim was smitten with the pestilence, as ye see, and, unwitting to us, he went out. Then the citizens incontinent put out S. Rocke from city and suburbs lest by him the city might be more infected. Then S. Rocke, sore oppressed with fervent pain of the pesti- lence, suffered patiently himself to be ejected out of Piacenza, and went into a certain wood, a desert valley not far from Piacenza, always blessing God. And there as he might he made him a lodge of boughs and leaves, always giving thankings to Our Lord, saying : O Jesu, my Saviour, I thank Thee that Thou puttest me to affliction like to Thine other servants by this odious ardour of pestilence, and most meek Lord, I beseech Thee to this desert place give the refrigery and comfort of Thy grace. And his prayer finished, anon there came a cloud from heaven by the lodge that S. Rocke had made within boughs, whereas sprang a fair and bright well, which is there yet unto this day. Whose water S. Rocke drank, being sore athirst, and thereof had great refreshing of the great heat that he suffered of the pestilence fever. " There was nigh unto that wood a little village in which some noblemen dwelled, among whom there was one well beloved to God named Gotard, which had great 256 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY husbandry, and had a great family and household. This Gotard held many hounds for hunting, among whom he had one much familiar, which boldly would take bread from the board. And when Rocke lacked bread, that hound by the purveyance of God brought from the lord's board bread unto Rocke. Which thing, when Gotard had advertised oft, that he bare so away the bread, but he wist not to whom ne whither, whereof he marvelled, and so did all his household. And the next dinner he set a delicate loaf on the board, which anon the hound by his new manner took away and bare it to Rocke. And Gotard followed after, and came to the lodge of S. Rocke, and there beheld how familiarly the hound delivered the bread to S. Rocke. Then Gotard reverently saluted the holy man and approached him ; but S. Rocke, dreading lest the contagious air of the pestilence might infect him, said to him : Friend, go from me in good peace, for the most violent pestilence holdeth me. Then Gotard went his way and left him, and returned home, where, by God's grace, he said thus to himself all still : ' This poor man whom I have left in the wood and desert certainly is the man of God, sith this hound without reason bringeth to him bread. I therefore that have seen him do it, so ought sooner to do it, which am a Christian man.' By this holy meditation Gotard returned to Rocke and said : Holy pilgrim, I desire to do to thee that thou needest, and am advised never to leave thee. Then Rocke thanked God which had sent to him Gotard, and he informed Gotard busily in the law of Christ. And when they had been awhile together, the hound brought no more bread. Gotard asked counsel how he might have bread, for more and more he hungered, and asked remedy of S. Rocke. S. Rocke exhorted him after the text, saying : * In the sweat of thy visage thou shalt eat thy bread,' and that he should return to the town, and leave all his goods to his heirs, and follow the way of Christ, and PIACENZA 257 demand bread in the name of Jesu. Then Gotard was ashamed to do so where he was known, but at last by the busy admonition of S. Rocke Gotard went to Piacenza, whereas he had great knowledge, and begged bread and alms at the door of one of his gossips. That same gossip threatened sharply Gotard, and said he shamed his lineage and friends by this foul and indecent begging, and put him away, being wroth and scorning him. For which cause Gotard was constrained to beg busily at the doors of other men of the city. And the same day the gossip that had so said to Gotard was taken sore with the pestilence, and many others that denied alms to Gotard. And then anon the city of Piacenza was infect with contagious pestilence, and Gotard returned to the wood and told to S. Rocke all that was happed. And S. Rocke told to Gotard tofore, that his gossip should hastily die, which was done indeed. And S. Rocke, moved with pity and mercy, being full sick, went into Piacenza being full of pestilence, and left Gotard in the wood. And though S. Rocke were sore vexed with the pestilence, yet he with great labour went to Piacenza and with touching and blessing he helped and healed them all, and also cured the hospital of the same city. And he being sore sick and almost lame, returned again to Gotard into the wood. And many that heard that he and Gotard were in the place of the desert valley came to them, whom they found all with Rocke, and tofore them all he did these miracles. The wild beasts which wandered in the wood, what hurt, sickness or swelling they had, they ran down to S. Rocke, and when they were healed they would incline their heads reverently and go their way. And a little while after, Gotard and his fellows, for certain necessities and errands, returned into Piacenza, and left that time S. Rocke alone in the valley. And S. Rocke made his prayers to Almighty God that he might be delivered from the woimds of pestilence, and in this prayer he fell 17 258 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY asleep. And in the meanwhile returned Gotard from the city, and when he came and joined him to Rocke sleeping he heard the voice of an angel saying : ' O Rocke, friend of God, Our Lord hath heard thy prayers ; lo, thou art delivered from the pestilence, and art made all whole, and Our Lord commandeth that thou take thy way to thine own country.' With this sudden voice Gotard was astonished, which never tofore knew the name of Rocke. And anon Rocke awoke, and felt himself all whole by the grace of God, like as the angel said. And Gotard told unto Rocke how he had heard the angel and what he had said. Then S. Rocke prayed Gotard that he should keep his name secret and to tell it to no man, for he desired no worldly glory. Then after a few days S. Rocke with Gotard and his fellows abode in the desert, and informed them all in godly works, and they then began to wax holy, wherein he exhorted them and confirmed, and left them in that desert valley." Whatever else one does while at Piacenza, one should not omit to visit that most famous shrine of a great British or rather Irish saint at the old and splendid Abbey of Bobbio. It is a long and a hard journey. Nevertheless, it should be attempted. The only way to do the whole journey in a single day is by carriage, for Bobbio lies at the end of a difficult road, some thirty-two miles to the south of Piacenza in the mountains. It is true that you may go ten miles, as far as Grazzano, by steam tram, and from there to Rivergaro, another five miles, by a little train, but at Rivergaro you will not get so fine a carriage as at Piacenza, and you have still more than seventeen miles to go. But what, the reader may ask, is Bobbio, and why should one go there ? After all, the British Isles are full of the forgotten shrines of early British saints and PIACENZA 259 no one marks them; indeed, these same early British saints aie more utterly neglected and forgotten than any other sort of beings. All the same, if you care anything for holiness, if you care at all for great achieve- ment, if you have any reverence for learning and the old great masters of letters, you must go to Bobbio, for there S. Columban had his home and thence "all the palimpsests known in the world have emerged." ^ I wish in three words I could make known to you this Irishman who was as it were S. Benedict and S. Francis and S. Bernard all in one. I wish in three hundred words, or even in three thousand, I could tell you the man he was, and the great Abbot and leader, and above all the great Saint. I know I can do none of these things, and I fear that even the boldest adventurer who lingers in Piacenza will, for all I can say, refuse to go to Bobbio in the woods of the upper valley of the Trebbia. Yet I will do my best. S. Columban was bom at Leinster in 543, the very year that S. Benedict died at Monte Cassino. He was as a young man beautiful and studious, and the first led him into grave temptation, for his countrywomen also were very fair, and they loved him ; but his study saved him, for when he saw he had entered into temptation he gave himself wholly to such things as grammar and rhetoric and geometry; and even so at last he fled away. On the advice of an aged woman he went first to Bangor by the sea, and then in 585, when he was forty- two years old, he set out for Gaul, where he came into Burgundy. There the king received him graciously, but he sought the mountains, the Vosges. Columban loved solitude and all dumb things : birds would come to him and perch on his shoulder that he might caress them, and in the forest even the squirrels would come to him and nestle in his ^ We owe to it, for instance, the De Repuhlica of Cicero, and the works and letters of Cornelius Fronto. 26o THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY cowl ; a bear is said to have resigned its cave to him. Such a man was not long without disciples, and when they grew in numbers he founded monasteries at Anne- gray, at Fontaines and at Luxeuil, where he instituted the hard rule known as the Irish Rule ; yet he was full of sweetness to all, and called his monks " my sweet sons," " my pupils," " my very brothers," and himself ** sinner.' ' His hard words he kept for the wicked, among them the young King of Burgundy, who presently sent him into exile. His journey soon became a triumphal progress, and after preaching to the heathen on the banks of the Rhine, with S. Gall, he passed through Switzerland, where he left his friend, into Italy. There Agilulf, King of the Lombards, welcomed him, as did Theodolinda his wife, and he at once set himself to fight that very pestilent blight of Arianism which at that time lay on all Cisalpine Gaul. In the mountains as in Burgundy, he founded his house, at Bobbio, in the valley of the Trebbia, to be his citadel against heresy. That was in 612. He himself lived in a cave near a chapel he had built to the Blessed Virgin, but he founded a church and monastery on the other side of the river, which though ruined remains to this day. Yet he was but three years at Bobbio, for he died in 615. That Bobbio which he had founded became the most famous and the most intellectual of the monasteries of Italy : it was the hope of the seventh century, and may be said to have achieved as much in the salvation of Europe as any other place whatsoever. When that was accomplished in the eleventh century it began to decline, later its precious library was distributed, and in the seventeenth century it was but a shadow of itself. The church which S. Columban founded stands in the upper part of what is to-day the town of Bobbio. It is an interesting building, but its chief treasure PIACENZA 261 is on the altar in the crypt, where in a curious shrine the bones of the great Irishman await the last great trumpet. The huge monastery, in ruin, is desecrated, only the church remains, and, in the town, the Duomo, with its vast Lombard nave and aisles as low as those of S. Columban are lofty. Yet Bobbio is a place to linger in, to remember our Saint, and to search out the mountains as he did, and stray about the woods, where the dawn is all yours and the sunset and the night, and where one day telleth another of the ancient glory of God. CHAPTER XVII THE CHILIAN WAY PIACENZA, as I have said, v/as the terminus of the Via iEmilia which the consul ^Emilius Lepidus built between Ariminum and Placentia in 187 B.C. The distance between these two cities was 180 miles, and the road thus constructed, and based upon the Flaminian Way which joined Rimini with Rome, became the means of civilisation for the whole plain. So great indeed was its influence that in time the vast province which it traversed and fed came to be known as ^Emilia, and that name, which was in popular use long before it became officially recognised, has in one way or another persisted till to-day, when the new Italy has officially revived it and merged again into one province those parts of old Emilia which for so many centuries were known as the Duchies of Parma and Modena, and the province of Romagna. It is not my intention to deal in this book with the whole of this new province, for the Romagna with Bologna as its capital no longer makes a true part of Cisalpine Gaul, as it once did. Crushed between the Veneto on the north and Tuscany on the south, for many ages in the hands of the Church, the Romagna runs rather with that part of Italy which we call the Marches, and it is with them that I intend to treat of it. Nor is such a division by any means arbitrary or even modern. It has always appeared in the mind of the historians, and even of the administrators of this country. Strabo 262 FACADE OF THE DUOMO, BORGO S. DONNINO IA< ADK r.F THE DUOMO, MODENA THE .EMILIAN WAY 263 indeed asserts, though I think without reason, that the iEmilian Way was at first only built between Rimini and Bologna, and that there it met the road to Aquileia. It is, however, practically certain that the great road was thrust forward to Placentia as quickly as possible, and the way to Aquileia might seem to be of far later origin. Nevertheless, Strabo's opinion bears witness to the fact that the eastern part of Cisalpine Gaul, what the Middle Age knew as Romagna, is in fact separate from those great provinces to the north and south of the Po that lie westward, and which we know as Lombardy and Emilia. The mainspring of this province of Emilia, whose key and first city was and is Piacenza, is the great road which lies in a straight line south-east right across it, and we shall best appreciate and understand it if we follow the road along which the cities and towns are strung like great glittering beads : Piacenza, Borgo S. Donnino, Parma, Reggio, Modena, and so into Romagna to Bologna, the sea and the Flaminian Way, at Rimini. If a man is bent on seeing Emilia proper, between Piacenza and Modena, and will not take a carriage but is determined to go afoot, let all honour be given to him, but let him choose fine and cool weather in spring or in autumn, for these eighty miles are stretched out in the Roman fashion straight and monotonous, and though the great hills of the Apennines come ever closer as he proceeds, on the south, the way is monotonous, and can be unbearable, in the heat by reason of the dust, and in the rain by reason of the mud. Choosing, then, a fortunate day, and starting early out of the S. Lazarus gate of Piacenza, such a traveller in something under a mile will come to the great leper hospital of S. Lazzaro, which Cardinal Alberoni in the eighteenth century turned into an ecclesiastical seminary. Most great cities, especially in Cisalpine Gaul and Venetia, had of necessity at their gates a great hospital 264 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY for lepers, for plague and leprosy were endemic in the low countries of the Po valley. We shall come upon just such a house as this outside Parma, Reggio and Modena, and in exactly the same position, — that is, out- side the Roman gate, — and every visitor to Venice knows the island of S. Lazzaro in the great lagoon ; but we may well ask why S. Lazarus was the guardian of such places. Doubtless the original intention was to place lepers under the protection of him who full of sores lay (mark this) at the rich man's gate. Thus often we see S. Lazarus depicted as a medieval leper carrying a clapper, and in England we have the prayer of the lepers : " Receive my soul into the bosom of Abraham with Lazarus, whom he did not despise but cherished." This Lazarus, rightly or wrongly, was soon identified with Lazarus of Bethany, the brother of Martha and Mary Magdalen, whom Christ raised from the dead. Indeed, at Sherborne the leper hospital was founded "in honour of the Saviour, the Blessed Virgin, S. Lazarus and his sisters Martha and Mary Magdalen," the last the most popular leper saint in England. S. Lazarus, as we know, coming with S. Mary Magdalen to Marseilles, became Bishop of that See; but as guardian of lepers he owes a very great deal to the influence of the Order of Knights Hospitallers and to the much smaller Order of Knights of S. Lazarus. S. Lazzaro now, however, is no longer a hospital but an ecclesiastical seminary, to which Cardinal Alberoni left all his property, as well as a few pictures, among them two which pass for the work of Borgognone, two warriors on horseback. Six miles from Piacenza the Nure is crossed just before Pontenure, which was a Roman town or village holding the bridge : Roman pavements and mosaics have been taken from here to Parma, where we shall find them in the Museo. THE iEMILIAN WAY 265 Proceeding on our way, the road visible for miles ahead of us, we pass Cadeo, and Fontana Fredda, where Theodoric had a palace. Cadeo is famous for the hospital which a citizen of Piacenza, Gisulphus, founded there in mo and called Ca Deo. At Fons Fredda Theodoric is said to have founded the parish church. It is now that the great hills and mountains of the Apennines begin to come in sight on the south and to make splendid the landscape. Just beyond Fontana Fredda a perfectly straight by- way turns off to the left across the railway to Corte- maggiore, some three miles away in the plain, beside the Arda torrent. This was one of the seats — the chief was the town of Busseto, to which Charles v. gave the title of city when he conferred there with Paul iii., some six miles east of Cortemaggiore — of the Pallavicino family, who ruled all the country between the great road and the Po, and called it their State. In the twelfth century they extended it to the Apennines, and arranged to get it erected into an imperial vicariate. At Cortemaggiore in the parish church are two fine fifteenth- century tombs of the Pallavicini ; two altarpieces by Pordenone, in the Annunziata, are not so fine that, if time presses, it is worth going five miles to see them. Passing along the great Roman highway, we come to the considerable town of Fiorenzuola, the ancient Florentia, of which we know nothing but that it was a station upon the ^Emilian Way. Nothing remains of the Roman town, but in the Church of S. Fiorenzo there are some fine remains of the Middle Age. Better, however, than anything in Fiorenzuola is the church and cloister of Chiaravalle della Columba, a few miles to the north- east,and easily reached by a road that leaves the iEmilian Way some three miles beyond Fiorenzuola. This was a Cistercian abbey, founded by the Pallavicini in 1136, and doubtless built in imitation of that founded two 266 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY years before at the gates of Milan by S. Bernard himself. After leaving Fiorenzuola, we skirt the foothills of the Apennines, and passing through Alseno come into Borgo S. Doninno. Borgo S. Donnino is the Roman Fidentia, a place only known to us as a station on the ^Emilian Way, fifteen Roman miles from Parma, and as the scene of a siege and battle in the civil wars between Marius and Sulla. It seems to have been a place of very little importance, the Itineraries calling it " Fidentiola vicus," and later ** mansio." In the year 362, however, Fidentia changed its name by a miracle, for the Bishop of Parma was in that year " admonished by a dream " to call it after S. Donnino, a martj^ under the Emperor Maximian, in whose honour a church was then founded. This S. Donnino was a soldier in the army of that Emperor and had served in Germany. Later he became a Christian, and when Maximian issued his edict that Christianity should not be professed on pain of death, Donnino fled, but was overtaken near Julia, in the iEmilian Way. In 362 the Bishop of Parma dis- covered the body of the martyr, and a chapel was erected to receive his remains, and from that time his shrine became one of the most sought-after in Italy. Even to-day there is nothing whatsoever to see in Borgo S. Donnino but the great and beautiful church that stands over his shrine. It has one of the noblest and most beautiful fa9ades in the Lombard manner any- where to be seen, and should on no account be missed. From Borgo S. Donnino the way into Parma is rendered magnificent by reason of the nearness of the mountains. If no other part of the road be taken afoot or in a carnage, for this at least the train should be left. It is true that there is almost nothing to see, but who would look for pictures or churches when he may have THE iEMILIAN WAY 267 the hills, and who would poke about cities if the open road were always as fine a walk as is this ? In the train all is missed, for though it slavishly follows the road, it passes too swiftly for reverence and too noisily for enjoyment. CHAPTER XVIII PARMA PARMA is one of the few little cities in Italy that I have never somehow or other been able to love. I do not excuse myself, and I cannot explain it, for Parma is as fair a city as can be, the city of Correggio too, with noble palaces, a great and splendid Cathedral, Baptistery and Tower, pleasant ways, interesting churches, a good picture gallery and an electric tram- way — everything, indeed, to make glad the heart of man ; yet whenever I find myself there I feel a little in distress. Perhaps in some former existence — if indeed that can be, and I do not believe it — I have had reason to dislike Parma, for I have none certainly in this : and indeed the only way such things as these likes and dislikes can be explained at all is by acknowledging the truth of that rhyme about Dr. Fell. Parma is my Dr. Fell. A Roman colony upon the ^Emilian Way was, so far as we know, the origin of Parma, which alone of these Cisalpine towns is still known by its exact Roman name. It was founded in the same year as Mutina was entrenched — that is to say, in 183 B.C. — in order to hold securely the new road to Piacenza. Parma was a colonia civium — that is to say, its colonists retained their privileges as Roman citizens. There were some 2000 of them settled here, and each received eight jugera of land. It soon became a flourishing place, as did all the colonies upon the great road, but we hear almost nothing of it till in the civil war that followed Caesar's murder we find it 268 PARMA 269 on the side of Brutus, so that Antony took it and gave it to his troops to plunder. Augustus re-established and re-colonised it, and it soon became as flourishing as before the war. It was situated in a great pasture land, and its wool was said by Martial to be inferior only to that of Apulia. Velleribus primis Appulia, Parma secundis Nobilis: Altinum tertia laudat ovis. In the year 377 a.d., a generation before the invasion of Alaric, Gratian settled a colony of Goths in the terri- tory of Parma, perhaps because it was then suffering from that decadence and poverty of population which S. Ambrose speaks of. Whether or no Alaric smote it we know not, but it is probable that it did not escape Attila. If it did not, nevertheless it survived the calamity, was restored by Theodoric and as a city of the Exarchate was called Chrysopolis, Parma Aurea, the golden city, and after the Lombard conquest, which spoiled if it did not destroy it, was rebuilt in 774 by Charlemagne. In the anarchy of the ninth century we find Parma in the hands of her Bishop Grazioso, vescovo delta santa chiesa parmense. In the tenth century cer- tainly the Bishop had the title of Count, and thus the first step was taken towards a resurrection of communal power. By 1024 the power of the Bishop was waning, and Parma, in exchange for large privileges, gave herself to Conrad 11. and to Henry iii. Then came that re- doubtable prelate Cadalo. He would have restored the power of the Bishops in Parma. He was a Veronese of good family, and became Bishop of Parma in 1046, and in 1061 the schismatic Bishops of Lombardy and Germany gathered at Basle elected this man Pope as Honorius 11. With an army he marched on Rome, but was twice defeated, at last by the Countess Matilda. He returned to Parma, which he ruled till his death, and it is to him we owe the foundation of the Cathedral. 270 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY Parma was at this time, so to speak, wholly Ghibelline and held strongly with Henry iv. in his humiliation at Canossa, and it was not till after the Emperor's death that the city was reconciled to the Papacy. This was done at the Council of Guastalla, and thereafter the Pope, with the Countess Matilda, a host of prelates and knights, came to Parma. In the vigil of All Saints the Pope consecrated the Cathedral which Cadalo had built, and the Parmigiani swore him fealty. Now that religious dissensions were brought to an end, Parma had time to quarrel with her neighbours. In 1152 she burnt Borgo S. Donnino, and in the following year was at war with Cremona. Barbarossa when he came into Italy in 1154 and 1158 did not touch Parma, for the city was on his side against Milan ; but Parma joined the glorious League which rebuilt Milan after her horrible destruction in 1163. After the Peace of Constance Parma found herself a free commune. But she did not long enjoy her liberty. The rise of the factions which followed hard upon Liberty saw in Parma the families of Rossi, Palla- vicini, Correggio and San Vitale striving for mastery, and to these troubles were added famine in 11 82, pesti- lence in the following year and the unfortunate wars with Reggio and Piacenza. Upon these followed the in- credible anarchy of Guelph and Ghibelline, which endured till the death of Frederick 11. Fifty years later, however, the Commune was dead, for in 1303 the people elected Giberto da Correggio as their lord. This man was soon disposed of by the Rossi and San Vitale, and in 1322 Parma found herself in the hands of the Pope John xxii. Weary of him, she gave herself in 1328 to Louis of Bavaria, and later to John of Bohemia, who happened to pass through the city. In this restlessness it is easy to discern weakness, and in the year 1335 Parma at last found herself really held by a foreigner, Alberto della Scala. From him she passed to a strong man. PARMA 271 Luchino Visconti, in 1341. The Visconti held Parma till the death of Bernabb Visconti in 1385, when the city came into the hands of Ottobuono Terzi, a cruel tyrant who was presently murdered by order of Niccolb d' Este, who had himself proclaimed lord. He ruled well, but at his death Parma fell to Filippo Maria Visconti, and after his death, in 1449, submitted to Francesco Sforza. The Sforza held Parma securely till their end. In 1499 the city gave itself to Louis xii. In the confusion of the following years the Pope claimed Parma in the name of the Church. Leo x. was able to barter it and Piacenza to and fro to suit his politics, and the Popes continued to hold it till Paul III. gave both it and Piacenza, as we have seen, to his bastard, Pierluigi Farnese, who took possession of Parma in 1545. He held it for two years till he was assassinated in Piacenza in 1547. He was succeeded by his son Ottavio, who later obtained the whole " ducato " in 1556, and ruled well. When he died in 1584 his son Alessandro, who was fighting in Flanders, delegated his son Ranuccio, born in 1569, to rule his state. To these two princes Parma owes most of her secular splendour. To Ranuccio i. succeeded Ran- uccio II., another good and cultivated ruler: he died in 1694. The house came to an end in 1727. During the Farnese rule the city had no political existence ; it was ruled by absolute princes, who adorned it with buildings and filled it with works of art, till indeed it became a temple of beauty. To them succeeded the Austrians and the Bourbons of Spain, who utterly ruined the city and the state, and the latter, in the person of Don Carlos, Infant of Spain and King of Naples, carried off from it no pictures, including works by Michelangelo, Raphael, Correggio and Titian, and many other works of art. In 1802 the Duchy was incorporated with the Republic, but at the Congress of Vienna the Empress Maria Luisa obtained Parma, Piacenza and 272 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY Guastalla. She ruled well and gently, and was followed by the last Bourbons, Charles ii. and Charles iii., who remained till 1856, when Parma was united to Italy. Such in briefest outline is the story of Parma, a restless and an unhappy story which sinks into a kind of material well-being and happiness under the Farnese and later Bourbons. But it is not as the city of the Farnese princes, still less of the Bourbons, that we think of Parma to-day, but rather as the city of Correggio, where some of his most astonishing works may still be seen, and a few of his loveliest pictures. Yet there is in truth much else in Parma for our reverence and affection. Its Cathedral is one of the finest in this part of Italy and its churches are often delightful, while its great palace is perhaps the greatest building of the kind north of the Apennines and south of the Po. Its situation, too, is delicious, at the foot of the great hills in a thousand meadows, and its towers and streets and squares, silent now but still not without gaiety, and, it must be confessed, utterly modern in appearance, lend the city a charm which, as we know, not many have known how to retain amid the vulgarity of our day. I suppose no one ever comes to Parma who does not go first to the Duomo in its noble piazza. A church has certainly stood here since 877, but that early build- ing was burnt in the first years of the tenth century. Rebuilt, it was burnt again about 1055, when Cadolo, the Bishop and future antipope, rebuilt it once for all and gave us the magnificent church we see. This, how- ever, was not completed till the thirteenth century. It is dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, as is the Duomo of Cremona, and, like that church, it suffered grievously in the earthquake of 11 17. The noble fa9ade, of course uncompleted, remains to us almost intact from that time, a magnificent specimen of the Lombard style. Its three doors are flanked by lions of red marble, and PARMA 273 that in the midst is covered by a double portico resting upon them. These lions are the work of Bono da Bisone at the end of the thirteenth century ; and the other sculptures here are later still, being the work of Bianchini at the end of the fifteenth. The church is a cruciform building under an open octagon surmounted by a dome ; the choir is raised above a crypt, and from the outside the arcaded apse is, I think, its most beautiful feature. But the church as seen from the street is arcaded everywhere : on the facade we have a triple columnar gallery ; each arm ends in a quadrilateral, itself arcaded, to which is added a semicircular apse again arcaded. Nothing more noble, rich and charming can be imagined. Moreover, as we pass round the church we come upon more than one Gothic detail ; and especially upon that Gothic chapel of brick and terra-cotta on the north side which has one of the loveliest windows in all Italy, something that brings one's heart into one's mouth to see suddenly at a turning of the way, — a thing to pray to. Within, of course, the church is less satisfactory; yet, save for a few Gothic additions and modern imperti- nences, it remains a noble Lombard building with a fine triforium too, and in this it is far better than the church at Piacenza. The great spectacle of the church, however, is of course the overwhelming frescoes of Correggio in the dome, which every one who comes at all to Parma comes to see. For myself, they seem beyond anything else to be found in Parma, and indeed among the most astonishing things in all Lombardy. Correggio's first frescoes had been painted for the Camera di S. Paolo, fortunate and lovely works, and later he had decorated the cupola of S. Giovanni Evan- gelista. It was therefore with a full knowledge of his work that in 1522 he began to cover the dome of the Cathedral with these frescoes of the Assumption of the Blessed 18 274 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY Virgin, to whom the church was dedicated, while below stand the Apostles and the four patron saints of Parma. Nothing else, I suppose, in European art has quite the sense we find here, the sense of flight. Madonna caught up from death, from the earth and all earthly things, is borne in an ecstasy, her arms stretched open wide, by a glad crowd of angels and cherubs, one of whom, laughing for joy, nestles in her bosom, into the heaven of heavens, a vast dome of light, built of angels, circle after circle, up to the brightness which is the smile of God. And out of that dazzling firmament one peerless archangel, Gabriel, God's messenger, has hurled him down, trembling for joy, to meet her and welcome her, the Queen of all. Nothing else in Europe, I think, expresses so fully and so unreservedly that sense of flight — the eagerness, the joy, and the confident, radiant power of flight — as does this matchless fresco. It is impossible to look upon it with- out emotion or to doubt for a moment that the painter had seen a vision. One simply disregards the painter's foibles and weaknesses : the thing is a rhapsody more wonderful than a Magnificat by Marenzio, almost in- articulate, if you like, for joy; a musical rapture that is beyond music, that is the expression once and for all of the highest religious emotion. And to those who would criticise it, I would give the reply Titian, who had also painted an Assumption, gave : " Turn it upside down and fill it with gold, and you will still come short of its proper price." It has been tended with careless hands, and it is to-day but a wreck of what once it was. Yet in colour still, as in gesture and delight, it remains something beyond the power of words to express, something that never was in the world or is here in no satisfying quantity. Coming out from the Duomo and passing the great square Campanile we have before us the Baptistery, an irregular octagon of red and grey Verona marble, begun in 1196 by Benedetto Antelami in the Lombard PARMA 275 manner. The Baptistery, six stories high, was flhished in 1270, when it was consecrated. Some thirty years later the Gothic story on the top was completed. The three doors by Antelami are noble and beautiful, and are named after the Redeemer and the Blessed Virgin, and the Gate of Life. In the architrave of each is a corresponding relief of great beauty, and all round the building runs a series of reliefs in the Lombard fashion. The interior is beautiful and almost wholly of the thirteenth century — indeed, one of the loveliest interiors I know in Italy. Every one born in Parma since 1216, when Antelami finished the build- ing, has been christened here, though not at this noble font, which dates from 1294. Behind the Duomo stands the Church of S. Giovanni Evangelista, a Renaissance church of 15 10 with a seventeenth-century facade and tower. Of old it was the sanctuary of a Benedictine monastery and is now used as a barracks ; and the only reason one comes to it at all is that before he painted the dome of the Cathedral Correggio here painted the Ascension. His work is utterly spoilt, and one can get but little delight from it, nor can it ever have had the passionate joy of the Assumption in the Cathedral ; nevertheless, it is interesting as leading up to that great masterpiece. Better than gazing upon this ruin is it to find delight in the church itself, in the beautiful Renaissance capitals, and the magnificent stalls of the choir, and the superb organ and cantoria. Nor should a painting from the master's hand in the archway of the door of the sacristy (itself a very beautiful chamber), representing the patron saint of the church, be missed ; nor the altarpiece by Gottesaldi in a magnificent Renaissance frame of 1518. The cloisters, too, are worth a visit, though hard to see. It was Bernardino Zaccagni who built this church in 1510 ; in 1521 he also built the Madonna della Steccata in the Piazza of that name just behind the Palazzo del 276 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY Governo in the Piazza Garibaldi. This is a noble building, a great cross under a splendid dome. Within are the tombs of Ottavio Farnese and of Sforzino Sforza. The frescoes on the choir arch are by Parmigianino. We turn now to the Palazzo della Pilotta, an immense and unfinished block of buildings facing the Strada Garibaldi, the Palace of the Farnese. Up to 1564 the Farnese lived and held their court in the Episcopio. In that year, however, they began to buy various houses and buildings where now the Pre- fettura stands, and began to build the Palazzo Ducale, that has served as residence for every Duke of Parma since. At the death of Ottavio Farnese, the beginner of this vast palace, the work for a time was stayed, and was not continued till Ranuccio i. became lord. In 1618 Ranuccio began the gigantic fagade, and with him the work ended : his splendid dream was never fulfilled. But we ask, why is the Palace called " della Pilotta" ? It is so called from the game of Pilotta which was played in the great cortile on the north, called now del Guazzatoio.^ Whatever we may think of the Farnese, we have to admit here that they had great ideas. I do not say that this is the largest palace in Italy, but I do say that no other can show such cortili, or, I think, such an atrium, or such a staircase. The whole effect is noble, and certainly forces us to think that the position of Parma in the kingdom of United Italy is not what it was as the capital of an independent Duchy. The Palace, too, contains some collections of antiquities and pictures, all that have been left after the truly mighty theft of Don Carlos. In the Museo di Antichita we have certain bronzes discovered here and at Velleia, a little town that was ^ Cf. Laudedeo Testi, Parma (Bergamo, 1905), p. 99. This is the best work on Parma as an art city to be had, and it is very well illustrated. PARMA 277 suddenly long ago overwhelmed by a landslip. In another room we find fragments from Antelami's pulpit for the Cathedral, and I know not what else. In the Pinacoteca on the first floor, we have, how- ever, some really beautiful things. To the Venetians we owe the four exquisite Cimas : the Endymion (370), the Apollo and Marsyas (373), the Madonna with SS. Cosmas and Damian (360) and the truly jewel- like Madonna with S. Michael and S. Austin (361). This last work is a marvel of colour and miniature-like beauty. In the shadow of a Roman ruin, a triumphal arch, the Madonna rests, her Child seated on the ledge of marble, her arm about Him. Close to Him stands an old saint — is it S. Austin ? — leaning on a tall cross of wood, listening to what He seems to be saying. On the other side of the Madonna, where the arch casts its shadow, stands the young S. Michael, his tall spear, slender as a lily stem, in one hand, his balances in the other. He seems to await the advent of some one unseen. And all this is set in a divine Italian landscape, at the foot of a little hill set with groves and trees, up which a country road runs to the little city on its top. In the sky float the few gossamer clouds of a summer afternoon. The other Venetian picture here is by Tiepolo, S. Fedele of Sigmaringa and the Blessed Giuseppe of Leonessa overcoming Heresy, a remarkable work. Three works by Francia — a Pieta (123), a Holy Family (359) and an altarpiece of the Madonna enthroned under a semicircular baldachino, her Child on her knee, surrounded by S. Benedict, S. Placidus, S. Scholastica and S. Justina, with the child Baptist in the foreground on the first step of her throne — should be noticed. The beautiful landscape is as lovely as though Perugino had conceived and painted it. Before turning to the Correggios, we come to the magnificent portrait of the young Alessandro Farnese by Antonio Moro, a very fine picture, and to Van Dyck's 278 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY bust of Isabella Clara Eugenia of Spain. Here too is one of Holbein's portraits of Erasmus, and a good portrait, though unfinished, of Pope Clement vii. by Sebastiano del Piombo. In another room are two pictures and some drawings by Parmigianino, and then we come to the Correggios. The greatest painter of North Italy is seen here almost at his best in the magnificent Madonna and Child, with S. Mary Magdalen, S. Jerome and two angels, in a marvellous far-stretching landscape, called II Giorno. Commissioned in 1523, the picture was not finished till 1527, and the painter was paid 400 imperial lire— about fifteen pounds— for it. Napoleon carried it off to Paris, and there Turner, who has left some notes upon it,i saw it. A noble and lyrical work, it is perhaps the finest of Correggio's religious pictures. It certainly needs a German critic to decry its " deficiencies," and to insist that '' the attitude of Jerome is affected and insecure," and to add that " Correggio is never happy in grand things." It is true that no Latin people can support the ridiculous parade that is essentially barbaric and German, but it would need more than Teutonic muddle-headedness to convince us that the cupola of the Duomo is not a " grand thing," carried out with the astonishing success that is the result of genius, and that no amount of plodding and painstaking work can ever hope to achieve, or apparently to understand. The Madonna della Scodella, in which we see the Madonna and Child with S. Joseph resting on their return from Egypt, while above child angels dance among the clouds and lurking in the background watch over them, is a later work than II Giorno, though only by a few years. It originally stood in the Church of S. Sepolcro in this city. These two works are the most splendid of Correggio* s pictures remaining in Parma and among his greatest. * T, Sturge Moore, Correggio (Duckworth, 1 906), pp. 79-80. MADONNA DELLA SCODELLA CORREGGIO Gallery of Parma PARMA 279 In the spoiled Piet^ (352) and the Death of SS. Placidus and Flavia (353) we have work nearly contemporary with II Giorno and of much charm. Both works were painted to the commission of Placido del Bono, the confessor of Paul iii., for a chapel in S. Giovanni Evangelista. The Pieta is totally ruined, but the latter work is in excellent preservation and everyway a delight. Of the two frescoes here by Correggio, the fragment called the Madonna della Scala, and tne Annunciation, the latter comes from the Annunziata, and both are ruined. But if we wish to see what Correggio was capable of as a decorator and fresco painter when dealing with spaces less heroic and less inaccessible than the cupolas of the Duomo and of S. Giovanni, we may do so in the Convento di S. Paolo, once a Benedictine nunnery where for the famous Abbess Giovanna da Piacenza in 15 18 he painted his first work in fresco. Unfortunately, the triumph of colour which he doubtless achieved is gone, and all that remains is a charming design upon a pagan theme, in which we see Diana surrounded and peeped at by naked cupids, Juno naked and unashamed suffering punishment — a whole bower of delight filled with magic light and shade and pleasure. Little more remains to be seen in Parma. The Library in the great lonely Palace and the Teatro Farnese there should be visited, and the lovely Palazzo del Gardino across the river with its fine frescoes by Agostino Carrocci : and then Parma is done with. Yet before finally leaving this city of dead and despicable princelings, that yet contrived so many lovely and ador- able things, some light upon this contradiction which in some way I think spoils Parma for me may be had at Fornovo, a little place in the narrow and lofty valley of the Taro to the south, easily reached from Parma by a train. The significant and as it now would appear really 28o THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY important battle which took place here in the year 1495, and which should have prevented the retreat of the carnival army of Charles viii. from Italy, shows us at least, though it does not explain, the amazing decadence and anarchy of a people that had almost single-handed re-created Europe. The French march through Italy had, as we know, been rather a pageant than an invasion. Invited into Italy by Ludovico il Moro in 1494, who held out to Charles the bait of Naples, the French had been greeted by Italy at large with a kind of cynical indifference, as though the invasion of their country were a matter which little concerned them. But Charles had not long been established in Naples when Italy took fright, and realising the almost certain consequences of his conquest, attempted by some act to redeem her lost soul. The event proved that she was incapable of action any longer, as it proved that she had irredeemably lost her soul. That event was the battle of Fornovo. A great opportunity, to be seized at once by a virile people, presented itself to the Italians. Ludovico the traitor already repented him of the evil he had done. He hastily patched up a league with Venice, Ferdinand of Naples and Maximilian the Emperor ; and Charles awoke one morning in Naples to find himself in a trap. The Neapolitans were his enemies ; and Charles, seeing that almost everything was already lost, began at full speed his long retreat through Italy. He had to cross the Apennines, and his only road lay over the Cisa Pass, which debouches by the valley of the Taro upon Fornovo and Parma. Here, and rightly here, the Venetians and the Milanese awaited him with an over- whelming force. In his anxiety Charles gave his enemies every oppor- tunity of revenge. His army was weakened by disease and by many a minor expedition which had been detached from it. Nor was he careful of conciliation. PARMA 281 The wanton destruction by the Swiss of Pontremoli would have roused the indignation of any people still capable of anger. But Italy was spiritually bankrupt. Slowly, for all his haste, the French and their Swiss allies crossed the summit of the mountains, slowly they descended into Lombardy by the left bank of the Taro, until their vanguard, thirty miles in advance, reached Fornovo on July 2, and halted there three days till the king should arrive. The Venetians and Milanese were encamped at Giarola" in the plain under the last spur of the moun- tains between it and the Taro. They had the French vanguard at their mercy, and, that destroyed, the whole army, encumbered with artillery, would have been an easy prey in the exhaustion of that long passage. Oppor- tunities so precious are seldom offered to despairing men, and, once lost, can never be retrieved. The Italians did not even attack. We may estimate the total forces so amazingly opposed in the trap of the Taro valley at some nine thousand on the French side, as opposed to some thirty- six thousand of the Venetians and Milanese. The Italians thus had it four to one, and the whole position was so profoundly in their favour that had they been outnumbered still their victory seemed inevitable. Yet the Italians consented to negotiate : they ** wished to let the king pass, without perilling their cause by a general action, which, as all know, is essentially hazardoust and ought therefore to he avoided." ^ Meanwhile the French had crossed the Taro, and both forces were now upon the right bank. At eight on the morning of July, 6 the French, their army united, resumed their march. The king was with the main body, the artillery followed the advance and the baggage was on the left. A Venetian gun opened 1 Sanuto's own words : Guicciardini inculpates the others as well as the Venetians. s82 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY the battle (if battle it can be called), and was promptly dismounted by the artillery of the enemy, who then recrossed the Taro and marched on for about a mile. Then came the one incident of the day, which, though it may be called an act on the part of the Italians, only completes their shame. The Marquis of Mantua, at the head not of an Italian but of a Dalmatian force of irregular horse, charged, and had nearly suc- ceeded in cutting his way to the king, when his undis- ciplined men spied the baggage, and gave themselves up to pillage. Meanwhile, the Italians had yielded everywhere, four to one though they were, and at last, as the French pushed onward, the Italian army, broken and fugitive, poured back across the Taro in utter confusion, and fled towards Parma. Charles forbore to press his advantage, his business was the safety of his retreat. He encamped his weary army about a mile from the field. Even next day the Italians might have struck a blow which would for long have preserved their country from foreign invasion. They did nothing : jealousy distracted their leaders, and they contented themselves with announcing their *' victory " to their respective Governments, the Venetians even ordering triumphant festivities " on the strength of having captured the King's baggage, of having carried off his rosaries and a portfolio of portraits of the ladies of his harem." Such was the battle of Fornovo, which closed the fifteenth century in Italy and led to the long paralysis and captivity which has only passed away in our own day. A visit to Fornovo reconciles us even to the Farnese rule in Parma, for Italy deserved nothing better. CHAPTER XIX REGGIO THE road from Parma to Reggio, some eighteen miles of the ^Emilian Way, is far less attractive than the way between Piacenza and Parma, yet it has a charm of its own, and I for one never tire of those vast spaces of country subject to the sky, where the earth lies spread out infinite and quiet to the mountains on the south and to the far low horizon on the north. Just as outside Piacenza we found a leper hospital about a mile from the city, so we do outside Parma and at about the same distance. Nearly a mile before we come to S. Ilario we cross the Enza and come out of the Duchy of Parma into the Duchy of Modena. Thence the road runs as straight as a ruled line into the little city of Reggio. Reggio, so far as we know or can ascertain, was a mere stronghold founded by iEmilius Lepidus to serve and to guard his great highway. It seems to have no Gallic origins whatever, indeed its earliest name was Forum Lepidi, and the origin of its later appellation, Regium Lepidi, is unknown. It did not become a colony like Parma and Mutina, and never rose to the wealth and prosperity that they achieved, yet it has this claim to fame that it was here Marcus Brutus, the father of the murderer of Caesar, was put to death by Pompey in 79 B.C. That Reggio was little more in the time of the Empire than a mere country town is confirmed to us by 283 284 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY S. Ambrose, who speaks of its bareness and decay, and like Parma it was one of the places in which Gratian settled his Gothic captives. It suffered, of course, in the Dark Ages from the incursions of the barbarians, and was then, in so far as its central part about the Cathedral was concerned, surrounded by a wall. About this, in time, rose the borghi, that on the west being at first limited by the torrent Crostolo, whose bed has now become the Corso Garibaldi. Like every other Lombardy town, it benefited by the Peace of Constance in 1183, and established the lordship of its Commune upon the surrounding territory, enclosing then its borghi with the wall which in some sort we still see ; the principal gates being those of S. Croce, S. Pietro, S. Stefano and Castello, which named the quarters of the city. In 1339 Luigi Gonzaga had obtained the lordship of Reggio, and he then built the Cittadella, in the place now occupied by the Passeggio Pubblico, on the ruins of a hundred and twenty-five houses and a ruined con- vent within the city, and twenty-four other buildings without it. The Cittadella besides being a fortress con- tained the parochial Church of S. Nazaro and the Ducal Palace, and it is now thought that Ariosto was born within its walls on September 8, 1474. In 1409 Reggio was united by Niccolo d' Este to Modena, which his house had obtained in 1288. The last Este to reign was that Hercules 11 1. who lost his dominions at the Peace of Luneville, when Reggio came with the rest of the dukedom of Modena to the Austrian House, from which it only passed in 1859, when Vittorio Emanuele proclaimed United Italy. The centre of Reggio for ages has been the Piazza del Duomo, now called after Victor Emmanuel; it is the heart of the city now as in old days, and there stand the Cathedral, the Bell Tower and the Palazzo del REGGIO 285 Comune, now the Monte di Pieta. Beside the Palace open the arcades of th© Peschiera, where opposite the Municipio is Albergo della Porta, known in the seven- teenth century as the Osteria del Cappel Rosso, In front of the Monte di Pieta stands the Municipio, built in 1414, and here in the great Sala del Consiglio was held, on January 7, 1797, the Congress of the cities of the Emilia which created the short-lived " Repubblica Cispadana." On the eastern side of the Piazza stand the Duomo and the Palazzo Vescovile, to the left of which is the Palazzo dei Canonici. Opposite is the house of Ariosto. The Palazzo Vescovile is of great antiquity of founda- tion, but as we see it is a building largely of the sixteenth century. The Duomo, originally a Lombard church of the twelfth, was largely re-erected in the fifteenth and six- teenth centuries. Thus its fagade is, in so far as it is finished, of the Renaissance, with recumbent figures, in the manner of Michaelangelo, of Adam and Eve by Prospero Clementi over its main doorway, and the four statues in the niches representing S. Grisante, S. Daria, S. Venerio and S. Gioconda are by his pupils. Above, in the beautiful octagonal tower, is a bronze group of the Madonna and Child with two Donors, Giroldo Fiordibelli and Antonia Boiardi, by Bartolommeo Spani. Within, the Cathedral has a lofty choir over a crypt, but it has suffered many restorations. Here we find the best works of these two Reggiani sculptors, Bartolommeo and Prospero Clementi. To the former belongs the tomb of Valerio Malaguzzi, uncle of Ariosto, in the third chapel on the right, and the tomb of Bishop Buon- francesco Arlotti in the chapel to the left of the choir ; to the latter the tombs of Ugo Rangoni, Bishop of Reggio, and Paul iii., nuncio at the court of Charles v. In the chapel to the right of the choir, the beautiful Christ 286 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY upon the altar and the tomb of Cherubino Sforzani in the left aisle are also his. Behind the Duomo, in the Piazza di S. Prospero, stands the church of S. Prospero, built on the foundation of an old Lombard building by Gasparo Bisi in 1504. The aspect of this Piazza is very charming, not only by reason of the Church of S. Prospero and the fine old octagonal tower which stands beside it, but because the three apses of the Duomo, so gracious from here, look into the square and add something strange and lovely to its quietness. Unfortunately, the fagade of S. Prospero is of 1748, but the six lions in red Verona marble are by Bisi and were carved in 1503. Here again we find the work of the Clementi. To Bartolommeo is due the tomb of Rufino Gabloneta over the entrance, and to Prospero the fine statue of the Madonna in the right transept. Here, too, by the fourth altar on the south side is a picture, perhaps by Sodoma,^ welcome in so poor a place as Reggio. This work, S. Homobonus giving alms, is a remarkable and powerful picture, with certain curious and almost gro- tesque faults. Mr. Cust, whose book on Sodoma is a mine of carefully gathered information, suggests that Anselmi was Sodoma's partner in this work. There are two altarpieces, as it happens, by Anselmi in this church, a fine S. Paul and a Baptism of Our Lord. It is interesting to compare them. The frescoes by Bernardo Campi of Cremona in the choir have been restored. Returning to the Piazza del Duomo and taking the Via di S. Pietro Mart ire, and then turning to the right up the Corso Garibaldi, we come to the Madonna della Ghiara. This is a beautiful church in the form of a Greek cross built in Bramante's manner, and of fine proportions. In the right transept is a Madonna by Lelio Orsi. Now, 1 Venturi gives it to Bernardino Zacchetti, an obscure Reggian painter. Cf. L'Arte, 1901, Sept.-Oct. fasc. ix.-x. REGGIO 287 till I came to Reggio all I knew of Lelio Orsi was that he had a very original picture, the Walk to Emmaus (1466), in the National Gallery. He was probably a son of that Bernardino Orsi a picture by whom I find in the Duomo of Reggio. He was certainly employed to decorate some triumphal arches erected in honour of Ercole Gonzaga's visit to Reggio in 1536, and it has been thought that he was a pupil of Correggio. In 1546 he was banished from Reggio for some unknown offence, and in 1552 he was pardoned and allowed to return. During these years he lived at Novellara, to the north of Reggio, on the line to Guastalla and within easy reach of the city. There some of his works remain, as do more than one in the Museo here in Reggio. CHAPTER XX MODENA NOTHING of much interest is to be found on the great road between Reggio and Modena. A mile or more outside the Roman gate of Reggio we find, as before at Parma, a leper hospital under the dedication of S. Lazzaro. At S. Maurizio we pass a villa of Ariosto's, and at Rubiera we are in a fief of Boiardo, the author of the Orlando Innamorato, who was not only a poet, but lord of Scandiano, five miles away to the south at the foot of the great hills. Then, after crossing the Secchia, the great road curves suddenly northward, really the first turn it has made since it left Piacenza : and we enter the city of Modena. Modena, the Roman Mutina, a Gallic city, probably of Etruscan origin, belonged to the Boii, and seems to have come into Roman hands in 222 B.C., at the close of the Gallic War. They fortified it, and at the opening of the Second Punic War, in 218 B.C., it was already a consider- able place, and there the triumvirs took refuge when the Gauls rose to greet Hannibal and Placentia was no longer safe. It was thus a walled town before Piacenza or Cremona, and it is probable that even in Gallic times it had been a stronghold. In 183 B.C. the Republic determined to establish a colony here and at Parma : these were both coloniae civium, and their 2000 settlers enjoyed the full rights of Roman citizens. Mutina, however, had not been long founded when it suffered disaster. The Ligurians of the hills swept MODENA 289 down upon it in 177 B.C., and succeeded in taking the town, but Caius Claudius was at hand, and is said to have retaken the place easily enough, slaughtering 8000 of the enemy. It then rose rapidly to prosperity, and alone of the Cisalpine towns bore a conspicuous part in the Social War as it did in the Civil War that followed the death of Caesar, so that Suetonius, recounting its adventures, speaks of the Bellum Mutinense, and Cicero speaks of it as firmissima et splendidissima populi Romani colonia. In the time of the Empire it was still wealthy, but we hear little of it till in 312 a.d. Con- stantine the Great took it during his war with Maxentius, and before the end of that wonderful century it had begun to feel the great decline of which S. Ambrose speaks, in which these cities along the ^Emilian Way fell into ruin and decay, and their territories into a barren wilderness. In the early Dark Age it was ravished by Attila per- haps more severely than any other town of Emilia, but under the Lombard Kings it again rose to importance as their frontier city towards the Exarchate ; yet the wars brought it to decay, and in the tenth century we have a lamentable picture of its ruin, its territory little better than a morass, and itself covered with mud and water. In the eleventh century Modena came into the hands of the Canossa, but after the death of the great Countess, in the first years of the twelfth century, we see it developing a commune at first owing allegiance to the Empire, but presently joining the Lombard League against the Emperor. Then the usual wars of the factions brought it into the hands of a lord. This was Obizzo d' Este of Ferrara. It is true he was dis- posed of in 1306 after a defeat at the hands of the Bolognesi, and a short period of popular government followed. But soon the Bonacolsi had it, and then the Este house again. The Este had now come to remain, which they managed to do till 1796, when the French 19 290 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY entered and made of Modena a province of the Cisalpine Republic and later of the Italian kingdom. In 1814, however, the ducato was restored under an Austrian house, only to be ended in 1859, when Modena became a part of the kingdom of United Italy. In its great days, surrounded completely by its walls and strong in its citadel, Modena must have seemed a formidable place, very different from the open city we see to-day, now that what is called " progress " has demanded and obtained the destruction of both fortress and walls. Four gates have always given access to the city : the Porta Bologna on the east, the Porta S. Agostino on the west, the Porta S. Francesco on the south and the Porta Mirandola on the north. The centre of Modena beside the .Emilian Way, which traverses Modena from end to end as it does Parma and Reggio, is the Piazza Grande, in which stands the Duomo. This great church is still one of the noblest in Lombardy. It was begun in 1099, before Modena had erected her Comune, and was finished in 1184. Its builder was Lanfranc ; but, ages before he began to build the church we see, the Bishop of Modena, in the year 400, had built a basilica here over the tomb of S. Gimignano. This building fell into ruin in the year 1000. It is prob- able that the present church owes much to the Countess Matilda : it was consecrated by Pope Lucius iii. when he passed through Modena in 1184. There are, how- ever, certain fragments from the older basilica in the present building. The fa9ade, which is richly sculptured with scenes from the history of man down to Noah, the work of Nicolaus and Wiligelmus, is adorned with a lovely rose window above the main portal and with a delightful colonnade which girdles the whole church and consists of the three arches borne by small columns within a larger arch supported by pilasters, and an engaged column springing from the ground. The main portal, flanked by two simple round arched doors, is covered MODENA 291 by a double canopy borne by columns resting upon the usual lions of Verona marble. The most delightful part of the exterior of the church, however, is the semicircular choir and crypt to the east, flanked on either side by smaller semicircular apses, and guarded by two delightful turrets, between which rises the eastern wall of the nave. The southern side of the church has two good doorways, each with a canopy borne by lions : here, too, is a pulpit and some reliefs of the story of S. Gimignano by Agostino di Duccio, fifteenth-century work. The interior, unfortunately, has been so amazingly restored that the effect of antiquity has quite passed from it. The nave and aisles with pointed vaulting are borne by alternate pillars of brick and columns of marble, above which is a triforium. The choir is raised over a lofty crypt borne by thirty lovely columns of marble for the most part with Renaissance capitals. Here is the tomb of S. Gimignano. In the right aisle of the church by the third altar is a curious terra-cotta group representing the Presepio by Antonio Begarelli, a work of the early sixteenth century. Over the second altar in the left aisle are some fine reliefs, and over the third altar a beautiful Coronation of the Blessed Virgin by Serafino de' Serafini, painted in 1385. It bears the inscription : Seraphinus de Sera- phinis pinxit 1385 die Jo vis xxiii Marcis. This is generally said to be the earliest work of a Modenese painter. Close by over the next altar is a Madonna on high with S. Jerome, S. Sebastian and S. John Baptist, painted in 1522 by Dosso Dossi of Ferrara : it was painted for the comunUj an association of the priests serving the Cathedral. Opposite this altar upon a pillar is the beautiful Gothic pulpit which Enrico da Campione made in 1321. In the choir we come upon a tomb, that of Francesco 292 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY Molza, erected in 15 16 by Bartolommeo Clementi of Reggio, and not far away some curious sculptures of the Passion of the twelfth century; above are some spoiled frescoes. The stalls here are of the fifteenth century from the hand of Cristoforo da Lendinaria. United now to the Cathedral by two modern arches rises the lovely campanile called La Ghirlandina, begun at the same time as the Cathedral, and finished as we see it in 13 19. It has often been struck by lightning, for it is 335 feet high, and though properly a bell tower has in the Middle Age been used as a defence. To the east of the Duomo, across the Piazza, before the apse, is the Palazzo della Ragione, now a savings bank. To the south is the Palazzo di Giustizia, and to the west, in a corner, the Arcivescovado. Apart from the Duomo, the churches of Modena have little interest. S. Francesco, however, which is beauti- ful, should be visited, for it is of the fourteenth century, and contains a vast terra-cotta, consisting of thirteen life-sized figures representing the Deposition. It is by Begarelli. Not far from S. Francesco, too, is the Church of S. Pietro, with a lovely fagade of the Renaissance and several of Begarelli's works. Here, too, is a striking altarpiece by Francesco Bianchi of the Madonna en- throned with S. Jerome and S. Sebastian, while three putti make music at her feet. In the predella are scenes from the story of S. Sebastian. Nor, I suppose, should S. Agostino, the Pantheon d'Este, be omitted, one of the finest baroque churches in existence. But the true interest of Modena does not reside in her churches, which with the exception of the Duomo are of altogether mediocre importance. The delight and splendour of Modena lie in her picture gallery in the Albergo Arti, after those of Milan and Bergamo the finest in all Lombardy. The collection, which was presented to the city by Francis v. in 1869 and has since been enriched by the addition of the Campori collection, MODENA 293 unfortunately has no catalogue. We will, however, take the schools separately, beginning, as is here but good manners, with that of Ferrara, from which the Modenese sprang. We begin, then, with a very late work by Cosimo Tura, a full-length figure of S. Anthony of Padua. He is at Rimini by the sea, and seems about to turn round and preach to the fishes, as we know he did there. It is painted almost in monochrome, and probably formed part of an altarpiece once in the Chapel of S. Niccolb at Ferrara. By Ercole Roberti, the pupil of Tura, we have here also a later picture, one of those classical subjects he executed for the Ferrarese Court. It represents the Death of Lucrezia, and is charming but much damaged. From Tura and Ercole Roberti we pass to Francesco Bianchi, and so to the Modenese school. Bianchi was probably the pupil of Tura, and certainly the follower of Ercole Roberti. Here in his native city there are most of the works from his hand that are now known. The altarpiece in S. Pietro we have already noted. For the Duomo he painted three medallions with the Madonna and S. Sebastian and S. Gimignano in fresco on the ceiling of the sacristy. Here in the Pinacoteca are two certain and two doubtful pictures. The works certainly his are the early Crucifixion (442) and the Annunciation (476) which he left unfinished at his death. The Crucifixion clearly shows the influence of Roberti, and so indeed does the Annunciation, painted in 1506. Here in a noble court, through the beautiful Renais- sance arch of which we catch a glimpse of the hill country. Madonna kneeling at an elaborate prie-Dieu is roused from her prayer by Gabriel, who trips softly across the court, dropped from the summer sky whence God the Father amid the cherubim speeds the Dove, His hand raised in blessing. A delightful if a mannered picture we may think, and assuredly Bianchi had had 294 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY many forerunners in Modena before the school was absorbed by that of Ferrara, such as that Serafino Serafini whose sole work remains in the Duomo. Such were Tommasso da Modena (1325-26), a small Polyp- tych (489) by whom is to be found here, and his younger contemporary, Barnab^ da Modena (c. 1367- 1383)^ by whom also we have here a Polyptych of the Madonna and Child with S. Catherine and the Baptist, the Annunciation and the Crucifixion (486) ; and the Fra Paola da Modena, who is the author of that Madonna deir Umilti where Madonna seated on the ground gives suck to her Child, while a friar kneels in adoration. This work, which is signed and dated, was painted in 1370, but it has been entirely repainted. Nor besides these fourteenth-century painters must one forget to mention others of the fifteenth century, less famous than Bianchi, but who were influenced as he was by Tura. Such are Agnolo and Bartolommeo Erri, who in 1465 painted a Triptych of which the chief subject is the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin, now in the Pinacoteca here (unnumbered). Tura had in Modena his mere imitators, too. Such were Cristoforo da Lendinara, who in 1482 signed and painted the picture of the Madonna and Child here (485), and Bartolommeo Bonascia, the author of a striking Pieta (486). But in truth, however we look at it, the school of Modena was but a branch of the Ferrarese. A pupil of Ercole Roberti, who though not a Modenese may well be mentioned here, was Correggio, by whom this gallery can boast a single picture, a Madonna and Child (17), a much damaged and badly repainted picture from the Campori collection. Returning now to the Ferrarese pictures, we come upon a group of works by Dosso Dossi (1479-1541). In his earlier and better work this master came under the influence of Giorgione. A comparatively early picture and a delightful one is the Jester (474) here, MODENA 295 which Mr. Gardner declares holds the same position in Dossi's art as the Mona Lisa does in Leonardo's. What- ever we may say to that, we cannot but be fascinated by this jolly clown nursing a sheep under a tree in a wide countryside, and laughing at us heartily enough straight out of the picture. But Dosso Dossi can paint an altarpiece as well as the laughter of a clown or the mystery of Circe, and we have perhaps his best in the Madonna and Child in the heavens surrounded by winged cherubs with S. George and S. Michael, the devil under his foot, below in our world (437). As a portrait painter Dosso also excelled. The por- trait of Ercole d' Este here (450) is, however, a post- humous reconstruction of the Duke. It was painted in 1524. Nor was he anything but the first of the decorators of his day, though the fragments of what would seem to have been a fine work of the kind here are too much damaged for us to appreciate them. Several works from the hand of Dosso's brother, Battista Dossi, are to be found in the Pinacoteca. Among them is that fine Nativity (440) in which it would seem we have portraits of Alfonso i. and Ercole 11. A Portrait of the former (450) and a Madonna and Child with S. Francis and S. Anthony and the Confraternity of S.Maria della Neve below (446), should also be mentioned. Dosso Dossi was born in 1478 ; Garofalo, in whose making he had some influence, in 1481. From his hand we have a Deposition (285) painted in 1527 and a Madonna and Child enthroned with angels and saints, S. John Baptist, S. Lucy and the Beato Contardo d' Este, painted in 1533 ; and from his pupil Girolamo da Carpi, we have a Portrait of Ercole d' Este (471). We now turn to the school of Cremona. By Boccaccio Boccaccino (1467-1525 c.) we have a Madonna and Saints (426) ; by Giulio Campi, the Portrait of a Man in Black (217) ; and by Sofonisba Anguissola, a Portrait of a Man, a tondo (301). 296 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY The Veronese school is represented by a single picture of Caroto's, a delightful thing, the Blessed Virgin sewing, painted in 1501. From Verona we pass to Venice. In the Portrait of a Man (319) we have a doubtful Alvise Vivarini, but we have the veritable hand of his pupil Bartolommeo Montagna in a picture of the Madonna and Child (5), painted in 1503. Cima, another of Alvise's pupils, is here in a Pieta (143), and Catena in a picture of the Madonna and Child with Two Saints (404). By the Tuscans we have four pictures : the Madonna and Angels adoring the Divine Child (449) by Botticini, a Madonna and Child with the infant John Baptist (334) ^^^ 3-1^ early work by Franciabigio, the Birth of the Baptist (223). Best of all these, perhaps, we have a delightful little panel of the Nativity (457) by Giovanni di Paolo the Sienese. But the treasure of the gallery as it happens is not any Italian picture, but the noble Velasquez, which alone would make a visit to Modena a necessity. This is a portrait of Francis d' Este, Duke of Modena and Reggio, and was painted in Spain in 1638. ''The Duke," Palomino tells us, " highly honoured Diego Velasquez, and praised his rare gifts ; and when Diego painted him, mvich to his satisfaction, he generously rewarded him, especially with a rich gold chain, which Velasquez generally wore, as was customary, upon feast days in the palace." This magnificently virile picture for long passed as a Van Dyck, but I have seldom seen a work wherein at the first glance the painter's name more certainly leaps to the mind. ' ^» » »t.* FRANCESCO D ESTE, UUKK OF MODKNA VELASQUEZ Gallery, Modena CHAPTER XXI CANOSSA IT would be a good thing to take the opportunity of the general dullness both of Reggio and Modena to visit Novellara, if only for the sake of Lelio Orsi, or, from Modena, Mirandola, if only for the sake of Pico the humanist, but that a far more interesting and adven- turous journey offers itself as one lingers in Reggio, and at length so insistently that it cannot be denied. I mean a journey into the high Apennine to that castle of the great Matilda where Pope Gregory vii. humbled the Emperor Henry iv., and so thoroughly that even Bismarck remembered it, saying to Leo xiii. that he would not go to Canossa whatever else he might do ; but, as we know, in the quieter fashion that even the Germans have learnt to adopt in our day, he went all the same. Canossa remains in the imagination of the world as the symbol of the mighty work that Rome achieved during the Dark Ages, I mean the creation of the Papacy that was not only to dominate but to civilise Europe, and when Hildebrand on that bare and pallid rock broke Henry in the cruel winter of 1077 that creation was proclaimed to Europe and the two succeed- ing centuries were already secured. There are half a dozen ways from Reggio to Canossa. That is the easiest and I think the best which takes you afoot, by carriage or by train, into the valley of the Enza at S. Polo, and so to Ciano. At Ciano you may get a mule, or you may walk by Rossena to that magnificent 297 298 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY and isolated spot where the destiny of Europe for more than two centuries was decided. All the way is fair, and nothing in the world is more inspiring than the splendid climb from Ciano to Canossa. The lords of Canossa held in their day not only these mountains and all the passes into Italy across them, but a vast part of Lom- bardy, including Parma, Reggio, Mantua and Brescia, to say nothing of Tuscany and Spoleto. One feels at once on leaving Reggio and entering the region of the hills that one is at last really in their country. The first founder of Canossa, that Sigifredo who came up from the Arno valley probably by the Cisa, the way of Hannibal before him, and the way of all the Emperors and of Charles viii., was very rich, and when he saw the pleasant wealth of Lombardy perhaps from the spurs of these very hills as we may see it to-day, he bought lands and signory in Reggio, and left his children when he died, in 945, what was in truth a kingdom. Azzo his son had Canossa, which he fortified and where he lived, and thither the beautiful Adelaide came for safety from Berenger, titular King of Italy, who when she rejected his suit imprisoned her on the Lago di Gar da. She fled to Mantua, dressed as a man, where Azzo, to whom she had appealed, found her and bore her off in safety to his eyrie. And when Otho the Emperor appeared in Italy, sought her and married her, Azzo was heaped with honours so great that Berenger was forced to attack him in Canossa. The siege which followed lasted for three years. When Azzo died he was ruling not only in the mountains, but the whole northern plain between Reggio and Brescia. He was succeeded by his son Tebaldo, and he by his son Bonifazio, and both increased their power, Bonifazio adding the Duchy of Tuscany to his lordship and ruling like a sovereign king. Henry iii. the Emperor certainly went in fear of him. But with Bonifazio the Canossa house seemed likely to end, for by his marriage with •. • • « CANOSSA 299 Beat/ice of Lorraine he had but one daughter, Matilda ; in fact, however, she was the greatest of her house, the gran donna d' Italia, the friend of Hildebrand and the handmaid and protectress of the Papacy and the Church, she who reminded Dante of Persephone as she went alone singing and plucking flower after flower that strewed her way. We shall meet her again at Canossa. She lived a virgin, and on her death her vast inheritance passed by her will to the Holy See. Such was the house that ruled all this country, the centre of whose power was set here high among the everlasting hills. If you set out from Reggio by train, you will go through Bibbiano to S. Polo, if by road you will pass the Quattro Castella. In Bibbiano there is nothing to see, and no time to see it if there were; but the Quattro Castella offers the traveller one of the most astonishing spectacles in Italy. Four conical hills rise from the vast hillside aU in a line barring the way, and each crowned by a castle. They are the first outworks of that vast system of defence which guarded Canossa. The most in- teresting is Bianello, for it alone conserves something of Matilda's time. It is the second of the four, the first to the east being Monte Vecchio, the third Monte Lucio, the fourth Mongiovanni, where stood the Chapel of S. Niccolb, in which, it is probable, Henry, coming from Bianello, met Matilda and the Abbot of Clugny in con- ference. This Bianello was founded by the great Countess, who often lived there. In 1077 i* received Henry iv., and in that same year the Pope, while it was here Matilda took refuge when Henry assaulted Canossa in 1092. But neither Canossa nor Bianello was the habitual residence of Matilda. Her home was in the castle she had built at Carponetti, the beautiful ruin of which still remains in the high Apennines almost due south of Canossa. S. Polo, where the train takes you before bringing you 300 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY to Ciano, is also a bright village that appertained to the great Countess, as did all in this country. It was united to the feud of Bianello. In 1372 it came into the hands of Bernabo Visconti, and later into those of Niccolo d' Este. The hill that rises behind S. Polo towards Parma is Guardasone. Its castle was probably the Guardia d'Azzone, hence the name, but this Azzo was not he of Canossa, but Azzo da Correggio, lord of Parma in 1341 and the friend of Petrarch. At Ciano, where one leaves the train, there is nothing to see. A horse or mule hence to Canossa costs four lire. The Trattoria of Filippo Quirino musters seven beds in all, and they cost a lira apiece. It is possible to sleep here, but only advisable if it is necessary. As one leaves Ciano, the great red hill and castle of Rossena come in sight, and from Rossena, you who have come by train, and we who have come afoot, go on together by the same road. Rossena was a fortress of Bonifazio Canossa, but there is not much to be said about it. It is a splendid thing rather than a famous one, and yet it is famous too by reason of the pitiful legend of Everelina. In the dungeons of Rossena lay in mortal fear Cildo, flung there by the tyrant Usualdo. His daughter Everelina, " bella come 1' amore e la speranza," maddened by her father's captivity, fled one night from her mother's house and ran to the castello of Usualdo, where, flinging herself at his feet, she offered herself in exchange for her father. Usualdo agreed. Cildo was given up, and when Usualdo would have brought Everelina to his bed, she begged that she might offer one prayer to the morning star from her balcony. This was permitted her, and she flung herself into the bottomless ravine, never to be seen again by mortal eyes. Beyond Rossena, but not directly upon the way to Canossa, is the delicious and wooded spot known as CANOSSA 301 Selvapiana, where Petrarch was the guest of Azzo da Correggio in the summer of 1341, and here he began his Africa, completed later in Parma. After Rossena, the great white and naked rock of Canossa crowned by its ruin comes in sight, in wonderful contrast with Rossena itself. Here in the winter of 1077 the two great forces of the world met in combat, and the Emperor fell. It is almost impossible for us in our confused and wholly material age to understand the drama that was played out upon this naked upland, as it were upon the top of the world, in the three days and nights of that bitter January. The Emperor had come from his Germany into Italy with the intention of making the Pope prisoner. He knew not what he was proposing. To humble the Latin world, which the Papacy expressed, was in itself a barbarian, if an honourable, adventure ; but to break the heart and the soul of Europe was to achieve what even Attila had failed to do. As the event proved, when the two men were face to face it was the barbarian who was to go down, and that not by force of arms but by force of will. Henry, after all, apart from his position, was not a great man. At war with his German feud- atories, hated by his sons, unfaithful and cruel to his wife, weak in all his ways, he was always dis- trusted by Gregory, and these disagreements had ended at last in his excommunication. Abandoned by his nobles, the Emperor summoned a council in Augsburg, and the Pope set out with Matilda in December 1076 to attend it. He got no farther than Vercelli when he heard that Henry was on his way into Italy at the head of an army. Then the great Countess persuaded the Holy Father to place himself in her keeping in her Castle of Canossa. Hildebrand agreed, and the end of the year saw him in safety upon the Apennines, within the strongest fortress in Italy. Henry, however, could only threaten. He entered 302 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY Italy indeed, but only as a fugitive, with his wife Bertha and his little son Conrad, and but a single servant. He crossed the Mont Cenis in disguise, accepting the hospitality of shepherds, who, amid incredible hardships in the snow, led and lowered him by ropes over the almost impassable mountains. He reached Turin, and set out for Canossa. All the world now watched him on what was little more than a pilgrimage of penance. But Italy was not Germany, and he found in the Cis- alpine plain more friends than he had expected. As time went on, he found himself at the head of a great force, and, like the barbarian he was, he dreamed that this might avail. He had not begun to understand what he would have opposed. At Canossa everything was ready for an attack. Azzo d' Este was there and Hugh, Abbot of Clugny, and over them all the great Countess. Uplifted before all Europe, the Emperor and the Pope faced one another to decide who should be master. Henry came. Was it the mountains that had broken him, or the astonishment of Italy, or the hand of God ? Whatever it was, he was broken. His first act was to beg intercession from Matilda, who with Hugh the Abbot met him when he begged it at Bianello. The Countess, who was his cousin, undertook to plead his cause. Then Hildebrand said : " If Henry is indeed repentant, let him lay down crown and sceptre, and declare that he is unworthy of the name of a king." There spoke the soul of Europe that cannot be broken. Henry did as he was ordered. It was the end of January ; the earth was covered with snow, the streams were silent with frost. In the thin garb of a penitent, in a shirt of white linen, the successor of the Caesars, nay Caesar himself, slowly climbed the rocky path to the outer gate of Canossa. And they all looked upon him as he stood before the closed inner gate. There, in the bitter CANOSSA 303 weather, he waited fasting for three days and three nights. On the fourth day, half dead with cold, the wretched Emperor was brought into the presence of God's Vice- gerent. He prostrated himself in the dust, crying for pardon. Then Hildebrand placed his foot upon the Emperor's neck and spoke : "Super aspidem et basiliscum ambulabis et conculcabis leonem et draconem " : Thou shalt tread upon the lion and the adder : the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under thy feet. After this Gregory said Mass and permitted Henry to receive the Blessed Sacrament. That scene will live for ever in the mind of man, for it is the most perfect expression of that Europe out of which we are come and to which we shall return. Canossa is its monument, a place worthier of pilgrimage by us who are European than ever was Becket's tomb at Canterbury, holy though that was and famous through the world. Canossa was a bigger victory than Canterbury, and Italy a bigger stage than England. Look you, then, how the mountains shine hence, and all Lombardy is spread out before them, and Italy far away thrice guarded there to the south. It is well that our journey should draw to an end in such a famous place as this, where we may look back upon our many days of going, and possess them all in a single heart's beat, a single glance, as Hildebrand looked over the world. There lies Cisalpine Gaul, jewelled with cities — Modena, Parma, Verona, Mantua; girdled with her mighty river, the glistening belt of the Po ; islanded by the Euganeans, and ringed and fortressed by the Alps. Here are the Apennines, yonder is Italy : and the story of Europe, that noble tale of great Rome turned Chris- tian, and all our past, at our feet. INDEX Abelard, 129, 185 Acerrse, 9 Acqua Fredda, 46 Adalbert 11., 152 Adaluald, 164, 165, 167 Adda, the, 6, 9, 25, 40, 45 Adelaide, Empress, 152, 298 Adige, the, 6 Adolphus succeeds Alaric, 23 Ady, Mrs. See Cartwright -^milian Way, 13, 243, 262, 283, 289 Agilulf the Goth, 164, 165, 208, 223, 260 Agrate, Marco, his work in Milan, 95, 102 Aguanegra, 223 Aix-la-Chapelle, treaty of, 76 Alaric invades Italy, 19, 21, 22, 23, 28, 59, 93, 94, 269 Alba, 7, 68, 69 Bishop of, 231 Alberoni, Cardinal, 263, 264 Alberti, Leon Battista, his work in Mantua, 209, 210, 215, 218 Albertinelli, 127, 179 Alboin, the, 26, 149, 223 Alciato, 73 Alemanna, Antonio d', 173 Alemanni, the, invade Italy, 25 Alessandri, Cardinal Longo degli, 174 Alessandria, 68, 224 foundation of, 66 Alessi, Galeazzo, his work in Milan, 113, 114 his work in Pa via, 1 45 20 Alexander iii.. Pope, opposes Barbarossa, 65, 66 Alfred, King, 157 Alps, the, the gates of Italy, 2-4, 14, 16, 17 Alseno, 266 Altenburg, 179 Altichiera of Verona, his work in Milan, 117 Altinum, 24 Alzano, 183 Amadeo, Giovanni Antonio, 228 his work at Bergamo, 174, 175 his work at Pavia, 141, 145, 146, 147 Amalie, Princess, 127 Amati, the, of Cremona, 233 Ancona, 27, 232 Andreassi, Bishop Giorgio, 211 Angelico, Fra, 143, 179 Anghera, Castle of, 34 Angilbertus 11,, Archbishop, 90, 91 note Anguissola, Sofonisba, 181, 295 Anne d' Alen9on, 217 Annegray, 260 Anselmi, 286 Anspert, Bishop, rebuilds Milan, 60 Antelami, Benedetto, 274, 277 Antonello da Messina, 253 Antony, Mark, 269 Apennines, the gates of Italy, 2-4, 17 Apulia, 269 Aquileia, 20, 23, 24, 223, 263 Arcevia, 126 Arcimboldi, the, 103 3o6 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY Arco, Castle of, 202 Areola, battle of, 203 Arduin of Ivrea, 152 Arezzo, 7, 158 Niccolo d', 102 Argegno, 47, 49 Aribert, Archbishop, loi, 102, 167 Ariminum. See Rimini Ariosto, 114, 209, 288 birth of, 284, 285 Arlotti, Bishop Buonfrancesco, 285 Arnold of Brescia, 185, 186 Arona, 32, 34 Aspertus, Bishop, rebuilds Milan, 87, 97 Assisi, S, Francesco, 139 Asta, battle of, 23 Asti, 68, 69 Ataulphus, marriage of, 94 tomb of, 93 Atilius, Lucius, 245 Attila invades Italy, 21, 24, 59, 149, 185, 203, 269, 289, 301 Augsburg, 301 Augustus Caesar conquers the Inalpini, 5, 14, 15, 16, 148, 269 founds the Empire, 4, 17 Austrians, the, in Piedmont, 187, 202-204, 209, 219 rule in Lombardy, 77-79 Autharis, King, 162-164 Averoldo, Altobello di, 193 Avignon, 68 Auxentius, Bishop of Milan, 84 Azzo da Correggio, 300, 301 Bacchiacca, 179 Badile, 197 Bagnolo, 223 Baise, 40 Balducci, Matteo, his work in Bergamo, 180 Balduccio, Giovanni di, his work in Milan, 95-97, 107 note, 159 Bandinelli, Baccio, 180 Bangor, 259 Barbarossa, Frederick, destroys Milan, 81, 95 Barbarossa, Frederick, invades Italy, 45, 63-66, 130, 166, 167, 186, 224, 238- 241, 270 Barbiano, Alberigo da, 69 Barcelona, 94 Barnaba da Modena, 294 Basaiti, Marco, 180 Basella, 175 Basle, 269 Battagio, Giovanni, 236, 237, 241 Baveno, 32, 34 Bayard, Chevalier, 186 Beatrice of Canossa, 209 of Lorraine, 299 Beauharnais, Eugdne de, 77, 213, 214 Beaune, 129 Becket, Thomas a, 303 Begarelli, Antonio, 291, 292 Belisarius, 25, 27, 59 Bellaggio, 39, 40, 45, 46 Bellavista, 29 Bellini, Gentile, his work in Milan, 124 Bellini, Giovanni, 121, 125 his work in Bergamo, 177, 180 his work in Mantua, 213 his work in Milan, 124 school of , 175, 177, 178 Bellini, Jacopo, 194 his school, 118, 119 Bellinzona, 42 Bembo, Cardinal, in Mantua^ 209, 213 on Castiglione, 220 Gian Francesco, 230 Benacus, 197 Benedetto da Maiano, 182 Benedictine Order, the, 136 Benevento, 26 Benzi, the, 51 Benzone of Cremona, 174 Berengarius, 167 Berenger, King, 152, 298 Berenson, B., on Borgognone, 122 at Castiglione, 55 on the Morelli Collection, 179, 182 Bergamesque Alps, 1 83 INDEX 307 Bergamo, 68 Accademia Carrara, 176-182 Attila at, 24 Bishop of, 28 Cappella Colleoni, 1 71-175 Cenomani in, 6 Churches of, 175 Citti Alta, 169, 170 Citta Bassa, 169, 170 history of, 170 S. Maria Maggiore, 1 71-174 Bernardino da Novi, 146 Bernese Oberland, 29 Bertani, 212 Bertha, 302 Bertolino da Novara, 215 Bianchi, Francesco, his work in Modena, 292, 293 Bianchini, 273 Biandronno, 53 Bianello, 299, 300, 302 Bibbiano, 299 Bishops, temporal power of the, 28, 60-62 Bisi, Gasparo, 286 Bismarck, 297 Bizzozero, 54 Blanchis, Andreolo de, his work at Bergamo, 173, 174 Bobbio, Abbey of, 69, 258-261 Boccaccino of Cremona, Boc- caccio, 227, 229, 230, 295 Boccaccio, Decameron, 209, 214 Boethius, 157, 189 Bohemia, II Medeghino, Vice- roy of, 42-44 Boiardi, Antonia, 285 Boiardo, 288 Boii, the, 6-12, 222, 237, 288 Bologna, Boii in, 6 bought by Milan, 69 coronation of Charles v. at, 75 founded by Rome, 13 S. Domenico, 158 Bolognese school of art, 125 Boltrafho, his work in Milan, 123 Bonacolsi, the, 208, 212, 289 Bona di Savoia, 72 Bonascia, Bartolommeo, 294 Bonifazio of Tuscany, 125, 209 Bono da Bisone, 273 Bono, Placido del, 279 Bonsignori da Verona, 177, 180 Bordone, Paris, 178 Borgia, Cesare, 213 Lucrezia, 114 Borgognone, 264 his work at Bergamo, 170, 176, 177, 181 his work in Milan, 115, 121, 122 his work at Pavia, 141, 143, 145-147 Borgo S. Donnino, 68, 263, 266, 270 Bormio, 42 Borromean Islands, the, 33 Borromeo, Cardinal Federigo, 75,87,114 family, the, 34, 42, 75 Boschetti, Isabella, 216 Boston, 179 Botticelli, Sandro, his work in Bergamo, 179 his work in Milan, 115, 127 his work at Piacenza, 253 Botticini, Francesco, 179, 296 Bourbon, Constable, 73, 220 Bozzolo, 220 Braccio da Montone, 174 Bragaglia, the, 39 Bragerio, Bartolino, 226 Bramante d' Urbino, his work in Como, 50 his work m Milan, 73, 92, 107, 112, 115 his work in Piacenza, 251, 252 school of, 158, 236 Bramantino, 146 Breakspear, Nicholas, 186 Brenner Pass, the, 16, 17 note Brescia, 64 note, 68, 70, 145, 240, Attila at, 24 Cenomani in, 6 churches and pictures of, 188-195 history of , 185-187, 195, 224 painters of, 123 Brescian Alps, 183 3o8 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY Brioschi, Bernardino de, 146 Brivio, Francesco, 122 Bronzino, 180 Brunate, 49 Bninichildis, 162 Brusasorci, 197, 212 Brutus, Marcus, 222, 269, 283 Buonacolsi, the, in Mantua, 208, 212, 289 Busentino, the, 94 Busi, Giovanni, his work in Bergamo, 177, 181 Busseto, 265 Busti, Agostino, his work in Milan, 102, 103, 107 Butinone, his work in Milan, 121, 122 Byron, Lord, 37 Cadalo, Bishop, 269, 270, 272 Cadenabbia, 39, 46 Cadeo, 265 Cagliari, 158, 159 Caleppio, 184 Calisto, 197 Calisto Piazza da Lodi, 236, 241 Calvisano, 216 Cambray, 186 Campania, battle of, 25 Camperio, Giacomo da, 226 Campi, Bernardo, 286 Giulio of Cremona, 228- 233, 295 Campiglione, Giovanni da, 172, 173 Campione, Bonnino di, 159 his work in Milan, 97, 107 Campione, Enrico da, 291 Campione, Matteo di, 50, 159 his work at Monza, 164, 165 Campione, Ugo da, 173, 174 Campori Collection, the, 292 Cane, Facino, 69 Caninius Rufus, 46 Cannae, battle of, 1 1 Cannobbio, 36, 49 Canossa, Henry iv. at, 270, 297-303 Countess Matilda, 208, 209, 269, 270, 289, 290, 297, 299-303 Canossa, Counts of, 208, 209, 289, 298 Azzo, 298 Bonifazio, 298, 300 Sigifredo, 298 Tebaldo, 298 Canterbury, 303 Cantu, quoted, 166 note Capolago, 29 Caracci, Ludovico, 250 Caracciolo, Cardinal Marino, 103 Caravaggio, Benedetto, 177 Carducci, 199 Carelli, Marco, 102 Cariani, his work in Bergamo, 176, 177, 181 Carinus, 96 Carlo Alberto of Piedmont, 28, 78, 219 Carlos, Don, King of Naples, 271, 276 Carmagnola, 70 Caroline of Brunswick, Queen, 49 Caroto, Francesco, 176, 180, 212, 296 Carpaccio, his work in Milan, 125 school of, 177 Carpi, Girolamo da, 295 Carponetti, 299 Carrara, Conte Giacomo, 176 Carraresi, the, 68 note, 69 Carrocci, Agostino, 279 Carthaginians, the, in conflict with Rome, 11, 12 Carthusian Order, the, 136, 137 Cartwright, Julia, Isabella d' Este, 210 note, 213 note, 217 Casalano, Bishop Sicardo, 225 Casale Pusterlengo, 243 Casalmaggiore, 232, 233 Casio, Girolamo, his work in Milan, 123 Cassano, Bridge of, 186 Castello Costa di Mezzate, 184 Malpaga, 183 Marcaria, 220 Castellucchio, 220 Castiglione d' Olona, 35, 52-56, 204, 205 INDEX 309 Castiglione, Baldassare, 213, 220 Cardinal Branda da, 54, 55 family, the, 54 Castignola, 31, 39 Catena, 296 Cathari, the, 95, 131-5 Cato the elder, on the Gauls, 6 Catullus, birth of, 18 quoted, 185, 197-199 Cavazzola, 181 Cavour in Stresa, 32 quoted, 204 Cellini, Benvenuto, 180, 220 Cenomani, the, 6-13, 185, 207 Certosa of Pavia, 136-147 Cesano, 52 Charlemagne, coronation of, 166 invades Italy, 149-152, 157, 165, 269 re-establishes the Empire, 4, 16, 27, 28, 59, 60 Charles 11., 272 Charles iii., 272 Charles iv., 153 Charles v., coronation of, 166 in Milan, 74, 75 invades Italy, 44, 153, 220, 265, 285 Charles vi.. Emperor, 76 Charles viii. invades Italy, 73- 75, 280-2 Charles Albert, 28, 78, 219 Charles Emmanuel iii., 76 Charles of Anjou, 247 Charterhouse, London, 138 Chartreuse, Grande, 136, 137 Chiaravalle, 128-136, 155 della Columba, 265 Chiavenna, 42, 43 Childebert, King of Austrasia, 162 Chiudino, 184 Chiusi, sacked by the Gauls, 9 Chlodosinda, 162 Christianity the soul of armies, 21 Chrysopolis, 269 Ciano, 297, 298, 300 Cicero, 259 note, 289 Cildo, 300 Cima, his work in Bergamo, 180 Cima, his work in Milan, 124 his work in Modena, 296 his work at Parma, 277 Cisa Pass, the, 280 Cisalpine Gaul. See Lom- bardy. Plain of Republic, 76, 77 Cistercian Order, the, 129, 130, 136 Citeaux, 129 Civerchio, 181, 197, 236 his work at Brescia, 188, 192, 194 Clairvaux, S. Bernard at, 128, 129 Claudian, quoted, 40 Claudius, Caius, 289 Emperor, constructs the Brenner Pass, 16 Clement vii.. Pope, 75, 278 Clementi, Bartolommeo, 285, 286, 292 Prospero, 211, 285, 286 Clugny, Hugh, Abbot of, 299, 302 Cluniac Abbot of Molesme, Robert, 129, 136 Cluny, 129 Clusium. See Chiusi Cocai, Merlin, 198 Codogno, 143 Col di Tenda, 32 Colico, 39, 40, 41, 43 CoUeoni, Bartolommeo, 1 74, 175. 183 Cologne, Cathedral, 65 note, 95. 136 Columbus, Christopher, at Pavia, 157 Comabbio, 53 Commachio, 27 Commune, the, rise of, 60-62 Como, 31, 39, 40> 45, 49, 63, 68, 224 Duomo of, 49-51 S. Fedele, 155 taken by Rome, 12 Concordia, 24 Conegliano, 252 Conrad the Salic, 152, 302 Conrad 11., 269 Consentia, 94 Constance, Diet of, 239 310 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY Constance, Peace of, 66, 167, 251, 270, 284 Constance, Queen of Bohemia, 132 Constantine, Emperor, 289 crosses the Alps, 16 in Milan, 19, 58 Constantinople, 20 Cordoba, Gonsalvo da, 73 Corenno, 31, 42 Corio, 73 Correggio, his work in Mantua, 213 his work in Milan, 125 his work in Modena, 294 his work in Parma, 268, 271-279 school of, 287 Correggio family, the, 68 note, 270 Giberto da, 270 Cortemaggiore, 265 Corteolona, 152 Cortine, 199 Cossa, his work in Milan, 119, 120 Costa, Lorenzo, his work in Mantua, 211, 213, 214 his work in Milan, 119, 120 Cotignola, 71, 104 Cottian Alps, passes of, 16, 17 note Cottius, Prince of Susa, 16 Credi, Lorenzo di, 179 Crema, 64 note, 68, 171, 234 history of, 224, 238 pictures of, 236 Cremona, 26, 63, 68, 171, 207, 250, 272, 295 buildings of, 225-233 Cenomani in, 6 history of, 10-13, 67, 221- 225, 232, 238-240, 244, 270 school of painting, 181, 229 Crespi, 147 Crivelli, Carlo, his work in Bergamo, 177 his work in Milan, 124 Crivelli, Lucrezia, 107 Crowe and Cavalcaselle, History of Painting in Italy, quoted, 55, 230 Curtatone, 219 Cust, Mr., on Sodoma, 286 Custozza, battle of, 78 Dante, 299 Danube, the, 21 Delia Torre, family of, at Milan, 67 Desenzano, 197, 198, 200 Desiderius, King, 1 49-1 51, 165, 199 Desio, 67 Dickens, Charles, on Mantua, 206, 207 Diocletian, Emperor, his parti- tion of the Empire, 19, 21, 58 Dolabella, P. Cornelius, defeats the Senones, 7 Domenico, Fra, 96 Domodossola, 32 Donatello, his work in Ber- gamo, 182 school of , 107, 118, 119 Dossi, Battista, 295 Dossi, Dosso, 125 his work in Mantua, 213 his work in Modena, 291, 294. 295 Dresden, 253 Drusus, 16, 148 Duccio, Agostino di, 116, 291 Edward hi., 69 Elizabeth, Queen, 249 Embriachi, Baldassare degli, 145 Emilia, province of, 4, 76, 243, 262, 289 Erasmus, 278 Eremitani di S. Agostino, the, 159-161 Erri, Agnolo and Bartolommeo, 294 Escorial, the, 140 Este, the, of Ferrara, 69, 289 Alfonso d', 295 Azzo d', 302 Beato Contardo d', 295 Beatrice d', 72, 130, 144 Ercole iii. d', 284, 295 Francis d', portrait of, 296 INDEX 311 Este, Isabella d', in Mantua, 213-218 Leonello d', 180 Niccol6 d', 271, 284, 300 Obizzo d', 289 Etruscans, the, in Lombardy, 5 march on Rome, 8 Eugdne of Savoy, Prince, 76 Everelina, 300 Ezzelino da Romano, 6^, 167 at Brescia, 186 at Cremona, 225 at Mantua, 208 Fabriano, 126 Faesulae. See Fiesole Fano, 27 Farinata, 212 Farinati, Paolo, 201 Farnese, the, 243, 271, 276, 282 Alessandro, 249, 277 Ottavio, 249, 271, 276 Pierluigi, lord of Parma and Piacenza, 248, 249, 253, 271 Ranuccio, 249, 271, 276 Federigo 11. of Mantua, 216, 217 Ferdinand, King of Naples, 280 Ferramola, 197, 236 his work at Brescia, 188, 192 Ferrara, 27, 252 the Este of, 69 Lingones in, 6 Peace of, 186 Ferrarese school of painting, 119, I77» 293 Ferrari, Gaudenzio, his work in Lombardy, 36, 51, 56, 123, 143 Fidentia, 266 Fiesole, battles at, 9, 23 Fino, 52 Fiordibelli, Giroldo, 285 Fiorentino, Pier Francesco, 1 79 Fiorenza di Lorenzo, 180 Fiorenzuola, 265 Flaminian Way, 10, 262 Flaminius, C, 9 Florence, at war with Milan, 69, 71 Florence, Certosa, 138 expels the Medici, 108 Or San Michele, 158 S. Casciano, 96 Foix, Gaston de, 73, 74, 107, 115, 153, 186 Folengo, Teofilo, 198 Fontaines, 260 Fontana, 146 Fredda, 265 Foppa, Vincenzo, his influence, 143 his work at Bergamo, 176, 177, 181 his work at Brescia, 188, 192, 193 his work in Milan, 97, 121 Forli, 96 Fornovo, 74 battle of, 279-282 Foro di S. Alessandro, 171 Francesca, Piero della, his work in Milan, 126, 127 Francia of Bologna, 120, 277 Franciabigio, 296 Francis i. defeated at Pavia, 153 invades Italy, 43, 107, 247 occupies Milan, 74 Francis v., 292 Franks invade Italy, 25, 28 Frederick 11., 270 besieges Brescia, 186 in Cremona, 225 threatens Milan, 67 Fredi, Maestro, 172 Freundesberg, 7 Friuli, 26, 152 Frizzoni, Signor, 178 Fromentone of Vicenza, 189 Fronto, Cornelius, 259 Gabloneta, Rufino, 286 Gaddi, Agnolo, 179 Gaiseric invades Italy, 24 Galerani, Cecilia, 107 Galileo, 114 Galla Placidia, Empress, 94, 189 Gallic wars, the, 5 Gallio, Marchese Giacomo, 51 Gattamelata, 175 312 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY Gatti, Bernardo, 228 Garda, 202, 203 Gardner, Edmund, quoted, 295 Gardone, 201 Gargnano, 201 Garibald, Duke of the Bavar- ians, 163 Garibaldi at Solferino, 204 Garofalo, 295 Gauls invade Lombardy, 5 Gazza, Bartolommeo, 233 Geneva, lake of, 40 Genoa, 12, 14, 204 Duchess of, 32 Gentile da Fabriano, school of, 117 his work in Milan, 126 George iv., 49 Gera, 9 Germanicus, Emperor, 148 Ghibellines, Guelphs at war with, 67, 68, 208, 224, 270 Ghirlandi, Fra Vittore, 176 Giarola, 281 Gibbon, Edward, quoted, 16 Giolfino, Niccolo, 181 Giorgione, school of, 125, 177, 294 Giotto, 233 his influence in Milan, 116, 117, 120, 179 Giovio, Paolo, 46, 217 Girolamo dai Libri, 181 Gisalberto, Abbot, 97 Gisulphus, 265 Gmiind, Arler di, 99 Goito, 205 Gonzaga family, the, 68 note, 69 at Mantua, 208-218 Barbara, 215 Ercole, 287 Federigo, 215-217 Ferdinando, 209 Francesco, 215-217, 219 Guglielmo, 212 Guido, 208 Ludovico, 215 Luigi, 208, 209, 284 tombs of, 220 Gorlago, 184 Gotard, 255-258 Goths invade Italy, 19 Gottesaldi, 275 Gozzoli, Benozzo, 126 Graian Alps, 6, 16, 17 note Gratian, 269, 284 Gravedona, 31, 41, 43 Graziosa, Bishop, 269 Grazzano, 258 Great St. Bernard Pass, 6, 16, 17 note, 150 Gregorio, Bishop of Bergamo, 172 Gregory vii.. Pope, at Canossa, 164-168, 297 Grenoble, 136 Gries Pass, 16 Griffo, Leonardo, his work at Castiglione, 55 Grisons, the, 37, 42, 43 Grotte, 199 Grumello, 184 Gualtiero of Cremona, Bishop, 225 Guardasone, 300 Guardi, 178 Guarnerius, 233 Guastalla, 270, 272, 287 Guelphs. See Ghibellines Guercino, 250 Guicciardini, 281 note Guido, Archbishop, 56, 62 Guglielmina, heresies, of 96, 131-135 Gundiberg, 165 Hadrian, Emperor, 16 Hadrian IV., Pope, 149-152, 186 Hals, Franz, 182 Hamilcar, 12 Handel, 115 Hannibal, his invasion of Italy, 3, 10-12, 16, 148, 221, 222, 244, 288, 298 Harding, Stephen, 129 Hasdrubal, defeat of, 11, 12 Haynau, 187 Henry 11., Emperor, 152 Henry iii., Emperor, 269, 298 Henry IV,, Emperor, at Canossa, 270, 297-303 Henry vii., Emperor, 68, 167, 225 INDEX 313 Herulian revolt, the, 24 Hildebrand, Pope, 61, 62, 297, 299, 302 Hinton Charterhouse, 147 Hippo, 24, 158, 159 Holbein, 278 Honorius, Emperor, 94, 189 flees from Milan, 19, 23, 59 Honorius 11., Pope, 269 Hunnish invasion of Italy, 24 Iberian troops, Hannibal's, 10, II lUyrian tribes, 15 II Medeghino, 42-44 Inalpini, the, 5, 15 Innocent 11., Pope, 250 Innocent iv.. Pope, 96 Insubres, the, 6-13, 58, 222 Intra, 34, 35 Isabella Clara Eugenia of Spain, 278 Iseo, 197 Isola Bella, 33, 34 Comacina, 46, 47, 50 dei Pescatori, 33 Madre, 33, 34 Isolfo, Bishop, 209 Isonzo, the, 25 Italy, its relation to Europe, 3 Ivrea, 152 John of Bohemia, 270 John XXII., Pope, 270 Joseph II., Emperor, 139, 158 Julia, 266 Julian Alps, the, 19, 20, 23, 26 Julier Pass, the, 16, 17 note Julius II., 74 Jungfrau, the, 32 Justina, Empress, 86 Justinian, Emperor, 25 Juvara, 210 Lago di Bolsena, battle of, 8 Como, 31, 39, 45, 53 Garda, 4, 196-203, 298 Iseo, 196 Lecco, 39 Lugano, 30, 37 Maggiore, 31 Monate, 32 Orta, 31 Lago Superiore, 219 Varese, 32, 53 Lake Vadimon, 8 Lampadms, 189 Lampagnani, 72 Lanfranc, Archbishop of Can- terbury, 157, 290 Lannoy, 73 Latium, Gallophobia in, 7 La Turbie, 15 Lautrec, 73, 153 Laveno, 35 Lazise, 203 Lecco, 39, 40, 43-45 Count of, 42-44 Lechi, 200 Le Fosse, 223 Legnano, battle of, 66 Leinster, 259 Le I sole, 223 Lendinaria, Cristoforo da, 292, 294 Lenno, 41, 46 Leo, Pope, turns back Attila, 21, 24, 203, 248, 271 Leoben, 203 Leoni, Leone, his tomb of II Medeghino, 44 his work in Milan, 102 Lepontine Alps, 16 Leyva, Antonio de, 73, 75 Lezzono, 46 Liberale, his work in Milan, 125 school of, 180, 181 Libyan troops, Hannibal's, 11 Licinius Sera, 48 Liema, 44 Ligures, the, 10 Liguria, province of, 5 Limone, 202 Limonta, 44 Lingones, the, 6, 9 Lippi, Fra Lippo, 179 Little St Bernard Pass, 6, 17 note Hannibal crosses by, 10, 16 Liutprand, King, 159 Livy, quoted, 5, 7, 58 Locarno, 31, 36 Loches, 144 Lochis, Conte, 176 Lodi, 224 314 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY Lodi, Bishop of, 28 Lodi, churches of, 241, 242 history of, 63, 65, 68, 237- 242 Vecchio, 237 Lombard architecture, 154 League, 65, 66, 224, 251, 289 school of painting, 116 Lombards, the, invade Italy, 20, 26-28, 47, 64 Lombardy, plain of, 5, 18 iron crown of, 162, 165-168 its ethnography, 3 its relation to Italy, 2, 3, 14 Longhi, Pietro, 180 Lorenzetti, Pietro, 127 Lorenzo da Pavia, 213 Lo Spagna, 127 Lothair, King of Italy, at Milan, 60 Lotto, Lorenzo, 183, 184 his work at Bergamo, 169, 170, 176, 178 his work in Milan, 125 Louis VII., 129 Louis XII., 74, 153, 271 Louis of Bavaria, 68, 208, 270 Louise of Savoy, 153 Lovere, 197 Lozza, 54 Lucca, 175 Lucifer, Bishop, 85 Lucius III., Pope, 290 Lucius Furius, 222 Ludovico il Moro, portrait of, 143. 144 Lugano, 29, 31, 38, 39, 42 Luino, 31, 35-37 Luini, Bernardo, his work in Como, 51 his work in Lugano, 39 his work in Luino, 36 his work in Milan, 115, 123 his work at Pavia, 141, 143, 145 his work in Saronno, 56 his school, i8i LuneviUe, Peace of, 284 Luther, Martin, 36 Luxeuil, 260 Lyons, 77 Maderno, 146, 201 Madonna del Frassine, 203 del Monte, 53 della Pace, 45 del Sasso, 36 del Soccorso, 46 Magenta, battle of, 79, 204 Maggia, the, 32 Maggiore, 38 Magi, tomb of the, 65 note, 95 Mago, 12, 246 Maguzzano, 198 Malaguzzi, Valerio, 285 Malatesta, Pandolfo, 171 Malcesine, 202 Malpaga, Castle of, 183 Manerba, 200 Manichees, the, 131 Manlius, Lucius, 245 Mantegazza, Antonio and Cristoforo, 142 Mantegna, Andrea, 176, 180 his work in Mantua, 210, 213, 215, 218 his work in Milan, 118, 119 Mantegna, Francesco, his work in Mantua, 210 Mantovano, Rinaldo, 218 Mantua, 120, 254, 303 churches of, 209-212 forlornness of, 206, 218 history of, 5, 6, 26, 68 note, 69, 203, 207-209, 219 Marquis of, 282 palaces of, 212-218 Virgil's birthplace, 206, 208 Manzone, Fabio, his work in Milan, 114 Marcellus, M. Claudius, 9 Marcus, 58 Marches, the, 262 Marchigiani, the, 233 Marcignago, 63 Marenzio, 237, 274 Maria Luisa, Empress, 271 Maria Theresa, Empress, 158 Marignano, battle of, 74, 141, 146 Mariotto, Bernardino, 180 Maritime Alps, Coast Road, 16, 17 note Marius, 21, 266 INDEX 315 Marlborough, John, Duke of, 76 Marmirolo, 205 Maroggia, 50 Marseilles, 14, 151, 264 Martial, 269 Martinenghi, the, 183, 200 Masolino, his work at Castig- lione, 54, 55 Mattel, Cristoforo de', 145 Mavino, 199, 200 Maxentius, 289 Maximian, Emperor, 266 Maximilian, Archduke, 78 Emperor, 72, 280 Maximus Hercules, in Milan, 19, 58 Mayfreda, Papessa, 133, 134 Mazzardi family, the, 36 Mazzolino, 230 Meda, Giuseppe, his work in Milan, 114 Medea, 175 Medici family, the, 44, 108 Alessandro de', 180 Gabriele de', 102 Gian Giacomo, 42-44 Giovanni Angelo, 42 Giuliano de', 179 II Medeghino, 42-4, 102 Lorenzo de*, 213 Mediolanian, See Milan Medo, 58 Mddole, 205 Melone, 227 Melpum, 5 Melzi, the, 77, 142 Menaggio, 37, 39, 44, 45 Merula, 73 Metaurus, the, 11 Metellus, L. Caecilius, relieves Arezzo, 7 Metz, 152 Michelangelo, 213, 271, 285 Michele da Verona, his work in Milan, 125 Michelozzo, his work in Milan, 95. 97. 107 Milan, Ambrosian Library, 114, 115 Austrian rule in, 76-79 Borromean influence in, 75, 76 Milan, Brera, 107, 1 18-127 Castello of the Sforza, 104- 108, 121 commercial importance of, 80, 116, destroyed by Goths, 24, 25, 59.65 Duomo, 44, 70, 77, 98-103, 139. 144 her relations with Cremona, 224, 238 history of, 9, 15, 19, 24, 58- 79 II Medeghino of, 42-44, 102 Insubres in, 6, 9 in the Cinquecento, 11 3-1 16 Napoleon i., in, 76, 77, 203 Palazzo della Ragione, 97 power of the bishops in, 60- 62 rebuilt by Bishop Anspert, 60 republic of, 62-64, 66, 71 Roman columns, 81, 82, 91-93 S. Ambrogio, 82, 86-91, 93, 115, 155, 168 S. Ambrose, Bishop of, 83-91 S. Babila, 97 S. Carlo, Archbishop of, 34 S. Eustorgio, 95-97, 121, 158-160 SS. Gervasius and Protasius, 87 S. Lorenzo, 91-95 S. Maria delle Grazie, 108- 113. 144 S. Nazaro, 104 S. Satiro, 97, 112 S. Vincenzo in Prato, 97 S. Vittore, 88 under the Sforza, 71-74, 103- 108, 113 under the Visconti, 67-70 Mirandola, 297 Modena, 204, 225, 238, 243, 247, 263, 283 Albergo Arti, 292-296 Bishop of, 28 buildings of, 290-292 Duchy of, 4, 5 history of, 10, 13, 24, 27, 268, 284, 288-290 Treaty of, 167 3i6 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY Molesme, Abbot of, 129, 136 Molza, Francesco, 292 Mommsen, Theodor, quoted, 10 note, 15 note, 16, 246 Monaco, 15 Monaco, Lorenzo, his work in Bergamo, 179 Monate, 53 Mongiovanni, 299 Monselice, 26 Montagna, Bartolommeo, 146, 296 his work in Bergamo, 127 his work in Milan, 125 Montalto, Barbara di, 37 Mont Cenis, the, 16, 150, 302 Monte Cassino, 259 Cervano, 53 del Castello, 184 Generoso, view from, 29-31, 37. 38, 57 Monteghezzone, 241 Monte Lucio, 299 Motterone, 32, 35 Rosa, 32, 53, 171 Salvatore, 39 Vecchio, 299 Viso, 32, 53, 171 Montf errat. Marquis of, 68 note, 69, 217 Mont Genevre Pass, 16, 17 note Mont' Isola, 196 Montpelier, 253 Monza, 59, 65 note coronations in, 162, 165-168 history of , 162, 165, 167 S. John Baptist, 164-168 S. Michele, 250 Theodolinda at, 162-167 Moore, Sturge, Correggio, 278 note Morcote, 31, 39, Morelli, Giovanni, 178 on Pordenone, 252 Moretto, his work in Bergamo, 176, 177, 181, 184 his work at Brescia, 188, 190- 194 his work in Milan, 123 Morigia, Buonincontro, 164 Morignano, Marquis of, 42-44 Moro, Antonio, 277 Morone, Domenico, 181, 197, 230 Moroni, Francesco, his work in Bergamo, 170, 176, 181 his work in Milan, 115, 123, 124 Moroni, Giovanni Battista, 184, 197 Mozzanica, battle of, 71 Muratori on Guglielmina, 131 note, 132 note, 135 Musso, Marquis of, 42-44 Mutina. See Modena Nani, Sebastiano, 226 Naples, 27 Charles viii. claims, 73, 74 Napoleon i., 278 at Pavia, 154 coronation of, 166 crosses the Alps, 16, 76, 77 defeats the Austrians, 202, 203, 241, 242 enters Milan, 76, 77, 100 in Mantua, 203, 214 Napoleon iii. enters Milan, 79 Narbonne, 94 Narses, 25, 27, 223 National Gallery, London, 142, 143. 287 Naviglio, the, 64 Nero, C. Claudius, defeats Has- drubal, 11 Nesso, 47 Newman, Cardinal, 90 Niccolo da Foligno, 180 Nice, 202 Nicolaus, 290 Niel, Marshal, 205 Nobiallo, 45 Novara, 64 note, 68, 74, 114, 238 Novellara, 287, 297, Nufenen Pass, the, 16 Odoacer, crushed by Theo- doric, 24, 25 Olano, 58 Oldrado da Lampugnano, 144 Olger, King, 150 Olgiate, 52 Olgiati, 72 Ombrone, the, 9 INDEX 317 Orazio, Pomponeo, 205 Oria, 31, 39 Orsenigo, Simone da, 98, 99 Orsi, Bernardino, 287 Lelio, 286, 287, 297 Ortler, the, 32 Orto, Pietro dell', 56 Orvieto, 26 Ostrogoths invade Italy, 19, 24 Otho, Emperor, 298 Othoi., 152 Otho III,, 166 Paderno, 225 Padua, Arena Chapel, 233 burnt by Attila, 24 seized by the Lombards, 26 S. Giustina, 118 under the Carraresi, 68 note, 69 Paduan school of art, 118 Palavicini, Oberto, 67 Palazzuola, 184 Paleologa, Maria, 217 Palestrina, 237 Palladio, 189 Pallanza, 34 Pallavicini, the, 265, 270 Pallavicino, Uberto, 247 Palma Giovane, 201 Palma Vecchio, school of, 127 his work in Bergamo, 178 Palomino, 296 Paola da Modena, Fra, 294 Paolo, Giovanni di, 296 Papus, L. iEmilius, 9 Parenzano, Bernardo, 230 Paris, S. Denis, 140 Parkminster, 138 Parma, 164, 204, 224, 225, 238, 263, 264 bishop of, 28, 266, 269 Correggio's work at, 272-279 Duomo, 272 history of, 6, 13, 25, 247, 248, 268-272, 284 province of, 4, 5 Parmigianino, 276, 278 Parmigiano, 197 Patarini, the, 62, 200 Pater, Walter, 236 Paul III., 248, 249, 265, 271, 279, 285 Paul v.. Pope, 34 Pavia, 240, 247, 250 Certosa, 102, 136-147 churches of, 1 58-161 Duomo, 157 history of, 24, 26, 43, 69, 74, 148-154, 237-239 rivals Milan, 59, 64, 65, 66 note S. Michele Maggiore, 152, 154-157, 172, 173 Stilicho at, 23 University of, 146, 154, 157 Pax Romana, the, 17 Pellegrino, Galeazzo, 145 Pennine Alps, the, passes of, 6 16, 17 note Perugia, 26, 107 Perugino, Pietro, 127, 277 his work in Cremona, 231 his work in Pavia, 142 Pesaro, 27 Peschiera Maraglio, 24, 196, 203 Pesellino, Francesco, 127, 179 Petrarch, 114, 300, 301 in Mantua, 209, 214 in Pavia, 157 Piacenza, 67, 68, 149, 222, 224, 237, 238, 263, 283 Abbess Giovanna da, 279 buildings of, 248-253 history of, 6, 10-13, 26, 27, 71, 243-249, 270, 271 S. Roch at, 253-258 Piccinino, 105 Pico, 297 Piedmont and Liguria, 5 note Piedmont, province of, 4, 5 Piermarini, his work in Milan, 77 Piombo, Sebastian del, 278 Pisa, 9 Council of, 128 Pisanello of Verona, 180 his work in Milan, 117, 120, 121 Pisogne, 197 Pius II., Pope, 220 Pius IV., Pope, 42, 102 Placentia. See Piacenza Platina, 228 3i8 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY Pliny on Como, i8, 40, 41, 42, 45-49, 51 on Pavia, 148 quoted, 5, 196, 197, 237 Po, the river, 3, 4, 20, 243, 244 Pola, Bishop of, 193 Poland, King of, 253 Poliziano, Angelo, 215 Pollentia, battle of, 23 PoUi, Bartolommeo dei, 145 Polybius, quoted, 7, 9, 13 Pompey, 16, 283 Ponte di Cassano, 67 Pontenure, 264 Pontida, 65 Pontormo, 179 Pontremoli, 68, 232, 281 Porato, Giacomo, 226 Porcia, Conte Antonio, 125 Pordenone, 228, 265 Castel Porcia, 125 his work in Piacenza, 252 Porlezza, 39 Porta, Girolamo della, 104 Paolo, 56 Portinari, Pigallo dei, 97 Porto Mantovano, 205 Tresa, 37 Pozzo Bianco, 176 Pozzolengo, 204, 205 Predis, Ambrogio de, 115, 122, 181 Previtale, 176 Punic War, Second, 12, 245, 288 QuATTRO Castella, the, 299 Querela, 182 Quirino, Filippo, 300 Radagaisus invades Italy, 23 Radetzky, 78, 187 Ramperto, Bishop, 190 Rangoni, Ugo, Bishop of Reggio, 285 Raphael, 236, 271, his Sistine Madonna, 253 his work in Bergamo, 1 76 his work in Milan, 115, 120, 126 Ravenna, 103 as a capital, 19, 23, 24, 25, 27.59 Ravenna, battle of, 153, 186, 187, 247 Stilicho at, 23 S. Vitale, 92, 94 Recared of Spain, 162 Reformation, the, 36 Reggio, 238, 247, 263, 270 history of, 283, 284 buildings and pictures of, 284-287 Regulus, L. Atilius, defeats Gaul, 9 Rembrandt, 127, 182 Repubblica Cispadana, 285 Rhaetian Alps, the, 15, 16, 1 7 note Rheims, 136 Rienzi, 186 Rimini, 244, 262, 293 held by Rome, 8, 10, 13, 27 Senones in, 6 S. Roch at, 254 Rinaldus, Archbishop, 95 Ripari, 230 Riva, 202 Rivergaro, 258 Rivoli, battle of, 202, 203 Robert of Anjou, 68 Roberti, Ercole, 230, 293 his work in Milan, 119, 120 Rocca di Frezzo, 174 Rodari brothers, the, 50 Romagna, province of, 4, 5, 27, 76, 262 Romagnosi, 250 Roman Empire, apogee of, 17-19 decline and fall of, 17, 19-28 partition of, 21 Romanino, his work in Ber- gamo, 169, 181, 201 his work at Brescia, 188, 190-194 his work in Cremona, 227 his work in Milan, 123, 124 school of, 227, 236, 241 Romano, Ezzelino da, 67, 167 Gian Cristoforo, 146 Giulio, his work in Mantua, 211, 212, 213, 216, 218 -school of, 229 INDEX 319 Romans, the, cross the Alps, 15, 16 invade and settle Cisalpine Gaul, 7-10, 13, 14 Romanus, Pliny's letter to, 40 Rome, compared with Milan, 81 sacks of, 5, 7, 23-25 Vatican, 115 Romeo at Mantua, 206, 207 Romulus Augustulus, 24 Roncaglia, 240 Rondinelli, 125 Rossena, 297, 300 Rossi, the, 68 note, 270 Rovegnano, 128, 135 Rubens, 252 Rusca, Roberto, 135 Salinator, M. Livius, 11 Sallust on the Gauls, 6 Salo, 200, 201 S. Ambrose, Father of Milan, 19, 59, 82-89, 102, 103 quoted, 247, 269, 284, 289 relics of, 90, 91 Sammachini of Bologna, 228 Samnites, the, 7 Sandro, Amico di, 179 Sangallo in Milan, 92 Sansovino, Jacopo, 189, 200 Santi, Giovanni, 126 Sanuto, quoted, 281 San Vitale, the, 270 S. Apollonio, 190 Saracens in Sardinia, 159 Saramita, Andrea, 131, 134 Sardinia, 9 Saronno, 36, 52, 56, 57 Sasso di Ferro, 35 Satyrus, 84, 85, 88 S. Augustine, death of, 24 in Milan, 83, 86 shrine of, 158-160 S. Austin in Milan, 87 Savona, 202 Savonarola, 108 Saxe-Meiningen, Duke of, 46 S. Barnabas, 251 S. Bartholomew, 102 S. Benedict, 129, 136, 259 S. Bernard, 185, 266 founder of Chiaravalle, 128- 135 S. Biagio, 200 S. Bruno, 136 Scala, Alberto della, 270 Scaligers, the, at war with the Visconti, 69 castles of, 186, 200, 202, 203 Scamozzi, 171, 172 Scandiano, 288 S. Candida, 89 S. Carlo Borromeo, 34, 42, 75, 113, 114 tomb of, 103 S. Caterina del Sasso, 31, 35 Scipio Africanus, 10 Cornelius, 9, 58 Publius, 10, 244, 245 Scotti, Alberto, 247 Scotti, the, 68 note S. Columban, 259-261 Scolza, 174 S. Donnino, 266 Secchi, Father, 90, 91 Selvapiana, 301 Sempronius, Tiberius, 245, 246 Senigaglia, 6 Senones, the, 6, 7 Sentinum, battle of, 7 Serafini, Serafino de', 291, 294 Serbelloni, Cecilia, 42 Seregna, 219 Seregno, Vincenzo, his work in Milan, 113, 114 Seriate, 183, 184 Sesia, the, 32 S. Eustorgius, Archbishop of Milan, 95 Severo, Alberto, 226 Severus, a butcher, 87 S. Filastro, 190 Sforza, the, their rule in Milan, 113, Bianca Maria, 107, 115 Francesco, 247, 271 career of, 104-106, 232 employs II Medeghino, 42- 44 his rule in Milan, 71 portrait of, 231, Galeazzo Maria, 72, 108, 140 at Pavia, 157, 158 Gian Galeazzo, 72, Ludovico il Moro, 97, 104, 107 320 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY Sforza, Ludovico il Moro, at Pavia, 157 his rule in Milan, 72-74 invites Charles viii. into Italy, 280 Sforzino, 276 Sforzani, Cherubino, 286 S. Gall, 260 S. Gervasius, 86, 89, 91 S. Gimignano, 290, 291 S. Giovanni, 47 S. Gotthard Pass, the, 16 Sherborne, 264 S. Hugh, 136 Sicily, 27 Signorelli, Luca, his work in Bergamo, 180 his work in Milan, 126 S. Ilario, 283 Simplon, the, 16, 37 Sinigaglia, founded by Rome, 8 Sion, Cardinal, 73 Sirmione, 197-200 Siry, Sixtus, 175 Siviano, 196 S. Lazzaro, 263, 264, 288, S. Marcellina, 84, 85, 89 S. Maria delle Grazie, 219, 220 S. Martin, 89 S. Martino, 205 S. Mary Magdalen, 264 S. Maurizio, 288 S. Mona of Milan, 44 Sodoma, 182, 286 Solari, Andrea, 144, 146 Cristoforo, 50 his work in Milan, 102, 123 his work at Pavia, 144 Solferino, battlefield of, 194, 195. 203 Spani, Bartolommeo, 285 S. Peter, patrimony of, 27 S. Peter Martyr, 95, 107 note, 135 S. Pietro all' Orto, 131, 134 Splugen Pass, the, 16, 39 Spoleto, 26, 298 S. Polo, 297, 299 S. Protasius, 86, 89, 90 Squarcione of Padua, school of, 118, 119, 121 S. Rocco al Porto, 253 S. Roch, life of, 253-258 S. Satiro, 88 S. Siro, 157 Stilicho, 21, 23, 40 Strabo, Pompeius, quoted, 14, 15, 237, 262, 263 Stradivarius, 233 Street, Mr., quoted, 49, 142 Stresa, 31-33 Strozzi, Pietro, tomb of, 2U Suetonius, 289 Sulla, 266 Suvorov, 76 Tacitus, quoted, 148, 247 Taro, the, 281 Tarquinius Priscus, 5 Tasso, 114, 209 Tavernola, 197 Teietto, 216 Telamo, battle of, 9 Templar, the Knights, 251 Tennyson, Lord, quoted, 199 Terzi, Ottobuono, 271 Theodolinda, Queen, 121, 162- 167, 194, 260 Theodoric, Emperor, invades Italy, 19, 24-27, 265, 269 at Monza, 162, 165 rebuilds Pavia, 149 Theodosius, Emperor, 59, 94 absolved by S. Ambrose, 86, 88, 103 Thessalonica, 86 Thrasmund, King, 159 Tibaldi, Pellegrino, his work in Milan, 113, 114 Ticino, the, 10, 32 Ticinum. See Pavia Tiepolo, 198, 277 his work in Bergamo, 175, 178 Tintoretto, his work in Brescia, 194 his work in Milan, 125 Titian, his work in Brescia, 192-194 his work in Mantua, 213 his work at Mddole, 205 his work in Milan, 125 on Correggio, 271, 274 Titus Manlius, tradition of, 7 Toce river, the, 32 Toledo, 220 Tommasso da Modena, 294 INDEX 321 Tommaso of Savoy, Prince, 153 Torbido, 201, 202 Torbole, 202 Tomo, 41, 49 Torre, Martino deila, 67, 167 Torri, 202 Torriani, the, 68, 167 Torriggia, 49 Tortona, 64, 238, 240 Toscolano, 201 Totila, 25, 247 Tours, 89 Transpadana, 13, 14 Trasimenus, battle of, 1 1 Trebbia, battle of the, 11, 245, 246 Tremezzo, 46 Tremosine, 201 Trent, 25, 202 Tresa, the, 32 Trescore, 184 Tresseno, Podest4 of Milan, 98 Treviso, 252 Trezzo, 139 Trieste, 14 Trivulzi, tombs of the, 104 Trivulzio, Antonio, 104 Gian Giacomo, 104 Prince, 118 Trotti, Lorenzo, 226 Tura, Cosimo, 177 his work in Milan, 119, 120 his work in Modena, 293, 294 Turin, 204, 302 history of, 245 Turner, J. M. W., 278 Tybalt, 206 Tyrol, the, 77 Uraias the Goth, 59, 65, 81, 87 Urbino, Bramante of, 121 Duchess of, in Mantua, 213-215 Duke Federigo of, 126 Usualdo, 300 Utrecht, Peace of, 76 Val Benedetto, 46 Valentinian, Emperor, 86, 189 at Milan, 19, 59 Val Introgno, 35 Valtellina, 42, 43 Vandals, the, invade Italy, 24 21 Van Dyck, 277, 296 his work in Milan, 127 Varese, 35, 52, 53, 139 Vasari, 55 on da Vinci, 108-112 on Mantua, 218 on Perugino, 142 on Sodoma, 182 Velasquez, his portrait of Francis d' Este, 296 Velleia, 276 Venegono, 56 Venetia, province of, 4, 5 invasions of, 23-27, 77 its alliance with Rome, 8, 10, 13 Venetian school of painting, 296 Venice acquires Brescia and Bergamo, 186, 187 at war with Milan, 70, 71 Barbarossa in, 66 CoUeone statue, 174 proceeds against Charles vin., 280-282 S. Lazzaro, 264 S. Maria Nuova, 125 Venice and Venetia, 5 note, 87 note Venturi, quoted, 286 note Vercelli, 10, 68, 245, 301 Verona, 59, 184, 206 Alaric at, 23 Attila at, 24 Odoacer at, 25 rival of Pavia, 148 Scaligers' rule in, 68 note, 69 S. Peter Martyr, 95 taken by the Lombards, 26 Verone, Giacomo del, 69 Veronese, Paolo, 194 school of painting, 118, 125, 180, 296 Verrocchio, Andrea, 127, 174 Versailles, 216 Vespasian, 188 Viani, Antonio, 209, 210 Vicenza, 69 Attila at, 24 taken by the Lombards, 26 Victor Emmanuel, 204, 284 enters Milan, 79 322 THE CITIES OF LOMBARDY Victoria, Queen, 32, 161 Vida, Monsignore Girolamo, 231 Vienna, Congress of, 77, 271 Vignola, 251 Villa Arconati, 46 Villa d' Este, 49 Villafranca, 79 Villa Giulia, 44 Villani, quoted, 66 Villa Pliniana, 47 Serbelloni, 40, 41 Taverna, 49 Vincent, 254 Vinci, Leonardo da, 36, 213 his Cenacolo, 1 09-1 13 his Mona Lisa, 295 influence of, 56, 181, 182 in Milan, 73, 92, 107-113, 115 Virgil, 45, 114, at Mantua, 18, 206 quoted, 217, 222 Visconti, the, 34, 45, 72, 186 at Piacenza, 247 their rule in Milan, 67-70, 103, 105 Archbishop Giovanni, 96, 102 Archbishop Ottone, 130, 135 Astorre, 43 Azzone, 45, 68 Bernab6, 69, 107, 138, 271, 300 Bianca Maria, 231, 232 Duchess Litta, 125 Filippo Maria, 70, 71, 103, 105, 140, 145, 271 Galeazzo, 68, 69, 72, 130, 138, 225 Visconti, Gaspare, 97 Giovanni, 68, 138 Giovanni Galeazzo, 106, 107, 159 builds the Duomo, 98 his affection for Pavia, 138-141, 148, 153, 157 his rule in Milan, 69 Giovanni Maria, 70, 95 Luchino, 68, 271 Matteo, 68, 69, 138, 167 Otto, 67 Ottone, 102 Stefano, 97 Uberto, 67 Visigothic invasion of Italy, 23 Viti, Timoteo, his work in Milan, 120 Vivarini, the, 180 Alvise, 124, 296 Volpi, Ambrogio, 145 Volturnia, 223 Voragine on S. Roch, 253-258 Vuolvinio, 90 Wenceslaus, Emperor, 145 Westminster Abbey, 140 Whistler, J. M'N., 122 Wiligelmus, 290 Wiirtemberg, Duke of, 215 Ypres, 249 Zaccagni, Bernardino, 275 Zacchetti, Bernardino, 286 note Zama, battle of, 12 Zenale, his work in Milan, 122 Ziirich, 185 Printed by Morrison & Gibb Limited, Edinburgh. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW ei6i AV. IV V 1915 FEB 23 1522 f^Pfi 2 t932 MAY 11 1345 9'lan' mi-t. 30m6,'14 f"^ ^^ ^^ ~W KJt tJ r.e oiti^3 of Lombardi '.I H7 ]k wtr. -Y p ',0V, EB 231S22 APR 2 19o2 t^i-^