Blast from the past - Milan part 1

I recently realized that when I did this a few years ago I was scandalously remiss in posting pictures from my trip to Italy, and also some of my French adventures.  Unfortunately I have gotten a new computer since then and nearly all of my pictures from those trips are on my old computer, which is in NY.  All I have on hand are the pictures I posted on Facebook from Milan.  However when I go back to NY in July I will transfer my older albums to this computer so I can finally show them off.

Just note: the camera I used for these pictures was not very good, so the quality isn't great.  Also I couldn't figure out how to turn off the stupid date stamp.  Keep in mind that one of the primary goals on this trip was to check out lots of church art and architecture so there will be an overwhelming amount of that here.

Okay!  Onward.  Milan was my first stop in a tour of five Italian towns and cities that I visited for my spring break in 2008.  I believe I ended hitting all my main stops here in the three days I had.

Milan is pretty well known I suppose, but I'll give a bit of background.  It's a very old city, with evidence of pre-Roman settlements.  It's had three main important historical periods: it was a place of religion and learning in the 4th century AD, under the influence of the renowned Church Father St Ambrose; it was a main center of the Italian Renaissance under the patronage of the Sforza family in the 15th and 16th centuries, and finally it was an area of political dispute and turmoil in the 19th century.   I'll touch on things from all these periods but it would be a bit ridiculous to try to get through everything.

An important thing to note is that Italy was not unified as a country until the late 1800's.  It was split into independent city states that were ruled by very wealthy dukes who rarely started out as royalty - they generally bought their way into power and consolidated it by a combination of power, intimidation, and patronage.  This political system is what paved the way for the Italian Renaissance, as the families tried to outdo each other culturally as well as politically, and tried to keep up with the royal houses of Europe.  In doing this they poured tons of money into supporting famous artists to make works for them.

One of my first stops was the Ambrosiana Library, one of the oldest and most renowned archives in the world.  My nerd excitement meter was through the roof here!  Not only does this place have sketches and paintings from tons of great Italian artists like da Vinci (it also has some of his notebooks and manuscripts), Raphael, Botticelli, and Caravaggio, it also has a ton of ancient texts, from Aristotle to some first copies of the gospels.  There is just such a wide range of things here I can't begin to list them all.  Many of the manuscripts and texts are not open to the public, but the windows into the library galleries are glass.  I spent a good few minutes just staring through these windows, wondering what rare and amazing books I was looking at.

Unfortunately pictures weren't allowed inside the museum part when I was there.

This is a bank I came across just walking around.  It looks like a Renaissance bank but the coat of arms isn't Medici so I'm not sure who this belonged to.  Banks, as well as political power, were generally tightly controlled by wealthy families who would display their coat of arms prominently on all the buildings they commissioned.

I had no clue what this building was but it's pretty typical of the Renaissance style mini-palaces around Italy.

The ruling family of Milan at the height of the Renaissance were the Sforzas.  Although the Medici and Borgias are probably the most well known of the Italian mafia-like ruling families, the Sforzas were similar in their power and influence; they patronized da Vinci and Michelangelo amongst others.  The notorious Lucrezia Borgia married a Sforza.

Their castle still exists in Milan and is now a pretty incredible Renaissance museum.  It was started in the mid 15th century and ended up being one of the biggest citadels in Europe.

Here are the grounds of the castle:

 Inside the museum is a mixture of artifacts gathered from elsewhere and things that are part of the castle itself.

Here is an arch taken from an old Medici bank:

A bunch of cool swords:

Michelangelo's unfinished Pieta Rondanini - the difference in styles between this and his earlier idealized neo-Classical works is striking.

 Here is a ceiling in the castle that was painted by da Vinci.  Although I wasn't able to get a great shot of it (the colors are pretty off and I have nothing of the trunks of the trees, more towards the side of the ceilings) this picture is not out of focus.  He had done a number of trees with their leaves meeting at the high center of the ceiling, with the Sforza coat of arms in the middle.

Moving on to what is probably the most well known landmark in Milan: the Duomo.  This is the fourth largest cathedral in the world, and largest in Italy (although I believe St Peter's in Vatican City is bigger).  It took an unusually long time to build - 600 years - and was started in the 1380's, in a flamboyant Gothic style.  It's certainly one of the most ornate churches I've seen, and the stone used is pretty distinctive.

The square in front has tons and tons of pigeons!

Inside the church is absolutely huge, and quite dark.  None of my pictures here came out very well, but it gives a decent impression of the gloomy, rather oppressive atmosphere.  It's much more cheerful from the outside.

The pattern on the floor - the colors, again, are off, but you can get the idea.

A side altar:

This cathedral felt extremely touristy and impersonal to me.  You can read my original entry on Milan, linked above, but I still remember the rather flat feeling it gives off - as opposed to somewhere like Notre Dame, which is also big, imposing, darkish, and very touristy.  It is really lovely, but there is a sense of intimidation rather than general awe or splendor.

There's also a pretty gruesome sculpture of St Bartholomew, who I guess was skinned alive, because it shows him walking, having been flayed, carrying his own skin over his shoulder.  My picture didn't come out very well at all.

I'll end with a few shots of San Lorenzo Basilica, which I did not get to enter.  It has a big and lovely park outside.  This is a particularly old church, having probably been founded around the time of St Ambrose in the 4th century.  It has changed over the centuries, but is still overwhelmingly Byzantine/Romanesque.  You can see it's not Gothic at all, with simpler, cleaner lines based on domes and rounded arches.  I believe it was renovated in the 1500's, but I think it has kept its original outlines.

More to come!