Pavia to Milan 53 



near the church of S. Giorgio, with the adjoining palace belong- 

 ing to Galeazzo (Corio, p. 438), the palace and baths named after 

 Trajan and Maximian (near the present Palazzo Trivulzio), and 

 the church of S. Satiro, finally reaching the Summer Metropolitan 

 Basilica of Santa Tecla*^* (PI, 2), facing the Via Torino in such 

 a way as to require a detour just where the street now debouches 

 into the Piazza del Duomo. Thence by Santa Maria Maggiore 

 (PI. i) to the Archiepiscopal Palace (PI. 39), where at least 

 the chief guests were to be lodged.''^ Somewhat south of west 

 lay S. Ambrogio, and, some distance south of that, S. Vincenzo 

 in Prato."" 



243 I : Three men, attired as kings, and followed by servants and apes, 

 rode from the Carrobbio, where the Corso Porta Ticinese now joins the 

 Via Torino, out to S. Eustorgio. On the. way they were stopped by 

 Herod and the scribes, who were seated near the Roman columns in front 

 of S. Lorenzo, and asked whither they were going. Arrived at S. 

 Eustorgio, they deposited their gifts on the high altar, which represented 

 the manger at Bethlehem, and lay down to sleep. After a time, they 

 woke with a start, as if by a divine impulse, and continued their journey 

 through the Porta Romana (outside of which was a Roman triumphal 

 arch). 



" See p. 57, note 2. 



■^ Corio; Annal. Med.; Frag.; Giulini 5. 511. 



'^ Milan was as yet poor in sculpture and painting. Had the English 

 visitors been in P'lorence, they might have admired Giotto's paintings in 

 the Peruzzi and Bardi chapels of Santa Croce; the frescoes of the 

 Spanish Chapel (see Ruskin's Mornings in Florence) ; the Orcagnas of 

 the Strozzi chapel in Santa Maria Novella, and his richly carved taber- 

 nacle in Or San Michele; Taddeo Gaddi's work in the Baroncelli (Giugni) 

 chapel of Santa Croce; besides Gaddi's Ponte Vecchio, and Giotto's 

 Campanile. Had they been in Pisa, there were the frescoes of the Campo 

 Santo; or in Padua, Giotto's frescoes in the Scrovegni chapel (we are 

 reminded that Francesco da Carrara, the ruler of Padua, received six 

 years later, as a bequest — dated April 4, 1370 — from Petrarch, a Madonna 

 by Giotto, whose beauty, according to the poet, whatever the ignorant 

 might think of it, was sure to be admired by the masters of art : 

 'Quia . . . ego nihil habeo dignum se, dimitto tabulam meam sive 

 iconam Beatre Virginis Mariae, operis Joctii pictoris egregii, . . . cujus 

 pulchritudinem ignorantes non intelligunt, magistri autem artis stupent'). 

 We shall hardly be far wrong in assuming that the art of the period was 

 somewhat too austere to have suited the taste of the joyous guests. Mag- 

 nificence was the note of the V'isconti : the Castello at Pavia (cf. pp. 43, 80) 

 had just been built, and the new Cathedral of Milan was to be begun in 

 1386. Painting and sculpture, however, were not to flourish in Milan 

 during the rest of the century (cf. Giulini 5. 661). 



