It was thus that the almost childlike spirit of the Milanese painters felt the antique:  how differently from their Roman brethren!  It was thus that they interpreted the lines of their own poets:—­

  E i tuoi capei piu volte ho somigliati
  Di Cerere a le paglie secche o bionde
  Dintorno crespi al tuo capo legati.[10]

Yet the painter of this hall—­whether we are to call him Lanini or another—­was not a composer.  Where he has not robbed the motives and the distribution of the figures from Raphael, he has nothing left but grace of detail.  The intellectual feebleness of his style may be seen in many figures of women playing upon instruments of music, ranged around the walls.  One girl at the organ is graceful; another with a tambourine has a sort of Bassarid beauty.  But the group of Apollo, Pegasus, and a Muse upon Parnassus, is a failure in its meaningless frigidity, while few of these subordinate compositions show power of conception or vigour of design.

Lanini, like Sodoma, was a native of Vercelli; and though he was Ferrari’s pupil, there is more in him of Luini or of Sodoma than of his master.  He does not rise at any point to the height of these three great masters, but he shares some of Luini’s and Sodoma’s fine qualities, without having any of Ferrari’s force.  A visit to the mangled remnants of his frescoes in S. Caterina will repay the student of art.  This was once, apparently, a double church, or a church with the hall and chapel of a confraternita appended to it.  One portion of the building was painted with the history of the Saint; and very lovely must this work have been, to judge by the fragments which have recently been rescued from whitewash, damp, and ruthless mutilation.  What wonderful Lombard faces, half obliterated on the broken wall and mouldering plaster, smile upon us like drowned memories swimming up from the depths of oblivion!  Wherever three or four are grouped together, we find an exquisite little picture—­an old woman and two young women in a doorway, for example, telling no story, but touching us with simple harmony of form.  Nothing further is needed to render their grace intelligible.  Indeed, knowing the faults of the school, we may seek some consolation by telling ourselves that these incomplete fragments yield Lanini’s best.  In the coved compartments of the roof, above the windows, ran a row of dancing boys; and these are still most beautifully modelled, though the pallor of recent whitewash is upon them.  All the boys have blonde hair.  They are naked, with scrolls or ribbons wreathed around them, adding to the airiness of their continual dance.  Some of the loveliest are in a room used to stow away the lumber of the church—­old boards and curtains, broken lanterns, candle-ends in tin sconces, the musty apparatus of festival adornments, and in the midst of all a battered, weather-beaten bier.

THE PIAZZA OF PIACENZA