gazing from their gallery upon the church below.  The Luinesque smile is on their lips and in their eyes, quiet, refined, as though the emblems of their martyrdom brought back no thought of pain to break the Paradise of rest in which they dwell.  There are twenty-six in all, a sisterhood of stainless souls, the lilies of Love’s garden planted round Christ’s throne.  Soldier saints are mingled with them in still smaller rounds above the windows, chosen to illustrate the virtues of an order which renounced the world.  To decide whose hand produced these masterpieces of Lombard suavity and grace, or whether more than one, would not be easy.  Near the altar we can perhaps trace the style of Bartolommeo Suardi in an Annunciation painted on the spandrils—­that heroic style, large and noble, known to us by the chivalrous S. Martin and the glorified Madonna of the Brera frescoes.  It is not impossible that the male saints of the loggia may be also his, though a tenderer touch, a something more nearly Lionardesque in its quietude, must be discerned in Lucy and her sisters.  The whole of the altar in this inner church belongs to Luini.  Were it not for darkness and decay, we should pronounce this series of the Passion in nine great compositions, with saints and martyrs and torch-bearing genii, to be one of his most ambitious and successful efforts.  As it is, we can but judge in part; the adolescent beauty of Sebastian, the grave compassion of S. Rocco, the classical perfection of the cupid with lighted tapers, the gracious majesty of women smiling on us sideways from their Lombard eyelids—­these remain to haunt our memory, emerging from the shadows of the vault above.

The inner church, as is fitting, excludes all worldly elements.  We are in the presence of Christ’s agony, relieved and tempered by the sunlight of those beauteous female faces.  All is solemn here, still as the convent, pure as the meditations of a novice.  We pass the septum, and find ourselves in the outer church appropriated to the laity.  Above the high altar the whole wall is covered with Luini’s loveliest work, in excellent light and far from ill preserved.  The space divides into eight compartments.  A Pieta, an Assumption, Saints and Founders of the church, group themselves under the influence of Luini’s harmonising colour into one symphonious whole.  But the places of distinction are reserved for two great benefactors of the convent, Alessandro de’ Bentivogli and his wife, Ippolita Sforza.  When the Bentivogli were expelled from Bologna by the Papal forces, Alessandro settled at Milan, where he dwelt, honoured by the Sforzas and allied to them by marriage, till his death in 1532.  He was buried in the monastery by the side of his sister Alessandra, a nun of the order.  Luini has painted the illustrious exile in his habit as he lived.  He is kneeling, as though in ever-during adoration of the altar mystery, attired in a long black senatorial robe trimmed with furs.  In his left hand he holds a book; and above