The church of Saronno is a pretty building with a Bramantesque cupola, standing among meadows at some distance from the little town.  It is the object of a special cult, which draws pilgrims from the neighbouring country-side; but the concourse is not large enough to load the sanctuary with unnecessary wealth.  Everything is very quiet in the holy place, and the offerings of the pious seem to have been only just enough to keep the building and its treasures of art in repair.  The church consists of a nave, a central cupola, a vestibule leading to the choir, the choir itself, and a small tribune behind the choir.  No other single building in North Italy can boast so much that is first-rate of the work of Luini and Gandenzio Ferrari.

The cupola is raised on a sort of drum composed of twelve pieces, perforated with round windows and supported on four massive piers.  On the level of the eye are frescoes by Luini of S. Rocco, S. Sebastian, S. Christopher, and S. Antony—­by no means in his best style, and inferior to all his other paintings in this church.  The Sebastian, for example, shows an effort to vary the traditional treatment of this saint.  He is tied in a sprawling attitude to a tree; and little of Luini’s special pathos or sense of beauty—­the melody of idyllic grace made spiritual—­appears in him.  These four saints are on the piers.  Above are frescoes from the early Bible history by Lanini, painted in continuation of Ferrari’s medallions from the story of Adam expelled from Paradise, which fill the space beneath the cupola, leading the eye upward to Ferrari’s masterpiece.

The dome itself is crowded with a host of angels singing and playing upon instruments of music.  At each of the twelve angles of the drum stands a coryphaeus of this celestial choir, full length, with waving drapery.  Higher up, the golden-haired, broad-winged, divine creatures are massed together, filling every square inch of the vault with colour.  Yet there is no confusion.  The simplicity of the selected motive and the necessities of the place acted like a check on Ferrari, who, in spite of his dramatic impulse, could not tell a story coherently or fill a canvas with harmonised variety.  There is no trace of his violence here.  Though the motion of music runs through the whole multitude like a breeze, though the joy expressed is a real tripudio celeste, not one of all these angels flings his arms abroad or makes a movement that disturbs the rhythm.  We feel that they are keeping time and resting quietly, each in his appointed seat, as though the sphere was circling with them round the throne of God, who is their centre and their source of gladness.  Unlike Correggio and his imitators, Ferrari has introduced no clouds, and has in no case made the legs of his angels prominent.  It is a mass of noble faces and voluminously robed figures, emerging each above the other like flowers in a vase.  Bach too has specific character, while all are robust and full of life, intent upon the service set them.  Their instruments of music are all the lutes and viols, flutes, cymbals, drums, fifes, citherns, organs, and harps that Ferrari’s day could show.  The scale of colour, as usual with Ferrari, is a little heavy; nor are the tints satisfactorily harmonised.  But the vigour and invention of the whole work would atone for minor defects of far greater consequence.