The Certosa of Pavia by Esther Singleton

The Certosa of Pavia leaves upon the mind an impression of bewildering / sumptuousness: nowhere else are costly materials so combined with a / lavish expenditure of the rarest art. Those who have only once been / driven round together with the crew of sightseers can carry little / away but the memory of lapis-lazuli and bronze work, inlaid agates and / labyrinthine sculpture, cloisters tenantless in silence, fair painted / faces smiling from dark corners on the senseless crowd, trim gardens / with rows of pink primroses in Spring and bigonia in Autumn, blooming / beneath colonnades of glowing terra-cotta. The striking contrast / between the Gothic of the interior and the Renaissance facade, each / in its own kind perfect, will also be remembered; and thoughts of the / two great houses, Visconti and Sforza, to whose pride of power it is a / monument, may be blended with the recollection of art treasures alien / to their spirit.

Two great artists, Ambrognio Borgognone and Antonio Amadeo are the / presiding genii of the Certosa. To minute criticism, based upon the / accurate investigation of records and comparison of styles, must / be left the task of separating their work from that of numerous / collaborators. But it is none the less certain that the keynote of the / whole music is struck by them. Amadeo, the master of the Colleoni / chapel at Bergamo, was both sculptor and architect. If the facade / of the Certosa be not absolutely his creation, he had a hand in the / distribution of its masses and the detail of its ornaments. The only / fault in this otherwise faultless product of the purest quattrocento / inspiration is that the facade is a frontispiece, with hardly any / structural relation to the church it mocks: and this, though serious / from the point of view of architecture, is no abatement of its / sculpturesque and picturesque refinement. At first sight it seems a / wilderness of loveliest reliefs and statues -- of angel faces, fluttering / raiment, flowing hair, love-laden youths, and stationary figures / of grave saints, mid wayward tangles of acanthus and wild vine and / cupid-laden foliage; but the subordination of these decorative details / to the main design, clear, rhythmical and lucid, like the chant of / Pergolese, or Stradella, will enrapture one who has the sense for unity / evoked from divers elements, for thought subduing all caprices to the / harmony of beauty. It is not possible elsewhere in Italy to find the / instinct of the earlier Renaissance, so amorous in its expenditure of / rare material, so lavish in its bestowal of the costliest workmanship / on ornamental episodes, brought into truer keeping with a pure and / simple structural effect.