Pavia. These are commonly stated to be the beautiful work of Amadeo. The inscription, however, would seem to attribute the whole tomb to Gian Cristoforo Romano, which is certainly untrue; for the statues of Fame and of Victory at the extremities of the tomb are certainly the work of Bernardino da Novi; that of the Madonna and Child is by Bernardino de' Brioschi.

This monument is not a tomb. Gian Galeazzo Visconti died at Marignano in September 1402, and was buried in the Duomo of Milan with much pomp. Forty years later his body was removed to the Certosa, but when, fifty years after that, this monument was begun, no one was able to recall where he had been interred. He was completely forgotten. "L'oubli et le silence sont la punition."

On the vault at the end of the transept is a fresco by Bramantino, in which we see Gian Galeazzo and his family kneeling before the Virgin. He is offering her a model of the church; Filippo is behind him, and Giovanni and Gabriele Maria, his two other sons, are opposite. Fontana's two great bronze candelabra and the fine glass in the windows complete what is, I suppose, the finest corner of this church. Close by is the Sagrestia Nuova, reached by a door over which is a fresco of the Madonna enthroned with saints and angels, by that rare master Montagna, between pictures by Borgognone. The large altarpiece here is the work of Andrea Solario, and represents the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin.

Proceeding now into the aisle, we find in the third chapel perhaps the loveliest picture in the church, I mean Borgognone's splendid altarpiece of S. Siro and four saints. Another work, a Crucifixion, by the same master, greets us in the next chapel, and the Four Evangelists about Maderno's altarpiece in the sixth are also the work of this great Lombard.

One should, if the guides that infest the church will

allow it, return to the south transept, and from it enter the Chiostro della Fontana, the Small Cloister with its frescoes by Crespi and its terra-cotta frieze of children playing upon instruments of music. The doorway into this cloister is the work of Amadeo. It is a cold but lovely place, and offers us the best view we can get of the church. The refectory is to be reached from it, a fine room with a cornice by Borgognone.

From the Chiostro della Fontana, too, we may reach the Great Cloister, surrounded on three sides by the cells of the monks, empty now, each consisting of four rooms on two floors and a tiny garden.

Such is the great Certosa of Pavia, a place famous in history, and one of the most sumptuous buildings in the world, now as dead and as empty as the Italian Government can make it. One wonders, as one is led about this extraordinary mausoleum, how anyone can ever have prayed there, it is so cold and so proud in its immortality. How often when I have lingered, hoping at evening for a sign and finding none, have I longed for the ruins of my own land, where a kinder because a less vulgar fate has overtaken all such places as this. For there comes back into my mind the stillness and the holiness of that hillside in Somerset where I have so often dreamed away the hours amid the early English arches covered with ivy and golden lichens and all manner of flowers, that is Hinton Charterhouse, wrapped in a lovely sleep, guarding our past, and still to be named Locus Dei.

PAVI

CHAPTER VIII

PAVIA

AVIA, "La Dotta," the learned, the City of the Hundred Towers, lies on the northern bank of the Ticino, some four miles to the south of the Certosa. On the right bank of the river lies the small suburb of Borgo Ticino, which is connected with the city by a remarkable covered bridge, built in 1351 by Gian Galeazzo Visconti. This place has always stood outside the city, or rather the fortress proper of Pavia, which, with its tremendous walls and towers, for many centuries was the strongest place in all the Lombard plain Verona, which held the northern gate, being its only rival.

Ticinum, as Pavia was anciently called, has a long and an illustrious history. It took its name from the river on which it stands, some five miles above the junction of that stream with the Po, and according to Pliny it was originally of Gaulish foundation. It is almost certainly, indeed, later than the time of Hannibal, who must have crossed the Ticino in the immediate neighbourhood of the present town, and it is highly probable that the ford here created the place, which thus even in its genesis was a fortress. The earliest mention of Ticinum in history is to be found in Tacitus,1 who tells us that Augustus, on the death of Drusus, the father of Germanicus, advanced "as far as Ticinum" to meet the funeral procession. It must indeed about this time have become of some importance, 1 Ann. iii. 5.