Milan has many of Europe’s great artworks — it should pay more attention to them.
Right now, Milan is having a world’s fair — “Expo 2015” — whose theme is “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life.” You might get a kick out of it if you like that sort of thing; I had a chance to visit it last week and didn’t find it especially interesting. One man’s meat, as they say. I was much more interested in seeing Milan itself, which I’d never before had an opportunity to visit, and which you’d expect to be (at least) a co-star of any show it hosted. Unfortunately, that’s not how it worked out.
Milan is Italy’s second-largest city; it’s the capital of Lombardy, sitting at the base of the Alps, just south of Switzerland. It’s known as one of the world’s fashion capitals, and the home of the Scala Opera. Before the Scala opened in 1778, Milan was best known as the home of Sforza-family political intrigue, and the adopted home of Leonardo da Vinci.
Ludovico Sforza murdered his way onto Milan’s throne, officially becoming the Milanese duke in late 1494. Hoping to weaken the Papal States and consolidate his power in Italy, Ludovico persuaded the French king, Charles VIII, to invade the Italian kingdom of Naples, ruled by one of the pope’s allies. The French conquered Naples but lost a lot of men in the process; Ludovico took that as his cue to switch sides, and formed a Milanese–Venetian–Papal alliance to expel Charles from Italy. Unfortunately, the French weren’t as weak as Ludovico had thought, and, with the French army rapidly approaching Milan, he decided to switch sides again. This so enraged the other Italians, who were then just six months into a 25-year treaty that Ludovico himself had proposed, that they decided to band together with the French to rid themselves of the perfidious Sforza once and for all. That was in 1499, just five years after Ludovico came to power. He died in a French prison.
Ludovico Sforza is generally blamed for having sold out Italy to foreign domination: After the French came the Spanish, then the Austrians, then the French again, then the Austrians again. Italy in its entirety wasn’t returned to Italian rule until the 19th century.
On the other hand, Ludovico was Leonardo da Vinci’s patron. He personally commissioned Leonardo’s Last Supper.
The lack of interest in Milan’s historical treasures was obvious all over the city. The Expo is detached from nearly all of Milan’s museums; although the city was mobbed, they were almost completely empty.
The Last Supper was finished just months before Ludovico was deposed. As soon as it was finished, its fame began to spread across Europe; soon, it was one of the best-known paintings in the world. Copies proliferated; when the French finally conquered Milan, they examined the possibility of cutting the wall it was painted on out of the church it was painted in, and taking it to France as a war prize. Almost as quickly as it became famous, it started to fall apart. Leonardo — technical genius though he may have been — had no experience in fresco, the technique of painting on wet plaster to permanently tattoo an image in place. Instead, Leonardo painted on dry plaster, using a binding glue of his own invention. Less than 20 years after The Last Supper was finished, the paint began to chip and fall off the wall. In the 500 years since, the room The Last Supper lives in — the refectory of Milan’s Santa Maria delle Grazie — has been flooded, bombed, and used as a stable. None of that helped the painting’s condition. It is estimated that only a fifth of Leonardo’s original paint remains.
The Milanese have vowed not to let The Last Supper deteriorate any further. To see it, you have to pass through two air locks, which are designed to make sure the temperature and air quality inside the room are carefully controlled. This care is defeated somewhat by the fact that, to get out, you pass though another, single air lock, which adjoins the front desk — which, during my visit, had its emergency door propped open, so the men working inside could get some fresh air.
The lack of interest in Milan’s historical treasures was obvious all over the city. The Expo is detached from nearly all of Milan’s museums; although the city was mobbed, they were almost completely empty. The once-revered Basilica of Sant’Ambrogio, consecrated in 379, welcomed visitors with holy water that was not only brown and fetid, but spawning mosquitoes.
The apathy extended to Milan’s cathedral, one of the most famous buildings in the world. Mark Twain described it as “So grand, so solemn, so vast! And yet so delicate, so airy, so graceful! . . . They say that the Cathedral of Milan is second only to St. Peter’s at Rome. I cannot understand how it can be second to anything made by human hands.” Its holy water was unpleasantly brown, too. The inside of the cathedral, during my visit, was filled with bangs and crashes of construction, which was either planned independently of the Expo, or not completed in time (the Expo has been open for two months now). Large parts of the interior were closed off; other parts were filled with hideous, tasteless modern sculptures. Outside, its piazza hosted two days of a basketball exhibition, and part of its northern façade was covered by scaffolding covered by a billboard ad.
Milan’s Expo is part of its long-time campaign to be a modern, relevant city. It should be careful not to ruin what made it interesting to begin with. Outside the city center are crowds of hideous, modern skyscrapers, with more under construction; inside the city are some of Europe’s great artworks, most of them neglected.
Europe has dozens of global-hub cities, but only one Milan. We ought to make sure it lasts.