life of the saint above. Under St. Peter is his crucifixion; under St. Paul, his decapitation; while certain events from the lives of the Saviour and the Madonna are in like manner represented beneath their figures.[1] On the lower part of the inside of the door, Antonio took it into his head to execute a small relief in bronze, representing Simone and himself with all their disciples going to amuse themselves in a vineyard,^ and having with them an ass loaded with the requisites for a feast. These masters were not constantly occupied with this door during the whole twelve years: within that period they also constructed certain sepulchral monuments of marble for different popes and cardinals in San Pietro; all of which have been destroyed in the erection of the new church.
When these works were completed, Antonio was invited to Milan by the Duke Francesco Sforza, then Gonfaloniere of Holy Church, who had seen his works in Pome. Here he was commissioned to erect the hospital for the poor (Albergo de’ Poveri di Dio), a refuge intended for the sick, both men and women, as well as for helpless innocents not legitimately born:[2] and this work Antonio accomplished after his own design. The division of the building set
- ↑ The stories beneath the figures of the Saviour and Madonna do not represent events of their lives, but the coronation of the Emperor Sigismond by Pope Eugenius, and the audience given by the same pontiff to certain ambassadors from the East. Beneath the figures of St. Peter and St. Paul are also stories from the life of Pope Eugenius, and then follow the martyrdom of the two saints. This door, rudely engraved by Ciampini, Vetera Monim. vol. i. p. 44, plate 19, and again by Giustiniani, in his Descrizione del Concilio Fiorentino, has been much more perfectly represented in the twentieth plate of the Basilica Vaticana illustrata, lately published. In the story representing the decapitation of St. Paul, Filarete has inscribed his own name thus;—Opus Antonii de Florentia. Good engravings of this door are also to be found in the works of Pistolesi, and there is a circumstantial description of it in Platner and Bunsen’s Beschreibung der Stadt, Rom. p. 171.
- ↑ The Canon Della Torre, in his description of Milan, attributes the architecture of this hospital to Bramante; but it is known that Bramante was but thirteen years old when the building was erected, and Piacenza, a most competent authority, declares, in his notes to Baldinucci, that the work is due to Filarete. For the part really taken in it by this architect, as well as for the dates when the respective portions of the fabric were completed, and other details, the reader is referred to the Guida di Milano e suo Territorio, published for the use of the Scientific Association at the meeting held in that city in 1844, vol. ii., pp. 407, 408.
