is
indeed was the province in which Lodovico's true genius was most
apparent, and in which his own fine taste, vast power of organization
and minute attention to detail, all made themselves felt and bore rich
fruit. "This," wrote Isabella d'Este--herself no mean judge of these
matters--from Lodovico's court, "is the school of the Master and of
those who know, the home of art and understanding."

Throughout the Milanese, architects and engineers, painters and
sculptors, with a host of minor craftsmen, were carrying out the vast
projects that emanated from this one man. The decoration of the capital
was naturally among the chief objects of his ambition.

"In the year 1492," writes the chronicler Cagnola, "this glorious and
magnanimous prince adorned the Castello di Porta Zobia with many fair
and marvellous buildings, enlarged the Piazza in front of the Castello,
and removed obstructions in the streets of the city, and caused them to
be painted and beautified with frescoes. And he did the same in the city
of Pavia, so that both these towns, that were formerly ugly and dirty,
are now most beautiful, which things are very laudable and excellent,
especially in the eyes of those who remember these cities as they were
of old, and who see them as they are to-day."

Chief among Lodovico's most honoured and trusted servants was Bramante
of Urbino, whose genius excited so marked an influence on the
development of Lombard architecture, and who was to the builders what
Leonardo became to the painters of Milan. "Signor Lodovico loved
Bramante greatly, and rewarded him richly," writes Fra Gaspare Bugati, a
Dominican friar of S. Maria delle Grazie, the Moro's favourite church,
which this great architect did so much to beautify. During this year,
Bramante, having finished the palace of Vigevano and completed the new
buildings at the royal villas of Abbiategrasso, Cuzzago and other
places, upon which he had been long engaged, began several important
works in Milan itself. The new cloister or Canonica attached to the
ancient basilica of S. Ambrogio, with its graceful columns and
dark-green marble capitals, and the apse of S. Maria delle Grazie, soon
to be crowned with that matchless cupola that remains among Bramante's
most perfect works, were both begun in 1492. A few years before, between
1485 and 1490, he had built the Baptistery of San Satiro, which another
of Lodovico's chosen artists, the great Como sculptor, Caradosso, was
now en