master-spirit of the Lombard style enthralls attention.
His curious treatment of drapery, as though it were made of crumpled
paper, and his trick of enhancing relief by sharp angles and attenuated
limbs, do not detract from his peculiar charm. That is his way, very
different from Donatello's, of attaining to the maximum of life and
lightness in the stubborn vehicle of stone. Nor do all the riches of the
choir--those multitudes of singing angels, those Ascensions and
Assumptions, and innumerable bass-reliefs of gleaming marble moulded
into softest wax by mastery of art--distract our eyes from the single
round medallion, not larger than a common plate, inscribed by him upon
the front of the high-altar. Perhaps, if one who loved Amadeo were
bidden to point out his masterpiece, he would lead the way at once to
this. The space is small; yet it includes the whole tragedy of the
Passion. Christ is lying dead among the women on his mother's lap, and
there are pitying angels in the air above. One woman lifts his arm,
another makes her breast a pillow for his head. Their agony is hushed,
but felt in every limb and feature; and the extremity of suffering is
seen in each articulation of the worn and wounded form just taken from
the cross. It would be too painful, were not the harmony of art so rare,
the interlacing of those many figures in a simple round so exquisite.
The noblest tranquillity and the most passionate emotion are here fused
in a manner of adorable naturalness.

From the church it is delightful to escape into the cloisters, flooded
with sunlight, where the swallows skim and the brown hawks circle and
the mason-bees are at work upon their cells among the carvings. The
arcades of the two cloisters are the final triumph of Lombard
terra-cotta. The memory fails before such infinite invention, such
facility and felicity of execution. Wreaths of cupids gliding round the
arches among grape-bunches and bird-haunted foliage of vine; rows of
angels, like rising and setting planets, some smiling and some grave,
ascending and descending by the Gothic curves; saints stationary on
their pedestals and faces leaning from the rounds above; crowds of
cherubs and courses of stars and acanthus-leaves in woven lines and
ribbons incessantly inscribed with Ave Maria! Then, over all, the rich
red light and purple shadows of the brick, than which no substance
sympathizes more completely with the sky of solid blue above, the broad
plain space