Genius in Milan
Sometimes in the pressing confusions of family life, in the muddles of compromise, and in the threats of war and famine, we can overlook the genius of man. Our ability as a species to create beauty in the veneration of gods, or conjure wizardry and technology, or to divine art in all its forms, is our species’ special gift to existence. Our curiosity, our thirst for knowledge and progress is unique to us. Cities are made in our image and no other city is touched with human genius as is Milan.
Il Duomo di Milano
The 5th largest church in Christendom, the Duomo of Milan is one of the world’s great buildings. It’s taken 600 years to build and requires constant and costly maintenance, yet its peerless majesty transcends all the challenges its architecture brings. To have a true sense of its scale and dazzling beauty go onto the roof 60 metres above the noise of the piazza. There under a warm blue sky, lie on a pink marble slab and gaze at the carved eagles soaring, the human body in all its shapely glory, and at the stone masons’ exquisite skills so high above the humming of the crowds below .
Il castello Sforzesco
Such was the design of the stronghold of the ruling Sforza princes that Milan was never taken by force. The castle’s size and scale has the effect of making mortal man feel very small. The sheer quantity of bricks used along with the size of the stones brought here by horse and cart is overwhelming. However it’s in the stables - Sala delle Asse -that the true genius lies. The entangled branches of the trees mulberry form a ceiling through which flashes of blue sky shine. The eyes take a little time to adjust to the shady light, but as they do, branches with entangled knots and loops appear in interwoven figures of eight. Hanging from them in complex shapes and patterns one can discern leaves, large and blackened by shade. The design of the arbour is a maze for the eyes. It is the work of genius. It is the work of Leonardo da Vinci.
La Chiesa Maria delle Grazie
Leonardo da Vinci’s, ‘The Last Supper’ was an experimental work painted for Franciscan friars on their refectory wall. Ever the innovator, Leonardo used a new technique that began to deteriorate soon after its completion. What we see now is a work of divine complexity - 40% Leonardo’s, 40% recent restorative work (of over 40,000 hours) and the remaining 20%, the work of other men over the centuries. The marvel of this painting is two-fold - Leonardo’s novel and revolutionary style along with our knowledge and desire to preserve what is good.
Restaurant Retanà and the Bosco Verticale
Coming up the Metro steps at Porta Nuova, the eye is caught by Stefano Boeri’s, ‘Bosco Verticale’. These two towers are a response to Milan’s housing crisis as well as the intense pollution of the city. They are planted with 900 trees, 5,000 shrubs and 11,000 perennial plants to create a Milanese Garden of Babylon. The awe here is the technology combining with great beauty.
Man’s genius is to turn the earthly mundane of shelter and food into a blissful heaven. Nowhere can this be more apparent that when sitting in the Restaurant Retanà at the foot of the Bosco Verticale. Outisde, under the shade of large umbrellas, surrounded by immaculately groomed Milanese, plates of sublimity and genius arrive in succession at the table. Cesare Battisti, a chef, a farmer, a poet. A man who understands seasons, his land, and all that is grown in time and place. This is where the complications of an over-elaborate existence are replaced by simple genius. His ublime saffron yellow Risotto alla Milanese, feeds the soul feeds as well as the belly.
Pinacoteca Di Brera
Arrive late in the afternoon, once the crowds have left and be humbled by the sheer scale of the place - paintings the size of houses, rooms the size of bus depots. But not everything man does is great. We see our reflections in art - our ability to impose great cruelty and suffering is our perverse genius. The fantastical ways that we have devised to humiliate, torture and kill is desperate and shocking. The walls are covered with intense pain and deep loss, none more so than Giovanni Bellini’s painting, the ‘Pietà’. Mary supports Christ’s broken body with the same tenderness as she once held him as a child. Whilst she is soaked in sorrow, her humanity and her final act of mothering towards her son, is love.
La Scala
Mankind’s highest heights - vocally, musically and artistically can be seen from layers of plush red and golden gilded boxes which curve around opera’s most famous stage. The spirit needs music and no better place can be found to both see and hear it, than at La Scala. Here those blessed with the greatest of musical talents, come to perform on a platform that’s honoured the gods for two hundred years. Tickets are booked months in advance for a journey to the musical heavens.
A trip to Milan is a trip to the City of Man. We come face to face with our genius - our vanity, our power, our creations, our love and our destructions. It is the living mirror of ourselves.