Milan: THE Last Supper

As is well known, Leonardo (Mr. Smokey (Signore Chiaroscuro)) moved around quite a bit, originally from near Pisa, learning his craft(s) in Florence, then working for whomever would pay, chiefly the nobility in Milan, and lastly, Francois Premier in France. He was good, no doubt, and multi-talented. In visual art, he experimented too much with materials and techniques (at this expense of his patrons), seldom finished anything, and left very little art to be judged by, considering his reputation among some ("that than which no greater can be conceived..."). Personally, I think he's the most over-rated of Renaissance artists, but still certainly worth a look, and his Last Supper was one of the main reasons we were in Milan. Vicki had wisely procured reservations way back in March, or even February, and so we were all set and amped up from our experience at Starbucks. (I confess that in these matters I have been heavily influenced by https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9Aj7W3g1qo).

It's all in an adjunct to this church, way out in what would have been the burbs in
the early 16th century

In that building there, the rebuilt cenacle of the church (see Monuments Men
for some background); you'd think there would be hundreds outside hoping
for a ticket, but it's only the next group of reserved ticket-holders; only small
groups, 15-20 are allowed in at a time, and only for 15 minutes; sort of like
the Scrovegni Chapel; sort of

Well, partial timeline; there's a lot more to the story;
probably not a  molecule of what you see on the wall was
ever in the same room with Leonardo; Vasari saw it in
the 1560s and wrote that it was ruined beyond recognition;
another victim of Leonardo's experimentation with materials
and techniques; fortunately, good copies were made almost
as soon as the deterioration began; never mind the man you
see in the reflection

At last, we are in; it's not all that big, as Last Suppers go

Closer up; as you can see, someone once cut in a door-way, removing Our Lord's Feet

Extreme closer up; very difficult to do halos in chiaroscuro

Really a woman, Vicki says, citing a certain theory

Judas Bad Guy with the pointy beard and lean and hungry look

Helpful diagram #1,503

Painting at the other end of the room no one notices until they walk by it after
the guards begin shouting "time up, visit over, leave room, exit through gift
shoppe!"

Final Parthian shot; we both exited through the gift shoppe muttering that
Ghirlandaio's at the Oggnisanti was much better; in every way; but still glad
we finally got to see The Last Supper

Milan: The Starbucks

The Milan Starbucks--the chain's first (daringly) in Italy--has been open less than a year but already can be acclaimed a success. It's very popular, and not just with (American) tourists. This is no mean feat in Italy: Italians didn't invent coffee, but they certainly perfected it, and their coffee culture is rivaled, historically, only by Vienna's. Maybe France. And they're proud of it. FWIW, Starbucks in the US, in my experience, is nothing at all like Italian coffee culture. I'm more a Peets fan than Starbucks, but we had to go see the new Starbucks, just a couple blocks off the main Piazza.

Larger and more ornate than any Starbucks of my experience; the old post office
renovated

I guess a certain amount of flattery, not to mention big bucks, got them a place
here, their first and only in Italy

Strangely, the Starbucks name appears mostly in fairly fine print, and there
are only a few of the images visible

View from our table; this is maybe a quarter of the place (we had a coffee and
a hot chocolate and some tasty Italian pastries)

Half the menu, in plain Anglais

Happily, my Starbucks app (from Missoula) came right up

Much of the floor space is an open gift shoppe, many things Starbucks- or coffee-
oriented

A lot of it pretty high-end, too

Part of the deal in Milan is to be a roastery; here's some of the apparatus

Ditto

Ditto again

View of the downstairs bar

From the beautiful upstairs marble bar

You don't have to drink coffee

Or even hot coffee

Right; and now we're ready to move on to Mr. Smoky's Last Supper

Milan: The Duomo

We finished up at Skocjan in the mid afternoon, found our way back to the border and had an early dinner, still exhilarated by the cave, but warmed by another visit to Porky's of Skovina. With plenty of light remaining, we resolved to proceed on, into Italy, and as far toward our next destination, Milan, as we could get. Navigational as well as traffic difficulties found us only as far as La Sicilia, a suburb of Treviso, where we spent the night in a secluded sosta next to a big family restaurant. (Pleasant memories of Treviso, our base for Venetian explorations in a previous year). Back on the road early in the morning, a world-class traffic jam persuaded us to stick to the tollways all the way to Milan. The tollways vary widely in cost, but: a) there is little merging, the principal cause of traffic jams in Italy, b) you can go fairly fast (for us however, only 100kph, tops), and c) there are fewer trucks, which slow everything down. The continent-wide speed limit for heavy trucks is 90kph—54mph--and from the almost universal compliance one observes, it is very strictly enforced, with catastrophic consequences for non-compliance. 

Our previous visit to Milan was just a day, mostly because we could not find overnight parking or a campground within reasonable distance of the city center. Fortunately, you can do a lot of Milan in a day. This time, however, Vicki had located a highly regarded sosta fairly close in. We arrived in early afternoon, and, after being told the place was full, the sosta maestro let us in. A bit of a joker, I thought. Anyhow, we settled in, I went for a couple walks in the burbs, and we planned a two day visit to Italy's second city...its financial/communications/political/fashion capital. As they say, for every church in Rome, there is a bank in Milan. It was a great two days, starting with the big piazza at the center of the city, the site of Milan's famous over-the-top Flamboyant Gothic cathedral.

Waiting in line to get in after one of the more convoluted
ticketing processes yet

The Disneyfication of everything: you can skip the line by pulling a fast pass, or
fast track, as they call it here; come to think of it, however, the Catholic church
may have invented the fast pass, way back in late Medieval times: indulgences,
so called, were your fast pass through Purgatory...look it up

Inside, at the west big door, two huge one piece marble columns

View from stern forward;  nave and four side aisles, truly a huge church, fifth
largest in Christendom

"This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine..." up high over the altar, signifies
where they keep the relic (a True Nail from the True Cross) on special days

Under new Vatican regulations, He only works with a net nowadays

Register showing the names of all the Milan Bishops, going back to way back
when; don't laugh, it was the Council of Milan that de-criminalized Christianity
in the early 4th century

Some of the windows are indeed old

The Ark, Cain bonking Abel, other recognizable scenes

This is the one really old one, like 14th century

Annunciation

Interesting Calvary; the two thieves appear merely roped up, writhing and
wriggling; Jesus definitely nailed down; important for the True Nail thing

Altar, apse, etc.

Vaulting in the nave

St. Bartholomew still all wrapped up in himself

Huge 19th century windows in the apse; huge like one sees in the UK of GB

Outside: Milan is of course the most sculptured of all Christian buildings: 3400
statues, 135 gargoyles, and 700 other figures; give or take

Alas, most are so high up there you can barely seem them

But He can see them

The bronze doors are pretty wondrous

Milan also has the most prohibitions of any church in
Christendom

Not one of the classic (12th-13th century) Gothics, but certainly one of the great
cathedrals