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Ruskin at Works, 16.276 [n/a] calls Sant’ Ambrogio the oldest of ‘round arched churches of North Italy’. Willis (1835), while warning about the unreliability of dates gives the fourth century as the date of founding, the ninth century for repairs and the addition of the facade and atrium, and 1196 for the collapse of the fourth bay of the nave under the weight of the lantern, and for the addition of pointed supports, Gothic in outline; hence Ruskin’s comments at Notebook M p.13.
Gally Knight (Gally Knight (1844) I p.xxv) stresses the rudeness of the atrium (presumably Ruskin’s cortile), but adds:
It appears from this description that there is nothing in the details of the design, or in the execution of this little court, to demand our admiration, and yet it is exceedingly beautiful, from the mere simplicity and harmony of the general disposition.
Gally Knight remarks that the restoration in 1631 under Cardinal Borromeo is ‘said to have taken great pains to restore the decayed parts in their original style’. The portal ‘retains a slight, but very slight admixture of the Lombard imagery. A multiplicity of mouldings had not yet begun to make their appearance. The enrichment consists chiefly of interlacing scrolls’. It is ‘free from the monstrous imagery with which the churches of the eighth century were usually disfigured’ - perhaps a reference to imagery of the kind found in San Michele, Pavia.
Ruskin disapproves of what he calls the ‘delicate fictions’ of Gally Knight and contrasts them with his own ‘rough veracity‘ at Works, 9.431.
With S. Michele at Pavia, S. Ambrogio is used by Ruskin as a point of reference for the definition of the earliest Lombard architecture in Italy. See Notebook M pp.6L-14 for Ruskin's detailed examination of the building and its features, including the pulpit and the baldacchino, arches, capitals.
For his use of features of S. Ambrogio as points of comparison with other buildings see:
Notebook M p.50 - base of Fondaco dei Turchi;
Notebook M p.55 - base of Fondaco dei Turchi;
Notebook M p.192 - in relation to bases of Santa Fosca Torcello.
Notebook M2 p.20L compared with Torcello Duomo
Notebook M2 p.53L in relation to the wedge capitals of S. Marks;
Notebook M2 p.128 in relation to cusp of shafts at San Michele at Pavia
Notebook M2 p.136 Porch at Genoa carries the style of S. Ambrogio and San Michele at Pavia to utmost refinement;
Notebook M2 p.179L Porches at Bourges in relation to S. Ambrogio and San Michele at Pavia
Notebook M2 p.26back in relation to the spurs;
Notebook M2 p.30back in relation to superimposition.
See also:
On the antiquity of Sant’ Ambrogio and its importance as a type of Lombard style see Works, 9.40: the Lombards represented the whole of Northern architecture, and that style was exemplified by St. Ambrogio in Milan and San Michele at Pavia: ‘The various Gothics of the North are the original forms of the architecture which the Lombards brought into Italy, changing under the less direct influence of the Arabs.’
On its antiquity see also Works, 9.427; Works, 16.276 [n/a]; Works, 34.356 [n/a].
On the bases Works, 9.336; Works, 9.342.
On the capitals Works, 9.383.
On the shafts Works, 9.40; Works, 9.133.
On the pulpit Works, 9.427; Works, 16.276 [n/a].
Ruskin does not seem to have anything to say about the high altar, apart from its baldacchino, though for Gally Knight (Gally Knight (1844) I p.xxvi) the altar merits a section to itself because of its magnificence, as ‘almost the only one of its kind to have survived’.
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For the arcade of the atrium see also here. For the nave see here. For the altar and Baldacchino see here.
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[Version 0.05: May 2008]