The Duomo was then a votive offering from Gian Galeazzo Visconte to Heaven for a son to inherit the great destinies which he intended to conquer, and from the Milanese people for children to continue their race. It was dedicated, not to the Birth of the Son of God, but to hers who brought Him into the world—_Mariæ Nascenti_, as the inscription on the façade proclaims—to the Birth of Motherhood. Thus the great church rises in worship of the mystery of Life. When one thinks of its origin, the wonderful ribbed and perforated and pinnacled building appears in a new light, rising as it were out of the still hovering darkness of the Middle Ages, the embodiment of a people’s aspiration towards renewed life. The moment of its inception was that pregnant one for Italy when the mediæval pessimism was yielding to hope and joy in life, and when to the worship of the Nascent Mary was to be joined the worship of that twin mystery, the Venus Reborn. The building was begun in 1386. The story of its actual rise is extremely lengthy and tedious. The multitude of conflicting counsels, the number of architects concerned with it, make its very existence seem a miracle. It is not known who first designed it, or whether he was a native or foreigner. Milan’s close relations with the countries beyond the Alps, and the alliances and constant intercourse of the Visconti with the Courts of France and Germany, naturally induced Gian Galeazzo to call Northern architects to his aid and to choose the Gothic style of the North. There is little doubt that the original plan proceeded from a Northern mind. The work of carrying it out, however, passed very soon into the hands of native builders, most of whom belonged to the celebrated guild of stoneworkers from Campione. Marco da Campione was chief architect—ingegnere—in 1386. Others of the company, Zeno, Bonino, Jacopo, and Maffiolo, appear in the records of the first years, with Simone Orsenigo, the dei Grassi and a host of other noted craftsmen of the day. Among the crowd there was evidently no conspicuous master spirit, and the post of chief was obtained, especially later on, as much by interest and intrigue as by merit. Many foreign artists were called from time to time by Gian Galeazzo to give help and advice. Their intervention always led to heated argument and loud contention in the Council of the Fabric, the foreigners criticising and condemning the work of the Lombard builders, and these defending it with jealous zeal, and invariably defeating and driving out the intruders. Johann von Fernach and Heinrich von Gmünd were employed for a short time in the latter part of the century. Their strenuous objections to important points in the structure were overruled by the Italians. In 1400 the Frenchman, Jean Mignot, having been engaged to take a prominent part in the work, pronounced the building unsafe, and proposed radical alterations. The indignant Lombards, headed by the celebrated military