The Monastero Maggiore, also called S. Maurizio, in the Corso Magenta, is an early sixteenth century building of typical Renaissance form, by Dolcebuono, and is extremely interesting on account of the complete and beautiful decoration of the interior by Luini and his school. It is one of the principal shrines for the worshippers of that master, who is seen at his best there. Luini was commissioned, about 1522, to paint this church by Alessandro Bentivoglio and his wife, Ippolita Sforza, their daughter Alessandra being a nun in the ancient and wealthy Benedictine convent to which it belonged. The interior, which is of great length, without aisles, has a very graceful gallery or loggia all round, and chapels in the corresponding space below. A partition wall in the middle, not reaching to the roof, divides it into halves, the lower half being the public church, with the High Altar at its upper end, and the part shut off behind the choir that reserved by the nuns for their private use. The whole interior has the effect of a splendid hall, rather than a church. The walls are entirely covered with paintings, of the strong gay colour characteristic of Luini’s work, dimmed by time to a delightful harmony where the temptation to “freshen it up” has been resisted. Beautiful ladies, in richest robes, look out from beside the High Altar with that sweet familiar smile, of which the charm grows somewhat stale by too much repetition. The emblems they carry show them to be saints—Cecilia and Ursula holding a tabernacle between them, Apollonia and Lucia standing on either side of a small figure of the Redeemer. Above them appears a real lady of the time, Ippolita Sforza herself, a beautiful and stately creature, in a spreading white brocade dress, kneeling under the protecting presence of three saints, of whom Sta. Scholastica, who has her hand on Ippolita’s shoulder, is said to be a portrait of her daughter, the young Suora Alessandra. Alessandro Bentivoglio, a mild personage, who is lauded by his daughter in a memorial inscription for having done no one any harm—_nemini nocuit_—is depicted in a corresponding composition on the other side of the altar, with S. Benedict, St. John Baptist, and St. Lawrence. Above on the left is the Martyrdom of St. Maurice, and on the right St. Sigismund, the supposed original founder of the church, offering a model of the building to St. Maurice, who stands upon a pedestal, and in the background of the same composition is seen the Martyrdom of Sigismund. Between is represented the Assumption of the Virgin, in which the principal figure has been unfortunately much restored. The altarpiece is by Campi, 1578.