By a staircase, which emerges on a terrace, where you find yourself close to the ancient brick campanile of the convent—a relic, some say, of the Roman walls, or, according to other authorities, one of the towers built by Ansperto when he restored the walls in the ninth century—you are conducted into the upper gallery of the church. Over the doorways leading through this loggia there are half-length paintings of women saints by Boltraffio, exceedingly charming where they have not been spoilt by repainting. They have the familiar contours of that artist’s Madonnas, but the colour, unlike the hot and opaque tones of his oil-painting, is very fresh and delicate, and decorative. They are all there, the Martyrs, Catherine, Agnes, Agatha, and the rest, each sweet-visaged creature bearing a green branch flowering into red or some lovely blossom. Here is one of a type especially characteristic of Boltraffio, with long golden hair curling in rings over her shoulders; she is dressed in green and purple, and holds a lily. On the wall dividing the two parts of the church there are some very poor frescoes by the sons of Luini—the Supper in the House of the Pharisee, the Adoration of the Magi, and the Baptism of Christ. The effect of the long gallery and of the richly-decorated church as seen through its graceful pillared openings is very charming. A fit temple for Suora Alessandra and her fellows, those vestal virgins of the Renaissance, cherishing the flame of its many-sided religion in their art-irradiated cloisters, innocent sacrifices for the sins of the too vigorous races, Bentivogli, Sforza, and many another almost as wicked, from which they sprang. Beneath the archways, where their beautiful martyr sisters of long before look sweetly down upon them, the meek veiled figures seem to flit silently before us. But they, too, are but beings of the imagination now. The little door in the wall between Luini’s saints is never opened now for the passing of the Eucharist to the cloistered worshippers on the inner side. No sweet voices rise any more to the accompaniment of that ornate organ; the long row of stalls has been untenanted this hundred years and more. In this place, where those virgin princesses and ladies knelt and adored, surrounded by these exquisite creations of the Renaissance spirit, and by its lovely order and refinement, the loathsome dust to-day lies thickly everywhere, and no foot falls but that of a chance visitor. And the vast gardens and vineyards of the convent, where behind high secluding walls Alessandra and her companions took the air and played and laughed, let us hope, and where, doubtless, the stately Ippolita came to visit her daughter, bringing a breath of the joyous world outside, have given place to modern streets and houses, and the great Monastero Maggiore has utterly disappeared, except for this one rich relic, the church.