On leaving this church I went to visit a little chapel, where St. Augustine was baptized; but it has been modernized. I was much disappointed, because, as the interest of the place depended entirely on the event which took place there, it is palpably of importance, to any impression received from it, that the original form and disposition should as much as possible be preserved; and the Roman Catholic clergy generally know how to give effect to their religious establishments.
Another church which interested me very much, is the Madonna delle Grazie. It did belong to a rich convent of Dominicans, celebrated for containing the Last Supper of Leonardo da Vinci. The front of this edifice has suggested to me, the idea of what that of the cathedral might have been. The nave is ancient, with a sort of half modernization which lets the antique character peep through; to this have been added a large square edifice, forming the centre of the building, crowned with a lantern of sixteen sides, and a choir. The central part is just of the beginning of the restoration of Roman architecture, and retains traces of Gothic taste; but the parts are so well disposed, and so well combined, that it forms one of the most picturesque compositions possible. The Last Supper still exists in a room in the convent; but it is in so bad a state, that hardly any thing but the design and composition are readily intelligible. The head of our Saviour is said by Vasari to have been left unfinished by Leonardo; but Lanzi rather throws a doubt on this fact, though he acknowledges that in its present state, three heads of the apostles alone remain of the original work. However this may be, the expression of the head of Christ pleased me very much; but I shall not presume to enter on the merits of the painting, a subject already so often treated. The damage is principally owing to time and damp, though the feet of our Saviour were cut away by a superior of the convent to heighten a doorway; and some mischief was done by the French troops, and especially by the cavalry, who were stationed there in 1796; but I think from the carelessness and inattention unavoidable in these circumstances, and not from that systematic love of destruction which Eustace attributes to the French in all cases. The woman who showed it said she had known the water stand three feet deep in the room. Under Eugène Beauharnois it was drained; and I believe every thing possible has since been done for the preservation of the picture. On the opposite wall is a composition in distemper, anterior to Leonardo, on which two figures in oil were painted by him, previous to the execution of his own subject, which was done in oil. The ancient distemper remains much more perfect than either these figures, or those of the Last Supper.
