prior, Jacopo Sestio, and carried out by the architect, Guiniforte Solari. But so much austerity was not to the liking of Lodovico the Moro, devoted frequenter of the church and its great Maecenas.
Sforza therefore engages Bramante to transform the architecture of the temple and Leonardo to frescoe the refectory where he used to dine twice a week, with the Supper.
The Moro chose the church of the Grazie for his own burial and that of his consort, Beatrice. When the latter died, at only twenty-one years of age, the Duke commissioned Giovanni della Porta and Cristoforo Solari to design a magnificent tombal ark to be situated at the centre of the tiburium - a characteristic of Romanic Lombardy architecture, enlosing the dome internally -, which will contain the salm of the loved one and where the Moro will go assiduously to pray. To be closer to his unforgotten wife, Lodovico also has a room prepared in the nurses cloister, so-called because it was used to give medical care to the troops, which was named Beatrice's room.
On April 10 in the year 1500 the Moro, Aaving lost the war against the Eing of France, captured and imprisoned first in the castle of Lys-Saint Georges and then in that of Loches in Turenna in the company of a court-jester who had the task of cheering up prison life, died eight years later.
In the history of the convent of the Grazie written by Eather Gattico in about 1560, it is recalled that the friars obtained the salm of their benefactor and they placed it in the sepulchre next to that of Beatrice, as he had desired.
The tombal sarcophagus remained in the centre of the tiburium until 1564 when, exiled by the decree of the Council of Trento which only permitted the remains of saints to be close to altars, it was taken apart and dispersed. Only the lid was saved, which can be admired at the Carthusian Monastery in Pavia, in the left transept of the Basilica.
Leonardo had been commissioned by the Moro to carry out the Supper in 1495, but the commitment of the great artist appeared to the prior of the convent to be too discontinuous, and he went to the Moro to complain about it. The latter called the painter and referred the complaint to him. Leonardo justified the slow pace by the fact that he was still missing two heads, which were causing him a lot of thought: one was of Christ, which had to express a celestial beauty which could not be found on earth; the other, that of Judah, which had to express moral vileness, ingratitude, human wickedness. How however he had solved one of his problems, since for Judah he would have put the head of the prior. The Duke – Vasari states – laughed a lot at this reply.
In l511 the Lansquenets pillaged the city, also plundering churches and monasteries. Reaching the convent of the Grazie at night-time, they are stopped and driven back by a shining angel which silently threatens them from the top of the dome. On another night, that of the 23rd September 1630, while the fathers are resting or reading in their cells, the silence is broken by the sound of the bells agitated by invisible hands and a voice is heard from on high, not Auman: "I will have pity on my people". It was – stated the friars – the voice of Jesus who promised the Madonna of the Grazie to have the pest which was raging Milan, halted. And the epidemic was extinguished.
The complex of the Grazie has recently undergone important restoration work, but not yet completed are those recognitions which could reveal, for example, the underground passage followed sometimes even twice a day by Lodovico il Moro, without guards, from the Castle, to reach Ais Dominican friends and to find himself once again close to Ais adored consort who he had had placed in a lead coffin locked inside another of wood and this in turn closed in a large coffin covered in black velvet with golden ornaments and edgings and placed - awaiting the final positioning beneath the Bramante dome - on the wall at the end of Choir, on two brackets similar to lions, as is written by Father Gattico in his history of the Grazie.