The Unicorns in the Ark

The idea for The Madonna of the Almonds came from the legend of the well-loved liqueur Amaretto di Saronno, now known as Disaronno Originale™. The story tells of a love affair between a beautiful widow (an innkeeper in the legend) and the artist Bernardino Luini of the da Vinci school. Luini supposedly painted the widow as the Virgin in the Sanctuary church of Saronno in 1525, and she invented Amaretto for him as a gift of love. Though this tale forms the skeleton of the book, it should be made clear that the Amaretto drink mentioned in these pages bears no other relation to Disaronno Originale™, either in ingredients or method of production. The secrets of Disaronno Originale™ remain in the keeping of the Reina family of Saronno, as they should.

It would be futile, however, to deny the existence of Bernardino Luini, who is now revered as the greatest artist of Renaissance Lombardy, comparable even to his Master, Leonardo da Vinci. In fact, Bernardino’s presence in the Monastery of Saint Maurice in Milan was so secret, and the work there was so accomplished, that for many years the frescoes were attributed to Leonardo himself.

Little is known of Bernardino’s biography, so I have taken certain liberties with the story of his life, in particular the parentage of his two oldest sons Evangelista and Giovan Pietro. His work, however, speaks for itself. Visit by all means the beautiful sanctuary church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli in Saronno, (now called the Santuario Beata Vergine dei Miracoli) but if you would see Bernardino’s true genius, cross the threshold of Monastero San Maurizio (Ex Monastero Maggiore) in Milan, the decoration of which was Luini’s greatest achievement.

All three of Bernardino’s sons followed him in his profession, and all of them, at different times, added to their father’s work in San Maurizio.

Evangelista (Elijah) Luini became a painter of note and settled in Genoa, where he is known to have painted the civic arms on the lighthouse there in 1544.

Giovan Pietro (Jovaphet) painted the celebrated Last Supper in the Hall of the Nuns in San Maurizio. The apostle John (who leans his head tenderly on the shoulder of his Lord) is clearly portrayed as a woman, and, in fact, appears in another of Giovan Pietro’s frescoes as the Magdalene. Aurelio Luini was the youngest and most talented of Bernardino’s sons, and as such he inherited the fabled Libricciolo, Leonardo’s scrapbook of human facial anomalies. Perhaps because of this, he became a talented painter of grotesques. His contribution to San Maurizio’s decoration was a beautiful panel fresco detailing the Flood. Careful observers will note that among the couples of existent animals entering the Ark is a pair of Unicorns.

And Simonetta di Saronno? She exists on the walls of San Maurizio in the face of every female Saint and every Magdalene, and in Saronno where every Madonna is the same woman. Many of these Holy ladies wear the symbol of the heart of almond leaves somewhere about their person. To me it is suggestive that this beauty with the red hair and the white hands, and the hooded Lombard eyes, lived in Bernardino’s lifetime and heart. Or perhaps she never existed at all. There are Unicorns in the Ark, and like Aurelio Luini’s fresco, some of this book is real, and some is not.