The Albergo Internazionale Hotel was a serendipitous afterthought. Our primary destination was Milan. But, we couldn’t book free rooms at the Milan Hilton till the second night of the trip, so we decided to spend our first night in Switzerland, going directly from Malpensa (Milan’s airport) to Lugano by train.

It ended up being a two-train trip, actually. One took us from the airport to Milan’s Central Station and there we transferred to a one-hour high-speed run to Lugano. After an overnight flight and almost no sleep, it was a relief to sink into the roomy, comfortable train seats. (Why can't we have comfortable, efficient passenger trains in the US?)

Lugano has a history of being a playground for the rich and famous, especially in the years when gambling was a major attraction. There was a large casino under construction, but little evidence of the jet set in residence. We loved the city’s end-of-season peace and clean air, and the beautiful scenery. A look in the windows of the numerous watch and jewelry shops confirmed that there were definitely rich people hiding out somewhere, but we didn’t notice any.

Our hotel room had a balcony with a full view of the lake. It also had some very European touches - a small anteroom before you got to the locked hotel room door, a bidet, and little mats they put down by the beds at night so you didn’t have to step on the carpet. The desk staff cheerfully pointed us in the right direction for everything, from an Internet café to a shop where Ron replaced a UV camera filter.

This is the amazing sight that greets you as you enter the front door. The sacristan knew enough English to forbid us to take pictures but not enough to sell us the post cards in a dusty display case. Fortunately, we were able to find a post card elsewhere showing an array of the scenes in the church. The images were tiny but there is enough detail to get at least a vague sense of the wonderful art we saw.

The artist who created all of the frescoes in the church is Bernado Luini. And if this one looks like a counterfeit Last Supper, maybe it’s because Luini was one of Da Vinci’s best-known students. (Note the amazing addition of Mary and what appears to be an angel as central figures at the table, taking precedence over the disciples.)

Here's another of Luini's frescos in the church.

The composition is very reminiscent of Da Vinci, but Luini's distinctive style is particularly evident in the depiction of the three figures. Notice how Jesus is playfully grasping the ear of the lamb and looking up at Mary, as the angel at far left points and smiles knowingly directly at us.

An excerpt from Vladimir Nabokov’s “Veneziana” is appropriate here, even though it actually describes another Madonna by the same artist:

“But the most enchanting Madonna of all comes from the brush of Bernardo Luini. All his creations contain the quiet and the delicacy of the lake on whose shore he was born, Lago Maggiore. The most delicate of masters. His name even yielded a new adjective, luinesco. His best Madonna has long, caressingly lowered eyes, and her apparel has light-blue, rose-red, misty-orange tints. A gaseous, rippling haze encircles her brow, and that of her reddish-haired infant. He raises a pale apple toward her, she looks at it lowering her gentle, elongated eyes . . . Luinesque eyes . . . God, how I kissed them. . . ."

The grumpy church sexton, of course, would not have approved of such sensuous prose describing the work, but what he can't read won't hurt him.

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