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Doge Marco Corner / Cornaro died in 1368. The tomb is on the north wall of the choir of SS Giovanni e Paolo. Nino Pisano signed the statue of the Virgin and Child over the tomb. See Notebook M2 p.38; Notebook M2 p.43; Gothic Book p.22; Gothic Book p.23L and Works, 11.13, where its Gothic is described as rich and fully developed and contrasted with the extravagant and overwrought tomb of Michele Morosini; Works, 11.97, where the contrast seems less sharply drawn, perhaps because of the intervention by a member of the Morosini family in a letter to Ruskin reported in a footnote and in Appendix A at Works, 11.257.
The index at Works, 39.137 [n/a] under ‘Cornaro, Pietro, tomb of’ suggests that Ruskin was in error when he referred to the tomb of Pietro Cornaro. A footnote at Works, 9.326 asserts that Ruskin confused the tombs of Marco and Pietro Corner, but does not offer any evidence for that claim. The evidence from Ruskin’s notes in Gothic Book suggests that he was well aware of the difference, and that his references were correct in the published text.
In the two accounts in Gothic Book Ruskin locates the tombs accurately within SS Giovanni e Paolo: Marco on left of Choir (Gothic Book p.22); Pietro in a ‘plain sarcophagus on the right of the chapel next the choir on the north’ (Gothic Book p.43L). Footnotes at Works, 9.326 and Works, 9.375 suggest that Ruskin was wrong in suggesting that fig 21 of Plate IX (facing Works, 9.318) and fig 10 of Plate XV (facing Works, 9.360) were from the tomb of Pietro. However both figures are clearly based on Ruskin’s drawings at Gothic Book p.43 from the tomb of Pietro, and the dentils are a feature he remarks on as particularly characteristic of that tomb.
At Works, 11.295 there is a comparison between the leaf plinth of the tomb of Giovanni Soranzo in St. Marks with the tomb of ‘Peter Corner’: the Corner tomb of 1361 has, Ruskin, says the last example of a very early type. At Gothic Book p.44; Notebook M2 p.54 and Notebook M p.150 Ruskin makes and illustrates precisely the same point about the old fashioned style of the flower and leaf. The point is made in relation to the carving of the cornice, not plinth, of the Pietro Cornaro tomb, but the substance of the point about the very early type of leaf and flower relates to Ruskin’s account of Pietro and not to his account of Marco.
It appears that Ruskin did not confuse the two tombs.
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[Version 0.05: May 2008]