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The tomb of Andrea Dandolo in the Baptistry of San Marco is the last tomb of a Doge to be located there. It is from the workshop of Andriolo de’ Santi, and to be compared with the tombs in Padua of Ubertino and Jacopo da Carrara from the same workshop.
See Gothic Book p.10 for Ruskin’s first attempt to understand this inscription.
The inscription in Latin dactylic hexameters, the form of Virgilian epic, reads, in the transcription by Pincus (2000).
QUEM REVERENDA COHORS VIRTUTUM TEMPORE NULLO
[D]ESERVIT GELIDI BREVIS HEC TENET AVLA SEPULCRI
MEMBRA VALENTIS ERANT PROBITAS CUI DOGMATA SENSUS
INGENIVM PENETRANS MODUS ATQUE PROFAMINIS ALTI
NOBILITATIS OPVS MORVM SERIES QVE VENUSTA
QVI DEDIT ASSIDVOS PATRIE MEMORANDUS HONORES
ET QVIA CLARA SONANT POPVLIS SVA GESTA PER ORBEM
PLURA SINIT CALAMVS MERITO RECITANDO NOTARE
DANDULA QVEM SOBOLES PEPERIT GENEROSA DUCATVM
ANDREAM OMNIMODA VENETUM RATIONE MERENTEM
SEPTIMA DUMQVE DIES SEPTEMBRIS MILLE TRE[C]ENTOS
QVATUOR AT DECIES IAM QVINQVE DEDISSET OBIVIT
The date, the year not the day of the month, was what Ruskin was interested in, and the odd form of the date in the inscription is the result of the need to fit it into the verse form. Ruskin, apparently, could not read the whole of the date, and the Ruskin Library Transcript T7A compounds the problem.
Ruskin’s manuscript version of the last two lines may be transcribed as:
mille trecentos (i.e. 1300),
quatuor (i.e. 4) at (‘and’)
decies iam qu(with in brackets an approximation to the shape of the word which was illegible). He then adds his guess that the word is ‘quinque’.
That then gives iam/now, quinque/5, decies/groups of ten.
The whole date therefore is presented in the form 1000 + 300 + 4 + (5 x 10) = 1354.
In the Ruskin Library Transcript T7A ‘janes’ is simply a misreading of ‘iam’ and ‘guinos’ is an attempt to make a word from what Ruskin had given simply as a general representation of the shape he could see.
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[Version 0.05: May 2008]