CONSTRUCTION XI. THE ARCH MASONRY 175

the principle above stated, § 22, in alternate serpentine and marble; the outer arch being a noble example of the pure uncusped Gothic construction, b of Plate 3.

§ 24. Fig. 34 is the masonry of the side arch of, as far as I know or am able to judge, the most perfect Gothic sepulchral monument in the world, the four square canopy of the (nameless?)* tomb¹ standing over the small cemetery gate of the Church of St. Anastasia at Verona. I shall have frequent occasion to recur to this monument, and, I believe, shall be able sufficiently to justify the terms in which I speak of it: meanwhile, I desire only that the reader should observe the severity and simplicity of the arch lines, the exquisitely delicate suggestion of the ogee curve in the apex, and chiefly

* At least, I cannot find any account of it in Maffei’s “Verona,”² nor anywhere else, to be depended upon. It is, I doubt not, a work of the beginning of the thirteenth century. Vide Appendix 19: “Tombs at St. Anastasia.”

¹ [The monument is of Count Guglielmo da Castelbarco (1320), the friend and adviser of the Scaligers, and one of the chief benefactors of St. Anastasia. Of him Ruskin writing at a later date says: “I do not feel sure that even, in after times, the poem of Dante has had any political effect in Italy; but at all events, in his life, even at Verona, where he was treated most kindly, he had not half so much influence with Can Grande as the rough Count of Castelbarco, not one of whose words was ever written, or now remains; and whose portrait, by no means that of a man of literary genius, almost disfigures, by its plainness, the otherwise grave and perfect beauty of his tomb” (Val d’ Arno, § 89). The “frequent occasion to recur to this monument” was not found in Stones of Venice, though minor references to it occur in ch. xxv. § 14 below, p. 341, and in vol. ii. ch. vii. § 39. But in the catalogue of “drawings and photographs, illustrative of the architecture of Verona, shown at the Royal Institution, February 4, 1870,” many particulars were given; the tomb had recently been “restored.” The catalogue is reprinted in a later volume of this edition where another drawing of the subject is reproduced; the reference in the 1899 ed. of On the Old Road is vol. ii. § 246. The “careful plate” was not included in Stones of Venice or in the accompanying Examples. The plate (D) here given is from one of several drawings of the subject by Ruskin; the drawing was first published in Studies in Both Arts (1895), Plate 5. The passage § 24 above, together with Fig. 34, was printed in that work to accompany the plate-the words “The accompanying figure” being substituted for “Fig. 34,” and “Castelbarco” for “(nameless?).” Ruskin’s affection for the monument dated back to his first visit to Verona in 1835. A drawing of it made in that year was published as Plate v. in Verona and its Rivers, 1894. In a copy of the first edition of this volume inscribed by Ruskin “To my dear Mother, March 1851” (now in Mr. Wedderburn’s collection), he has begun to pencil in the decorative details on the outline of the arch given in the text. Mr. Wedderburn has a sketch of the tomb in black and white, rapidly done, said Ruskin in giving it to him, “just to show I could blotch.” For further reference to St. Anastasia and to Plate D, see above, Introduction, p. li.]

² [Verona Illustrata, by the Marquis Francesco Scipione Maffei, first published 1732 and frequently re-issued.]

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