304 APPENDIX, 11

showing he had been to the Holy Land.* His armour is a peaked crestless helmet, fastened by clasps to the gorget, all of compact steel, the gorget descending low on the breast and fringed at the edge. At the shoulders there is a piece of chain mail, which opens in front to admit the arm pieces, and fastened over their joint. The body armour is all compact steel, but the edge of a shirt of chain mail appears under it at the middle. The armour for the limbs is of course all solid. The gorget is bestrewn with crimson scallop-shells; there is a delicate trefoil (ogee in the upper foil) on the sheath of the sword....¹

The face of the figure has the mouth slightly open, and is rigid and hard, but the ornamental work is full of picturesque power, and very like that of the Four Evangelists’ house.² The features of all the human faces are hard and lifeless, but the animals’ heads, the armour, feathers, and hair, are all worked excellently, but more especially the armour, one of the sharpest and best-cut pieces of costume in Venice. The face may perhaps be meant to represent that of a man slain in battle-the open mouth gives it a ghastliness very unusual in effigies on tombs-but it is also ill cut, and seen to disadvantage through the small opening of the helmet.

The mouldings of the trefoil arches which support this tomb ... [reference to intended Plate] will be seen to resemble closely those of the Bernardo tomb [§ 15.] The basic plinth has its central roll cabled with leaves at the angles. The draperies of this tomb are, however, more loose and far less severely designed than those of the Bernardo, showing considerably more Renaissance character; the upper leaf plinth of this tomb is just as heavy, confused, and ineffective as that of the Bernardo tomb is beautiful, and the leafage which fills the spandrils is also valueless. It is curious that so much picturesque power should be shown in the animal figures, and so little in the easier leafage decoration. It is possible they may be by different hands.

§ 13. The Doge Pietro Mocenigo (A.D. 1476: Frari)³

A great arch, flanked by six round-headed niches, carrying statues in Roman armour. On the pedestal, Hercules destroying the Nemean Lion and Hydra, and trophies of Roman armour. These male figures in Roman armour, one with drapery thrown over it, carry the sarcophagus, on the top of which stands the Doge in an attitude of triumph; two youths on each side in Roman dresses. Above the whole arch, a bas-relief which I cannot make out; it may be Christ and the Woman of Samaria (it is, according to Selvatico,

* That an angel should be found spreading its wings over a tombstone would by no means imply richness of religious imagery in our days, when angelic character is supposed to consist in a child’s face with fat cheeks between bird’s wings, cherubs of this species being generally furnished by the brace, like game. But in the olden time it was not so; and the angel is in the present case a carefully wrought and fully draped figure, its wings formed of sharp sword-like plumes, and far expanded.

¹ [The passage here omitted is almost identical with the last seven lines of § 69 on p. 101, above.]

² [For this house, see Vol. X. p. 309.]

[For a general reference to the style of this tomb, see above, ch. ii. § 78, p. 108.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]