APPENDIX, 11 305

the Maries with the Angel at the Sepulchre). A figure at the top of all may be a saint (or Christ, according to Selvatico): I cannot tell. No mortal can tell what any of the other figures are meant for. On the sarcophagus, two bas-reliefs-very delicate and quite invisible from below, but sweetly composed in the best cinquecento manner-of a Turk giving keys, and a woman receiving them with train. Expressionless, but very graceful, and full of curious landscape with cypresses and trees like this [reference to a sketch], all double, and architectural background with beautiful little figures in windows.

All is finely cut, and the anatomy good and gesture graceful; the flower work exceedingly fine and lovely (explain character of all Renaissance flower work in toto, dividing into classical as in all their tombs, and naturalas in cloister of Carmini).¹ But in this tomb study the attitude of Hercules in the two bas-reliefs-the calibre of the man is given by it; he turns his back to the Hydra while he hits at it.

§ 14. The Doge Giovanni Mocenigo (A.D. 1485: Frari)²

It is a series of flat architraves, piled one above another on composite shafts, with round-headed concha niches, and one on each side, containing two finely draped female figures, without any meaning that I can discover. Under the level roof of the architrave is placed a plain square sarcophagus, intensely simple, the whole monument affecting the greatest purity. This sarcophagus bears the curious symbol of the Lion of St. Mark on one, two, and three towers-thus [reference to a sketch]. It bears a second pseudo-sarco-phagus, and on this a recumbent figure very well cut; the hands there both, and face complete, but the figures are blunt, even square at the ends, and vulgarly laid, and the face heavy, yet intellectual, like Whewell,³ but swelled, and without his bright eyes.

Above the sarcophagus, under this architrave, is a semicircular lunette containing a bas-relief representing St. John Baptist interceding with the Madonna and Christ for the Doge, who kneels at their feet. The face is evidently a careful portrait in both sculptures, for the recumbent figure and small kneeling Doge tally exactly. The figure of St. John is very beseeching and expressive, but he beseeches in the style of a suppliant at the Opera, while the infant instead of looking kind, as it is intended to do, has the grin of excessive cunning. The Madonna’s feet are excessively awakward, perhaps with some view to being seen from below. On the other side of her throne an (attendant?) in Roman armour seems giving the Doge’s cap to an angel! or putting it aside with an expression of sorrow. Not so bad, neither, in idea.

The basement is occupied in the centre by two angles, in the usual attitudes, one leg up behind, holding the inscription; on each side of this is a bas-relief-of baptism-that of Christ on the left-all very finely cut, but the figures long and meagre-odd that in degenerate days it seems that

¹ [For the flower-work in the cloister of the Carmini, see below, Venetian Index, p. 366.]

² [See, again, p. 108 above.]

³ [For Ruskin’s acquaintance with Whewell, see Vol. VIII. p. xl.]

XI. U

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