APPENDIX, II 307

moulding is lost; the sculptor has crumpled the leaves too much, and they look thin and frost-bitten in distant effect.

The panel moulding [a similar reference] is quite plain, but wrought with great finish. Its substitution of the roll for the dentil marks the later date of the monument; and keeping this in mind, the spectator ought most carefully to observe the utter coarseness and rudeness of the features of the Madonna and Christ. The nearer they are seen the more disagreeable they will be found; and there is another mark of failing sentiment in the action of the bird in the infant’s hand, which, for the sake of the ornamental effect, is carved with a hawk’s head, and appears to be biting the hand which holds it. All these circumstances are of importance as collective evidences of the turns which the artistical mind was taking-but more especially the coarseness of feature in the Madonna and Christ-significative of a want of love for holiness or purity which was rapidly to make Venice the centre of the vices of Europe. It is the more curious and significative, because the faces of the aged male saints are very beautiful in expression, the senatorial character still preserving the types of nobility in the features of aged manhood, which the young female countenance had entirely lost.

§ 16. The Doge Nicolaus Marcellus (A.D. 1474: SS. Giovanni e Paolo)¹

In St. John and Paul on left, a sarcophagus with its double urn above completely developed recumbent figure heavy faced, one side of face only executed, but both hands are there and of finer model than usual. Entire figure utterly slovenly, drapery thrown any way, merely to look like a figure in the distance.

It lies under an arch supported by entablatures, etc., and two shafts, themselves sustained first by a shallow projecting plinth, and then by two small brackets; caryatid figures about two feet high on three legs, one coming from the middle of body, monstrous and inequivalent to weight. The four female figures (Virtues?) on the planks are very finely carved, as fine as any cinque cento work I know, and sweet in expression, feeble in design.

Under the arch, a bas-relief of I know not what saint presenting Doge to Madonna, as usual: an attendant in Roman armour on the other side carrying a flag. The Madonna exceedingly beautiful-very pure and Peruginesque-the whole bas-relief most careful and beautiful in its way. The thin drapery of the Madonna exquisite. It is all quite invisible from below.

A small figure of Christ put on top of entablature, where no one would find it out.

[The study of this tomb suggested to Ruskin the following points to work out in sketch of Renaissance:-“Effect of knowledge in general on art.

Design: How different from imitative sculpture. To carve a man, or carve a tree, no art. Botany or anatomy.

Pretty figures gracefully felt-not design.

Renaissance generally loses sight of design for execution, and always of sentiment in design.”]

¹ [This monument is shown in Plate 155 of the work by Cicognara and Zanotto referred to above, p. 101 n.].

[Version 0.04: March 2008]