VIII. THE REQUIEM 285

Above, Christ Himself ascends, borne in a whirlwind of angles; and, as the vaults of Bellini and Carpaccio are only the amplification of the Harpy-Vault, so the Paradise of Tintoret¹ is only the final fulfilment of the thought in this narrow cupola.

96. At your left hand, as you look towards the altar, is the most beautiful symbolic design of the Baptist’s death that I know in Italy. Herodias is enthroned, not merely as queen at Herod’s table, but high and alone, the type of the Power of evil in pride of womanhood, through the past and future world, until Time shall be no longer.

On her right hand is St. John’s execution; on her left, the Christian disciples, marked by their black crosses, bear his body to the tomb.

It is a four-square canopy, round arched; of the exact type of that in the museum at Perugia, given to the ninth century; but that over Herodias is round-trefoiled, and there is no question but that these mosaics are not earlier than the thirteenth century.

And yet they are still absolutely Greek in all modes of thought, and forms of tradition. The Fountains of fire and water are merely forms of the Chimera and the Peirene; and the maid dancing, though a princess of the thirteenth century in sleeves of ermine, is yet the phantom of some sweet water-carrier from an Arcadian spring.

97. These mosaics are the only ones in the interior of the church which belong to the time (1204)² when its façade was completed by the placing of the Greek horses over its central arch, and illumined by the lovely series of mosaics, still represented in Gentile Bellini’s picture,³ of

¹ [See the description in The Relation between Michael Angelo and Tintoret (Vol. XXII. p. 105.]

² [“Closer examination shows that these mosaics of the baptistery are not of the year 1204, but were executed in the reign of Andrea Dandolo (1343-1354), whose tomb is on the right of the font. The Doge is represented in the mosaic of the Crucifixion, kneeling, in company with two magistrates” (note in the Italian edition, p. 110 n.). The mosaics have suffered from modern restorations.]

³ [No. 567 in the Academy: see above, pp. 162, 257, and Plate XLVI. The remaining mosaic of the early time is over the door of St. Alipius, the northern door of the façade.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]