Here, too, is a brass eagle so like one of our own, that one might almost give it credit for coming from an English smith or founder. Returning to the nave, one finds nothing more worthy of admiration than another smaller baldachin over an altar between it and the north aisle. This is hexagonal, carried on shafts with stilted arches and roofed with a steep roof. Its dimensions render a small altar a necessity--a matter of common occurrence in old examples. Another reredos and altar in a chapel at the north end of the north transept, dating from 1430, may also be noticed. Here the altar is panelled in front and carved with two angels censing a cross, and low open screens with arcades carried on shafts are placed a few inches from the ends of the altar. The footpace is not carried round the altar, so that it can only be approached from the front. Of another sort of furniture--monuments of the dead--S. Mark’s has, as might be expected, a good many examples. The earliest are the probably Roman sarcophagi,[31] which lie in the outer aisle or cloister right and left of the entrance; the next, near them,[32] where the sarcophagus is still retained, but adorned with Christian emblems and sculpture; and of considerably later date, and much more artistic interest, are the tombs of the Doge Andrea Dandolo, and of Sant’Isidoro. Here the sarcophagus is surmounted by a canopy, reverent angels stand on either side drawing back partially the curtains from the front of the effigy, and in the centre of the tomb is a bas-relief of the Madonna, and at the ends the Annunciation, S. Gabriel on one side, the B. V. Mary at the other. This is the type of monumental memorial on which so much of the time of Venetian sculptors seems to have been spent. Here, indeed, and on the very similar figures of the Virgin on so many of the tympana of doorways throughout the city, we have to study the sculptor’s art from the time of the Byzantine carvers who wrought the still numerous early capitals, until the artist of the Ducal Palace came to revive the art with his original and splendid series of capitals.