In the small piazza in front of the church stands one of the glories of Venice--the monument of Bartolomeo Colleoni. As is the case with too many equestrian statues the base seems dangerously small for the steed, slow and stately as his movement is. What a grand air of valiant determination this old warrior wears! what a serious purpose the artist had in his work, and how carefully he has rendered every detail of trapping and armour on both man and horse! We have already heard of this famous condottiere in his chapel at Bergamo and in his castle of Malpaga. His statue was the work of Andrea Verocchio, but was completed by Alessandro Leopardi, between 1479 and 1488. Colleoni had left his whole fortune to the republic of Venice on condition that his statue should be placed in the Piazza of S. Mark. This being contrary to the laws, an ingenious loophole for escape was discovered; the bequest was secured by the erection of the statue in front of the Scuola di San Marco, whose strange Renaissance front (built with coloured marble in a horrible sort of perspective, which is the lowest depth to which architecture ever reached) stands at right angles to the front of SS. Giovanni e Paolo. For any one who wished to be remembered near S. Mark’s church, the catastrophe would be as great, if he cared about art, to find himself connected, instead, with such an abortion as the Scuola of that ilk, as it would be to Bartolomeo Colleoni to find himself here in the suburbs when he stipulated so carefully for a place in the very centre of the city!