SECTION XL. I must again refer to the importance which I have above
attached to the death of Carlo Zeno and the doge Tomaso Mocenigo. The
tomb of that doge is, as I said, wrought by a Florentine; but it is of
the same general type and feeling as all the Venetian tombs of the
period, and it is one of the last which retains it. The classical
element enters largely into its details, but the feeling of the whole is
as yet unaffected. Like all the lovely tombs of Venice and Verona, it is
a sarcophagus with a recumbent figure above, and this figure is a
faithful but tender portrait, wrought as far as it can be without
painfulness, of the doge as he lay in death. He wears his ducal robe and
bonnet--his head is laid slightly aside upon his pillow--his hands are
simply crossed as they fall. The face is emaciated, the features large,
but so pure and lordly in their natural chiselling, that they must have
looked like marble even in their animation. They are deeply worn away by
thought and death; the veins on the temples branched and starting; the
skin gathered in sharp folds; the brow high-arched and shaggy; the
eye-ball magnificently large; the curve of the lips just veiled by the
light mustache at the side; the beard short, double, and sharp-pointed:
all noble and quiet; the white sepulchral dust marking like light the
stern angles of the cheek and brow.
This tomb was sculptured in 1424, and is thus described by one of the
most intelligent of the recent writers who represent the popular feeling
respecting Venetian art.
"Of the Italian school is also the rich but ugly (ricco ma non
bel) sarcophagus in which repose the ashes of Tomaso Mocenigo.
It may be called one of the last links which connect the
declining art of the Middle Ages with that of the Renaissance,
which was in its rise. We will not stay to particularize the
defects of each of the seven figures of the front and sides,
which represent the cardinal and theological virtues; nor will
we make any remarks upon those which stand in the niches above
the pavilion, because we consider them unworthy both of the age
and reputation of the Florentine school, which was then with
reason considered the most notable in Italy." [Footnote:
Selvatico, "Architettura di Venezia," p. 147.]
It is well, indeed, not to pause over these defects; but it might have
been better to have paused a moment beside that noble image of a king's
mortality.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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