This munificent patron of Verona (who was besides its Podestă deserved to have what has been justly termed the most perfect monument in the city where the finest monuments existing in Italy are to be found. Ruskin indeed has pronounced it to be, “the most perfect Gothic monument in the world”; and again he alludes to it as “pure and lovely, my most beloved throughout all the length and breadth of Italy—chief as I think among all the sepulchral marbles of a land of mourning.”
Four columns of white marble surmounted by sculptured capitals bear the canopy, which is formed of a simple Gothic arch, richly cusped and adorned with a decorative piece of carving in harmony with the purity of style which marks the whole of the monument. Under the canopy lies the effigy of the dead magistrate, a recumbent figure laid on the top of a red marble sarcophagus, which rests in its turn on the backs of two couchant lions. The whole is bound together by bars of iron along whose surface a delicate tracery is outlined. An effect is thus obtained of wonderful strength and grace: for besides the sense of security given by these bars, the eye is carried along their linear decoration to observe still more forcibly the perfect symmetry and proportion of the monument. No name exists as to the author of this masterpiece, but in this case surely it may be asserted that the good he did is not interred with his bones, but that it lives after him, a beauty and a joy for ever.
Three other tombs stand beyond that of Guglielmo da Castelbarco and immediately outside the adjoining church of St Peter Martyr. The first is that of Guinicello de’ Principi of a noble family of Bologna, and bears the date of 1273; the next is that of Leonardo da Quinto, the learned jurisconsult alluded to in chapter vi., and one of the witnesses to Cansignorio’s will in 1375; the last is to a member of the Dussaimi family. Speaking of these tombs Ruskin says: “Whose they are is of little consequence to the reader or to me, and I have taken no pains to discover; their value being not in any evidence they bear respecting dates, but in their intrinsic merit as examples of composition. Two of them are within the gate, one on the top of it, and this latter is on the whole the best, though all are beautiful; uniting the intense northern energy in their figure sculpture with the most serene classical restraint in their outlines, and unaffected, but masculine simplicity of construction.”[45]
The small church of St Peter Martyr close by was once a part of the convent of St Anastasia. It was endowed by the Knights of Brandenburg, whom Cangrande II. summoned to his assistance in 1353, and of whom his special body-guard was formed. Some of the portraits of these knights can be seen in the paintings of their gracefully proportioned church, which was also enriched by several frescoes, the most remarkable being that of Falconetto above the high altar. This is a strange rendering under symbolical emblems of the Incarnation: the Blessed Virgin being seated in an enclosure with all manner of quaint beasts around her, while the Babe descends from Heaven in a halo of light. A crucifix said to be by Giotto, but of a far earlier date, hangs above Falconetto’s painting, and around are other frescoes by Badile. In front of the church of St Anastasia and at the side of that of St Peter Martyr is a statue in white Carrara marble to Paul Veronese; designed by Della Torre and executed by Romeo Cristiani. It was erected in 1888.
Following the Corso St Anastasia we come to the Piazza delle Erbe, the market-place of Verona, where chatter and merry gossip together with the sale of flowers, vegetables, plants, owls, birds, and other strange wares go on in as picturesque and original a setting as can be found anywhere. The whole of the