§ LXXII. With respect to our present purpose, however, it is a monument of enormous importance. We have to trace, be it remembered, the pride of state in its gradual intrusion upon the sepulchre; and the consequent and correlative vanishing of the expressions of religious feeling and heavenly hope, together with the more and more arrogant setting forth of the virtues of the dead. Now this tomb is the largest and most costly we have yet seen; but its means of religious expression are limited to a single statue of Christ, small and used merely as a pinnacle at the top. The rest of the composition is as curious as it is vulgar. The conceit, so often noticed as having been borrowed from the Pisan school, of angels withdrawing the curtains of the couch to look down upon the dead, was brought forward with increasing prominence by every succeeding sculptor; but, as we draw nearer to the Renaissance period, we find that the angels become of less importance, and the curtains of more. With the Pisans, the curtains are introduced as a motive for the angels; with the Renaissance sculptors, the angels are introduced merely as a motive for the curtains, which become every day more huge and elaborate. In the monument of Mocenigo, they have already expanded into a tent, with a pole in the centre of it: and in that of Foscari, for the first time, the angels are absent altogether; while the curtains are arranged in the form of an enormous French tent-bed, and are sustained at the flanks by two diminutive figures in Roman armor; substituted for the angels, merely that the sculptor might show his knowledge of classical costume. And now observe how often a fault in feeling induces also a fault in style. In the old tombs, the angels used to stand on or by the side of the sarcophagus; but their places are here to be occupied by the Virtues, and therefore, to sustain the diminutive Roman figures at the necessary height, each has a whole Corinthian pillar to himself, a pillar whose shaft is eleven feet high, and some three or four feet round: and because this was not high enough, it is put on a pedestal four feet and a half high; and has a spurred base besides of its own, a tall capital, then a huge bracket above the capital, and then another pedestal above the bracket, and on the top of all the diminutive figure who has charge of the curtains.
§ LXXIII. Under the canopy, thus arranged, is placed the sarcophagus with its recumbent figure. The statues of the Virgin and the saints have disappeared from it. In their stead, its panels are filled with half-length figures of Faith, Hope, and Charity; while Temperance and Fortitude are at the Doge’s feet, Justice and Prudence at his head, figures now the size of life, yet nevertheless recognizable only by their attributes: for, except that Hope raises her eyes, there is no difference in the character or expression of any of their faces,—they are nothing more than handsome Venetian women, in rather full and courtly dresses, and tolerably well thrown into postures for effect from below. Fortitude could not of course be placed in a graceful one without some sacrifice of her character, but that was of no consequence in the eyes of the sculptors of this period, so she leans back languidly, and nearly overthrows her own column; while Temperance, and Justice opposite to her, as neither the left hand of the one nor the right hand of the other could be seen from below, have been left with one hand each.
§ LXXIV. Still these figures, coarse and feelingless as they are, have been worked with care, because the principal effect of the tomb depends on them. But the effigy of the Doge, of which nothing but the side is visible, has been utterly neglected; and the ingenuity of the sculptor is not so great, at the best, as that he can afford to be slovenly. There is, indeed, nothing in the history of Foscari which would lead us to expect anything particularly noble in his face; but I trust, nevertheless, it has been misrepresented by this despicable carver; for no words are strong enough to express the baseness of the portraiture. A huge, gross, bony clown’s face, with the peculiar sodden and sensual cunning in it which is seen so often in the countenances of the worst Romanist priest; a face part of iron and part of clay, with the immobility of the one, and the foulness of the other, double chinned, blunt-mouthed, bony-cheeked, with its brows drawn down into meagre lines and wrinkles over the eyelids; the face of a man incapable either of joy or sorrow, unless such as may be caused by the indulgence of passion, or the mortification of pride. Even had he been such a one, a noble workman would not have written it so legibly on his tomb; and I believe it to be the image of the carver’s own mind that is there hewn in the marble, not that of the Doge Foscari. For the same mind is visible enough throughout, the traces of it mingled with those of the evil taste of the whole time and people. There is not anything so small but it is shown in some portion of its treatment; for instance, in the placing of the shields at the back of the great curtain. In earlier times, the shield, as we have seen, was represented as merely suspended against the tomb by a thong, or if sustained in any other manner, still its form was simple and undisguised. Men in those days used their shields in war, and therefore there was no need to add dignity to their form by external ornament. That which, through day after day of mortal danger, had borne back from them the waves of battle, could neither be degraded by simplicity, nor exalted by decoration. By its rude leathern thong it seemed to be fastened to their tombs, and the shield of the mighty was not cast away, though capable of defending its master no more.
§ LXXV. It was otherwise in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The changed system of warfare was rapidly doing away with the practical service of the shield; and the chiefs who directed the battle from a distance, or who passed the greater part of their lives in the council-chamber, soon came to regard the shield as nothing more than a field for their armorial bearings. It then became a principal object of their Pride of State to increase the conspicuousness of these marks of family distinction by surrounding them with various and fantastic ornament, generally scroll or flower work, which of course deprived the shield of all appearance of being intended for a soldier’s use. Thus the shield of the Foscari is introduced in two ways. On the sarcophagus, the bearings are three times repeated, enclosed in circular disks, which are sustained each by a couple of naked infants. Above the canopy, two shields of the usual form are set in the centre of circles filled by a radiating ornament of shell flutings, which give them the effect of ventilators; and their circumference is farther adorned by gilt rays, undulating to represent a glory.
§ LXXVI. We now approach that period of the early Renaissance which was noticed in the preceding chapter as being at first a very visible improvement on the corrupted Gothic. The tombs executed during the period of the Byzantine Renaissance exhibit, in the first place, a consummate skill in handling the chisel, perfect science of drawing and anatomy, high appreciation of good classical models, and a grace of composition and delicacy of ornament derived, I believe, principally from the great Florentine sculptors. But, together with this science, they exhibit also, for a short time, some return to the early religious feeling, forming a school of sculpture which corresponds to that of the school of the Bellini in painting; and the only wonder is that there should not have been more workmen in the fifteenth century doing in marble what Perugino, Francia, and Bellini did on canvas. There are, indeed, some few, as I have just said, in whom the good and pure temper shows itself: but the sculptor was necessarily led sooner than the painter to an exclusive study of classical models, utterly adverse to the Christian imagination; and he was also deprived of the great purifying and sacred element of color, besides having much more of merely mechanical and therefore degrading labor to go through in the realization of his thought. Hence I do not know any example in sculpture at this period, at least in Venice, which has not conspicuous faults (not faults of imperfection, as in early sculpture, but of purpose and sentiment), staining such beauties as it may possess; and the whole school soon falls away, and merges into vain pomp and meagre metaphor.
§ LXXVII. The most celebrated monument of this period is that to the Doge Andrea Vendramin, in the Church of St. John and Paul, sculptured about 1480, and before alluded to in the first chapter of the first volume. It has attracted public admiration, partly by its costliness, partly by the delicacy and precision of its chiselling; being otherwise a very base and unworthy example of the school, and showing neither invention nor feeling. It has the Virtues, as usual, dressed like heathen goddesses, and totally devoid of expression, though graceful and well studied merely as female figures. The rest of its sculpture is all of the same kind; perfect in workmanship, and devoid of thought. Its dragons are covered with marvellous scales, but have no terror nor sting in them; its birds are perfect in plumage, but have no song in them; its children lovely of limb, but have no childishness in them.
§ LXXVIII. Of far other workmanship are the tombs of Pietro and Giovanni Mocenigo, in St. John and Paul, and of Pietro Bernardo in the Frari; in all which the details are as full of exquisite fancy, as they are perfect in execution; and in the two former, and several others of similar feeling, the old religious symbols return; the Madonna is again seen enthroned under the canopy, and the sarcophagus is decorated with legends of the saints. But the fatal errors of sentiment are, nevertheless, always traceable. In the first place, the sculptor is always seen to be intent upon the exhibition of his skill, more than on producing any effect on the spectator’s mind; elaborate backgrounds of landscape, with tricks of perspective, imitations of trees, clouds, and water, and various other unnecessary adjuncts, merely to show how marble could be subdued; together with useless under-cutting, and over-finish in subordinate parts, continually exhibiting the same cold vanity and unexcited precision of mechanism. In the second place, the figures have all the peculiar tendency to posture-making, which, exhibiting itself first painfully in Perugino, rapidly destroyed the veracity of composition in all art. By posture-making I mean, in general, that action of figures which results from the painter’s considering, in the first place, not how, under the circumstances, they would actually have walked, or stood, or looked, but how they may most gracefully and harmoniously walk or stand. In the hands of a great man, posture, like everything else, becomes noble, even when over-studied, as with Michael Angelo, who was, perhaps, more than any other, the cause of the mischief; but, with inferior men, this habit of composing attitudes ends necessarily in utter lifelessness and abortion. Giotto was, perhaps, of all painters, the most free from the infection of the poison, always conceiving an incident naturally, and drawing it unaffectedly; and the absence of posture-making in the works of the Pre-Raphaelites, as opposed to the Attitudinarianism of the modern school, has been both one of their principal virtues, and of the principal causes of outcry against them.
§ LXXIX. But the most significant change in the treatment of these tombs, with respect to our immediate object, is in the form of the sarcophagus. It was above noted, that, exactly in proportion to the degree of the pride of life expressed in any monument, would be also the fear of death; and therefore, as these tombs increase in splendor, in size, and beauty of workmanship, we perceive a gradual desire to take away from the definite character of the sarcophagus. In the earliest times, as we have seen, it was a gloomy mass of stone; gradually it became charged with religious sculpture; but never with the slightest desire to disguise its form, until towards the middle of the fifteenth century. It then becomes enriched with flower-work and hidden by the Virtues; and, finally, losing its foursquare form, it is modelled on graceful types of ancient vases, made as little like a coffin as possible, and refined away in various elegancies, till it becomes, at last, a mere pedestal or stage for the portrait statue. This statue, in the meantime, has been gradually coming back to life, through a curious series of transitions. The Vendramin monument is one of the last which shows, or pretends to show, the recumbent figure laid in death. A few years later, this idea became disagreeable to polite minds; and, lo! the figures which before had been laid at rest upon the tomb pillow, raised themselves on their elbows, and began to look round them. The soul of the sixteenth century dared not contemplate its body in death.
§ LXXX. The reader cannot but remember many instances of this form of monument, England being peculiarly rich in examples of them; although, with her, tomb sculpture, after the fourteenth century, is altogether imitative, and in no degree indicative of the temper of the people. It was from Italy that the authority for the change was derived; and in Italy only, therefore, that it is truly correspondent to the change in the national mind. There are many monuments in Venice of this semi-animate type, most of them carefully sculptured, and some very admirable as portraits, and for the casting of the drapery, especially those in the Church of San Salvador; but I shall only direct the reader to one, that of Jacopo Pesaro, Bishop of Paphos, in the Church of the Frari; notable not only as a very skilful piece of sculpture, but for the epitaph, singularly characteristic of the period, and confirmatory of all that I have alleged against it: