VIII. THE DUCAL PALACE 363

of dress which will be found in nearly every piece of figure sculpture in Venice, from the year 1300 to 1380, and of which the traveller may see an example within three hundred yards of this very group, in the bas-reliefs on the tomb of the Doge Andrea Dandolo (in St. Mark’s), who died in 1354.¹

§ 41. The figures of Adam and Eve, sculptured on each side of the Fig-tree angle, are more stiff than those of Noah and his sons, but are better fitted for their architectural service;² and the trunk of the tree, with the angular body of the serpent writhed around it, is more nobly treated as a terminal group of lines than that of the vine.

The Renaissance sculptor of the figures of the Judgment of Solomon has very nearly copied the fig-tree from this angle, placing its trunk between the executioner and the mother, who leans forward to stay his hand. But, though the whole group is much more free in design than those of the earlier palace, and in many ways excellent in itself, so that it always strikes the eye of a careless observer more than the others, it is of immeasurably inferior spirit in the workmanship; the leaves of the tree, though far more studiously varied in flow than those of the fig-tree from which they are partially copied, have none of its truth to nature: they are ill set on the stems, bluntly defined on the edges, and their curves are not those of growing leaves, but of wrinkled drapery.³

§ 42. Above these three sculptures are set, in the upper arcade, the statues of the archangels Raphael, Michael, and Gabriel: their positions will be understood by reference to the lowest figure in Plate 17, where that of Raphael above the Vine angle is seen on the right. A diminutive figure of

¹ [This tomb, in the Baptistery, is described above, ch. iv. § 16, p. 86, and again in the next volume, ch. ii. § 61; and details from it are given in Vol. IX. pp. 319, 375. He reigned 1343-1354.]

² [See Vol. IX. p. 297, where the “exquisite” adjustment of the workmanship of the figures to their distance from the eye is dwelt upon.]

³ [The “Judgment of Solomon” is by two Tuscan sculptors, Pietro di Nicolo of Florence and Giovanni di Martino of Fiesole-the same who wrought the tomb of the Doge Tomaso Mocenigo, described in the preceding volume, p. 48. The date is thus early Renaissance.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]