108 THE STONES OF VENICE II. PRIDE OF STATE

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.

§ 78. Of far other workmanship are the tombs of Pietro and Giovanni Mocenigo, in St. John and Paul, and of Pietro Bernardo in the Frari;¹ 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 undercutting, 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

¹ [The tombs of Pietro and Giovanni Mocenigo are on either side of the west door. Pietro was Doge 1474-1476; Giovanni, 1478-1485. The tomb of Pietro Bernardino (died 1568), by Alessandro Leopardi, is near the monument of Canova in the left aisle. For detailed accounts of the three tombs, see additional matter in Appendix 11 -§ 13 (Pietro Mocenigo), § 14 (Giovanni), § 15 (Bernardo).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]