290 APPENDIX, 11

projecting from the wall of the church and sustained by brackets, the figures of the Madonna and saints, sometimes of Christ, retaining their former positions round the sarcophagus, and being now associated with much rich ornamental work. The effigies, which at first are painfully stiff, become very noble portraitures about the middle of the fourteenth century, but are always laid in the postures of death, the hands sometimes lifted back on the heart, as if the last act had been one of prayer, but more commonly falling simply across each other on the body. In proportion to the skill of the sculptor the ornamentation of the sarcophagus becomes more elaborate, small niches with shafts and shell vaults being gradually constructed for its saints; the canopies are also enriched and enlarged, and pinnacles are added at the flanks. This is the perfect period, uniting the most modest and pious feeling with the richest architectural decoration. From this point the decadence is continual. The first false step seems to have resulted from a reluctance to allow the portraiture of the dead, which had now become so beautiful, to be laid on the coffin or sarcophagus itself; or else, in the mere desire to obtain greater richness of effect, another support, a tablet or large bracket, is introduced for the recumbent figure, and the sarcophagus is pent lower down. The moment this is done the deathfulness of the statue is felt to be painful or unnecessary, and a likeness of the man in life is desired rather than one in death. The effigy sits up, mounts on horseback, or wears its robes of state with perennial grace; the sarcophagus, as a disagreeable object, is first covered with ornament, and at last thrust out of sight; the canopy, from a plain gable roof, expands into a classical pediment supported by mighty pillars; the Virgin and saints disappear, and are replaced by allegorical figures of Fame, the Virtues, or by Genii and the Muses-this change, observe, being at bottom not so much a transition from Gothic to Classic architecture, as from the expression of trust in God to the expression of the pride of man. Exactly in proportion to the increase of this pride, the idea of death becomes dreadful; at last it is banished altogether, and the monument becomes a colossal piece of fantastic portrait painting, in which the deceased is represented as in life, surrounded by every circumstance that can be suggested by flattery or arrogated by insolence.

§ 3. The Doge Vitale Falier (A.D. 1096: St. Mark’s)

Let us then first enter the Atrium of St. Mark’s by the central porch, and turning round when we have entered, so as to look out towards St. Mark’s Place, we shall see in the dark spaces of wall, on the right and left of the doorway, two rude but rich shrines built in recesses so as to recall to the mind some images of the rock tombs of Petra.¹ These are the two earliest mediæval

¹ [The capital city of the Nabatæns, on the site of the modern Wády Músá in the mountains which form the eastern wall of the great valley between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Akaba. Its ruins, hewn out of the rose-coloured limestone, are described in Stanley’s Sinai and Palestine and in Dean Burgon’s poem:-

“The hues of youth upon a brow of woe,

Which man deemed old two thousand years ago,

Match me such marvel save in Eastern clime,

A rose-red city half as old as Time.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]