APPENDIX, 11 295

is of a curiously bold and late-looking profile. The leaf plinth, on the contrary, is of a remarkably early type, occurring, I believe, for the last time in 1361, on the tomb of Peter Corner. The moulding on the Soranzo sarcophagus, differing very little from it-in the cutting of the lower lobes it is the same, and in the heavy round roses-but the Soranzo leaves are somewhat more bold in projection and sharp in the outer edge. The dentils have been gilded, the ground between them painted blue. The leaf plinth has all its flowers and leaves gilded, and the ground red; a bar of blue seems to have been struck across beneath the roots of its leaves.

§ 6. Duccio degli Alberti (A.D. 1336: Frari)¹

We must now return to the church of the Frari; and in the same little chapel, south of the choir which contains the beautiful tomb of Arnoldo [§ 4], but on its opposite side, we shall find a monument of little inferior interest, thus inscribed along the edge of its sarcophagus: “Hic jacet Ducius de Albertis, honorabilis civis civitatis Florencie, Ambassator in Venetiis, qui obiit anno D^ni. MCCCXXXVI. die XXX O .. bris....”

... It affords considerable room for criticism. The first and most serious complaint which the spectator will be disposed to make against it is, that he cannot see the recumbent figure with any distinctness; the second, that the sarcophagus seems awkwardly fitted into the space between the pillars of its canopy; and the third, that the flower mouldings look coarse and heavy to the last degree. These deficiencies, justly complained of, have all arisen from the same cause. The sarcophagus and canopy are by different sculptors, and the one has worked with little reference to the intentions of the others. The sarcophagus and effigy are by the same hand, and that a most skilful one. But the foresight of their sculptor has not been equal to his skill. He has never calculated on the position of the tomb; and the recumbent figure, which is most carefully worked, appears from below a mere mass of confusion; while two small statues of Justice and Temperance, the latter worthy of the best Pisan masters, which stand at the angles of the sarcophagus will be thought stunted and vulgar by every spectator who has it not in his power to ascend to them. On the other hand, the workmanship of the canopy is altogether coarse and feelingless, so that the value of the monument as an example of the sculpture of the middle of the fourteenth century, depending as it does on details invisible from below, has been nearly as much overlooked as the rude merit of the tomb of Arnoldo.

I have, indeed, some reluctance in making in assertion, which the casual spectator can by no means verify, that the draperies of the effigy itself, and of the figure of Temperance on the left side of the sarcophagus, are worthy of any period of art whatsoever, and that there is nothing on the facade of the Ducal Palace which in any wise equals them in style or execution. Those of the figures of Justice and Temperance are formed on perhaps the loveliest type which can be chosen by the sculptor for female dress. A type exquisitely pure and modest, and yet showing every grace

[This tomb has already been briefly referred to: see ch. ii. §§ 58, 66, pp. 92, 98.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]