296 APPENDIX, 11

of the form which can be shown without loss of dignity. Their robes are “without seam, woven from the top throughout.”¹ Drawn close at the neck, and following the lines of the body, simply and almost without folds, to a little below the waist, then expanding, and involving the limbs in delicate but deep and noble foldings. The recumbent statue, of course, wears the dress of the Florentine noble in a civil capacity, the loose birretta or cap, and flowing robe disposed with exquisite care over the limbs, and wrought out into every edge and recess of its folds with a tenderness and love, not vain, though unseen and forgotten for these five hundred years. He who worked with such faithfulness has long had his reward, and a time may yet come when his work may have influence over men.

The face of the figure, as is almost always the case with these neglected tombs, has been much injured, but it has never been equal in execution to the drapery, nor is it itself of an agreeable type. It is hard, stern, and plain featured, but, as was to be beforehand expected, much more highly finished than that of the figure of Arnoldo. The hardness of the former is that of marble, and there is no muscular marking in it of any kind; the hardness of the Duccio countenance is that of the natural features; and the outlines of the brow and cheek are well drawn, the hair of the eyebrow being distinctly marked-a character to be especially noticed for future comparison with the Ducal Palace sculpture.

The sarcophagus has, as in the earlier tombs, the cross between two shields; the cross enclosed in a quatrefoil of pure Gothic moulding; the shields those of the Alberti bearing a cross of chains ... [references to intended illustrations]. The arch moulding is decorated with leaves and roses most vilely cut; one of the worst for coarseness of taste that I have ever seen, not only in Venice, but in mediaeval work at all; yet in the conception of it there is evidence that the carver had seen good work, and that of an advanced type, for the leaves are represented as swelling, full and flowing; their great fault being not rigidity but clumsiness. The gable moulding is no better, but it has acorns mixed with its leaves instead of roses; and here let us pause for a moment to observe how the non-naturalism of the Southern Gothic, which began with the Greeks and descended through the Romans to the Byzantines, still appears in the Gothic of Italy in contradistinction to that of the North.

We have seen² how the acanthus leaf has gradually softened its lobe, and become a soft and somewhat flowing nondescript, easily flexible into any form which may be desired. Now in the tomb opposite us³ the leaf in a peculiarly luxuriant scroll is associated alternately with a rose and a fir cone, and in this tomb of Duccio it has in one moulding a rose, in another an acorn, introduced without the slightest intention of imitating either a wreath of rose-tree or oak, but merely for the sake of variety in the ornamental lines. [Then follow further references to intended illustrations of details, and the MS. continues:-]

In the pediment of the canopy the two shields have the bearings of Venice and Florence, the lion and lily; the circle above all has the Lamb,

¹ [John xix. 23.]

² [See above, ch. i. § 11, p. 10.]

³ [i.e. the tomb of Arnoldo, opposite to that of Duccio.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]