APPENDIX, 11 299

shafts of the Ducal Palace. It is most fortunate, therefore, that along the centre of its basic plinth runs the inscription in deep and bold letters:-

“M.C.C.CXLVII. DI XIV MARCII SEPULTURA D^NI. MARCI

JUSTINIANO. S. JOANNIS BRAGULE ET EO EREDUM.”

The Venetian Latin of the fourteenth century appears to have been liable to as great an occasional decadence as its sculptures, but the meaning of the legend is not ambiguous:-

“14th March, 1347. The tomb of Master Mark Justinian (Messer Marco Giustiniani would be the Italian translation), of St. John Bragola, and of his heirs.”

It is therefore worth our pains to examine the details of this tomb carefully. The inscription just quoted runs along the flat central fillet of the basic plinth, whose profile [reference to intended illustration] is remarkable for the flat extension of its upper and lower ogee curves-otherwise closely resembling the Morosini one. The panel moulding is precisely the same as that of the Morosini, having also the gabled dentil, but the panels are filled with slabs of a coarsely crystallized red granite. The leaf moulding has already been given, being valuable as a dated example, at Plate xvi. vol. i.;¹ but that drawing being worked up in London from an outline sketch is a little too finished in effect. The real moulding looks harder and simpler, and is very rigid in its polygonal folds of leaf. But the genius of the sculptor seems to have been reserved for the decoration of the lateral figures. The Madonna, curiously enough, is as simple in dress as coarse in feature, but still remarkable as answering to that of the Morosini tomb in being the adoption of a popular type. The Christ stands upon her lap; and holds in His hand two roses. A curtain is hung behind the group, which two cherubs peep over in a sufficiently ludicrous manner, another pair being introduced at the side of the throne.

The lateral figures, being destitute of such accessories, and much dependent on their dress for their interest, have had it enriched with chequering bead patterns very beautifully, and even their glories worked as they are in the illuminations of Fra Angelico; besides this, they each stand upon a little independent basic plinth, which is worked with a flat leaf ornament exactly resembling the fillets round the Ducal Palace capitals, and they have spiral shafts behind them, whose capitals are half hidden by their glories, which are richer in workmanship than any we have yet met with.

... [Further details follow, not intelligible without the illustrations.]

§ 9. The Tomb of St. Isidore (A.D. 1355: St. Mark’s)²

We come now³ to the exquisite tomb of St. Isidore. The sarcophagus itself is laid under a round arched recess behind the altar, and is of workmanship so superior both to that of the ornaments of the recess itself in which it lies, and to that of all the other sepulchral monuments in Venice, that it might at first be supposed to be by the hand of a foreign master. Close examination

¹ [Vol. IX., opposite p. 365; the moulding from this tomb is figure f in the plate.]

² [Briefly referred to above, ch. ii. § 61, p. 95. For St. Isidore, and the bringing of his body to Venice, see St. Mark’s Rest, §§ 11, 148.]

³ [i.e. after the tomb of Andrea Dandolo, referred to in ch. ii. § 61, pp. 94-95.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]