II. PRIDE OF STATE II. ROMAN RENAISSANCE 87

look upon its doves and crosses, or rudely carved angels, any more with disdain; knowing how, in one way or another, they were connected with a point of deep religious belief.

§ 52. Towards the beginning of the fourteenth century, in Venice, the recumbent figure begins to appears on the sarcophagus, the first dated example being also one of the most beautiful; the statue of the prophet Simeon, sculptured upon the tomb which was to receive his relies in the church dedicated to him under the name of San Simeone Grande.¹ So soon as the figure appears, the sarcophagus becomes much more richly sculptured, but always with definite religious purpose. It is usually divided into two panels, which are filled with small bas-reliefs of the acts or martyrdom of the patron saints of the deceased: between them, in the centre, Christ, or the Virgin and Child, are richly enthroned, under a curtained canopy; and the two figures representing the Annunciation are almost always at the angles; the promise of the Birth of Christ being taken as at once the ground and the type of the promise of eternal life to all men.

§ 53. These figures are always in Venice most rudely chiselled; the progress of figure-sculpture being there comparatively tardy. At Verona, where the great Pisan school had strong influence, the monumental sculpture is immeasurably finer; and so early as about the year 1335,* the consummate form of the Gothic tomb occurs in the monument of Can Grande della Scala at Verona.² It is set over the portal of the chapel anciently belonging to the

* Can Grande died in 1329: we can hardly allow more than five years for the erection of his tomb.

¹ [See in the preceding volume, ch. viii. § 38; and below, Venetian Index, p. 433. The date of the statue, by Marco Romano, is 1327.]

² [The tomb, executed by Bonino da Campiglione, stands over the portal of Santa Maria Antica, the parish church and burying-place of the Scaligers before they rose to power. The equestrian statue which surmounts the tomb, as described in the text, is shown in Plate A. For notices of other sketches by Ruskin of various details from this and other tombs of the Scaligers, see, in a later volume of this edition, the catalogue of drawings illustrative of the lecture, Verona and its Rivers. Among them is one of the sculpture of Can Grande at the siege of Vicenza. For Ruskin’s summary of the career of Francesco (nicknamed Can Grande) della Scala, see that lecture, § 22.]

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