92 THE STONES OF VENICE II. PRIDE OF STATE

not the most elaborate, is that of the great Doge Francesco Dandolo, whose ashes, it might have been thought, were honourable enough to have been permitted to rest undisturbed in the chapter-house of the Frari, where they were first laid.¹ But, as if there were not room enough, nor waste houses enough, in the desolate city to receive a few convent papers, the monks, wanting an “archivio,” have separated the tomb into three pieces: the canopy, a simple arch sustained on brackets, still remains on the blank walls of the desecrated chamber; the sarcophagus has been transported to a kind of museum of antiquities, established in what was once the cloister of Santa Maria della Salute; and the painting which filled the lunette behind it is hung far out of sight, at one end of the sacristy of the same church. The sarcophagus is completely charged with bas-reliefs; at its two extremities are the types of St. Mark and St. John; in front, a noble sculpture of the death of the Virgin; at the angles, angels holding vases. The whole space is occupied by the sculpture; there are no spiral shafts or panelled divisions; only a basic plinth below, and crowning plinth above, the sculpture being raised from a deep concave field between the two, but, in order to give piquancy and picturesqueness to the mass of figures, two small trees are introduced at the head and foot of the Madonna’s couch, an oak and a stone pine.

§ 59. It was said above,* in speaking of the frequent disputes of the Venetians with the Pontifical power, which in their early days they had so strenuously supported, that “the humiliation of Francesco Dandolo blotted out the shame of Barbarossa.” It is indeed well that the two events should be remembered together. By the help of the Venetians, Alexander III. was enabled, in the twelfth century, to put his foot upon the neck of the emperor Barbarossa, quoting

* Vol. I. Chap. I.

¹ [For Francesco Dandolo, see Vol. IX. p. 29. For the dispersed pieces of his tomb, see below, Venetian Index, p. 431. On the suppression of the convents the old conventual buildings of the Frari were allocated to the State archives of Venice.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]