THE CAVALLI MONUMENTS IN THE

CHURCH OF ST. ANASTASIA, VERONA

1. THE tomb of Federigo and Nicola Cavalli¹ is in the southernmost chapel of the five which form the east end of the church of St. Anastasia at Verona.²

The traveller in Italy is so often called upon to admire what he cannot enjoy, that it must relieve the mind of any reader intending to visit Verona to be assured that this church contains nothing which deserves extraordinary praise; it has, however, some characters which a quarter of an hour’s attention will make both interesting and instructive, and which I will note briefly before giving an account of the Cavalli chapel. This church “would, if the front were finished, probably be the most perfect specimen in existence of the style to which it belongs,” says a critic quoted in “Murray’s Guide.”³ The conjecture is a bold one, for the front is not only unfinished, and for the most part a black mass of ragged brickwork, but the portion pretending to completion is in three styles; approaches excellence only in one of them; and in that the success is limited to the sides of the single entrance door. The flanks and vaults of this porch, indeed, deserve our almost unqualified admiration for their beautiful polychrome masonry. They are built of large masses of green serpentine alternating with red and white marble, and the joints are so delicate and

¹ [See below, § 10, p. 133.]

² [For other references to architectural features of this church, see-for the porch-Vol. XIX. p. 1., Vol. XXI. pp. 194-195, and Vol. XXIII. p. 102; and for the “wall base,” Vol. IX. p. 334.]

³ [See p. 278 of the third edition (1847) of the Handbook for Travellers in Northern Italy; the passage does not appear in recent editions. The passage cited in Murray is from vol. i. p. 227 of Letters of an Architect, by Joseph Woods (1828), an author criticised by Ruskin in Vol. VIII. p. 206 and Vol. X. p. 97.]

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[Version 0.04: March 2008]