cceptance
of divine love and no mere trance of ecstasy. No more wonderful figure
in all the range of sculpture has been created than the Clement XIII of
Canova.

[Illustration: "THE GENIUS OF DEATH,"
DETAIL FROM TOMB OF CLEMENT XIII,
ST. PETER'S, ROME
Antonio Canova
_Page 43_]

The group is completed by two symbolic figures representing Religion and
Death. The former is personified as a female figure holding a cross; the
latter sits with his torch reversed. Grief, but not hopeless and
despairing sorrow, is portrayed; it is the grief companioned by faith
which ever sees

"The stars shine through the cypress trees."

The base of the monument represents a chapel guarded by lions.
Pistolesi, the great Italian authority on the sculpture of St. Peter's
and the Vatican galleries, notes that the lions typify the firmness and
the force and the courage, "_la fortezza dell'anima_," that so signally
characterized Clement XIII. There is probably no sacred monument in the
realm of all modern art which can equal this creation in its delicacy,
its lofty beauty, and the noble message that it conveys.

The oldest art school, the Accademia di San Luca, founded in 1507 by
Sixtus, when he called to Rome all the leading artists of Europe to
assist in the decoration of the Sistine Chapel, is an organization that
magically links the present with the days of Canova, Thorwaldsen, and
Gibson, as it linked them, also, with the remote and historic past. The
father of the present custodian of the Academy knew Thorwaldsen well.
The grandfather of the gifted Italian sculptor, Tadolini (who has
recently completed the tomb for Pope Leo XIII, placed in the Basilica of
San Giovanni Laterano), modelled the bust of Thorwaldsen, and in one
gallery hangs the great Danish sculptor's portrait, painted by himself.
The first director of San Luca was Federigo Zuccaro. In the early years
of the nineteenth century this Academy was a vital centre of art life,
and it is still a school that draws students, although the visitor who
does not loiter and linger in his Rome may fail to know of this most
alluring place. The San Luca is in the Via Bonella, one of the old,
dark, narrow, and gloomy streets of the oldest part of Rome,--a short
street of hardly more than two blocks, running between the Via
Alessandra and the Forum. Hawthorne vividly pictures all this old Rome
when he speaks of the "