tine; but it is of the same
general type and feeling as all the Venetian tombs of the period, and it
is one of the last which retains it. The classical element enters
largely into its details, but the feeling of the whole is as yet
unaffected. Like all the lovely tombs of Venice and Verona, it is a
sarcophagus with a recumbent figure above, and this figure is a faithful
but tender portrait, wrought as far as it can be without painfulness, of
the doge as he lay in death. He wears his ducal robe and bonnet--his
head is laid slightly aside upon his pillow--his hands are simply
crossed as they fall. The face is emaciated, the features large, but so
pure and lordly in their natural chiselling, that they must have looked
like marble even in their animation. They are deeply worn away by
thought and death; the veins on the temples branched and starting; the
skin gathered in sharp folds; the brow high-arched and shaggy; the
eye-ball magnificently large; the curve of the lips just veiled by the
light mustache at the side; the beard short, double, and sharp-pointed:
all noble and quiet; the white sepulchral dust marking like light the
stern angles of the cheek and brow.

This tomb was sculptured in 1424, and is thus described by one of the
most intelligent of the recent writers who represent the popular feeling
respecting Venetian art.

"Of the Italian school is also the rich but ugly (ricco ma non bel)
sarcophagus in which repose the ashes of Tomaso Mocenigo. It may be
called one of the last links which connect the declining art of the
Middle Ages with that of the Renaissance, which was in its rise. We
will not stay to particularise the defects of each of the seven
figures of the front and sides, which represent the cardinal and
theological virtues; nor will we make any remarks upon those which
stand in the niches above the pavilion, because we consider them
unworthy both of the age and reputation of the Florentine school,
which was then with reason considered the most notable in Italy."[24]

It is well, indeed, not to pause over these defects; but it might have
been better to have paused a moment beside that noble image of a king's
mortality.

Sec. XLI. In the choir of the same church, St. Giov. and Paolo, is another
tomb, that of the Doge Andrea Vendramin. This doge died in 1478, after a
short reign of two years, the most disastrous in the annals of Venice.
He died of a pestilence which followe