ry well, even if they had tried: it is an
entirely commonplace and dull work, though of a good school, and has
been raised against the highest fresco with a strange disregard of the
merit of the work itself, and of its historical value to the family.
This fresco is attributable by Persico to Giotto, but is, I believe,
nothing more than an interesting example of the earnest work of his
time, and has no quality on which I care to enlarge; nor is it
ascertainable who the three knights are whom it commemorates, unless
some evidence be found of the date of the painting, and there is, yet,
none but that of its manner. But they are all three Cavallis, and I
believe them to represent the three first founders of the family,
Giovanni, "che fioriva intorno al 1274," his son Nicola (1297), and
grandson Federigo, who was Podesta of Vicenza under the Scaligers in
1331, and by whom I suppose the fresco to have been commanded. The
Cavallis came first from Germany into the service of the Visconti of
Milan, as condottieri, thence passing into the service of the Scaligers.
Whether I am right in this conjecture or not, we have, at all events,
record in this chapel of seven knights of the family, of whom two are
named on the sarcophagus, of which the inscription (on the projecting
ledge under the recumbent figure) is:--

S. (Sepulchrum) nobilis et egregii viri Federici et egregii et
strenui viri domini Nicolai de Cavalis suorunique heredum, qui
spiritum redidit astris Ano Dni MCCCLXXXX.

Of which, I think, the force may be best given thus in modern terms:--

"The tomb of the noble and distinguished Herr Frederic, and of the
distinguished and energetic Herr the Lord Nicholas of the house of the
Horse, and of their heirs, who gave back his soul to the stars in the
year of our Lord 1390."

226. This Frederic and Nicolas Cavalli were the brothers of the Jacopo
Cavalli who is buried at Venice, and who, by a singular fatality, was
enrolled among the Venetian nobles of the senate in the year in which
his brother died at Verona (for I assume the "spiritum redidit" to be
said of the first-named brother). Jacopo married Constance della Scala,
of Verona, and had five sons, of whom one, Giorgio, Conte di Schio,
plotted, after the fall of the Scaligers, for their restoration to power
in Verona, and was exiled, by decree of the Council of Ten, to Candia,
where he died. From another son, Conrad, are descended the Cavallis of
Venice, who