Chapter XXIX: Section XLII: If the writer above quoted was cold beside the statue of

one of the fathers of his country, he atones for it by his eloquence beside the tomb of the Vendramin. I must not spoil the force of Italian superlative by translation.

"Quando si guarda a quella corretta eleganza di profili e di
proporzioni, a quella squisitezza d'ornamenti, a quel certo
sapore antico che senza ombra d' imitazione traspareda tutta l'
opera"--&c. "Sopra ornatissimo zoccolo fornito di squisiti
intagli s' alza uno stylobate"--&c. "Sotto le colonne, il
predetto stilobate si muta leggiadramente in piedistallo, poi
con bella novita di pensiero e di effetto va coronato da un
fregio il piu gentile che veder si possa"--&c. "Non puossi
lasciar senza un cenno l' _arca dove_ sta chiuso il doge;
capo lavoro di pensiero e di esecuzione," etc.

There are two pages and a half of closely printed praise, of which the above specimens may suffice; but there is not a word of the statue of the dead from beginning to end. I am myself in the habit of considering this rather an important part of a tomb, and I was especially interested in it here, because Selvatico only echoes the praise of thousands. It is unanimously declared the chef d'oeuvre of Renaissance sepulchral work, and pronounced by Cicognara (also quoted by Selvatico).

"Il vertice a cui l'arti Veneziane si spinsero col ministero del
scalpello,"--"The very culminating point to which the Venetian
arts attained by ministry of the chisel."

To this culminating point, therefore, covered with dust and cobwebs, I attained, as I did to every tomb of importance in Venice, by the ministry of such ancient ladders as were to be found in the sacristan's keeping. I was struck at first by the excessive awkwardness and want of feeling in the fall of the hand towards the spectator, for it is thrown off the middle of the body in order to show its fine cutting. Now the Mocenigo hand, severe and even stiff in its articulations, has its veins finely drawn, its sculptor having justly felt that the delicacy of the veining expresses alike dignity and age and birth. The Vendramin hand is far more laboriously cut, but its blunt and clumsy contour at once makes us feel that all the care has been thrown away, and well it may be, for it has been entirely bestowed in cutting gouty wrinkles about the joints. Such as the hand is, I looked for its fellow. At first I thought it had been broken off, but, on clearing away the dust, I saw the wretched effigy had only _one_ hand, and was a mere block on the inner side. The face, heavy and disagreeable in its features, is made monstrous by its semi-sculpture. One side of the forehead is wrinkled elaborately, the other left smooth; one side only of the doge's cap is chased; one cheek only is finished, and the other blocked out and distorted besides; finally, the ermine robe, which is elaborately imitated to its utmost lock of hair and of ground hair on the one side, is blocked out only on the other: it having been supposed throughout the work that the effigy was only to be seen from below, and from one side.