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