872 Sir RpMnell Rodd [June 8, 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, June 3, 1910. 



His Grace The Duke of Northumberland, K.G. P.O. D.C.L. 

 LL.D. F.R.S., President, in the Chair. 



The Right Hon. Sir Rbnnell Rodd, G.C.Y.O. K.C.M.G. P.O., 

 His Majesty's Ambassador to the Court of Italy. 



Renaissance Monuments in the Roman Ghw-ches, and their Authors. 



Renaissance sculpture in Rome has, naturally, been overshadowed 

 by the Antique. And yet the monuments which fill her churches, or 

 have been broken up and hidden in crypt and cloister, display a 

 remarkable, and, in a sense, unique development of fifteenth century 

 art and portraiture. 



Here you may follow, sometimes in one single church, the whole 

 evolution of monumental art, from the earliest times, when it began 

 to be an object to those who were leaving an uncertain and unquiet 

 world, to secure a last resting place in the immediate neighbourhood 

 of the slirine, where the relics of the saint and the presence of the 

 miraculous elements offered the surest guarantee against disturbance. 

 But it was only for the great and influential that room was found 

 within the sacred edifice. Their effigies were set recumbent, inlaid 

 in the pavement, humbly near to mother earth, the bishop clasping 

 his crozier, the warrior of the church his cross-hilted sword, and soon 

 the feet or knees of thronging worshippers wore away their marble 

 out-lines and even the record of their names. Then some of the 

 more Illustrious were elevated on a base, secure above the tramping 

 feet, as on a bier set against the wall. As time went on, a niche was 

 hollowed out to receive the tomb : the vault became a canopy, and 

 the effigy, lay as it were on a bed, from which angels, rudely carved, 

 drew back a curtain to reveal the face of the sleeper. So the wall- 

 grave arose, and the living fought with tooth and claw to secure the 

 option of the choicest spot wherein to lie through future centuries. 

 The delicate art of the Cosmati redeemed by exquisite colom' and 

 design the incompleteness of the sculptor's craft, and, gradually, with 

 the spirit of the classical revival, the Gothic and Romanesque 

 character of the wall-graves gave place to the more accomplished 

 and conscious manner of the Renaissance. Rome, which has always 

 rather tended to assimilate than to produce, summoned the skilled 

 craftsmen of Tuscany and Lombardy to assist in preparing for the 

 princes of the church, memorials appropriate to the statehness and 



