lOiOl on Renaissance Monuments in the Roman Churches. 873 



magnificence of their lives. ' In the latter half of the fifteenth 

 century the revived art of sculpture was touching the plenitude of 

 achievement, and for a brief moment in the finest examples of the 

 Eoman ecclesiastical monuments, we are dimly reminded of the 

 restraint and dignity with which the Attic Stelse treated the presen- 

 tation of death. The great prelates of the Eenaissance are portrayed 

 to us, robed and mitred, lying in tranquil sleep on the flowered 

 sarcophagus. The saints of their choice occupy shell-vaulted niches 

 in the pilasters which support the architrave above them, and from 

 the lunette the Madonna looks benignly down on one who should 

 have been her faithful servant. If the modern spirit had already 

 invaded their lives, if rationalism and materialism were in reality 

 fast undermining the significance of forms and ceremonies from 

 which they turned to Pagan intellectualism, fifteenth century art at 

 any rate preser\'ed for a little longer the tradition of a less complex 

 psychology. But as the struggle for mastery over material execution 

 ceased to be apparent, the vanities of the world invaded even the 

 monopolies of death. Not willingly did the great and powerful 

 resign the state that had given them so much, and even in death 

 they were reluctant to be dissociated from a part in life. The 

 recumbent figure on the sarcophagus draws up one knee, raises the 

 head, and, propped on one elbow, the departed prelate watches the 

 movement of life below, or enviously regards the more sumptuous 

 sepulchre of his rival. So Sansovino interpreted the new spirit of 

 the age. Before long the tenant of the costly monument is sitting 

 bolt upright, and the suggestion of death is conveyed by a skeleton 

 deftly carved in yellow marble relieving against the background of 

 basalt. From the baroc piles in St. Peter's the enthroned pontiffs 

 of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries continue, as in life, to 

 dispense benediction or menace heresy, and, following the descending 

 curve of degeneration, we reach the nadir in the modern horrors of 

 the Campo Santo. 



I propose to-night to deal briefly in the short time at our disposal 

 with the second half of the fifteenth century, and attempt to 

 establish a few attributions of authorship, to clear away a few mis- 

 conceptions, due in many cases to the confused statements of the 

 indispensable but uncritical Yasari, and to introduce to your notice 

 certain craftsmen little known to the general public, whose contribu- 

 tion to the achievements of Renaissance art has emerged from the 

 researches of Miintz and Bertolotti, and the critical investigations of 

 Guoli, Yenturi, Tschudi, Schmarzow, Fabriczy, and others. 



The great Donatello visited Rome in 143o, and executed a sepul- 

 chral slab for the tomb of the Archidiacono Crivelli in the Church of 

 Aracoeli, as well as a marble tabernacle, once in Sta. Maria delle 

 Pebbre, and now preserved in the Sacristy of St. Peter's, which is 

 historically important, as being the first work of a monumental 

 character in which he finally discarded all trace of the Gothic 



