Cursory Strictures on Modern Ai't. iJif) 



Ji6t seen the things themselves. In the area before the 

 church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva he raised a bronze 

 elephant on a pedestal, and on the elephant's back placed 

 an Egyptian obelisk : the architecture of the east window in 

 St. Peter's church he has loaded with many tons weight of 

 stucco clouds, out of which issue huge rays, intended for 

 light or glory, of the same materials, but long and thick 

 enough for the beams of a house. Extravagances of this 

 kind, and many others that he has comn-.ittcd, have fortu- 

 nately had little eflect upon us, because some have been ne- 

 cessarily connected with catholic churches, and others in- 

 troduced in fountains, w^hich are only frequent in hot coun- 

 tries : we were, however, the dupes of his school, until na- 

 tive genius gained sufficient judgment and strength to cor- 

 rect its errors, and supply a better style of art. Before the 

 time of Bernini, two kinds of sepulcliral monuments pre- 

 vailed ; one from the highest antiquity, which was a sarco- 

 phagus, either plain, or covered with basso-relievos, with or 

 without the statue of the deceased on its top. The other 

 kind was introduced by Michel Angelo, in the mausoleum 

 of Julius the Second ; and those of the Medici family, in 

 the chapel of St. Lorenzo, at Florence. In these the sar- 

 cophagus, as in the former kind, was suited to the niche or 

 archileclurc against which it was placed, and surmounted 

 or surrounded by statues of the deceased and his moral attri- 

 butes. Both these practices were rational and proper; the 

 one for plainer, the other for more magnificent tombs. This 

 branch of sculpture was of too much importance to be neg- 

 lected by Bernini; he stripped it of its antient simple gran- 

 deur, leaving it neither group, statue, basso-relievo, sarco- 

 phagus, or trophy, but an absurd mixture of all, placed 

 against a dark-coloured marble pyramid, and thus sacri- 

 ficing all that is valuable in sculpture to what he conceived 

 a picturesque eifect. The pyramid is, from its immense 

 size, solid base, diminishing upwards, a building intended 

 to last thousands of years: how ridiculous, then, to raise a 

 little pyramid of slab marble, an inch thick, on a neat pe- 

 destal, to be the back ground of sculpture, belonging to 

 none of the antient classes, foisted into architecture, witli 



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