emaining four show Hercules
wrestling with Antaeus, taming the Nemean lion, extirpating the Hydra,
and bending to his will the bull of Crete. Labour, appointed for a
punishment to Adam, becomes a title to immortality for the hero.
The dignity of man is reconquered by prowess for the Greek, as it is
repurchased for the Christian by vicarious suffering. Many may think
this interpretation of Amadeo's basreliefs far-fetched; yet, such as
it is, it agrees with the spirit of Humanism, bent ever on harmonising
the two great traditions of the past. Of the workmanship little need
be said, except that it is wholly Lombard, distinguished from the
similar work of Della Quercia at Bologna and Siena by a more imperfect
feeling for composition, and a lack of monumental gravity, yet
graceful, rich in motives, and instinct with a certain wayward
_improvvisatore_ charm.

This Chapel was built by the great Condottiere Bartolommeo Colleoni,
to be the monument of his puissance even in the grave. It had been
the Sacristy of S. Maria Maggiore, which, when the Consiglio della
Misericordia refused it to him for his half-proud, half-pious purpose,
he took and held by force. The structure, of costliest materials,
reared by Gian Antonio Amadeo, cost him 50,000 golden florins. An
equestrian statue of gilt wood, voted to him by the town of Bergamo,
surmounts his monument inside the Chapel. This was the work of two
German masters, called 'Sisto figlio di Enrico Syri da Norimberga'
and 'Leonardo Tedesco.' The tomb itself is of marble, executed for the
most part in a Lombard style resembling Amadeo's, but scarcely
worthy of his genius. The whole effect is disappointing. Five figures
representing Mars, Hercules, and three sons-in-law of Colleoni, who
surround the sarcophagus of the buried general, are indeed almost
grotesque. The angularity and crumpled draperies of the Milanese
manner, when so exaggerated, produce an impression of caricature. Yet
many subordinate details--a row of _putti_ in a _cinquecento_ frieze,
for instance--and much of the low relief work--especially the
Crucifixion with its characteristic episodes of the fainting Maries
and the soldiers casting dice--are lovely in their unaffected
Lombardism.

There is another portrait of Colleoni in a round above the great door,
executed with spirit, though in a _bravura_ style that curiously
anticipates the decline of Italian sculpture. Gaunt, hollow-eyed,
with prominent cheek bones and stro