xternal staircase, very picturesque, but of the fifteenth
century and without merit.

MIRACOLI, CHURCH OF STA. MARIA DEI. The most interesting and finished
example in Venice of the Byzantine Renaissance, and one of the most
important in Italy of the cinque-cento style. All its sculptures
should be examined with great care, as the best possible examples of a
bad style. Observe, for instance, that in spite of the beautiful work
on the square pillars which support the gallery at the west end, they
have no more architectural effect than two wooden posts. The same kind
of failure in boldness of purpose exists throughout; and the building
is, in fact, rather a small museum of unmeaning, though refined
sculpture, than a piece of architecture.

Its grotesques are admirable examples of the base Raphaelesque design
examined above, III. 136. Note especially the children's heads tied up
by the hair, in the lateral sculptures at the top of the altar steps.
A rude workman, who could hardly have carved the head at all, might
have allowed this or any other mode of expressing discontent with his
own doings; but the man who could carve a child's head so perfectly
must have been wanting in all human feeling, to cut it off, and tie it
by the hair to a vine leaf. Observe, in the Ducal Palace, though far
ruder in skill, the heads always _emerge_ from the leaves, they are
never _tied_ to them.

MISERICORDIA, CHURCH OF. The church itself is nothing, and contains
nothing worth the traveller's time; but the Albergo de' Confratelli
della Misericordia at its side is a very interesting and beautiful
relic of the Gothic Renaissance. Lazari says, "del secolo xiv.;" but I
believe it to be later. Its traceries are very curious and rich, and
the sculpture of its capitals very fine for the late time. Close to
it, on the right-hand side of the canal which is crossed by the wooden
bridge, is one of the richest Gothic doors in Venice, remarkable for
the appearance of antiquity in the general design and stiffness of its
figures, though it bears its date 1505. Its extravagant crockets are
almost the only features which, but for this written date, would at
first have confessed its lateness; but, on examination, the figures
will be found as bad and spiritless as they are apparently archaic,
and completely exhibiting the Renaissance palsy of imagination.

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