e of mural and structural decoration
steadily increased. A host of sculptors filled the Tuscan churches
with those memorials which constitute one of their chief attractions.
These men imbued death with its most gentle aspect, concealing the
tragedy and sombre meaning of their work with gay arabesques and the
most living and lovable creations of their fancy. The _putti_, the
bright heraldry, the play of colour, and the opulence of decoration,
often distract one's eye from the effigy of the dead: and he, too, is
often smiling. He may represent the past: the rest of the tomb is
born of the present, and seldom--exception being made for a group of
tombs to which reference will be made later on[111]--seldom is there
much regard for the future. The dead at least are not asked to bury
their dead. They lie in state, surrounded by all that is most young
and blithe in life: it is a death which shows no indifference to the
life which is left behind. With them death is in the midst of life,
not life in the midst of death. Donatello was too severe for the later
Renaissance, and the brilliant sculptors who succeeded him lost
influence in their turn. With the development of sculpture, which
during Michael Angelo's lifetime acquired a technical skill to which
Donatello never aspired, the tomb became a vehicle for ostentation and
display; and there was a reaction towards the harsher symbols of
death. Instead of the quiet mourner who really mourns, we have the
strident and professional weeper--a parody of sorrow. Tier upon tier
these prodigious monuments rise, covering great spaces of wall,
decorated with skulls and skeletons, with Time carrying his scythe,
with negro caryatides, and with apathetic or showy models masquerading
as the cardinal virtues. The effigy itself is often perched up so high
as to be invisible, or sitting in a ridiculous posture. "Princes'
images on their tombs," says Bosola in Webster's play, "do not lie as
they were wont, seeming to pray up to heaven; but with their hands
under their cheeks, as if they had died of toothache."[112] Venice
excelled in this rotund and sweltering sculpture. Yet it cannot be
wholly condemned. Though artificial, theatrical and mundane, its
technical supremacy cannot be denied. The amazing ease with which
these huge monuments are contrived, and the absolute sense of mastery
shown by the sculptor over the material are qualities too rare to be
lightly overlooked. Whatever we may think of the