couraged by the authorities, and the task was
given to Alessandro Leopardi (who made the sockets for the three
flagstaffs opposite S. Mark's), and it is his name which is inscribed on
the statue. But to Verrocchio the real honour.

Among the Colleoni statue's great admirers was Robert Browning, who
never tired of telling the story of the hero to those unacquainted with
it.

The vast church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo does for the Dominicans what the
Frari does for the Franciscans; the two churches being the Venetian
equivalents of Florence's S. Maria Novella and Santa Croce. Like too
many of the church facades of Venice, this one is unfinished and
probably ever will be. Unlike the Frari, to which it has a general
resemblance, the church of John and Paul is domed; or rather it
possesses a dome, with golden balls upon its cupola like those of S.
Mark. Within, it is light and immense but far inferior in charm to its
great red rival. It may contain no Titian's ashes, but both Giovanni and
Gentile Bellini lie here; and its forty-six Doges give it a cachet. We
come at once to two of them, for on the outside wall are the tombs of
Doge Jacopo Tiepolo, who gave the land for the church, and of his son,
Doge Lorenzo Tiepolo.

[Illustration: BARTOLOMMEO COLLEONI FROM THE STATUE BY ANDREA
VERROCCHIO]

Just within we find Alvise Mocenigo (1570-1577) who was on the throne
when Venice was swept by the plague in which Titian died, and who
offered the church of the Redentore on the Guidecca as a bribe to
Heaven to stop the pestilence. Close by lie his predecessors and
ancestors, Pietro Mocenigo, the admiral, and Giovanni Mocenigo, his
brother, whose reign (1478-1485) was peculiarly belligerent and
witnessed the great fire which destroyed so many treasures in the Ducal
Palace. What he was like you may see in the picture numbered 750 in our
National Gallery, once given to Carpaccio, then to Lorenzo Bastiani, and
now to the school of Gentile Bellini. In this work the Doge kneels to
the Virgin and implores intercession for the plague-stricken city.
Pietro's monument is the most splendid, with a number of statues by
Pietro Lombardi, architect of the Ducal Palace after the same fire. S.
Christopher is among these figures, with a nice little Christ holding on
to his ear.

In the right aisle we find the monument of Bragadino, a Venetian
commander who, on the fall of Cyprus, which he had been defending
against the Turks, was flayed alive.