dow, should be looked at next to the
physician's; for as that is the best, this is essentially the worst,
piece of sculptured art in the building; a series of academy studies in
marble, well executed, but without either taste or invention, and
necessarily without meaning, the monument having been erected to a
person whose only claim to one was his having stolen money enough to pay
for it before he died. It is one of the first pieces extant of entirely
mechanical art workmanship, done for money; and the perfection of its
details may justify me in directing special attention to it.

222. There are no other monuments, still less pictures, in the body of
the church deserving notice. The general effect of the interior is
impressive, owing partly to the boldness and simplicity of the pillars
which sustain the roof; partly to the darkness which involves them:
these Dominican churches being, in fact, little more than vast halls for
preaching in, and depending little on decoration, and not at all on
light. But the sublimity of shadow soon fails when it has nothing
interesting to shade; and the chapel or monuments which, opposite each
interval between the pillars, fill the sides of the aisles, possess no
interest except in their arabesques of cinque-cento sculpture, of which
far better examples may be seen elsewhere; while the differences in
their ages, styles, and purposes hinder them from attaining any unity of
decorative effect, and break the unity of the church almost as fatally,
though not as ignobly, as the incoherent fillings of the aisles at
Westminster. The Cavalli chapel itself, though well deserving the
illustration which the Arundel Society has bestowed upon it, is filled
with a medley of tombs and frescoes of different dates, partly
superseding, none illustrating, each other, and instructive mainly as
showing the unfortunate results of freedom and "private enterprise" in
matters of art, as compared with the submission to the design of one
ruling mind which is the glory of all the chapels in Italy where the art
is entirely noble.

223. Instructive, thus, at least, even if seen hastily; much better
teaching may be had even from the unharmonious work, if we give time and
thought to it. The upper fresco on the north wall, representing the
Baptism of Christ, has no beauty, and little merit as art; yet the
manner of its demerit is interesting. St. John kneels to baptize. This
variation from the received treatment, in whic