TOMB
774
TOMB
ture above and around them, as a baldachin, e. g.
the tomb of the Delia Seala at Verona; chiefly that of
Cansignorio (d. 1375). During the Renaissance the
baldachin assumed
an entirely monu-
mental form, al-
most that of a
triumphal arch;
hno examples are
the monuments of
Ci.iUeazzo Visconti
in the Certosa at
Pa via and of
Francis I at Saint-
Denis.
The third class may be called mu- lal tombs, that is, altar - tombs set uriginallyin a niche against a wall, and Liter raised u]jon pillars, caryatides, or a soUd under- structure. They were decorated on all sides with rich plastic ornamenta- tion. They were
Tomb of the Doge Giovanni Pesaro
Longhena, the Frari, Venice
customary as early as the Gothic period and attained
their highest development in Italy, where the inordi-
nate craving for fame and the longing to be remem-
bered by posterity led to the production of those
magnificent sepulchral monuments for physicians,
lawyers, professors, statesmen, and, by no means
last, prelates, which fill the churches from Venice to
Naples. During the period of the early Renaissance
it was a favourite custom to place a recumbent statue
of the deceased upon a state bed or a sarcophagus and
to set this at a moderate height; this structure is
surrounded by standing or kneeling angels who draw
back a curtain of the niche in which the Madonna is
often visible. A fine example is the tomb of Leonardo <
Bruni (d. 1444) in
Santa Croce at
Florence. During
the late Renais-
sance undue con-
sideration was paid
to architecture, as
in the sepulchral
monument of Gio-
\-aiini Pesaro in
the Frari church at
Venice. In the
seventeenth and
eighteenth centu-
ries the art of
sculptui'e obtained
- igain a greater
Djiportunity in the t r (■ a t m e n t of tombs, but unfor- tunately only in the monotonous Baroque style. Hardly more than the figure of the deceased was brought into prominence. It was jilaced within an altar of similar style or upon a broad podium and was sur- rounded by all kinds of symbolical figures in the most daring positions. In a material sense these tombs are often very fine but they fre-
quently lack the desired spiritual earnestness and
repose.
The fourth class consists of hanging sepulchral monuments (memorial tablets). These occur as early as Gothic art in the form of funeral escutcheons and coats of arms made of wood or leather; and are especially prominent in the period of the Rococo and Baroque styles. Besides the altar-shaped tablet often constructed in several stories, the cartouche containing a portrait of the deceased was very popu- lar in sepulchral monuments of this class.
Since the modern era put an end nearly everyTvhere to the burial of the dead within the church building, a new form of sepulchral art has gradually developed ; it has produced works of the greatest beauty in all countries, but has also shown great perversions of the artistic sense, especiaUj' in Italy where the ten- dency is more to an excess of technic than to the conception of the eternal. The finest sepulchral monument of modern times is perhaps the one designed by A. BartholomS and erected at Fere Lachaise.
Stothakd, Monumental Effigies of Great Britain (London, 1817) : CoTM.AN, Engravings of Sepulchral Brasses in Norfolk and Suffolk (London, 1.S39); Male, L'arl religieux en France (Paris. 1908), 423—477; Burger, Gesch. des florent. Grabmals (Strasburg. 1904): ScHUBRING. Das italien. Grabmal der Friihrenaissance (Berlin, 1904) ; Davies, The Sculptured Tombs of the Fifteenth Cen- tury in Rome, with chapters o?i the previous centuries (London, 1910); <3erl.ach, Alte Grabmalskunst (Leipzig, 1909).
Beda Kleinschmidt.
Tomb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. — The tomb of the Blessed Virgin is venerated in the Valley of the Cedron, near Jerusalem. Modern writers hold, how-
ToMB OF Lf.onardo Brdni
Roaselliuo, Churcli of S. Croce, Florence
.\SSUMPTI0.\
ever, that Mary died and was buried at Ephesus.
The main points of the question to be taken into
consideration are as follows.
I. The apocryphal works of the second to the fourth century are all favourable to the Jerusalem tradition. According to the "Acts of St. John by Prochurus", written (160-70) by Lencius, the Evangehst went to Ephesus accompanied by Prochurus alone and at a very advanced age, i. e. after Mary's death. The two letters "B. Ignatii missa S. Joanni", wTitten about 370, show that the Blessed Virgin passed the remain- der of her days at Jerusalem (Funk, "Patres ap.", 1901, II, 214-16). That of Dionysius the .\reopagite to the Bishop Titus (363), the "Joannis liber de Dormitione Maria;" (third to fourth century), and the treatise "De transitu B. M. Virginis" (fourth century) place her tomb at Gethsemane. From an his- torical standpoint these works, although apocryphal, have a real value, reflecting as they do the tradition of the early centuries. At the beginning of the fifth century a pilgrim from Armenia visited "the tomb of the Virgin in the valley of Josaphat", and about 4.'il the "Breviarius de liierusaleni" mentions in that valley "the basilica of Holy Mary, which contains her
