In Italy there are many examples of what may be called Facade monuments, which are extensive architectural compositions, consisting of two or more orders of columns, with pediments, niches, statues, panels, and various other architectural decorations. Of such "maechine colossali," as Cicognara terms them, the monument of the doge Yeller by Tirali, and that of the doge Pesaro by Longheua, may be quoted as instances. In both of them the figures are merely accompaniments to the architecture, and that which should be the principal is almost the most insignificant among them. In the Catafalc tomb, even when equally extravagant in point of accumulated embellishment, there is at least a certain degree of character that stamps it at first sight for what it is, whereas in those of the kind just referred to there is nothing to indicate a sepulchral monument. This last remark applies very forcibly to those two celebrated works of Michel Angelo, the tombs of Giuliano and Lorenzo do' Medici, each of which has, besides the figures of those personages, two naked semi-recumbent figures, a male and female, intended, or supposed to be intended, to express day and night (or sleep), and morning and evening. More becoming in feeling and in taste
arc many other Italian tombs of about the same period, which consist of little more than a simple deposit°, or sarcophagus, with either a recumbent or semi-recumbent figure of the. deceased upon it; such, for instance, as those of Giov. Andr. Boccaccio in the cloister of Santa Maria della Pace, and of Angelo Marzi in the church of the Annunziata at Florence. Although' they have abandoned the architectural cari cat ura formerly in vogue for such purposes, instead of returning to the simple and natural expression of Christian monumental works, later sculptors have frequently given us allegorical compositions and groups of mythological figures, and the likeness of persons intended to be recorded is shown only in a medallion. In this vicious taste are many of the monuments in St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey, while others are chiefly remarkable for the fantastic conceits into which the artists have fallen, and which render them equally unbefitting the purpose they are designed for and the place where they are erected.