Page:Three Years in Europe.djvu/375

Rh inscribed on the dome appear scarcely more than a foot in length though they are six feet each. A pen in the hand of Moses scarcely appears 18 inches, but is seven feet long! The Baldacchino, the rich bronze canopy over the altar, looks about 25 feet high but is 120 feet in height! And even little cherubs in marble on the floor of the church appear of the size of little children, but are quite six or seven feet when you walk close to them! It is when you see the people in the church at a distance, creeping like pigmies [sic] on the spacious marble pavement that you can believe the comparative height of the figures and pillars. But even when the mind is convinced of this fact, the eye still fails to realize the vast proportions of this magnificient [sic] edifice.

I went all round the aisles and saw the exquisite marble figures on the tombs of the men buried here. One or two of these deserve mention. There is a tomb of the disinherited Stuarts of England whom the Pope of course took under his protection, and the fine monument over it is by Canova. In the Chapel della Pieta, there is a marble group by Michael Angelo, the great architect of this great church. It represents the Virgin with the dead body of Christ on her knees. The tomb of Pope Clement XIII. is by Canova and represents the Pope in the attitude of prayer with figures of Death and Religion before him. At the angles are the celebrated lions, one sleeping and the other awake, considered among the finest works of modern sculpture. The monument on the tomb of Pius VI. near the altar is also by Canova.