Spanish ideas were in control, and on investigation, thereafter, that Spanish influence in Naples may easily be accounted for.

Always on inspection unsuspected differences and likenesses become apparent. So, in Bellpuig, where by hearsay there was "only an overloaded Italian tomb," the strong sunlight directly after noon revealed, to one fresh from Naples and the abundant and known work of Giovanni da Nola, two distinct styles. An advantage of taking one's own photographs is that one has to stay and look at the object for several hours without intermission, and in that time, impressions are slowly formed. The mind is as sensitive as the photographic plate, but for neither is the best result instantaneous. The belief there formed and recorded in the notebook was that the Virgin a-top, the sarcophagus, the relief of a sea-fight, and perhaps the two friezes are by Giovanni da Nola. For the sirens and the half-length girls, with the pilasters, he is not responsible. From his designs, but not from his hand, are the putti and the Rachael and Leah figures, with the seated figures above, together with the scheme of the whole. The hypothesis would be that he prepared the drawings, under Spanish influence, in Naples, did the most important parts, and left the remainder probably to Genoese masters. On the base is carved: Joannes Nolanus faciebat.1

Raymond of Cardona was victor at Mazalquivir in 1505, and the battle there is probably the sea-fight depicted on his tomb. In 1510 Ferrand I made him Viceroy of Naples; in 1513 he delivered Milan from the French and Genoa from the Venetians; in 1522 he died at Naples. The Franciscan convent of Bellpuig he had founded fifteen years before, the bull of Julius II being dated early in 1507. His widow, Doña Isabel Cardona y Requesens, ordered his tomb for that church from Giovanni da Nola and buried him meanwhile in Castelnuovo. Nine years later the body, still incorrupt, was received at Bellpuig "in a chest closed by two keys" and deposited in the great tomb.

On March 15, 1531, says a notarial act still in existence, "positum fuit in monumentum in eadem Ecclesia situm, et sua effigie a famossisimo artifice Joanne de Nola, perfectissima arte construc

1 There is a short study of Giovanni da Nola in Frizzoni, Arte Italiana nel Rinascimento, pp. 83-88. Various references are scattered through the volumes of Napoli Nobilissima; the passage cited later from Benedetto Croce's researches into the records of Spanish artists and craftsmen in Naples, will be found there, Vol. IV, p. 12.

tum."

All travellers admired it: "the most sumptuous monument of the arts that there is in Catalonia," said Ponz, and again, 'coming back to Juan Nolano, he well deserves to be accounted as one of the great men who flourished when the noble arts were emerging from the shadows."2 Céan Bermúdez sets down under the year 1524, in his index of sculptors, "Juan Nolano in Cataluña."3

When the convent was exclaustrated the tomb was neglected, and opened casually to show to any chance traveller the tall body of the great Captain-General of the Church. Piferrer reported indignantly that a crowbar for this use lay across the sarcophagus: the golden sword of Julius II had disappeared at the time that the French went through. In 1809 they had come to Bellpuig, and with comings and goings stayed there about four months: they wrecked the church, violated the tomb, broke the statues, stole the gold hilt of the sword, and probably destroyed the banners which had been taken in great battles. When the French had gone the Spaniards, who were keeping Lérida, turned the convent into a military hospital and did more damage. From 1816 to 1829 the friars were restoring it, but in 1835 they were turned out and the townsfolk at leisure looted the place. At last the monument was transferred to the parish church; the work took from December 13, 1841, till May 11, 1842, and another notarial act certifies to the regularity of the translation, and preserves the names of the ducal representative, the clerical committee, and the municipal authorities, the masons and their assistants, and the supervising architect. The urns on the top were probably his invention, and parts of the dress of the hermes.

How badly the tomb had been damaged in 1809 and 1835 we have no way to know, but the work took fifty-nine cartloads of marble and much more of ordinary stone and building material. "A great altar fabricated of the said marbles and statues," the document calls it, and in description is more concerned with preserving the inscriptions than itemizing the sculptures.

1 Valeri Serra y Boldú, Lo Convent de Bellpuig, p. 15. The facts are drawn from this study and Piferrer's Cataluña (written in conjunction with Pi Margall and revised a generation later by A. A. Pijoan), II, pp. 259–312.

2 Ponz, Viaje de España, XIV, letter v.

Diccionario de los mas illustres professores de las bellas artes, VI, p. 109. There is no biography of Juan Nolano and I have been unable to discover the reference in the foregoing five volumes or to explain where he got the date. Piferrer, op. cit. notes on pp. 309 and 312 f.

Of these inscriptions there are three: below, on the left, one says:-Servavi thalamum genie dulcissime conjux, servandus nunc est pro thalamo tumulus. Another, corresponding, on the right, reads: Ornasti et manes lacrimis miserabilis uxor haud optare alias fas erat inferius. The most important crowns the whole, where a pediment might be: Raimundo Cardonae qui Regnum Neapolitanum prerrogativa pene regia tenens gloriam sibi ex mansuetudine comparavit, Ysabella uxor infelix marito opt. fecit. Vix.

ann. XXXXXIII

mens. VIII diebus VI. ann. M. D. XXII.

The tomb will recall to the traveller at first glance the two monuments by Sansovino in S. Maria del Popolo (1505-7), but the difference is great. It looks more like a triumphal arch or portal and the niche is deeper (Fig. 2). For the ecclesiastical figure dozing uncomfortably is substituted a young knight sleeping on his armor. This is a favorite motive in Spanish tomb sculpture, as almost nameless tombs

may be seen, for instance, among the in the south transept at Avila (Fig. 3). It is slightly modified in that of the Count of Tendilla (now in S. Ginés of Guadalajara), who died in 1479; or that, better known, at Sigüenza, of Martin Vázquez de Arce, whom the Moors killed in 1486. The intention of it is, always, the Spanish ideal of knighthood. The depth of the recess is also a Spanish trait, for while Italian tombs have the

1 The Avila tombs I have photographed, but I think they are unpublished; those of Guadalajara and Sigüenza may be found in the admirable work of Ricardo de Orueta, La Escultura Funeraria en España, in the volume for Ciudad Real, Cuenca and Guadalajara, pp. 110-160.

air of being developed from a wall slab, the Spanish derive from the arcosolium. The Gothic tombs of Leon, or Burgos, or of the Old Cathedral of Salamanca, show this, and show the tympanum under the arch occupied by a religious scene. Here the lunette is filled with a Pietà, equally suitable for its place in theme and in composition.

The statues that flank the recess are a trifle too large for their niches and the pattern on their bases recurs nowhere else. The one on the left, with oak bough and helmet, presents probably some allegory of strength in government and war; the one on the right, who has lost her hands and with them her attributes, shows more recueillement and stands probably for some aspect of faith. From roundels above emerge half-lengths of buxom nymphs, with

the laurel wreath and the olive bough. A pair of seated prophets or evangelists on top of the cornice are reduced to holding shields: that on the left is like a young warrior; the right-hand figure is brooding and very lovely. Over all a Madonna, up-borne in her mandorla of cherub-heads by gay young girl-angels, is perfectly Florentine.

The artist had thought it enough for the great admiral to set on his sarcophagus a frieze of marine deities, exquisite in design: the squatting, web-footed sirens which sustain it, though their funereal significance here is a curious survival of the Greek motive, are plastically an unhappy afterthought. In the spandrels above appear, on one side, the crane that occupies the same place at Ripoll, and on the other the pot of lilies that is the Virgin's impresa all over Spain. Now the cornice of cranes and lily pots is cer

tainly from Giovanni da Nola's hand, and I am at a loss how to interpret it; the rest is plain enough, one side being given to the active and one to the contemplative life, and Our Lady set in the midst in her joy and her sorrow.

Giovanni da Nola lived in Naples all his days, working for Spaniards and with Spaniards. So much we know, but not much more. At one moment in the church of Monte Oliveto, between Rossellino's lovely tomb and Benedetto's lovely altar, his art rises high as that of Girolamo da Santacroce, and, as tourists and compilers betray, you could not tell the one from the other. At S. Giovanni a Carbonara he was employed long, and Vasari, who also worked there and should know, says explicitly: "the altar-piece of that chapel [of the Marchese di Vico], in which are half-reliefs of the Magi making offerings to Christ, is by the hand of a Spaniard." Thence he proceeds to a story of a competition between this Spaniard and Girolamo da Santacroce.

In S. Giovanni a Carbonari work was going on from 1516 to 1557. The relief of Christ carried to his grave is by "Giovanni di Prato Spagnuolo," says Benedetto Croce. This sculptor is, however, usually referred to as the Spaniard Pietro delle Plate or da Prato, for instance, by Eugène Müntz. His name was probably Pere Prat, which is good Catalan. He is presumably the man who built the parish church of S. Elmo in the Castle for D. Pedro de Toledo, the Viceroy's cousin, in 1547, where a stone still says: Aedem hanc, opera et artificio Petri Prati Hispani Facundum cur idemque approbavit anno a Christi nato M D X L VIII. He made also, perhaps, says Croce, the statues of the sepulchre of Andrea Bonifacio and G. B. Cicara (which Frizzoni attributes to Giovanni da Nola) in the church of S. Severino. The point is that there was a Spaniard, that Giovanni, exceedingly sensitive and variable, was subjected to Spanish influence directly.

"He made a tomb for D. Pedro de Toledo, Marquis of Villafranca, and his wife, who were then resident in Naples, in which he made an infinity of stories of the victories that lord gained over the Turks, with many statues which are in that work, all set separate and carved out with much diligence. It was to have been carried into Spain, but that not having been done in his

1 Vasari, Le Vite, ed. Sansoni, 1880, V, pp. 93-96. Milanesi (and certainly Perkins after him, Handbook of Italian Sculpture, pp. 366-369) relied on De Dominici, who was finally shown up by Benedetto Croce in 1893 in Napoli Nobilissima, I, p. 143.