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At the back of the high altar is a second altar with pillars of alabaster, and the custodian places his candle behind the central ones to illustrate their soft lucency, and affirms that they are from Solomon's own temple. His candle illumines also Sansovino's bronze sacristy door, with its fine reliefs of the Deposition and the Resurrection, with the heads of Evangelists and Prophets above them.
The balcony of the room, which juts over the Piazzetta, is rarely accessible; but if it is open one should tarry there for the fine view of Sansovino's Old Library. Here one sees a few pictures, a few articles of vertû, some sumptuous apartments, some rich ceilings, and a wilderness of ancient sculpture.
I have reason for what I say, since we have often met together in familiar converse, and may the day be cursed on which you ever said any good about anybody on earth." How Michelangelo answered this intemperate and unjust invective is not known to us. In some way or other the quarrel between the two sculptors must have been made up probably through a frank apology on Sansovino's part.
S. Mark's main façade is of course beyond words wonderful; but after this the Piazza has only the Merceria clock and the Old and the New Procuratie, whereas the Piazzetta has S. Mark's small façade, the Porta della Carta and lovely west façade of the Doges' Palace, the columns bearing S. Mark's lion and S. Theodore, Sansovino's Old Library and Loggetta; while the Campanile is common to both.
Subsequently they were moved to Mesembria and then to Constantinople, from which city the great Doge Dandolo brought them to Venice. They now repose in S. Salvatore beneath an altar. The west side of the Piazzetta consists of the quiet and beautiful façade of Sansovino's Old Library.
It is possible indeed to think of its revivification as being more of a miracle than the new campanile: for the new campanile was a straight-forward building feat, whereas to reconstruct Sansovino's charm and delicacy required peculiar and very unusual gifts.
A short, but most significant, sentence is added to Sansovino's account of the construction of that room. A small square tower is seen above the Vine angle in the view of Venice dated 1500, and attributed to Albert Durer.
But that it was once better can be seen in one of the Guardis at the National Gallery, No. 2099. Finally we have Sansovino's mint, now S. Mark's Library, with the steamboat bridge for passengers for the Giudecca and the Zattere in front of it, and then the corner of the matchless Old Library, and the Molo with all its life beneath the columns.
Six realistic heads are here too, one of which is Titian's, one Sansovino's himself, and one the head of Aretino, the witty and licentious writer and gilt-edged parasite this last a strange selection for a sacristy door. Sansovino designed also the bronze figures of the Evangelists on the balustrade of the choir stalls and the reliefs of the Doge's and Dogaressa's private pews.
Infiltration of water had been observed in the roof of Sansovino's Loggetta where that roof joined the shaft of the Campanile. At this point a thin ledge of stone, let into the wall of the Campanile, projected over the junction between the leaden roof of the Loggetta and the shaft of the tower.
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