Dante Alighieri, his life and works . he tomb was restored in 1483by Bernardo Bembo (father of the celebrated cardinal,Pietro Bembo), who was at that-time Praetor, of theVenetian Republic in Ravenna. He entrusted the workto the Venetian sculptor and architect, Pietro Lombardi,who, among other things, recarved the face of the sarco-phagus, and inscribed upon it the epitaph of Canacciomentioned above, to which the letters S. V. F. were pre-fixed, evidently under the impression that the author of Englished as follows by the English traveller, Fynes Moryson, whenhe was at Ravenna in 1594 :— The Mo
Dante Alighieri, his life and works . he tomb was restored in 1483by Bernardo Bembo (father of the celebrated cardinal,Pietro Bembo), who was at that-time Praetor, of theVenetian Republic in Ravenna. He entrusted the workto the Venetian sculptor and architect, Pietro Lombardi,who, among other things, recarved the face of the sarco-phagus, and inscribed upon it the epitaph of Canacciomentioned above, to which the letters S. V. F. were pre-fixed, evidently under the impression that the author of Englished as follows by the English traveller, Fynes Moryson, whenhe was at Ravenna in 1594 :— The Monarchies, Gods, Lakes, and Phlegeton, I searcht and sung, while my Fates did permit; But since my better part to heaven is gone, And with his Maker mongst the starres doth sit, I Dantes a poore banished man lie here, Whom Florence Mother of scant Love did beare. For scant in the last line Moryson (or his printers) substituted sweet (see Itinerary, ed. 1617, part i. p. 95). 2 See Ricci, op. cit. p. 264. 3 That is, Sibi Vivens DANTES TOMB AT RAVENNA ELEGIES ON DANTES DEATH 107 the lines was Dante himself; while the epitaph ofMenghino Mezzano was omitted. Much of the work executed by Lombardi under Bembosdirections, including the inscribed epitaph, and the marblerelief of Dante reading at a desk, remains to this The tomb was a second time restored, more than twohundred years later (in 1692) by Cardinal DomenicoMaria Corsi, the Papal Legate ^; and a third time, in1780, by Cardinal Luigi Valenti Gonzaga, who erectedthe mausoleum, surmounted by a dome, as it now stands. Not only was the death of Dante recorded as an eventof importance by his fellow-citizen, Giovanni Villani, inhis Florentine chronicle,^ but numerous elegies werewritten on the occasion by friends and contemporariesof the poet in various parts of Italy. Among these werepoems by Cino da Pistoja, and Giovanni Quirini ofVenice, with both of whom Dante had exchanged sonnets inhis lifetime.* Cino, who thirty
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