Tomb of the Cardinal of Portugal

No more than a generic scheme of it remains in the large niche that holds the tomb of the Cardinal of Portugal by Antonio Rossellino, a truly scenographic setting for a most animated representation of a celebratory “triumph”. When, from 1492 to 1498, Pollajolo created the tomb of Innocent VIII, the clear Brunelleschian partition of the humanist monument, a mirror of rational and moral certainty, had given way to a plastic structure continuously vibrating as the light passes over the different projections of the bronze, which prolongs and expands into space the energy and torment of the modelling. It is the full expression of the individual merging into a cosmic dynamism beyond the control of reason.