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THE MONUMENTS OF SANTA CROCE.
on which Fame as a winged genius is inscribing the good deed:
of the deceased.
In front of the last central columns of the nave, are moderr
monuments to two of the Alberti family, who had their burial
vaults beneath this part of the church, the site of the ancient
choir. That on the southern side, by the sculptor Santarelli,
is to the senator Giovanni Vincenzio Alberti, who left a son.
Leon Battista, the last of the family, by whom the Alberti
became extinct, in 1836. The opposite monument, by Bartolini.
is to commemorate the most distinguished man in the family.
another Leon Battista, called the modern Vitruvius, who was
born in 1398; he was eminent as a mathematician, natural philo¬
sopher, elegant writer, and orator. He published works on
mechanics, painting, perspective, architecture, hydraulics, &c.
In the northern transept is a monument, by Fantacchiotti,
to the celebrated musical composer, Luigi Cherubini, born in
Florence, 1760, where a mass composed by him at the age of
thirteen, was first performed. He spent most of his life in
Paris, where he was appointed head of the Conservatoire de
Musique, and where he died in 1842. He composed forty-two
operas, and twenty-nine pieces of church music. In the
adjoining chapel is the monument to the Polish Countess
Zamoyska, of the family Czartoryska, by the celebrated modern
Tuscan sculptor Bartolini—one of his best works. She is
seated almost upright on her bed, painfully emaciated, and
with all the appearance of approaching death.
Returning to the nave, the first monument in the north aisle
was erected to the celebrated engraver Raffaelle Morghen, by
his pupils and friends, in 1854.1 Morghen, of German origin
(born in 1758, died in 1833), learned his art from his father,
when engaged in taking engravings of the paintings dis
covered in Herculaneum. He studied under Volpato at Rome,
and was afterwards appointed Professor of Engraving at
Florence, by the Grand Duke Ferdinand III.
His body was laid in the little church of Montughi, outside the Porta
San Gallo.