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Dominic kneeling at the
Cross. There are two or three others by the angelic friar in different
parts of the cloister, and a regular series, filling up all the arches,
by various artists. Its four-sided, cloistered walk surrounds a square,
open to the sky as usual, and paved with gray stones that have no
inscriptions, but probably are laid over graves. Its walls, however, are
incrusted, and the walk itself is paved with monumental inscriptions on
marble, none of which, so far as I observed, were of ancient date.
Either the fashion of thus commemorating the dead is not ancient in
Florence, or the old tombstones have been removed to make room for new
ones. I do not know where the monks themselves have their burial-place;
perhaps in an inner cloister, which we did not see. All the inscriptions
here, I believe, were in memory of persons not connected with the
convent.
A door in the wall of the cloister admitted us into the chapter-house,
its interior moderately spacious, with a roof formed by intersecting
arches.


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