[Footnote 130: See Schmarsow, p. 32.]

[Footnote 131: See "Arch. Storico dell' Arte," 1888, p. 24.]

[Footnote 132: Victoria and Albert Museum, No. 7629, 1861. Bocchi says: "Un quadro di marmo di mano di Donatello di basso relievo: dove e effigiato quando da le chiavi Cristo a S. Pietro. Estimata molto da gli artefici questa opera: la quale per invenzione e rara, e per disegno maravigliosa. Molto e commendata la figura di Cristo, e la prontezza che si scorge nel S. Pietro. E parimente la Madonna posta in ginocchione, la quale in atto affetuoso ha sembiante mirabile e divoto," p. 372.]

[Footnote 133: "Ammaestramento Utile," 1686, p. 141. "Una testa nel deposito a mano destra della Porta Maggiore, e scoltura di Donatello Fiorentino." In Chapel of Paul V., Sta. M. Maggiore: "In terra in una lapide vi e di profilo la figura del Canonico Morosini, opera di Donatello famoso scultore e architetto." Ibid. p. 241.]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The Medici Medallions.]

The Medici did not remain in exile long, and their return to Florence marks an epoch in the artistic as well as the political history of Tuscany. From this moment the sway of the private collector and patron began. Gradually the great churches and corporations ceased giving orders on the grand scale, for much of the needful decoration was by then completed. By the middle of the century patronage was almost wholly vested in the magnates of commerce and politics: if a chapel were painted or a memorial statue set up, in most cases the artist worked for the donor, and not for the church authorities. The monumental type of sculpture became more rare, bric a brac more common. Well-known men like Donatello received the old kind of commission to the end of their lives, while younger men, though fully occupied, were seldom entrusted with comprehensive orders. Even Michael Angelo was more dependent on the Pope than upon the Church. Among the earliest commissions given by the Medici after their return was an order for marble copies of eight antique gems. These were placed in the courtyard of their Florentine house, now called the Palazzo Riccardi. They are colossal in size, and represent much labour and no profit to art. Nothing is more suitably reproduced on a cameo than a good piece of sculpture; but the engraved gem is the last source to which sculpture should turn for inspiration. Donatello had to enlarge what had already been reduced; it was like copying a corrupt text. The size of these medallions accentuates faults which were unnoticed in the dainty gem. The intaglio of Diomede and the Palladium (now in Naples) is too small to show the fault which is so glaring in the marble relief, where Diomede is in a position which it is impossible for a human being to maintain. But the relief is admirably carved: nothing could be better than the straining sinews of the thigh; and it is of interest as being the only one which is related to any other work of the sculptor. The head of one of the angels in the Brancacci Assumption is taken from this Diomede or from some other version of it. A similar treatment is found in Madame Andre's relief of a young warrior. It has been pointed out that some of the gems from which these medallions were made did not come into the Medici Collections until many years later.[134] Cosimo may have owned casts of the originals, or Donatello may have copied them in Rome, for they belonged at this time to the Papal glyptothek, from which they were subsequently bought. The subjects of these roundels are Ulysses and Athena, a faun carrying Bacchus, two incidents of Bacchus and Ariadne, a centaur, Daedalus and Icarus, a prisoner before his victor, and the Diomede. Gems became very popular and expensive: a school of engravers grew up who copied, invented, and forged. Carpaccio introduced them into his pictures,[135] and Botticelli used them so freely that they almost became the ruling element of decoration in the "Calumny." Gems are incidentally introduced in Donatello's bust of the so-called Young Gattamelata, and on Goliath's helmet below the Bronze David. The Medusa head occurs on the base of the Judith, on the Turin Sword hilt, and on the armour of General Gattamelata. So much of Donatello's work has perished that it is almost annoying to see how well these Medici medallions are preserved—the work in which his individuality was allowed little play, and in which he can have taken no pride.

[Footnote 134: Molinier, "Les Plaquettes," 1886, p. xxvi.]

[Footnote 135: Cf. St. Ursula, Accademia, Venice, No. 574.]

* * * * *



[Sidenote: The Bronze David.]

According to Vasari, the Bronze David was made for Cosimo before the exile of the Medici, and consequently previous to Donatello's second journey to Rome. It was removed from the courtyard of the palace to the Palazzo Pubblico, where it remained for many years. Doni mentions it as being there in 1549,[136] and soon afterwards it was replaced by Verrocchio's fountain of the Boy squeezing the Dolphin. It is now in the Bargello. The base has been lost. Albertini says it was made of variegated marbles.[137] Vasari says it was a simple column.[138] It has been suggested that the marble pillar now supporting the Judith belonged to the David, but the David is even less fitted to this ill-conceived and pedantic shaft than Judith herself. The David soon acquired popularity; the French envoy, Pierre de Rohan, wanted a copy of it. It was certainly a remarkable innovation, being probably the first free-standing nude statue made in Italy for a thousand years. There had been countless nude figures in relief, but the David was intended to be seen from every side of Cosimo's cortile. There was no experimental stage with Donatello; his success was immediate and indeed conclusive. David is a stripling. He stands over the head of Goliath, a sword in one hand and a stone in the other, wearing his helmet, a sort of sun-hat in bronze which is decorated with a chaplet of leaves; below his feet is a wreath of bay. It is a consistent study in anatomy. The David is perhaps sixteen years old, agile and supple, with a hand which is big relative to the forearm, as nature ordains. The back is bony and rather angular; the torso is brilliantly wrought, with a purity of outline and a morbidezza which made the artists in Vasari's time believe the figure had been moulded from life. One might break the statue into half a dozen pieces, and every fragment would retain its vitality and significance. The limbs are alert and full of young strength, with plenty more held in reserve: it is heroic in all respects except dimension. The face is clear cut, and each feature is rendered with precision. The expression is one of dreamy contemplation as he looks downwards on the spoils and proof of conquest. David hath slain his tens of thousands! Finally the quality of the statue is enhanced by the care with which the bronze has been chiselled. Goliath's helmet, and David's greaves, on which the fleur de lys florencee has been damascened, are decorated with unfailing tact. The embellishment is in itself a pleasure to the eye, but it is prudently contained within its legitimate sphere; for Donatello would not allow the accessory to invade the statue itself, which is the chief fault of the rival David by Verrocchio. Donatello's statue marks an epoch in the study of anatomy. It is a genuine interpretation of a very perfect piece of humanity; but his knowledge compared with that of his successors was empiric. Leonardo's subtle skill was based upon dissection. Michael Angelo likewise studied from the human corpse, distasteful as he found the process. Donatello had no such scientific training: he had no help from the surgeon or the hospital, hence mistakes; his doubt, for instance, about the connection between ribs and pectoral bones was never resolved. But, notwithstanding this lack of technical data, the Bronze David has a distinction which is absent in statues made by far more learned men. Donatello's intuition supplied what one would not willingly exchange for the most exact science of the specialist. The David was an innovation, but the phrase must be guarded. It was only an innovation so far as it was a free-standing study from the nude. Nothing is more misleading than the commonplace that Christianity was opposed to the representation of the nude in its proper place. The early Church, no doubt, underwent a prolonged reaction against all that it might be assumed to connote; one might collect many quotations from patristic literature to this effect. But the very articles of the Christian Creed militated against the ultimate scorn of the human body: the doctrine of the Resurrection alone was enough to give it more sanctity than could be derived from all the polytheism of antiquity. The Baptism of Christ, the descent into Limbo, and the Crucifixion itself, were scenes from which the use of drapery had to be less or more discarded. The porches and frontals of Gothic churches abounded in nude statuary, from scenes in the Garden of Eden down to the Last Judgment. Abuses crept in, of course, and the Faith protested against them. The advancing standard of comfort and, no doubt, a steadily deteriorating climate, diminished the everyday familiarity with undraped limbs. Clothes became numerous and more normal; the artist came to be regarded as the purveyor of what had ceased to be of natural occurrence. He was encouraged by the connoisseur, lay and cleric, who found his literature in antiquity, and then demanded classical forms in his art. The nude was arbitrarily employed: there was no biblical authority for a naked David, and Donatello was therefore among the first to err in this respect. The taste for this kind of thing sprang from humanism, and throve with hellenism, till a counter-reaction came suddenly in the sixteenth century. Michael Angelo was hotly attacked for his excessive study from the nude as prejudicial to morals.[139] Ammanati wrote an abject apology to the Accademia del Disegno for the very frank nudity of his statues.[140] Some of the work of Bandinelli and Bronzino had to be removed. What was a rational and healthy protest has survived in grotesque and ill-fitting drapery made of tin—very negation of propriety. Although needed for biblical imagery, the nude in Italy was always exotic; in Greece it was indigenous. From the time of Homer there had been a worship of physical perfection. The Palaestra, the cultivation of athletics in a nation of soldiers, the religions of the country, with its favourable atmosphere, climate, and stone, all combined to make the nude a normal aspect of human life. But it was not the sole inspiration of their art: in Sparta, where there was most nude there was least art; in Italy, when there was worst art there was most nude.

[Footnote 136: "... una colonna nel mezzo dove e un Davitte di Donatello dignissimo." Letter to Alberto Lollio, 17. viii. 1549, Bottari, iii. 341.]

[Footnote 137: Giu abasso e Davit di bronzo sopra la colonna fine di marmo variegato. "Memoriale."]

[Footnote 138: "Life of Bandinelli," x. 301.]

[Footnote 139: "Due dialogi di Giovanni Andrea Gilio da Fabriano," 1564; a tiresome and discursive tirade.]

[Footnote 140: 22. viii. 1582. Reprinted in Bottari, ii. 529.]

* * * * *



[Sidenote: Donatello and Childhood.]

Michael Angelo strove to attain the universal form. His world was peopled with Titans, and he realised his ambition of portraying generic humanity: not, indeed, by making conventional, but by eliminating everything that was not typical. The earliest plastic art took clay and moulded the human form; the next achievement was to make specific man—the portrait; lastly, to achieve what was universal—the type. The progress was from man, to man in particular, and ultimately to man in general. There was a final stage when the typical lost its type without reverting to the specific, to the portrait. The successors of Michael Angelo were among the most skilful craftsmen who ever existed; but their knowledge only bore the fruit of unreality. Donatello did not achieve the typical except in his children: it was only in children that Michael Angelo failed. He missed this supreme opportunity; those on the roof of the Sistine Chapel are solemn and grown old with care: children without childhood. With Donatello all is different. His greatness and title to fame largely rest upon his typical childhood: his sculpture bears eloquent witness to the closest observation of all its varying and changeful moods. Others have excelled in this or that interpretation of child-life: Greuze with his sentimentalism, the Dutch painters with their stolidity. In Velasquez every child is the scion of some Royal House, in Murillo they are all beggars. They are too often stupid in Michelozzo: in Andrea della Robbia they are always sweet and winsome; Pigalle's children know too much. Donatello alone grasped the whole psychology. He watched the coming generation, and foresaw all that it might portend: tragedy and comedy, labour and sorrow, work and play—plenty of play; and every problem of life is reflected and made younger by his chisel. How far the sculptors of the fifteenth century employed classical ideas is not easily determined. There was, however, one classical form which was widely used, namely, the flying putti holding a wreath or coat-of-arms between them: we find it on the frieze of the St. Louis niche, and it is repeated on Judith's dress. The wreath or garland, of which the Greeks were so fond, became a favourite motive for the Renaissance mantelpiece. The classical amoretti, of which many versions in bronze existed, were also frequently copied. But there was one radical difference between the children of antiquity and those of the Renaissance. Though children were introduced on to classical sarcophagi and so forth, it is impossible to say that it was for the sake of their youth. There are genii in plenty; and in the imps which swarm over the emblematic figure of the Nile in the Vatican the sculptor shows no love or respect for childhood. There is no child on the Parthenon frieze, excepting a Cupid, who has really no claim to be reckoned as such. Donatello could not have made a relief 150 yards long without introducing children, whether their presence were justified or not. He would probably have overcrowded the composition with their young forms. Whether right or wrong, he uses them arbitrarily, as simple specimens of pure joyous childhood. Antique sculpture, too, had its arbitrary and conventional adjuncts—the Satyr and the Bacchic attendants; but how dreary that the vacant spaces in a relief should have to rely upon what is half-human or offensive—the avowedly inhuman gargoyles of the thirteenth century are infinitely to be preferred. Donatello was possessed by the sheer love of childhood: with him they are boys, fanciulli ignudi,[141] very human boys, which, though winged and stationed on a font, were boys first and angels afterwards. And he overcame the immense technical difficulties which childhood presents. The model is restive and the form is immature, the softness of nature has to be rendered in the hardest material. The lines are inconsequent, and the limbs do not yet show the muscles on which plastic art can usually depend. Nothing requires more deftness than to give elasticity to a form which has no external sign of vigour. So many sculptors failed to master this initial difficulty—Verrocchio, for instance. He made the bronze fountain in the Palazzo Pubblico, and an equally fine statue of similar dimensions now belonging to M. Gustave Dreyfus. Both have vivacity and movement, but both have also a fat stubby appearance; the flesh has the consistency of pudding, and though soft and velvety in surface is without the inner meaning of the children on the Cantoria. In this work, where Donatello has carved some three dozen children, we have a series of instantaneous photographs. Nobody else had enough knowledge or courage to make rigid bars of children's legs: here they swing on pivots from the hip-joint. It is the true picture of life, rendered with superlative skill and bravura. But Donatello's children serve a purpose, if only that of decoration. At Padua they form a little orchestra to accompany the duets. The singing angels there are among the most charming of the company; and whether intentionally or not, they give the impression of having forgotten the time, or of being a little puzzled by the music-book! But Donatello fails to express the exquisite modulation by which Luca della Robbia almost gives actual sound to his Cantoria: where one sees the swelling throat, the inflated lungs, the effort of the higher notes, and the voice falling to reach those which are deep. Luca's children, it is true, are bigger and older; but in this respect he was unsurpassed, even by painters whose medium should have placed them beyond rivalry in such a respect. The choir of Piero della Francesca's Nativity is so well contrived that one can distinguish the alto from the tenor; but Luca was able to do even more. He gives cadence, rhythm and expression where others did no more than represent the voice. Donatello's dancing children are more important than his musicians. He was able to give free vein to his fancy. We have flights of uncontrollable children, romping and rioting, dashing to and fro, playing and laughing as they pass about garlands among them. And their self-reliance is worth noticing; they are absorbed in their dance—children dance rather heavily—and only a few of them look outwards. There is no self-consciousness, no appeal to the spectator: they are immensely busy, and enjoy life to the full. Then we have a more demure type of childhood: they are shield-bearers on the Gattamelata monument, or occupy an analogous position on the lower part of the Cantoria. Others hold the cartel or epitaph as on the Coscia tomb. And again Donatello introduces children as pure decoration. The triangular base of the Judith, for instance, and the bronze capital which supports the Prato pulpit, have childhood for their sole motive. He smuggles children on to the croziers of St. Louis and Bishop Pecci: they are the supporters of Gattamelata's saddle: they decorate the vestments of San Daniele. They share the tragedy of the Pieta, and we have them in his reliefs. The entire frieze of the pulpits of San Lorenzo is simply one long row of children—some two hundred in all.

[Footnote 141: Contract with Domopera of Siena. Payment for wax, for making the bronze figures for the Baptistery. 16, iv. 1428. Lusini, 38.]

* * * * *



[Sidenote: The Cantoria.]

The Cantoria, or organ-loft, of the Florentine Cathedral was ordered soon after Donatello's return from Rome, and was erected about 1441. It was placed over one of the Sacristy doors, corresponding in position with Luca della Robbia's cantoria on the opposite side of the choir. The ill-fortune which dispersed the Paduan altar and Donatello's work for the facade likewise caused the removal of this gallery. Late in the seventeenth century a royal marriage was solemnised, for which an orchestra of unusual numbers was required, and the two cantorie were removed as inadequate. The large brackets remained in situ for some time, but were afterwards taken away also. The two galleries have now been re-erected at either end of the chief room of the Opera del Duomo. But the size of the galleries is considerable, and they occupy so much of the end walls to which they are fixed, that it is impossible to see the sides or outer panels of either cantoria. In the case of Luca's gallery, the side panels have been replaced by facsimiles, and the originals can be minutely examined, being only four or five feet from the ground, and very suggestive they are. As the side panels of Donatello's gallery are equally invisible in their present position they might also be brought down to the eye level. Comparison with Luca's work would then be still more simplified. But though in a trying light, and too low down, the sculpture shows that it was Donatello who gave the more careful attention to the conditions under which the work would be seen. The delicacy and grace of Luca's choir make Donatello's boys look coarse and rough-hewn. But in the dim Cathedral, where Donatello's children would appear bold and vivacious, the others would look insipid and weak. Moreover, the lower tier of Luca's panels beneath the projection and enclosed by the broad brackets, would have been in such a subdued light that some of the heads in low-relief would have been scarcely emphasised at all. In reconstructing Donatello's gallery an error has been made by which a long band of mosaic runs along the whole length of the relief, above the children's heads. M. Reymond has pointed out that the ground level should have been raised in order to prevent what Donatello would undoubtedly have avoided, namely, a blank and meaningless stretch of mosaic.[142] M. Reymond's brilliant suggestion about a similar point in regard to the other cantoria, a criticism which has been verified in a remarkable manner, entitles his suggestion to great weight. The angles of the cantoria where the side panels join the main relief lack finish: something like the pilasters which cover the angles of the Judith base are required. As for the design, the gallery made by Luca della Robbia has an advantage over Donatello's in that the figures are not placed behind a row of columns. There is something tantalising in the fact that the most boisterous and roguish of all the troop is concealed by a pillar of spangled white and gold. These pillars were perhaps needed to break the long line of the relief: but they have no such significance, as, for instance, the row of pillars on the Saltarello tomb,[143] behind which the Bishop's effigy lies—a barrier between the living and the dead, across which the attendant angels can drop the curtain. Donatello's gallery is, perhaps, over-decorated. There is less gilding now than formerly, and the complex ornament does not materially interfere with the broad features of the design: but a little more reserve would not have been amiss.

[Footnote 142: Reymond, I., p. 107.]

[Footnote 143: By Nino Pisano, in Sta. Caterina, Pisa.]

* * * * *



[Sidenote: The Prato Pulpit.]

The second work in which Donatello took his inspiration exclusively from childhood is at Prato. It is an external pulpit, fixed at the southern angle of the Cathedral facade, and employed to display the most famous relic possessed by the town, namely, the girdle of the Virgin. The first contract was made as early as 1428 with Donatello and Michelozzo, industriosi maestri, to whom careful measurements were given.[144] The sculptors promised to finish the work by September 1, 1429. Five years later, there was still no pulpit, and having vainly invoked the aid of Cosimo, they finally sent to Rome, where Donatello had by then gone, and a revised contract was made with the industrious sculptors, though Michelozzo is not mentioned by name.[145] The work was finished in about four years, and within three weeks of signing the new contract one of the reliefs was completed; it may, of course, have been already begun. Its success was immediate. "All say with one accord that never has such a work of art been seen before;" and the writer of the entertaining letter from which this eulogy is quoted goes on to say that Donatello is of good disposition; that such men are not found every day, and that he had better be encouraged by a little money.[146] The Prato pulpit has seven marble reliefs on mosaic grounds, separated by twin pilasters: there are thirty-two children in all.[147] It is a most attractive work, cleverly placed against the decorous little Cathedral and not surrounded by sculpture of the first order with which to make invidious comparisons. But beside the cantoria it is almost insignificant. The Prato children dance too, but without the perennial spring; they have plenty of movement, but seem apt to stumble. They do not scamper along with the feverish enthusiasm of the other children: they must get very tired. Moreover, several of the panels are confused. They are, of course, crowded, for Donatello liked crowds, especially for his children; but his crowds were well marshalled and the individual figures which composed them were not allowed to suffer by their surroundings anatomically. The Prato children belong to a chubby and robust type. They have a tendency to short necks and unduly big heads which sink on to the torso. Michelozzo never grasped the spirit of childhood; those at Montepulciano were not a success, and he was largely responsible for the Prato Pulpit; it has been suggested that Simone Ferrucci also assisted. Certainly it would be Michelozzo's idea to divide the frieze into compartments, which interrupt the continuity of the relief and necessitate fourteen terminal points instead of four on the cantoria. We can also detect Michelozzo's hand in the rather stiff and professional details of the architecture. But he seems to have also executed some of the reliefs, even if the general idea from which he worked should have been Donatello's. Thus the panel most remote from the cathedral facade is involved in design and faulty in execution; and the children's expression is aimless and dull. But it must not be inferred that the Prato Pulpit is in any sense a failure, or even displeasing. Its popularity is thoroughly well deserved. The test of comparison with the cantoria is most searching, too severe indeed, for such a high standard could not be maintained. But if the capo d'opera of sculptured child-life be excluded, the Prato Pulpit will always retain a well-deserved popularity. Two further points should be noted. Below the pulpit is a bronze relief, shaped like the capital of a large column. There should be two of them, and it used to be believed that the second was destroyed in 1512 when the Spanish troops sacked the town. But the story is apocryphal, for the documents show that payment was only made for one relief, and that Michelozzo was entirely responsible for the casting. It is a most decorative panel, the motive being ribands and wreaths, among which there are eleven winged putti of different sizes. At the top of the capital is a big baby in high-relief peeping over the edge; an exquisite fancy reminding us of the two inquisitive children clambering over the heraldic shields on the Pecci monument. On the base of the capital are two other putti of equal charm, winged like the rest, and sedately looking outwards in either direction. The volutes of the bronze are decorated with other figures, less boyish and almost suggesting the touch of Ghiberti, who, it may be remarked, was appointed assessor of the contract by the Wardens of the Girdle. Finally, one may inquire what Donatello's motive can have been in designing the frieze: what may be the relation of the sculpture to the precious Girdle. No conclusive answer can be given. In the organ-loft of Luca della Robbia the object was to show praise of the Lord "with all kinds of instruments"[148]: Donatello's was to "let them praise his name in the dance."[149] At Prato we have dance and music for no apparent reason, except perhaps as a display of joyfulness appropriate to the great festival of exhibiting the Cingolo. It is possible that the curious little reliquary in which the Girdle is actually preserved may supply the clue to some legend or tradition connected with the relic. This cofanetto was remodelled about this time, and the primitive motive and design may have been impaired. But we have a series of winged putti made of ivory, who dance and play about much as those on the pulpit, but amongst whom one can see scraps of rope, signifying the Girdle, from which they derive their incentive to joy and vivacity.

[Footnote 144: 14, vii. 1428.]

[Footnote 145: 27, v. 1434.]

[Footnote 146: Letter from Matteo degli Orghani, printed with the other documents in C. Guasti, opere, iv. 463-477.]

[Footnote 147: A pair of terra-cotta variants of these panels are preserved in the Wallace Collection at Hertford House.]

[Footnote 148: Psalm cl.]

[Footnote 149: Psalm cxlix.]

* * * * *



[Sidenote: Other Children by Donatello.]

There are six putti above the Annunciation in Santa Croce. They are made of terra-cotta, while the rest of the work is in stone, and designed in such a way that the children are superfluous. They are, however, undoubtedly by Donatello, and may have been added as an afterthought. Two stand on either side of the curved tympanum, clinging to each other as they look downwards, and afraid of falling over the steep precipice. Their attitude is shy and timid, as Leonardo said was advisable when making little children standing still.[150] Though unnecessary, their presence on the relief is justified by Donatello's skill and humour. In the great reliefs at Padua, Siena and Lille he introduces them without any specific object, though he contrives that they shall show fear or surprise in response to the incident portrayed. It is puzzling to know what the bronze boy in the Bargello should be called. Perseus, Mercury, Cupid, Allegory and Amorino have been suggested: he combines attributes of them all together with the budding tail of a faun, and the gambali, the buskin-trouser of the Tuscan peasant[151]—"vestito in un certo modo bizzarro" as Vasari says. Cinelli thought it classical, and it resembles an undoubted antique in the Louvre. Donatello has clearly taken classical motives; the winged feet and the serpents twining between them are not Renaissance in form or idea. But the statue itself is closely akin to the Cantoria children, but being in bronze shows a higher polish, and, moreover, is treated in a less summary fashion. It is a brilliant piece of bronze: colour, cast and chiselling are alike admirable, and there is a vibration in the movement as the saucy little fellow looks up laughing, having presumably just shot off an arrow; or possibly he has been twanging a wire drawn tightly between the fingers. It throws much light on the bronze boys at Padua made ten or fifteen years later. This Florentine boy shows how completely Donatello, perhaps with the assistance of a caster, could render his meaning in bronze. In two or three cases at Padua the work is clumsy and slipshod, showing how he allowed his assistants to take liberties which he would never have countenanced in work finished by his own hands. The Bargello has another Amorino of bronze, a nude winged boy standing on a cockleshell, and just about to fly away; quite a pleasing statuette, and executed with skill except as regards the extremities of the fingers, where the bronze has failed. It resembles Donatello's putti who play and dance on the corners of the tabernacle of Quercia's font at Siena; but the base of this figure differs from that of the other four. A fifth of the Sienese putti was recently bought in London for the Berlin Gallery, an invaluable acquisition to that growing collection.[152] This group, however, is less important than the wonderful pair of bronze putti belonging to Madame Andre.[153] These are much larger: they carry candle-sockets and are lightly draped with a few ribands and garlands: judging from the way they are huddled up, it is possible that they formed part of a larger work. They appear to be a good deal later than the Cantoria, though they do not show any technical superiority to the large Bargello Amorino; but they have not quite got that freshness which cannot be dissociated from work made between 1433 and 1440. Madame Andre has another superb Donatello—a marble boy: his attitude is unbecoming, but the modelling of this admirable statue—the urchin is nearly life-sized—is almost unequalled. There is a similar figure in the Louvre made by some imitator. It need hardly be said that Donatello's children, especially the free-standing bronze statuettes, were widely copied. According to Vasari, Donatello designed the wooden putti carrying garlands in the new Sacristy of the Duomo. There are fourteen of these boys, and they overstep the cornice like Michelozzo's angels in the Capella Portinari at Milan. Donatello may have given the sketch for one or two, but there is a lack of intelligence about them, besides a certain monotony. Moreover, it is improbable that Donatello would have designed garlands so bulky that they threaten to push the little boys who carry them off the cornice. In spite of its faults, this frieze is charming. The naivete of the quattrocento often invests its errors with attraction. It would be wearisome to catalogue the scores of bronze children which show undoubted imitation of Donatello. They exist in every great collection, one of exceptional merit being in London.[154] A large school sprang into existence, chiefly in Padua and Venice, whence it spread all over Northern Italy, and produced any number of bronze works which recall one or other feature of Donatello's children. But they never approached Donatello. Their work was a sort of minuteria—table ornaments, plaquettes, inkstands, and the ordinary decoration of a sitting-room. Monumental childhood almost ceased to exist in Italian plastic art, and, after Michael Angelo, degenerated into stout and prosperous children lolling in clouds and diving among the draperies which adorned the later altars and tombs. Their didactic value was soon lost to Italian sculpture, and with it went their inherent grace and significance. Donatello was among the first as he was among the last seriously to apply to sculpture the words ex ore infantium perfecisti laudem.

[Footnote 150: "Trattato della Pintura," Richter, i. 291.]

[Footnote 151: This open form of trouser, of which one sees a variant on the Martelli David, was also classical. The Athis or Phrygian shepherd usually wears something of the kind.]

[Footnote 152: Very similar classical types are in the British Museum, No. 1147; and the Eros springing forward in the Forman Collection (dispersed in 1899) is almost identical.]

[Footnote 153: From the Piot Collection. Figured in "Gaz. des Beaux Arts," 1890, iii. 410.]

[Footnote 154: Victoria and Albert Museum, No. 475, 1864. A winged boy carrying a dolphin.]

* * * * *



[Sidenote: Boys' Busts.]

It is inexplicable that modern criticism should withdraw from Donatello all the free-standing or portrait-busts of boys, while going to the opposite extreme in ascribing to him an enormous number of Madonnas. We know that Donatello was passionately fond of carving children on his reliefs: we also know that only two versions of the Madonna can be really authenticated as his work. Why should Donatello have made no busts of boys when it is not denied that he was responsible for something like one hundred boys in full-length; and how does it come about that scores of Madonnas should be attributed to him when we only have the record of a few? There can be no doubt that Donatello would not have rested content with children in relief or in miniature. The very preparation of his numerous works in this category must have led him to make busts as well, quite apart from his own inclinations. The stylistic method of argument should not be abused: if driven to a strict and logical conclusion it becomes misleading. It ignores the human element in the artist. It pays no attention to his desire to vary the nature of his work or to make experiments. It eliminates the likelihood of forms which differ from the customary type, and it makes no allowance for possibilities or probabilities, least of all for mistakes. It is purely on stylistic grounds that each bust connected with Donatello's name has been withdrawn from the list of his works. A fashion had grown up to ascribe to Donatello all that delightful group of marble busts now scattered over Europe. Numbers were obviously the work of competent but later men: Rossellino, Desiderio, Mino da Fiesole, and so forth. There remain others which are more doubtful, but which in one detail or another are alleged to be un-Donatellesque, and have therefore been fearlessly attributed to other sculptors from whose authenticated work they often dissent. That, however, was immaterial, the primary object being to disinherit Donatello without much thought as to his lawful successor in title. A critical discrimination between these busts was an admitted need; everything of the kind had been conventionally ascribed to Donatello just as Luca della Robbia was held responsible for every bit of glazed terra-cotta. These ascriptions to the most fashionable and lucrative names had become conventional, and had to be destroyed. Invaluable service has been rendered by reducing the number given to Donatello and adding to the number properly ascribed to others. But the process has gone too far. The difficulties are, of course, great, and stylistic data offer the only starting-point; but as these data are readily found by comparison with Donatello's accepted work, it ought to be possible, on the fair and natural assumption that Donatello may well have made such busts, to determine the authenticity of a certain proportion. In any case, it would be less difficult to prove that Donatello did, than that he did not make statues of this description. Among the busts of very young boys which cannot be assigned to Donatello are those belonging to Herr Benda in Vienna, and to M.G. Dreyfus in Paris. Nothing can exceed their softness and delicacy of modelling, and they are among the most winning statuettes in the world. They were frequently copied by Desiderio and his entourage. One of the little heads in the Vanchettoni Chapel at Florence is likewise animated by a similar exemplar. There is something girlish about them, a pursuit of prettiness which is no doubt the source of their singular attraction, and which invests them with an irresistible charm. The San Giovannino, also in the Vanchettoni, is a more concrete version of childhood, but is by the same hand as its fellow. These four busts fail to characterise the child's head; not indeed that characterisation was needed to make an enchanting work, but that Donatello's children elsewhere show more of the individual touches of the master and personal notes of the child. The Duke of Westminster possesses a life-sized head of a boy,[155] which is palpably by Donatello, though no document exists to prove it. We have all the essentials of Donatello's modelling; the handling is uncompromising and firm; the child is treated more like a portrait. Indeed, many of these children's busts, even when symbolised by St. John's rough tunic, were avowed portraits—the Martelli San Giovannino, for instance, which from Vasari's time has been ascribed, and probably with justice, to Donatello. This little head enjoys a reputation which it scarcely deserves. The expression is dull, the hair grows so low that scarcely any forehead is visible; the cheeks bulge out, and the mouth is too small. We have, in fact, a lifelike presentment of some boy, perhaps of the Martelli family, showing him at his least prepossessing moment, when the bloom of childhood has passed away, and before the lines have been fined down and merged into the stronger contours of youth. Desiderio would have improved Nature by modifying the boy's features, and we should have had a work comparable to those previously mentioned. But Donatello (and perhaps his patrons) preferred a less idealised version. The Martelli figure, and a most important boy's bust belonging to Frau Hainauer in Berlin, are now usually ascribed to Rossellino. But his St. John in the Bargello, where all the features are softened down, and his authenticated work in San Miniato and elsewhere, make the attribution open to question. The St. John at Faenza is also denied to be by Donatello; one of the critics who is quite certain on the point believes the bust to be made of wood! These problems cannot be settled by spending ten lire on photographs. The bust at Faenza,[156] though a faithful portrait, is one of the most romantic specimens of childhood depicted by Donatello. Admirably modelled, and with a surface like ivory, it gives the intimate characteristics of the model. Nothing has been embellished or suppressed, if we may judge from the absolute sequence and correspondence of all the features. The flat head, the projecting mouth, and the much-curved nose, are sure signs of accurate and painstaking observation; they combine to give it a personal note which adds much to its abstract merits. The St. John in the Louvre[157] is also a portrait, but of an older boy, in whom the first signs of maturity are faintly indicated: lines on the forehead, a stronger neck, and a harder accentuation of nose and mouth. But he is still a boy, though he will soon go forth into the wilderness. By the side of the Faenza Giovannino he would appear rough; beside the Vienna and Dreyfus statuettes he would be harsh and unsympathetic. He has no smiling countenance, no fascinating twinkle of the eye: the type has not been generalised as in Desiderio's work, and it therefore lacks those qualities, the very absence of which makes it most Donatellesque. The fundamental distinction between Donatello and the later masters can be emphasised by comparing this bust with another group of terra-cotta heads, which are analogous, although the boy in them is older. One in the Berlin Gallery[158] has been painted, and no final judgment can be passed until the more recent accretions of oil-colour have been removed. But the whole conception is weakly and vapid. The brown eyes, the nicely rouged cheeks, the mincing look, and the affectation of the pose make a genteel page-boy of him, and all suggest a later imitation—about 1470 perhaps—and contemporary with the somewhat analogous though better rendering in the Louvre.[159] The version belonging to M. Dreyfus differs in certain details from the Berlin bust, and it has been fortunate in escaping careless painting; it has more vigour and virility. One remark may be made about the Faenza, Grosvenor House, Martelli, Hainauer and Louvre busts: they all show a peculiarity in the treatment of the hair. It is bunched together and drawn back from behind the ears, and is gathered on the nape of the neck, down which it seems to curl. This is precisely the treatment observed in the Mandorla relief, the Martelli David, the young Gattamelata, and the Amorino in the Bargello: in a lesser degree it is observable in the Isaac and the Siena Virtues. The point is not one upon which stress could properly be laid, but it is a further point of contact between Donatello's accepted work and some few out of the numerous boys' busts which he must inevitably have made.

[Footnote 155: In Grosvenor House. Bronze; generally known as "The Laughing Boy."]

[Footnote 156: Its proportion is impaired by the basal drapery, which was grafted to the statue at a later date. This bust belonged to Sabba da Castiglione, who was very proud of it. He was born within twenty years of Donatello's death.]

[Footnote 157: No. 383. Marble. Goupil Bequest.]

[Footnote 158: Stucco, No. 38A. Cf. also one belonging to Herr Richard von Kaufmann, Berlin.]

[Footnote 159: No. 1274, St. John, Florentine School, a painting.]

* * * * *



[Sidenote: Niccolo da Uzzano and Polychromacy.]

The bust of Niccolo da Uzzano has gained its widespread popularity from its least genuine feature—namely, the paint with which it is disfigured. The daubs of colour give it a fictitious importance, an actual realism which invests it with the illusion of living flesh and blood. This is all the more unfortunate, as the bust is a remarkable work, and does not gain by being made into a "speaking likeness." Its merits can best be appreciated in a cast, where the form is reproduced without the dubious embellishments of later times. Niccolo was a high-minded patrician, an implacable opponent of the Medici, and a warm friend of higher education: it is also of interest that he should have been an executor of the will of John XXIII. He was born in 1359, and died in 1432. The bust is made of terra-cotta, and shows a man of sixty-five or so, and would therefore be coeval with the later Campanile prophets (but nothing beyond old tradition can be accepted as authority for the nomenclature). The modelling of the head is quite masterly. Niccolo is looking rather to the left; his keen and hawklike countenance, and his piercing eyes, deep set and quivering within pendulous eyelids, give a sense of invincible logic and penetration. The laconic, matter-of-fact mouth, and the resolute jaw add strength and courage to the physiognomy: the nose and its disdainful nostrils are those of the haughty optimate. The head is, however, less fine than the face: a skull of rather common proportions, and a sloping though broad forehead are its marked features. Donatello has given him an ugly ear; Niccolo's ear was, therefore, ugly, and the throat is swollen. The shoulders are covered with a thick piece of drapery, leaving the throat and upper part of the breast bare. Such is the impression conveyed by Niccolo in the cast. In the Bargello the colouring modifies what the form itself was meant to suggest. The smallest error of a paint-brush, the slightest deepening of a pigment, are quite sufficient to make radical alterations in the sentiment of a statue. When applied to plastic art, colour is potent enough to change the essential purpose of the sculptor. The chief reason why the terra-cotta bust of St. John at Berlin looks flippant and fastidious is, that the painter was indiscreet in drawing the eyebrows and lips: owing to his carelessness, they do not coincide with the features indicated by the modeller, and the entire character of the boy is consequently changed. The question of polychromacy in Donatello's sculpture is of great importance, and requires some notice. It is no longer denied that classical statues were frequently coloured. The Parthenon frieze and many celebrated monuments of antiquity were picked out with colour. Others received some kind of polish, circumlitio,—like the dark varnish which is on the face of the Coscia effigy. Again, the use of ivory, precious stones, and metal was common. The lips and eyeballs were frequently overlaid by thin slabs of silver.[160] The origin of polychromacy, doubtless, dates back to the most remote ages. It was first needed to conceal imperfections, and to supply what the carver felt his inability to render. It connotes insufficiency in the form. The sculptor, of all people, ought to be able to see colour in the uncoloured stone: he ought to realise its warmth, texture and shades. Nobody has any right to complain that a statue is uncoloured: the substance and quality of the marble is in itself pleasing, but relative truth is all that is required in a portrait-bust. If one wants to know the colour of a man's eye, or the precise tint of his complexion, the painter's art should be invoked, but only where its gradations and subtleties can be fully rendered—on the canvas. Polychromacy is a mixture of two arts: it is one art trying to steal a march upon another art by producing illusion. That is why the pantaloon paints his face, and why the audience laughs: the spirit which tolerates painted statues ends by adorning them with necklaces. Donatello, whose sense of light and shade was acutely developed, least required the adventitious aid of colour. Polychromacy was to a certain extent justified on terra-cotta, to soften the toneless colour of the clay, and on wood it served a purpose in hiding the cracks of a brittle substance. Nowadays it is happily no more than a refugium peccatorum. There is, however, no doubt that in Donatello's day it was widely used, and used by Donatello himself. It began in actual need, then became a convention, and long survived: il n'y a rien de plus respectable qu'un ancien abus. During the fifteenth century statues were coloured during the highest proficiency of sculpture: buildings were painted,[161] and bronze was habitually gilded. Donatello's Coscia, and his work at Siena and Padua, still show signs of it. The St. Mark was coloured, and the Cantoria was much more brilliant with gold than it is now. The St. Luke, which was removed from Or San Michele,[162] has long been protected from the weather, and still shows traces of a rich brocade decorated with coloured lines. The Christ of Piero Tedesco on the facade of the Cathedral had glass eyes. Roland and Oliver, two wonderful creations on the facade of the Cathedral at Verona, had blue enamel eyes. The Apostles in the Church of San Zeno, in the same city, are exceptionally interesting, being one of the rare cases where the genuine colouring is visible, although it has been much worn. The early colourists used tempera;[163] as this perished, oil paint was substituted, and there are very few painted statues extant on which restoration has never taken place, and consequently where the original colour of the sculptor is intact. With repainting, the original artist disappears: even if the work is cast, the delicate tints of the first colouring must be impaired, and repainting follows. Thus the Niccolo da Uzzano is covered with inferior oil colour, and only in a few details can the primitive tempera be detected. The later addition creates the fictitious interest, and immensely reduces the real importance of this masterly production.

[Footnote 160: Cf. Naples Museum, No. 5592.]

[Footnote 161: Cf. drawings of facades in Vettorio Ghiberti's Note-book.]

[Footnote 162: Bargello Cortile, No. 3, by Niccolo di Piero.]

[Footnote 163: Borghini, in 1586, gave a curious recipe for colouring marble according to antique rules. Florentine ed. 1730, p. 123.]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Portrait-busts.]

It is a singular fact admitting of no ready explanation that portrait-busts, so common in Tuscany, should scarcely have existed in Venice. Florence was their native home. From the time of Donatello every sculptor of note was responsible for one or more, while certain artists made it a regular occupation. Luca della Robbia, however, one of the most consummate sculptors of his day, made no portrait except the effigy of Bishop Federighi. There are one or two small heads in the Bargello, but they scarcely come within the category of studied portraits, while the heads on the bronze doors of the Duomo, though modelled from living people, are small and purely decorative in purpose. Glazed terra-cotta was a material so admirably adapted to showing the refinements of feature and character, as we can see in both Luca's and Andrea's work, that this absence is all the more surprising. At the same time, numerous as portrait-statues were in Tuscany, they do not compare in numbers with those executed in classical times. In the fifteenth century the statue was a work of art, and its actual carving was an integral part of the art: so the replica in sculpture was rare. But under the Roman Empire statues of the same man were erected in scores and hundreds in the same city; their multiplication became a profession in itself, and a large class of artisans must have grown up, eternally copying and recopying portrait-busts and giving them the haunting dulness of mechanical reproductions. The artist himself was more interested in the torso than the head; some artists came to be regarded as specialists in their own lines; Calcosthenes for instance, who made athletes, and Apollodorus, who made philosophers. Donatello made several portrait-busts, and two or three others, such as the head of St. Laurence, and the so-called St. Cecilia in London, which are portraits in all essentials. These two are idealised heads, both made late in life, judging from a certain sketchiness, in no way detracting from their sterling qualities, but indicative of Donatello's fluency as an oldish man. Both are in terra-cotta. The St. Laurence is placed on the top of one of the great chests in the Sacristy of San Lorenzo, too high above the eye-level.[164] It has no connection with the decorative work carried out there by the master, and it is difficult to see how it could have been meant to fit in with the altar. However, the authorship of Donatello is beyond question. St. Laurence is almost a boy, wearing his deacon's vestments. His head is raised up as if he had just heard something and were about to reply. The eager and inquiring look is most happily shown. The sentiment of this bust is quite out of the common; it has an engaging expression which is rare in the sculpture of all ages, differing from what is called animation or vivacity. These also may be found in the St. Laurence, where the exact but indescribable movement of the face as he is about to speak is rendered with immense skill. The bust, though modelled with a free hand, is not carelessly executed; everything is in concord, and the treatment of the clay shows exceptional dexterity, more so, at any rate, than is the case in the St. Cecilia.[165] The name given to this bust is traditional, there being no symbol to connect it with her; but it suggests at least that the work was not meant purely as a portrait. In technique and conception it is not quite equal to the St. Laurence, but it is none the less a work of rare merit, and being Donatello's only clay portrait in this country has a special value to us. The Saint looks downwards, pensive, quiet and modest, the embodiment of tranquillity and calm. There is no movement or effort about her, neither does the work show any effort on the part of the sculptor. It is equable in a very marked degree; the smooth regular features are simple and well defined, and the hair, brushed back from the forehead, has a softness which could scarcely be obtained in marble. The bust known as Louis III. of Gonzaga is interesting in another way: it is bronze and has been left in an unfinished state. Two versions of it exist—one in Berlin, the other in Paris, belonging to Madame Andre, the latter being perhaps the less ugly of the two. It used to be known as Alfonso of Naples, on the assumption that Donatello must surely have made a bust of that prince. This theory, however, had to be abandoned, and it is now held to be a portrait of the Gonzaga as being a closer resemblance to him than to Alfonso, or Giovanni Tornabuoni. Mantegna's portrait of Gonzaga, though made later, shows a rather different type, less displeasing than the bronze. In the bust we have what is probably the portrait of a coarse and clumsy person; he is petulant in the mouth, weak in the chin, gross in the thick and heavy jaw. The bronze is extremely rough, and shows no signs of the nervous and individual touches which we find in Donatello's terra-cotta. Both the busts are unfinished; in the absence of chasing and hammering they are covered with bubbles and splotches of metal. They have, therefore, not passed through the hands of assistants, except so far as the actual casting of the bronze was concerned. During the process of casting the refinements of a clay model would often be impaired, but this shows no sign of having been made from an original of merit. The man is ugly, it is true; but the broad expanse of his lifeless cheek and the bulbous forehead would in real life have been explained and justified by bone and muscle, which the sculptor would have rendered in his clay study. The ugliness of the man, however, is unrelated to the qualities of the bust. Nobody could make the likeness of an ugly man better than Donatello; and since the faults of this portrait lie more in the modelling than in the sitter, one is driven to conclude that the bust must be entirely the work of an assistant, or else a failure of the master.

[Footnote 164: It used to be over one of the doors, preserved in una custodia which Richa thought ought to have been made of crystal, so precious was the bust.—"Ch. Fiorentine," 1758, v. 39.]

[Footnote 165: Victoria and Albert Museum, No. 7585, 1861.]

An effective counterpart to this bust exists in Berlin. It is also a life-sized bronze of an older man, and in many ways the likeness to the Gonzaga bust is notable. But wherever Gonzaga's features lack distinction this portrait shows fine qualities and good breeding. Nothing could better illustrate how minute are the plastic details which will revolutionise a countenance; how easily noble and handsome features can degenerate into what is sordid and vulgar. In this bust the chin, though receding, is far from weak; the lips are full but not sensual; the nose has the faint aquiline curve of distinction. There is benevolence in the eyes, meditation in the brow, dignity and reserve throughout the physiognomy: it is the portrait of a man who may be great, but who must be good. When a bronze abozzo has to be finished the detail is added by hammering the metal, or incising it with gravers. Thus the bronze has to be reduced, it being seldom possible to enlarge it at any point. But the Gonzaga bust would require to be enlarged in several places to make it a lifelike head. In the case of the portrait just described, the metal was cast from a rough sketch which, in the first place, had the qualities of a living and consistent head, and which, in the second place, was modelled with sufficient amplitude to permit the entire head to be hammered, and the exquisite details to be added. Technically this head is almost unequalled among Donatello's bronze portraits; it is quite superb. Comparison with the Gattamelata at Padua is fair to neither. But it can be suitably compared with the bronze portrait in the Bargello generally known as the Young Gattamelata. The tomb of Giovanni Antonio, son of the famous Condottiere, is in the Santo at Padua. The effigy resembles this bust. Giovanni died young in 1456, and on the whole there is sufficient reason for considering it to be his portrait. On this assumption the bust can be dated about 1455. It is a happy combination of youth and maturity. On the one side we have the smooth features, still unmarked by frowns and furrows, the soft youthful texture of the skin, and something young in the thick curly hair. On the other hand, the character of the face shows perfect self-confidence in its best sense, as well as self-control and determination. A scrap of drapery covers the outer edge of either shoulder, and round his neck is a riband, at the end of which hangs a large oval gem, Cupid in a chariot making his horses gallop. Thus the throat and breast are bare, and show exceptionally good rendering of those thin bones and thick tendons which must always be a severe test to the modeller. As for the bronze itself, the surface is wrought with much care and finish, though the Berlin bust is unapproached in this respect. A few other portrait-busts remain to be noticed, which at one time or another have been attributed to Donatello. The Vecchio Barbuto, a thoroughly poor piece of work, and the Imperatore Romano[166] with its sadly disjointed and inconsequential appearance, are works which scarcely recall the touch of Donatello. The bust of a veiled lady is more interesting.[167] In the old Medici catalogue it used to be called Donna velata incognita, or sacerdotessa velata: and it was also called Annalena Malatesta: a suggestion has been recently made that it represents the Contessina de' Bardi, who married Cosimo de' Medici. Vasari certainly mentions a bronze bust of the Contessina by Donatello; but the family records would scarcely have called so important a person a nun or an incognita: moreover, she did not die till 1473, and as this bust is obviously made from a death-mask, it is clear that Donatello could not be its author. The custom of making death-masks is described by Polybius: in Donatello's time it became very popular, and Verrocchio became one of the foremost men in this branch of trade, which combined expedition and accuracy with cheapness. The wax models were coloured and used as chimney-piece decorations, in ogni casa di Firenze. The bronze bust of San Rossore in the Church of Santo Stefano at Pisa has been attributed to Donatello. From the denunzia of 1427 we know that Donatello was occupied on a bust of the saint, and certain payments are recorded.[168] But beyond this fact there is no reason for assigning the Pisa bust to him. No explanation is offered of its removal from Florence to Pisa, and had we not known that Donatello made such a bust, this uncouth and slovenly thing would never have been ascribed to him. It is a reliquary, the crown of the head being detachable, and the head can also be separated from the bust. It is heavily gilded and minutely chased with the trivial work of some meagre craftsman; the eyes seem to have been enamelled. It is merely interesting as a school-piece. Speaking generally, Donatello's portraits are less important as busts than when they are portions of complete statues. Excluding Niccolo da Uzzano and the old man at Berlin, the heads he made cannot compare with the portraits of John XXIII., Brancacci, Habbakuk and St. Francis at Padua. Donatello helped to lay the foundations of the tremendous school of portraiture which flourished after his death, both in sculpture and painting; based, in certain parts of Italy, on the principles he had laid down, though thriving elsewhere upon independent lines; such, for instance, as the remarkable group of portraits ascribed to Laurana or Gagini. But at his best Donatello rarely approached the comprehensive powers of Michael Angelo. With the latter we see the whole corpus or entity made the vehicle of portraiture; everything is forced to combine, and to concentrate the [Greek: ethos] of the conception; everything is driven into harmony. Michael Angelo gives a portrait which is also typical, while preserving the real. Donatello seldom got beyond the real; but he went far towards realising the highest forms of portraiture, and two or three of his works, though differing in standard from the Brutus or the Penseroso, surpass anything achieved by his contemporaries.

[Footnote 166: Bargello, No. 18, and No. 6, life-sized bronze.]

[Footnote 167: Bargello, 17.]

[Footnote 168: Gaye, i. 121.]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Relief-portraits.]

A few portraits in relief require a word of notice. As a rule they are later in date, though they are often given to Donatello. It became fashionable to have one's portrait made as a Roman celebrity: an Antonine for instance; a Galba or a Faustina; or as some statesman, like Scipio or Caesar. Donatello was not responsible for these portraits, though several have been attributed to him. But he made one or two such reliefs, such as the little St. John in the Bargello which has already been described. The oval-topped portrait in the same collection, made of pietra serena—a clean-shaved man with longish hair and an aquiline nose, is wrongly ascribed to Donatello. There is a much more interesting portrait, two copies of which exist; one is in London, the other in Milan.[169] It is a relief-portrait of a woman in profile to the right; her neck and breast are bare, treated similarly to the magnificent bust in the Bargello (177). The two reliefs, of which the Milan copy is oval, while ours is rectangular with a circular top, are modelled with brilliant and exquisite morbidezza: the undercutting is square, so that the shadows assert themselves; the wavy hair is brushed back and retained by a fillet, leaving the neck and temples quite free. In many ways it is the marble version of those portraits attributed to Piero della Francesca in the National Gallery[170] and elsewhere, but treated so that while the painting is curious the marble is beautiful. These reliefs cannot be traced to Donatello, though they show his style and influence in several particulars. Madame Andre has a marble relief of an open-mouthed boy crowned with laurels, and with ribands waving behind. It is very close to the Piot St. John in the Louvre, and analogous in some respects to two other reliefs of great interest, both in Paris, belonging respectively to La Marquise Arconati-Visconti and to M. Gustave Dreyfus. These are marble reliefs of St. John and Christ facing each other, exquisite in their childhood. The former is round, the latter square. It is usual to ascribe them to Desiderio, and there are details which lead one to agree on the point. They show, however, that Donatello's influence was strong enough to survive his death in particulars which later men might well have ignored. And the two reliefs combine the strength of Donatello with the sweetness of Desiderio.

[Footnote 169: Victoria and Albert Museum, No. 923, 1900, and Museo Archeologico, No. 1681, both marble.]

[Footnote 170: Nos. 585 and 758.]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: San Lorenzo.]

Donatello must have completed the most important decorative work in the Sacristy of San Lorenzo by 1443. Brunellesco was the architect, and there were differences between them as to their respective spheres of work. Donatello made the bronze doors, a pair of large reliefs, four large circular medallions of the Evangelists, as well as four others of scenes from the life of St. John the Evangelist. Excluding the doors, everything is made of terra-cotta. The reliefs over the inner doors of the Sacristy represent St. Stephen and St. Laurence on one side, and St. Cosmo and St. Damian on the other. They are nearly life size, modelled in rather low-relief upon panels with circular tops, and of exceptional size for works in terra-cotta. The reliefs are enclosed in Donatello's framework of latish Renaissance design, but the figures themselves are very simple. There is a minimum of ornament, and they harmonise with the remarkable scheme of the bronze doors below them, with which they have so many points in common. The ceiling of the chapel has been repeatedly whitewashed, and the eight medallions are consequently blurred in surface and outline. It is a real misfortune, for, so far as one can judge, they contain compositions and designs of great interest, by which a new light would probably be thrown upon several doubtful problems were it possible to study them with precision. Criticism must therefore be guarded, and their position is such as to make examination difficult. The Roundels of the Evangelists are modelled with boldness and severity, qualities which one is not surprised to find in Donatello, but which are here emphasised, for they stand out in spite of the coats of whitewash. In some ways they resemble the Evangelists of the Capella Pazzi. Here one notices a delicacy of decoration on the seats, desks, &c., contrasting with the rugged grandeur of the figures themselves, and with the absence of ornament, which is so marked a feature of the other reliefs in the Sacristy. The four scenes from the life of St. John (Vasari says from the lives of the Evangelists) are even more interesting than the panels just mentioned. It appears from the few words Vasari devotes to the Sacristy that Donatello also painted views upon the ceiling, but no trace remains. The incidents depicted in the roundels are St. John's Apotheosis, Martyrdom, and Sojourn on Patmos, and the Raising of Drusiana. There are landscapes and architectural backgrounds; many figures are introduced, and there is a good deal of nude study. We also notice a feature of frequent occurrence—a trick of giving depth to the scene and vividness to the foreground, by letting figures be cut off short by the frames. Men seem to be standing on the spectator's side of the relief, and only appear at the point where they can be partly included in the composition. The field becomes one that would be included within the range of vision as seen through a round window or telescope. Mantegna made great use of this idea. The more one looks at these eight medallions the more one regrets their present condition: washing is all that is required. If they could be carefully cleaned we would certainly find details of interest, and in all probability facts of importance. The frieze of angels' heads which surrounds the Sacristy is of secondary interest, as there are only two different cherubs, which are reproduced by moulds all along its entire length. Signs of gilding and colour are still visible. Pretty as they are, these angels cannot challenge comparison with the Pazzi frieze or with Donatello's similar work elsewhere—for instance, on the base of the Cantoria or upon the Or San Michele niche. The marble balustrade of the altar may have been designed by Donatello. The Sacristy shows how well adapted terra-cotta was for decoration on a large scale. But Donatello was too wise to cover the walls with his reliefs, as is the case in the Capella Pellegrini at Verona. Here the sculpture is used to decorate the chapel walls, there the walls are merely used to uphold the sculpture.

* * * * *



[Sidenote: The Bronze Doors.]

There is no more instructive study than the bronze doors of Italian churches. They are the earliest specimens of bronze casting to be found in Italy of Christian times; they show the gradual transition from Eastern to Western forms of art, and they were usually made by the most prominent sculptor of the day. Their size is considerable, they are frequently dated, and their condition is often extraordinarily good. Donatello's are relatively small, but they adhere to the best traditions. Excluding the great doors made by Luca della Robbia for the Sacristy of the Duomo, these in San Lorenzo are among the latest which were produced according to the ancient model and the correct idea. Thenceforward the doors ceased to be doors; the reliefs ceased to show the qualities of bronze, and disregarded the principles of sculpture. Donatello made two pairs of doors, one on either side of the altar. The doors open in the middle; there are thus four long-hinged panels of bronze, and each panel has five reliefs upon it. It is doubtful if the most archaic doors in Italy show such uniformity of design, for all the twenty bronze reliefs illustrate one single theme, namely, the conversation of two standing men. The panels simply consist of two saints, roughly sketched in somewhat low-relief upon an absolutely flat background: there is great variety in the drapery, and some of the figures might come out of thirteenth-century illuminations. Never was a monotonous motive invested with such variety of treatment: never was simplicity better attained by scrupulous elimination. Donatello's symmetrical idea had been previously employed, and Torrigiano put his figures in couples on what Bacon called one of the "stateliest and daintiest monuments of Europe."[171] Luca della Robbia put his figures in threes on the Cathedral gates, a seated figure in the centre, with a standing figure on either side. But Donatello had to make twice as many panels as Luca. Martyrs, apostles and confessors are talking on the San Lorenzo doors. Thus St. Stephen shows the stone of his martyrdom to St. Laurence. Elsewhere St. Peter's movement suggests that he is upbraiding his fellow, for the argument excites these saints. They gesticulate freely; martyrs seem to fence with their palm-leaves. One will turn away abruptly, another will pay sudden attention to his book, while his companion continues to talk. One man slaps his book to clinch the discussion, another jots down a note; two others are ending their controversy and prepare to leave—in opposite directions. But, though these are literal descriptions of the scenes, there is no levity; everything is ordained according to Donatello's strict formula. He was none the less determined to adhere to the old conventional and non-pictorial treatment of the gates, and at the same time to give animation to every panel. In this he has succeeded, but the symmetrical arrangement in pairs preserves a decorum in spite of the vigorous movement pictured on the doors. These doors open and shut: they were meant to do so, especially to shut. Ghiberti's second pair of doors for the Baptistery do not shut: they are closed, but they do not give the sense of shutting anything in or keeping anything out. They are more like windows than doors. They give no impression of defence or resistance: they are doors in nothing but name, and the chance that they hang on hinges. Were it merely a contest between Ghiberti and Donatello as to which sculptor were the more skilled constructor of doors, further comment would be unprofitable; but it raises the wider question of the laws and limitations of bas-relief—the application to sculpture of the principles of painting; in short, the broad line of demarcation between two different arts. Michael Angelo probably realised the unity of the arts better than Donatello, but Donatello knew enough to treat sculpture with due respect: he valued it too highly to confuse the issue by pictorial embellishments. It is no question of a convention, still less of a canon. But there are inherent boundaries between the two arts; and where the boundaries are overstepped, one or the other art must lose some of its essential quality and charm. Donatello's reliefs at Padua are crowded: Ghiberti's (on the second gates) are overcrowded. The difference in degree produces a difference in principle. If Ghiberti had made pictures instead of reliefs, the atmosphere would keep the objects in their right places, while differences of colour would give distinction to certain parts and the chief figures would still predominate. In other reliefs Ghiberti lavished so much care on landscape and architecture that the figures become of secondary importance: on one relief a tree casts its shadow on a cloud.[172] Ghiberti, in fact, with all his plastic elegance, with a grace, suavity and sense of beauty which Donatello never approached, was a painter at heart. "L'animo mio alla pittura era in grande parte volto," he says in his Commentary,[173] and the faults of his sculpture are due to this versatility. Donatello only used his pictorial knowledge to perfect form and feature; and, complex as his architectural backgrounds often are, they never suggest experiments in perspective, and they never detract from the primacy of the people and the incident. Michael Angelo was under no illusion on this point: he never confused painting and sculpture. Yet he said Ghiberti's gates would be worthy portals of paradise. "Ce n'est pas la seul sottise qu'on lui fasse dire," drily remarked the Chevalier des Brosses;[174] and, curiously enough, about the time that Michael Angelo made his famous Judgment, an amateur of the day made a much shrewder criticism, long since forgotten, that the doors would be adequate to stand at the gates of Purgatory:—"sarebbon bastanti a stare alle porte del Purgatorio."[175] The ambiguity is not without humour. Sculpture, indeed, had no reason to ape or imitate painting. Sculpture, in fact, was in advance of painting during the first half of the fifteenth century. Donatello, Luca della Robbia, Jacopo della Quercia, and Ghiberti were greater men in sculpture than their contemporaries in painting. The arts were in rivalry; the claim for precedence was zealously canvassed. The sculptors claimed superiority because their art was older, because statuary has more points of view than one. You can walk round it, while a picture has only one light and one view. Moreover, the argument of utility applies most to sculpture, which can be used for tombs, columns, fountains, caryatides, &c. Sculpture has finality, for, though it takes longer to make, it cannot be constantly altered like a picture. While all arts try to imitate nature, sculpture gives the actual form, but painting only its semblance. A man born blind has a sense of touch which gives him pleasure from sculpture, which is better suited to theology, which has greater durability, and so forth. The painter replied that, if a statue has more than one point of view, a picture containing many figures can give even greater variety. Then the argument of utility denies the essence of art, which is to imitate nature, not to adorn brackets and pilasters; but even if decoration be an end in itself, painting can be used where sculpture would be too heavy. The painter continues that his art requires higher training in such things as atmosphere and perspective. As to the greater durability of sculpture, the material and not the art is responsible; but, in any case, painting lasts long enough to be worth achieving. Finally, sculpture cannot always imitate nature: the sense of colour can make a sunset, a storm at sea, moonlight, landscape and human emotions, which are best translated by varying colour and light. The controversy is unsettled to this day.[176] The wise man, like Donatello, selected his art and never overstepped the boundary.

[Footnote 171: "Life of Henry VII.," ed. 1825, iii. 417.]

[Footnote 172: See Westmacott's lectures on Sculpture, II. III., Athenaeum, 1858.]

[Footnote 173: 2nd Comm. Vasari, I. xxx.]

[Footnote 174: Letter of 1739, p. 186.]

[Footnote 175: 17, viii. 1549, Antonio Doni, printed in Bottari, iii. 341.]

[Footnote 176: These dialogues will be found at great length in Borghini, Vasari, Leonardo da Vinci, Alberti, &c. Castiglione also devotes a canto of the "Cortegiano" to the subject.]

* * * * *



[Sidenote: The Judith.]

The bronze statue of Judith was probably made shortly before Donatello's journey to Padua. It is his only large bronze group, and its faults are accentuated by the most unfortunate position it occupies in the lofty Loggia de' Lanzi. It was meant to be the centrepiece of some large fountain. The triangular base, and the extremities of the mattress on which Holofernes sits, have spouts from which the water would issue, though the bronze is not worn away by the action of water. As we see the statue now, it looks small and dwarfed. In a courtyard it would look far more imposing, and when it came from Donatello's workshop, placed upon a pedestal designed for it, its present incongruities would have been absent. For instance, the feet of Holofernes would have been upheld by something from below, as the marks in the bronze indicate. With all its disadvantages, the statue is extremely interesting. Judith stands over Holofernes. With her left hand she holds him up by clutching his hair: her right arm is uplifted, in which she holds the sword. The action seems arrested during a moment of suspense: one doubts if the sword will ever fall. Judith, who was the ideal of courage and beauty, seems to hesitate; there is nothing to show that her arm is meant to descend, except her inexorable face—and even that is full of sadness and regrets. It is more dramatic that this should be so. Cellini's Perseus close by has already committed his murder. The crisis has passed, the blood spurts from the severed head and trunk of the Medusa; so we have squalid details instead of the overpowering sense of impending tragedy. With Cellini there was no room for mystery: no imagination could be left to the spectator. "Celui qui nous dict tout nous saousle et nous degouste." Holofernes is an amazing example of Donatello's power. He is a really drunken man: we see it in the comatose fall of the limbs, in the drooping features, the languid inanition of the arms. The veins throb in his hands and feet: the spine has ceased to be rigid, and were it not for the support of Judith's hands buried in his hair, he would topple over inanimate. The treatment of the bronze is successful and its patina is admirable. Judith's drapery, it is true, has a restless crackling appearance. It is furrowed into small and rather fussy folds, almost suggesting, like the figures of the Parthenon pediment, the pleats of wetted linen on a lay figure. Judith's arm is overweighted by the heavy sleeve. There are, however, pleasing details, especially the band of embroidery over her breast decorated with the flying putti; and her veil, Michael Angelesque in its way, is treated with skill and distinction. The base consists of three bronze reliefs joined into a triangle, separated at each angle by a narrow bronze plaque, beyond which is a curved pilaster giving extra support to the figures above. These reliefs are bacchic in idea and Renaissance in execution. Children dance, play and sleep around the mask from which the jet of water would issue. These reliefs, much inferior to the bronze capital at Prato, have been over-rated. As a group the Judith is not really successful. It is a pile of figures, less telling in some ways than the Abraham and Isaac, though, having no niche, it has to undergo the severer test of criticism from every aspect. But before Michael Angelo the Italian free-standing group was tentative. Even in Michael Angelo's sculpture, when we consider its massive scale, the extent and number of his commissions, and the ease with which he worked his material, it is astonishing how few free-standing groups were made. His grouping was applied to the relief. The free group is, of course, the most comprehensive vehicle of intensified emotion or action; it gives an opportunity of doubling or trebling the effect on the spectator. Sculpture has never realised to the full the chances offered by grouped plastic art of heroic proportions. Classical groups cannot be fairly judged by the Laocoon, the Farnese Bull, or even the Niobe reliefs. Their theatrical character is so patent, that it is obvious how far inferior they must be to the work of greater men whose genuine productions have perished. But, even so, the group being the medium through which emotions could be intensified to the uttermost, it is not necessary to assume that they were common in classical times; partly owing to the technical difficulties and expense, and partly owing to their disinclination to make sculpture interpret profound impressions, mental or intellectual.

There are only four life-sized statues of women by Donatello: this Judith, the Magdalen, the St. Justina, and the Madonna at Padua. The Dovizia is lost, and she was treated as an emblematic personage. These figures and the statuettes at Siena show that, although not accustomed to make female statues, Donatello was perfectly competent to do so. The little Eve, on the back of the Madonna's throne at Padua—the only nude figure of a woman he ever made, and here only in relief—is exquisite in sentiment and form. The statue of Judith had an adventurous life. After the revolution in 1495, the group was removed from the Medici palace to the Ringhiera of the Palazzo Pubblico, and the words of warning against tyranny were engraved on its new base: "Exemplum salutis publicae cives posuere, 1495." Judith was the type of nationalism, the heroine of a war of independence: and this mark of the Florentine love of liberty has lasted to our own day. No Medici dared to obliterate the ominous words. Donatello was not much in politics: his father had taken too violent a share in the feuds of his day, and narrowly escaped execution. Nor was Donatello's art coloured by politics: the Florentines did not give commissions like the Sienese for allegorical representations of the life and duties of citizenship. Differing from Michael Angelo, Donatello made no Brutus; he did not concentrate the political tragedies of his day into a Penseroso and a group of statues full of grave symbolical protests against the statecraft of his time; and, except for the accidental loss of Judith's pedestal, Donatello's art never suffered from the curse of politics. Michael Angelo was always surrounded by the pitfalls of intrigue and politics: some of his work was sacrificed in consequence. The colossal statue of Pope Julio was hurled from its place on the facade of San Petronio, Maestro Arduino the engineer, having covered the ground where it was to fall with straw and fascines, in order that no damage should be done—to the pavement! And the broken statue was sent away to Ferrara, where it was converted into a big cannon, which they felicitously christened Juliana![177]

[Footnote 177: Gotti, "Vita," i. 66.]

* * * * *



[Sidenote: The Magdalen and similar Statues.]

We have now to consider a group of rugged statues differing in date but animated by the same motive, the Magdalen in Florence and three statues of St. John the Baptist in Siena, Venice, and Berlin. Of these, the Magdalen in the Baptistery at Florence is the most typical and the most uncompromising. She stands upright, a mass of tattered rags, haggard, emaciated, almost toothless. Her matted hair falls down in thick knots; all feminine softness has gone from the limbs, and nothing but the drawn muscles remain. It is a thin wasted form, piteous in expression, painful in all its ascetic excess. The Magdalen has, of course, been the subject of hostile criticism. It gives a shock, it inspires horror: it is an outrage on every well-clothed and prosperous sinner.[178] In point of fact, Donatello's summary method of carving the wood has given a harshness and asperity to features which in themselves are not displeasing. In a dimmed light, or looking with unfocused eyes on the reproduction, it is clear that the structural lines of the face were once well favoured. But from the beginning the Magdalen was a work which made a profound impression, and its popularity is measured by the number of statues of a like nature. Charles VIII. wanted to buy it in 1498, but the Florentines thought it priceless and hid it away. Two years later they had the bronze diadem added by Jacopo Sogliani.[179] Finally, at a period when this type of sculpture with all its appeal to the traditions of the Thebaid, was least likely to have been acceptable in art or exemplar, the statue was placed in a niche above an altar erected on purpose for its reception, where an inscription testifies to the regard in which it was then held.[180] This Magdalen is didactic in purpose. Donatello seems to have given less attention to the modelling, subtle as it is, than to the concentration of the one absorbing lesson which was to be conveyed to the spectator. His object was to show repentance, abject unqualified remorse; purified by suffering, refined by bodily hardship, and sustained by the "sun of discipline and virtue." There is no luxury in this Magdalen, but she may have contributed to the reaction when Pompeo Battoni and the like transformed her into an opulent personage, dressed in purple, who reclines in some luscious glade while simpering over a bible. By then art had ceased to know how penitence could be decently portrayed, and the penitent was not long a genuine subject of art. The Greeks, of course, had no penitent or ascetic in their theocracy: even the cynic scarcely found a place in their art. In Italy the Thebaids of Lorenzetti are among the earliest versions; the sculpture of the following century brought it still more home to the public, and then the true mediaeval sentiment upon which this and similar works were founded vanished and has never reappeared. The date of the Magdalen has provoked a good deal of controversy: whether it was made immediately before or after the visit to Padua cannot be determined. But the statue has so many features in common with the Siena Baptist of 1457 that one can most safely ascribe it to some date after Donatello's return to Florence. It is certainly more easy to justify the Magdalen from the pulpits of San Lorenzo than from anything made before his journey to Northern Italy. One misapprehension may be removed. It is argued that the Magdalen cannot be posterior to Padua on the ground that by 1440 Donatello had ceased to work in any material but soft and ductile clay, which was converted into bronze by his assistants. The argument is that of one who probably thinks that the Entombment at Padua is made of terra-cotta, and who forgets that Donatello executed a number of works in stone for the Marchese Gonzaga about 1450.[181]

[Footnote 178: Rumour was very severe. "Elle m'a pour toujours degoute de la penitence," sighed Des Brosses. This inimitable person was the critic who, after visiting the Arena chapel at Padua, observed that nowadays one would scarcely employ Giotto to paint a tennis-court.]

[Footnote 179: Richa, III., xxxiii.]

[Footnote 180: The inscription is: "Votis publicis S. Mariae Magdalenae simulacrum ejus insigne Donati opus pristino loco elegantiario repositum anno 1735."]

[Footnote 181: See p. 199. Moreover, in 1458 Donatello accepted a commission at Siena for a marble San Bernardino. And the Anonimo Morelliano mentions four other marble reliefs at Padua.]



The statues of St. John at Siena, Berlin, and Venice[182] are closely analogous to the Magdalen. St. John is the ascetic prophet who spent years in seclusion, returning from the desert to preach repentance. These three figures have one curious feature in common—a flavour of the Orient. The St. John is some fakir, some Buddhist saint. Asiatic as the Baptist was, it is seldom that Italian art gave him so Eastern a type; but the explanation is simply that Donatello evolved his own idea of what a self-centred and fasting mystic would resemble, and his conception happens to coincide with the outcome of similar conditions actually put into practice elsewhere. The Berlin bronze is St. John as Baptist, the others show him with the scroll as Precursor. He always wears the camel's-hair tunic, which ends just below the knee; at Siena it is thick, like some woolly fleece; it conceals and broadens the frame, thus suggesting a stoutness which is not warranted by the size of the leg. The modelling of legs and arms in these statues is noteworthy. They are thin, according to Donatello's idea of his subject; and though the thinness takes the natural form of slender circumference, one sees that the limb with its angular modelling and its flat surfaces has become thin: the thinness is explained by the character. The feet of the Siena bronze are exceptionally good; the wrist and forearm of the Venice figure are admirable. The Siena Baptist is nearly life-sized, and was made in 1457. He is the least introspective of the three, a mature strong man, and the oldest of the many Baptists Donatello made. The Berlin figure is the flushed eccentric, holding up the cup he used in baptizing. The figure is half the size of life, and was doubtless one of the numerous statuettes which crowned fonts. It has been suggested that this bronze, which is defective in several places, was commissioned for the Cathedral of Orvieto in 1423.[183] But the type would appear more advanced than the busts on the Mandorla doorway or the Siena work made about this time. Moreover, the contract specifies a St. John cum signo crucis et demonstratione ecce agnus Dei. A Baptist was made at the same time for Ancona, and is now lost. On first seeing the St. John in Venice one's impression is to laugh. But he is not really a wild man of the woods—he is simply covered with and made grotesque by thick masses of oil paint. A close examination of the figure shows that in some places the paint is over a quarter of an inch thick, and the last coating it has received is glutinous in quality, and has been laid on with such freedom that the position and shape of certain features are altered. But if seen close at hand, the statue (which it is understood will shortly be cleaned) shows distinct merits. The modelling of the extremities is good, and though it is clear that Donatello was never quite willing to treat St. John as on a par with the other Saints, we have a systematic and generic rendering of his idea. In some measure painting was needed as a preservative for wood statues, otherwise it is difficult to justify the covering of a fine material by paint which cannot do justice to itself, while it must hide the refinements of the carving. Donatello worked but little in wood. Crucifixes were commonly made of it, but the material was one which could never receive quella carnosita and morbidezza[184] of marble or metal. The Greeks limited their use of it to garden and woodland themes: the Egyptians used it but little, because they had so few trees. In Donatello's time it was popular, and came to be regarded as a distinct art. Thus the Sienese wood-carvers were forbidden to work in stone,[185] but the great masters like Donatello did not strictly adhere to the rules, and did not refrain from invading the art of the woodcarver. There is a large class of statues derived from the four just described. One of these, attributed to Donatello, is the St. Jerome at Faenza, also made of wood.[186] Chocolate-coloured paint has been ladled all over the body. The beard is faint lavender, and the canvas loin-cloth is blue. The pose and expression are mannered. It is usual to dismiss it in an offhanded way as a bad and later work; but the modelling shows signs of skill, and until the paint is removed it is useless to make guesses. Two bronze statuettes of the Baptist[187] are distinctly Donatellesque, and made about 1450, though it is impossible to assign them with certainty to the master himself. Michelozzo's versions of St. John at Montepulciano, on the Cathedral altar in Florence, and in the Annunziata, show the influence of Donatello; but the Baptist is a milder prophet, and no longer the hermit. In the Scalzi at Florence there is a Baptist which is typical of many others of the same character. The Magdalen was less copied than the St. John. The version nearest Donatello himself is in London, a large grim bust;[188] in the same collection is a relief of her apotheosis, and the Louvre possesses a similar work.[189] Neither of the latter is by Donatello himself, but they recall his influence.[190] The large Magdalen in Santa Trinita at Florence is a good example of the bottega.