Chapter VI: Appendix: III 204 (4)

During the year 1433, when Florence enjoyed the luxury of driving Cosimo de' Medici into exile, Donatello went to Rome in order to advise Simone Ghini about the tomb of Pope Martin V.--_temporum suorum filicitas_, as the epitaph says.[113] This visit to Rome, which is not contested, like the visit thirty years earlier, did not last long, and certainly did not divert Donatello from the line he had struck out. At this moment the native art of Rome was colourless. A generation later it became classical, and then lapsed into decadence. The number of influences at work was far smaller than would at first be imagined. It is generally assumed that Rome was the home of classical sculpture. But early in the fifteenth century Rome must have presented a scene of desolation. The city had long been a quarry. Under Vespasian the Senate had to pass a decree against the demolition of buildings for the purpose of getting the stone.[114] Rome was plundered by her emperors. She was looted by Alaric, Genseric, Wittig and Totila in days when much of her art remained _in situ_. She was plundered by her Popes. Statues were used as missiles; her marble was exported all over the world--to the Cathedrals of Orvieto and Pisa, even to the Abbey Church of Westminster. Suger, trying to get marble columns for his church, looked longingly at those in the baths of Diocletian, a natural and obvious source, though happily he stole them elsewhere.[115] The vandalism proceeded at an incredible pace. Pius II. issued a Bull in 1462 to check it; in 1472 Sixtus IV. issued another. Pius, however, quarried largely between the Capitol and the Colosseum. The Forum was treated as an ordinary quarry which was let out on contract, subject to a rental equivalent to one-third of the output. But in 1433, and still more during the first visit, there was comparatively little sculpture which would lead Donatello to classical ideas. Poggio, writing just before Donatello's second visit, says he sees almost nothing to remind him of the ancient city.[116] He speaks of a statue with a complete head as if that were very remarkable--almost the only statue he mentions at all. Ghiberti describes two or three antique statues with such enthusiasm that one concludes he was familiar with very few. In fact, before the great digging movement which enthralled the Renaissance, antique sculpture was rare. But little of Poggio's collection came from Rome: Even Lorenzo de' Medici got most of his from the provinces. A century later Sabba del Castiglione complains of having to buy a Donatello owing to the difficulty of getting good antiques.[117] Rome had been devastated by cupidity and neglect as much as by fire and sword. "Ruinarum urbis Romæ descriptio" is the title of one of Poggio's books. Alberti says that in his time he had seen 1200 ruined churches in the city.[118] Bramantino made drawings of some of them.[119] Pirro Ligorio, an architect of some note, gives his recipe for making lime from antique statues--so numerous had they become. But much remained buried before that time, _sotterrate nelle Rovine d'Italia_,[120] and Vasari explains that Brunellesco was delighted with a classical urn at Cortona, about which Donatello had told him, because such a thing was rare in those times, antique objects not having been dug up in such quantities as during his own day.[121] But the passion for classical learning developed quickly, and was followed by the desire for classical art. Dante had scarcely realised the art of antiquity, though more was extant in 1300 than in 1400. Petrarch, who was more sympathetic towards it, could scarcely translate an elementary inscription. From the growing desire for knowledge came the search for tangible relics: but love of classical art was founded on sentiment and tradition. As regards the sculptors themselves, their art was less influenced by antiquity than were the arts of poetry, oratory and prose. While Rossellino, Desiderio, Verrocchio and Benedetto da Maiano maintained their individuality, the indigenous literature of Tuscany waned. Sculpture retained its freedom longer than the literary arts, and when the latter recovered their national character sculpture relapsed in their place into classicism. From early times sculptors had, of course, learned what they could from classical exemplars. Niccola Pisano copied at least four classical motives. There was no plagiarism; it was a warm tribute on his part, and at that time a notable achievement to have copied at all. But the imitation of antiquity was carried to absurd lengths. Ghiberti, who was a literary man, says that Andrea Pisano lived in the 410th Olympiad.[122] But Ghiberti remained a Renaissance sculptor, and his classical affectation is less noticeable in his statues than in his prose. Filippo Strozzi went so far as to emancipate his favourite slave, a "_grande nero_," in his will.[123] But Gothic art died hard. The earlier creeds of art lingered on in the byways, and the Renaissance was flourishing long before Gothic ideas had completely perished--that is to say, Renaissance in its widest meaning, that of reincarnated love of art and letters: if interpreted narrowly the word loses its deep significance, for the Renaissance engendered forms which had never existed before. But it must be remembered that in sculpture classical ideas preceded classical forms. Averlino, or Filarete, as a classical whim led him to be called, began the bronze doors of St. Peter's just before Donatello's visit. They are replete with classical ideas, ignoble and fantastic, but the art is still Renaissance. Comparatively little classical art was then visible, and its infallibility was not accepted until many years later, when Rome was being ransacked for her hidden store of antiquities. Statues were exhumed from every heap of ruins, generally in fragments: not a dozen free-standing marble statues have come down to us in their pristine condition. The quarrymen were beset by students and collectors anxious to obtain inscriptions. Traders in forgeries supplied what the diggers could not produce. Classical art became a fetish.[124] The noble qualities of antiquity were blighted by the imitators, whose inventive powers were atrophied, while their skill and knowledge left nothing to be desired. Excluding the Cosmati, Rome was the mother of no period or movement of art excepting the Rococo. As for Donatello himself, he was but slightly influenced by classical motives. His sojourn in Rome was short, his time fully occupied; he was forty-seven years old and had long passed the most impressionable years of his life. He was a noted connoisseur, and on more than one occasion his opinion on a question of classical art was eagerly sought. But, so far as his own art was concerned, classical influences count for little. His architectural ideas were only classical through a Renaissance medium. When a patron gave him a commission to copy antique gems, he did his task faithfully enough, but without zest and with no ultimate progress in a similar direction. When making a portrait he would decorate the sitter's helmet or breastplate with the cameo which actually adorned it. With one exception, classical art must be sought in his detail, and only in the detail of work upon which the patron's advice could be suitably offered and accepted. Donatello may be compared with the great sculptors of antiquity, but not to the extent of calling him their descendant. Raffaelle Mengs was entitled to regret that the other Raffaelle did not live in the days of Phidias.[125] Flaxman was justified in expressing his opinion that some of Donatello's work could be placed beside the best productions of ancient Greece without discredit.[126] These _obiter dicta_ do not trespass on the domain of artistic genealogy. But it is inaccurate to say, for instance, that the St. George is animated by Greek nobility,[127] since in this statue that quality (whether derived from Gothic or Renaissance ideals) cannot possibly have come from a classical source. Baldinucci is on dangerous ground in speaking of Donatello as "_emulando mirabilmente la perfezione degli antichissimi scultori greci_"[128]--the writer's acquaintance with archaic Greek sculpture may well have been small! We need not quarrel with Gori for calling Donatello the Florentine Praxiteles; but he is grossly misleading in his statement that Donatello took the greatest pains to copy the art of the ancients.[129] Donatello may be the mediæval complement of Phidias, but he is not his artistic offspring.

[Footnote 113: It is a bronze slab, admirably wrought and preserved, in S. Giovanni Laterano. Were it not for an exuberance of decoration, one might say that Donatello was responsible for it; the main lines certainly harmonise with his work. Simone Ghini was mistaken by Vasari for Donatello's somewhat problematical brother Simone.]

[Footnote 114: See Codex. Just. Leg. 2. Cod. de ædif. privatis. A similar law at Herculaneum had forbidden people to make more money by breaking up a house than they paid for the house itself, under penalty of being fined double the original outlay. This shows the extent of speculative destruction. Reinesius, "Synt. Inscript. Antiq.," 475, No. 2.]

[Footnote 115: See his Libellus in "Rer. Gall. Script.," xiv. 313.]

[Footnote 116: _Nihil fere recognoscat quod priorem urbem repræsentet_, in "De Varietate fortunæ urbis Romæ." Nov. Thes. Antiq. Rom., i. 502.]

[Footnote 117: "Ricordi," 1544. No. 109, p. 51.]

[Footnote 118: Written about 1450. "De re ædificatoria." Paris ed. 1553, p. 165.]

[Footnote 119: _Cf._ Plate 49 in "Le Rovine di Roma." "Tempio circolare." Written beside it is "_Questo sie uno tempio lo quale e Atiuero_ (i.e., _che è presso al Tevere_) _dove se chauaue li prede antigha mente_ (i.e., _si cavavano le pietre anticamente_)."]

[Footnote 120: Vasari, "Proemio," i. 212.]

[Footnote 121: _Cosa allora rara, non essendosi dissotterata quella abbondanza che si è fatta ne' tempi nostri_, i. 203.]

[Footnote 122: "2nd Commentary," in Vasari, I. xxviii.]

[Footnote 123: Gaye, i. 360.]

[Footnote 124: _Cf._ the action of the Directory in year vi. of the French Republic. They ordered the statues looted in Italy to be paraded in Paris--hoping to find the clue to ancient supremacy. Louis David pointedly observed, "_La vue ... formera peut-être des savans, des Winckelmann: mais des artistes, non_."]

[Footnote 125: "Works," 1796, i. 151.]

[Footnote 126: "Lectures," 1838, p. 248.]

[Footnote 127: Semper, p. 93.]

[Footnote 128: Ed. 1768, p. 74.]

[Footnote 129: "Donatellus, qui primum omnium vetustis monumentis mirifice delectatus est, eaque imitari ac probe exprimere in suis operibus adsidue studuit."--"Dactyliotheca Smithiana," 1768, II. p. cxxvi.]

* * * * *

TABERNACLE

ST. PETER'S, ROME]

LONDON]

[Sidenote: Work at Rome.]

Up till a few years ago the most important work Donatello made in Rome was unknown. We were aware that he had made a tabernacle, but all record of it was lost, until Herr Schmarsow identified it in 1886.[130] It was probably made for the Church of Santa Maria della Febbre,[131] and was transported to St. Peter's when Santa Maria was converted into a sacristy. The tabernacle is now in the Sacristy of the Canons, surrounded by sham flowers and tawdry decoration, which reduce its charms to a minimum. Moreover, the miraculous painting of the Madonna and Child which fills the centrepiece--having, perhaps, replaced a metal grille or marble relief, has been so frequently restored that a discordant element is introduced. The tabernacle is about six feet high; it is made of rather coarse Travestine marble, and in several parts shows indications of the hand of an assistant. It has suffered in removal; there are two places where the work has been repaired, and the medallion in the lower frieze has been filled with modern mosaic; otherwise it is in good order. It is essentially an architectural work, but the number of figures introduced has softened the hard lines of the construction, giving it plenty of life. Four little angels, rather stumpy and ill-drawn, are sitting on the lower plinth. Above them rise the main outer columns which support the upper portion of the tabernacle, and enclose the central opening, where the picture is now fixed. At the base of these columns there are two groups of winged children, three on either side, looking inwards towards the central feature of the composition. They bend forward reverently with their hands joined in prayer and adoration--admirable children, full of shyness and deference. The upper part of the tabernacle, supported on very plain corbels, is occupied by a broad relief, at either end of which stand other winged angels, more boyish and confident than those below. This relief is, perhaps, Donatello's masterpiece in _stiacciato_. It is the Entombment, his first presentment of those intensely vivid scenes which were so often reproduced during his later years. Christ is just being laid in the tomb by two solemn old men with flowing beards, St. Joseph and St. Peter. The Virgin kneels as the body is lowered into the tomb. Behind her is St. Mary Magdalene, her arms extended, her hair dishevelled; scared by the frenzy of her grief. To the right St. John turns away with his face buried in his hands. The whole composition--striking in contrast to the quiet and peaceful figures below--is treated with caution and reserve. But we detect the germ of the pulpits of San Lorenzo, where the rough sketch in clay could transmit all its fire and energy to the finished bronze. In this case Donatello not only felt the limitations of the marble, but he was not yet inclined to take the portrayal of tragedy beyond a certain point. The moderation of this relief entitles it to higher praise than we can give to some of his later work. The other panel in _stiacciato_ made about this time belonged to the Salviati family.[132] Technically the carving is inferior to that in St. Peter's, and it may be that in certain parts, especially, for instance, round the heads of Christ and one of the Apostles, the work is unfinished. Christ is seated on the clouds, treated like those on the Brancacci panel, and hands the keys to St. Peter. The Apostles stand by, the Virgin kneels in the foreground, and on the left there are two angels like those on the tabernacle. Trees are lightly sketched in, and no halos are employed. The work is disappointing, for it is carved in such extraordinarily low-relief that parts of it are scarcely recognisable on first inspection; the marble is also rather defective. As a composition--and this can best be judged in the photograph--the Charge to Peter is admirable. The balance is preserved with skill, while the figures are grouped in a natural and easy fashion. The row of Apostles to the left shows a rendering of human perspective which Mantegna, who liked to make his figures contribute to the perspective of the architecture around them, never surpassed. This panel, in spite of Bocchi's praise, shares one obvious demerit with the relief in St. Peter's. The Virgin, who kneels with outstretched hands as she gazes upwards to the Christ, is almost identical with a figure on the Entombment. She is ugly, with no redeeming feature. The pose is awkward, the drapery graceless, the contour thick, and her face, peering out of the thick veil, is altogether displeasing. One has no right to look for beauty in Donatello's statues of adults: character is what he gives. But neither does one expect this kind of vagary. There is great merit in the plaintive and wistful ugliness of the Zuccone: Here the ugliness is wanton, and therefore inexcusable. The Crivelli tomb and the Baptist in San Giovanni Fiorentino have been already described. There were other products of Donatello's visit to Rome, but they are now lost. Tradition still maintains that the wooden Baptist in S. Giovanni Laterano is his work. But it cannot possibly be by him, though it may be a later copy of a fifteenth-century original. Curiously enough, there is another Baptist in the same church which is Donatellesque in character and analogous in some respects to the St. John at Siena, namely, the large bronze statue signed by Valadier and dated 1772. Valadier was a professional copyist, some of his work being in the Louvre. Where he got the design for this Baptist we do not know; but it is certainly not typical of the late eighteenth century. Titi mentions a head in Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, and a medallion portrait of Canon Morosini in Santa Maria Maggiore.[133] Neither of them can be found.

[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 è effigiato quando da le chiavi Cristo a S. Pietro. Estimata molto da gli artefici questa opera: la quale per invenzione è rara, e per disegno maravigliosa. Molto è 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, è scoltura di Donatello Fiorentino._" In Chapel of Paul V., Sta. M. Maggiore: "_In terra in una lapide vi è 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 à 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 André'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, Dædalus 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.]

* * * * *

THE BRONZE DAVID

BARGELLO, FLORENCE]

[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 florencée_ 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 Palæstra, 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 è un Davitte di Donatello dignissimo._" Letter to Alberto Lollio, 17. viii. 1549, Bottari, iii. 341.]

[Footnote 137: _Giù abasso è 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.]

* * * * *

CANTORIA

IN OPERA DEL DUOMO, FLORENCE]

[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 Pietà, 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.]

* * * * *

CANTORIA (DETAIL)

FLORENCE]

[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 façade 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.]

* * * * *

THE PRATO PULPIT]

[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 façade, 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 façade 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.]

* * * * *

BRONZE AMORINO

BARGELLO]

[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 André.[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 André 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 _naïveté_ 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.]

* * * * *

SAN GIOVANNINO

FAENZA MUSEUM]

[Sidenote: Boys' Busts.]