MUSEUM OF FINE • ARTS BOSTON irir t * ♦ MANUAL OF ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE * * BY BENJAMIN IVES GILMAN SECRETARY OF THE MUSEUM INDEX OF NUMBERS No. Artist Page 42 Michel Angelo . . 170 43 do ... . • 143 44 Donatello . . . 62 56 Donatello (?) . 65 57 Donatello . . • 63 53 XV Century . 126 59 do ... . . 128 96 Ghiberti . . . • 30 1 19 do ... . . 29 120 do ... . • 47 124 XV Century . . . 125 124M do ... . • 133 126 Orcagna . . . . 22 127 do ... . . 22 129 L. della Robbia . . 78 130 Donatello . . . • 55 I 3 1 do ... . • 59 139 do ... . . 64 162 do ... . . 65 295 Michel Angelo . • 154 400 XV Century . . . 128 •3 do ... . • 13° •5 Verrocchio . . . 109 404 N. Pisano . . • 7 .1 Michel Angelo . . 149 .2 Donatello . . . • 55 405 XV Century . . . 127 412 Desiderio (?) . . . 101 .1 J. della Quercia . • 2 5 •3 B. da Maiano . 120 •4 XV Century . . . 128 413 A. della Robbia . . 84 No. Artist Page 41 3. i L. della Robbia (?) . . 80 .6 Mino da Fiesole . .116 •7 Desiderio 100 414 Pollaiuolo 104 .2 A. della Robbia ... 87 •3 do 85 .4 do (?) .... 88 424 Mino da Fiesole . .117 436 N. Pisano 9 449 Verrocchio (?)... 105 450 Desiderio (?) .... 101 458 do 101 460 Donatello 61 461 Verrocchio . . . .108 462 Mino da Fiesole . .115 463 B. da Maiano . . . .120 464 Rossellino 98 465 XV Century .... 126 466 G. Pisano 20 467 do (?) 21 468 L. della Robbia ... 68 478 Rossellino .... 96 479 Civitali 123 480 Verrocchio . . . .111 481 Donatello 57 482 Ghiberti 29 558 Federighi 92 613 Michel Angelo . . .157 614 do 157 885 do 148 897 do 145 905 A. della Robbia ... 89 Other numbers refer to specimens of Italian Renaissance ornament described on pp. 173— 175. t Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/manualofitalianrOOgilh MANUAL OF ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE AS ILLUSTRATED IN THE COLLECTION OF CASTS AT THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON I BY BENJAMIN IVES GILMAN SECRETARY OF THE MUSEUM MDCCCCIV COPYRIGHT I904 BY THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON All rights reserved THE GETTY CENTER' LIBRARY PREFACE One of the wider problems of the history of fine art is that of its intermittent development. Why has no sculptor of the foremost rank appeared in Italy since Michel Angelo, and why, when Michel Angelo lived, was Raphael also living? May genius be a matter of the heredity of a whole people, or is it occasion only that is lacking in times of artistic depression ? Why should not art flourish with a measurable continuity ? Why should it always blossom and decay ? Be the cause what it may, the works of sculpture of which the casts here described are reproductions belong exclusively to a short period in the history of Italy ; nor is it an arbitrary choice that has confined them to this period, but the fact that sculptures of equal merit were not produced there before and have not been produced there since. The ruder art of the eleventh and twelfth centuries in both northern and southern Italy was suddenly succeeded during the thirteenth by work far higher in quality both of skill and fancy. In northern IV PREFACE Italy the level continued to rise during the fourteenth century, until by the opening of the fifteenth it had at- tained a height not before reached since the Greeks. During the sixteenth century the imaginative power of Italian sculptors rapidly declined, not again during the three hundred years that have since elapsed to touch its former level, even in sporadic cases. Of this brilliant period in all the material arts a few only of the most noted names are represented in the collection here de- scribed. To gain an adequate idea of what Italian sculp- ture was at its best, we must conceive these artists sur- rounded by a throng of others, if not their peers, well worthy of association with them. It is apparent to every eye that plaster casts are far from exact reproductions of their originals, especially if these are works in the round. Milton’s lines “ Who reads Incessantly, and to his reading brings not A spirit and judgment equal or superior, Uncertain and unsettled still remains, Deep-versed in books, and shallow in himself,” apply to all appreciation, but especially to that of fine art seen in reproduction. The enjoyment of these cold PREFACE v wraiths of life-like originals, the grasp, by their aid, of what the artist’s achievement really was, demands a power of attentive vision, a productiveness of plastic fancy, whether native or acquired, that is already the beginning of an artistic endowment. Casting is by no means a completely trustworthy process, both through the impossibility of producing in plaster edges as sharp as in stone, the impracticability of delicately following reentrant surfaces, and the difficulty of rejoining with close accuracy the various fragments of which a mould is necessarily made. Furthermore, a cast is of another tint than marble, another color than bronze, and makes no attempt to reproduce their frequent coloring and gild- ing ; it is opaque instead of semi-transparent as marble is, and has less sheen and less intense shadows than either. Of the total effect of sculpture photographs must be admitted to produce at least as much as casts. Yet the fragment given by casts alone, consisting in the volume and the variety of their originals, is indispensable to the completer comprehension of an art fundamentally one of the sense of touch. A photograph does not give the size, and above all, not the rotundity of sculpture ; it is more- over a single view, instead of the indefinite variety of aspects upon which the artist in the round counts, and VI PREFACE which the cast repeats. Through their limited but equally essential scope both photographs and casts may be said rather to illustrate than to embody the works they repre- sent, and to illustrate them in a complementary way. Together far from reproducing their original, each gives elements the other lacks : the photograph its surface, its sheen, its depth of shadow, its sharpness of line, its exact form ; the cast none of these, but alone its volume and variety. Nor are they both without artistic advantages compared with original works, in that they can be be- held without fatigue, distraction, or limitations of time, under the best conditions of light and approach, and con- fronted one with another. Practically, the importance of casts to a wider and closer acquaintance with sculpture is recognized even where original examples of the art are most accessible, — as in Dresden at the Albertinum, in Berlin at the New Museum, and in Paris at the Tro- cadero. The study of Italian sculpture has an especial claim upon this community, and in particular upon visitors to our galleries. The late Charles C. Perkins, well remem- bered in Boston as a critic of unusual quality, Honorary Director of this Museum during the first ten years of its history, was one of the earliest investigators and writers PREFACE vii in this field. Mr. Perkins’s “ Tuscan Sculptors,” published forty years ago, but nine years after the “Cicerone” of Jacob Burckhardt, has been followed by a large litera- ture, in which the European scholars who have carried further the inquiries of his day invariably mention him with high appreciation as a pioneer student of the ori- ginal sources of their subject. The gaps that years have made in the historical fabric he wrought with the best material then accessible are many and great ; but upon what is left, the happy expression of an appreciative comprehension of the art he studied, time has no hold. A comparison like that of Michel Angelo’s “Day” to “ one of the forms which fancy shapes in the clouds ” would not have occurred to a mind unattuned to the thought of the artist, and is not likely to be forgotten. A book like the present must always, in the simple reading of it, leave an unsatisfactory, even a tantalizing impression. It brings us near to interesting things with- out once revealing them ; forever turning to something new before beginning to exhaust the old. This is the unavoidable result of the purely preparatory nature of all verbal comment upon art. It is the reader of these pages who must satisfy himself by closing them and turning spectator. Conceived by themselves, as inde- Vlll PREFACE pendent architecture, the steps of a cathedral would like- wise mock us with their upward gradation leading no- where ; yet we need them to reach the portal where they mean that we should enter and forget them. Boston, January, 1904. CONTENTS NICCOLO PISANO ( about 1206-before 1284) 404. Relief of the Adoration of the Magi; from the pulpit in the Baptistery at Pisa 7 436. Pulpit in the cathedral at Siena 9 GIOVANNI PISANO {about 1230-about 1320) 4 66. Statue of the Madonna and Child; from the altar of Madonna dell’ Arena at Padua 20 (In the Style of Giovanni Pisano) 467. Recumbent Effigy of Enrico Scrovegno; from his tomb in Madonna dell’ Arena at Padua ... 21 ANDREA DI CIONE, called ORCAGNA {died probably in 1368) 126, 127. Two Reliefs from the Tabernacle in the church of Or San Michele at Florence 22 The Marriage of the Virgin. The Annunciation. JACOPO DELLA QUERCIA {about 1374-1438) 412.1. Recumbent Effigy of Ilaria del Carretto; from her tomb in the cathedral at Lucca .... 25 LORENZO GHIBERTI {13^-1433) 1 19. Relief of the Sacrifice of Abraham; in the Museo Nazionale (the Bargello) at Florence ... 29 482. Relief of John the Baptist before Herod ; from the font in the Baptistery at Siena .... 29 96. Eastern Doors of the Baptistery at Flor- ence 30 120. Three Reliefs of the Miracles of St. Zeno- X CONTENTS bius ; from the front and ends of the reliquary under the altar of the chapel of St. Zenobius in the cathedral at Florence 47 DONATO DI NICCOLO DI BETTO BARDI, called DONA- TELLO { 1386 - 1466 ) 404.2, 130. Statue of St. George, and Relief of St. George and the Dragon; from a niche on the north fa$ade of the church of Or San Michele at Florence ; the statue now in the Museo Nazionale . 55 481. Relief of Herod’s Feast; from the font in the Baptistery at Siena 57 131. Relief of Dancing Cherubs; from the external pulpit of the cathedral at Prato 59 460. Statue of David with the Head of Goliath; in the Museo Nazionale at Florence 61 44. Twelve Reliefs of Singing and Playing Cher- ubs ; from the high altar of the church of S. An- tonio (II Santo) at Padua 62 57. Relief of Christ mourned by Cherubs; in the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensing- ton 63 139. Bust in Relief of St. John the Baptist as a Boy ; in the Museo Nazionale at Florence .... 64 (Attributed to Donatello) 56. Bust in Relief called St. Cecilia; in the possession of Lord Wemyss 65 162. Relief of a Lion’s Head; in the sacristy of San Lorenzo at Florence 65 LUCA DELLA ROBBIA { 1400 - 1482 ) 468. Ten Reliefs of Singing, Playing, and Dan- cing Youths and Children ; from the organ loft of the cathedral of Florence ; now preserved in the Cathedral Museum 68 CONTENTS xi 129. Relief of St. Augustine, reading, attended by Two Angels; one of ten panels in the doors of the new (north) sacristy in the cathedral of Flor- ence ... 78 (Attributed to Luca della Robbia) 413.x. Group of the Visitation; in the church of S. Giovanni fuor Civitas, Pistoia 80 ANDREA DELLA ROBBIA {^SW-^SW ) 413. Four Reliefs of Infants; from the fa9ade of the Hospital of the Innocents at Florence .... 84 414.3. Relief of the Annunciation ; over the door of the church of S. Maria in the court of the Hospital of the Innocents at Florence 85 414.2. Relief of the Meeting of St. Francis and St. Dominic ; from the Loggia di S. Paolo at Flor- ence 87 (Attributed to Andrea della Robbia) 414.4. Relief of the Madonna and Child; under the portico of the Accademia delle Belle Arti at Flor- ence 88 905. Relief of the Assumption ; in the Metropolitan Museum at New York 89 ANTONIO FEDERIGHI {died 1490) 558. Holy- Water Basin; one of two near the main portal of the cathedral at Siena 92 ANTONIO ROSSELLINO {1427-1478) 478. Relief of the Nativity; in the Museo Nazio- nale at Florence 96 464. Bust of Matteo Palmieri; in the Museo Na- zionale at Florence 98 XIV CONTENTS the Sacrament in the church of Notre Dame at Bruges 148 404- 1- Statue of Moses ; from the tomb of Pope Julius II in the church of S. Pietro in Vincoli at Rome . . 149 295. Head from One of the Two Statues of Cap- tives DESIGNED FOR THE TOMB OF POPE JULIUS II ; in the Louvre 154 614, 613. Tombs of the Medici ; in the new sacristy of the church of S. Lorenzo at Florence 157 Tomb of Giuliano de’ Medici, Duke of Nemours ; with figures of Night and Day. Tomb of Lorenzo de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino ; with figures of Evening and Dawn. (Attributed to Michel Angelo) 42. Statue known as Cupid; in the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington ...... 170 DETAILS OF ITALIAN RENAISSANCE ORNAMENT 173 INDEX OF PLACES 176 AIDS The American student of the art of the past is at a disad- vantage through his remoteness from most of its monuments. The following list names a number of aids, both pictorial and literary, to the study of Italian Renaissance Sculpture. Illustrations. The photographs of Fratelli Alinari in Flor- ence, of D. Anderson in Rome, and others, reproduce all the more important monuments. The great work of Dr. W. Bode, “ Die Renaissance Skulptur Toscanas,” although still incom- plete, already consists of nearly five hundred folio plates reproducing photographs. The “ Klassischer Skulpturens- chatz” of v. Reber and Bayersdorfer, completed in 1900 in four quarto volumes, embraces the whole of ancient and mod- ern sculpture in reproductions on a smaller scale. “ Das Museum,” edited by W. Spemann, of which seven volumes in small folio form are now complete, the eighth year being in progress, is a collection of like reproductions, including both painting and sculpture from ancient times to the present. All three of these publications are accompanied by a text. “ Kunstgeschichte in Bildern,” published by E. A. Seemann and completed in 1902 in five folio volumes without text, gives smaller reproductions, many from photographs, of architec- ture, painting, and sculpture from classical times to the end of the eighteenth century. Valuable for its illustrations, even to those who cannot read its acute and well-informed text, is Kuhn’s “ Allgemeine Kunstgeschichte ” in three large octavo volumes, now nearing completion. Books. Giorgio Vasari’s “ Lives of the Most Eminent XVI AIDS Painters, Sculptors, and Architects,” first published in 1550, has been translated by Mrs. Jonathan Foster. It remains the most important single source of information concerning the artists of the Renaissance in Italy. Among the works of Charles C. Perkins, that entitled “ Tuscan Sculptors ” (2 vols. 1864) was for a time the principal modern contribution to its special subject. Luebke’s “ History of Sculpture ” has been translated by F. E. Bunnett (2 vols. London, 1878). The brief “ History of Sculpture ” of Professors Marquand and Froth- ingham (New York, 1896), well illustrated, supplied with bib- liographical lists, and compactly embodying the results of modern scholarship, gives several chapters to the Italian Re- naissance. The volume by L. J. Freeman, “ Italian Sculptors of the Renaissance” (New York, 1901), contains a series of penetrating studies of the greater sculptors of the time. The most considerable work devoted to the subject within recent years is that of Marcel Reymond, “La Sculpture Florentine,” published in four small-folio volumes by the Messrs. Alinari (Florence, 1897-1900) and richly illustrated by reproductions of their photographs. Neither this book nor the convenient manual of Dr. Bode, “ Italienische Plastik ” (Berlin, 1893), has yet been translated into English. Among literary aids to a more extended knowledge of Ital- ian Renaissance sculpture, consisting of documents of the time, and of articles, monographs, and general works based immediately upon these and upon the monuments, mainly by continental scholars, the following may be mentioned : An ac- count of contemporary writings upon earlier Renaissance art and artists in Italy is given by C. Frey in his volume upon one of them entitled “ II Codice Magliabecchiano ” (1892). Other records of the time are “ Notizia d’ opere di disegno nella prima meta del Secolo XVI,” first published by Morelli in 1800, reedited by G. Frizzoni, 1884; F. Albertini, “ Opus- culum de mirabilibus novae et veteris urbis Romae” (1510). AIDS XVII Letters and other contemporary documents have been gathered by Gaye, “ Carteggio inedito d’ artisti dei Secoli XIV, XV, XVI,” (3 vols. 1839) ; Milanesi, “ Documenti per la storia dell’ arte Senese” (3 vols. 1854) ; and others. Burckhardt’s “ Der Cicerone, eine Anleitung zum Genuss der Kunstwerke Italiens ” (guide to the enjoyment of the art works of Italy), a work of genius, first published in 1855, has become in suc- cessive editions (8th, 1901), through the collaboration of many scholars, an epitome of later scientific results in the whole do- main of Renaissance art in Italy. In the three richly illustrated volumes of E. Muentz, “ Histoire de Tart pendant la Renais- sance ” (1889-95), the fruit of both learning and observation is presented in sumptuous form. Other general works are the “ Catalogue of European Bronzes in the South Kensington Museum,” by C. Drury E. Fortnum (1876) ; Dohme, “ Kunst und Kuenstler des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit,” Vol. Ill (1878); Dr. W. Bode, “ Italienische Bildhauer der Renais- sance” (1887), and “Die Florentinischen Bildhauer der Re- naissance” (1902); Zimmermann, “ Oberitalische Plastik im fruehen und hohen Mittelalter ” (1897) ; A. Philippi, “ Die Kunst der Renaissance in Italien ” (1897) ; L. Couraj ' d, “ Ori- gines de la Renaissance” (1901); Symonds, “Renaissance in Italy ” (1882). Among the few existing monographs of im- portance upon individual sculptors and their works the follow- ing maybe mentioned: Cornelius, “Jacopo della Quercia” (1896); Perkins, “Ghiberti et son ecole ” (1886); Semper, “Donatello seine Zeit und Schule ” (1876), “Donatellos Le^ ben und Werke ” (1887) ; A. Schmarsow, “ Donatello” (1886), v. Tschudi, “ Donatello e la critica moderna ” in Rivista sto- rica Italiana, IV; Semrau, “Donatellos Kanzeln ” (1891); W. Voege, “ Raffaelle und Donatello” (1896); A. G. Meyer, “ Donatello ” (1903) ; Cavalucci et Molinier, “ Les della Rob- bia” (1884); the articles of Professor Marquand upon the Robbia in the American Journal of Archaeology, Vols. VII, XV111 AIDS VIII, and IX (1891-94), The Brickbuilder, 1895, 1896, 1902, and Scribner’s, 1893; Cruttwell, “Luca and Andrea della Robbia and their Successors ” (1902); and C. Yriarte, “ Matteo Civitali ” (1 886). A good brief biography of Michel Angelo is that of Knackfuss (1897) m his series of “ Kuenstlermono- graphien.” The latest of the larger lives is that of Symonds (2 vols. 1893). That of H. Grimm was translated into Eng- lish by F. E. Bunnett (2 vols. 1866). Springer’s “ Raffaelle und Michel Angelo ” (1878) constitutes Vol. IV of Dohme’s “ Kunst und Kuenstler ” mentioned above. The first volume of H. Thode’s work, “ Michel Angelo und das Ende der Re- naissance,” appeared in 1902. The correspondence of Michel Angelo has been published by Milanesi (1875 and 1890), and his poems by Guasti and by Frey (1897), the latter of whom in his “ Studien,” published in the Jahrbuch der Koe- niglichen preussischen Kunstsammlungen XVI, 1895, p. 91, and XVII, 1896, pp. 5 and 97, gives a partial chronology of Michel Angelo’s life. Other books and articles having to do with individual sculptors and their works are referred to in the text. Among books upon Christian art and symbolism may be mentioned : Lowrie, “ Monuments of the Early Church ” (1901), with a select bibliography ; Mrs. Jameson’s well-known books ; the “ Dictionary of Christian Antiquities ” of Smith and Cheetham (2 vols. 1876-80) ; Didron’s “ Christian Ico- nography ” (English edition, 1886); Kraus, “ Geschichte der Christlichen Kunst” (Vol. I, 1896); and Cabrol, “ Diction- naire d’archeologie chretienne ” (1st part, 1903). The periodicals which record the progress of the study of the history of modern art are very numerous, not invariably continuous in publication, and very often short-lived. Chief among them are, in Italy, “ L’ Arte,” formerly “ Archivio storico dell’ Arte ” (Vol. I, 1888), “Arte Italiana decorativa e indus- trial ” (Vol. I, 1891), and “ Rassegna d’ Arte ” (Vol. I, 1901) ; AIDS xix in France, “ L’Art ” (Vol. I, 1875), st iH longer established “Gazette des Beaux Arts” (Vol. I, 1859), and “ Les Arts” (Vol. I, 1902) ; in Germany, the “ Repertorium fuer Kunst- wissenschaft ” (Vol. I, 1876), and the “ Zeitschrift fuer Bil- dende Kunst ” (Vol. I, 1866) ; in England, the “ Burlington Magazine ” (Vol. I, 1903) ; in America, the “ American Journal of Archaeology” (Vol. I, 1885). The annual called “ Gallerie Nazionale Italiane,” the quarterly “ Jahrbuchder koeniglichen preussischen Kunstsammlungen ” (Vol. I, Berlin, 1880), and the “Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des aller- hoechsten Kaiserhauses ” (Vienna, Vol. I, 1883), are publica- tions under governmental auspices, containing extended mon- ographs on artists and artistic monuments ; and similar smaller bulletins are issued by some individual museums. The “ Bibliography of the Fine Arts ” of Sturgis and Krehbiel (1897) contains many useful notes upon the books mentioned, while the “ Rassegna bibliografica dell’ arte Ital- iana ” (Vol. I, 1897) is limited in scope as its title shows. The new “ Internationale Bibliographie der Kunstwissen- schaft (Vol. I, Berlin, 1902) aims to take account of all more important publications in all languages upon every branch of art. ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE In crossing the threshold between the gallery of Greek Vases with its casts of late Roman sculpture, and that of the Italian Renaissance, we pass in time through a mil- lenium. From the day when in Rome the sculptor of the sarcophagus of the Niobids laid down his chisel, until, in Pisa, Niccolo and his aids lifted theirs to carve a pulpit for the Baptistery, more years went by than separate the earliest sculptures of historic Greece from the latest products of Roman times, and nearly thrice as many as were to be occupied by the revival of the art upon Italian soil in which Niccolo’s is the first distinguished name. Nor is the change to be measured by the flight of time alone. A whole world vanishes as we enter the doorway, and a new one has replaced it ere we emerge. The two worlds are those of the visions that lay nearest the heart of European civilization during the two histori- cal eras to which they belong. Art is long, and to do the best that lies in them, men must devote their lives to it. It must, unless by exception, become their livelihood, to be gained, like any other, by the production of that which their fellows will buy. Hence it comes that the forms which art has taken in the past are chiefly those which 2 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE artists have been commissioned by others to give it. Espe- cially is this true of sculpture, which, as the fine art im- pressing shape upon resistant material, involves processes both long and laborious. Like architecture, which deals with similar material to ends in part utilitarian, it is even less individual, even more cooperative, more expressive of the genius of a whole people, than their sister art of painting. Of sculpture, by its nature dear-bought, mas- sive and enduring, its patrons have in all times asked the embodiment of sacred themes, those of affection, of pa- triotism, of religion, most of all the latter. But the tasks which it has been set in Christendom profoundly differ from those by which it developed in the ancient world. The gods of paganism were corporeal beings ; that of Christianity is an unseen spirit. As music is the charac- teristic art of modern times, so sculpture was of antiquity ; for of all arts the former can most impressively bring before us a disembodied soul, and the latter a bodily pre- sence. It lay in the natural path of sculpture to express to the Greeks the highest things, for these to them were types of personal perfection ; and it is they from whose dismembered remains or whose reflections in copies we now infer to the original glory of the art in Greece. But sculpture had first to learn how to image to the eyes of Christians, even remotely, the invisible sanctities of their contrasted faith. The earliest Christian sculpture, that of the third and fourth centuries, chiefly sarcophagi, made use of still surviving traditions of classical art. Based upon pleasure INTRODUCTION 3 of the eyes $.nd pride in life, these traditions proved ere long inadequate to utter the contempt of the flesh and the longing for a heavenly world with which Christianity had fired the imagination of the age. The statue of the Good Shepherd in the Lateran Museum, a product of the third century, personifies a Gospel allegory in an ideal of youthful beauty, as it were a god of paganism given a Christian significance. Yet it embodies, not the divinity itself, but an abstraction ; and the dread lest this distinction should not be drawn by the multitude, active in the movement to which we owe the word iconoclasm , eventually closed this avenue to sculpture. What was left of the plastic impulse served the new faith in less ambitious ways, decorative instead of monumental, con- cealing its poverty in the richness of its materials, ivory and the precious metals instead of stone or bronze. In this ornamentation, applied mainly to church furniture and utensils, the sculpture of figures and groups fulfilled a purpose wholly new, — that of imaging, no longer a pantheon of superb idealizations of human endowment, living lives of eternal beauty, but men imperfect like ourselves, the dramatis personae of situations supposedly historical, either biblical or legendary in origin. These motives, chosen for the lessons they conveyed, often in allegory, were jealously restricted by ecclesiastical author- ity to approved forms — “probata legislation So they carried their spiritual burden, they might be and soon became of the rudest, both in conception and execution ; and conventional symbols, the cross, the monogram XR, 4 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE the lamb, the fish, the peacock, in a measure replaced the imagery of a hampered and neglected art. But the joy of the sculptor in a message well delivered in carven forms, and in their own charm as well as its import, sur- vived throughout the darkest ages, as flowers in sheltered spots bloom through the winter. Byzantine sculptured ornament, foliage and animals, is often of marked beauty and variety, as in the wreathed border of the episcopal chair of the sixth century, at Ravenna ; and the vivid and well-composed ivory reliefs of the monk Tutilo in the ninth century testify to his artistic sense, as his repute does to that of his contemporaries. Two hundred years later began the era of cathedral building, and at length reopened the way for monumental sculpture. In rearing the great structures of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, workers in stone ac- quired a skill which found large opportunity for more independent use both without and within them. During the latter half of this epoch, the portals and choirs of churches in Germany and France, notably at Wechsel- berg, Freiberg, Bamberg, Naumberg, Paris, Amiens, Chartres, and Rheims, were magnificently adorned with figures and groups in the round, for the first time worthy of comparison, both technically and in independ- ence and elevation of fancy, with classical examples. Italian sculpture did not so soon profit by the opportu- nities of architecture ; and when, toward the end of the thirteenth century, works of similar rank began to be produced in Italy, their inspiration proved another than NICCOLO DI PIETRO PISANO 5 that of the actual existence of courts and market- places, where the northern artists found the noble forms and stately draperies they perpetuated in stone. The bridge-gate built by the Emperor Frederick II about 1240 on the Volturno at Capua, fragments of whose sculptures are still shown there, was adorned in emulation of Roman examples ; and twenty years later, in retracing upon the panels of the Baptistery pulpit at Pisa the outlines of antique reliefs, preserved about the cathedral, relics from Roman times, or booty of the Pisan fleet, Niccolo Pisano based a Christian art upon the classical ideal of earthly life perfected. Niccol6 di Pietro Pisano : born about 1206, died be- fore 1284. The name of Niccolo Pisano first appears in an inscription upon the pulpit of the Baptistery at Pisa relating its completion by him in 1260; and a like inscription upon the upper basin of the fountain at Perugia, finished about 1280, in which his son Giovanni is also mentioned, is the latest contemporary record of him. Documents of inter- mediate date name him as the sculptor of the sarcophagus in the monument of S. Domenico at Bologna, to which the remains of the saint were committed in 1267; of the pulpit in Siena cathedral finished in 1268, and of an altar in the cathedral at Pistoia, commissioned in 1273, but of which nothing is now known. Several reliefs over the left-hand portal of Lucca cathedral, upon the architrave the Annun- ciation and the Adoration, in the lunette the Deposition, be- tray his immediate influence, if not his hand. 6 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE In these few works a commanding individuality asserted itself ; one within the twenty years of whose activity Italian sculpture came of age. The carvings in stone of the previ- ous century, like those signed Wiligelmus in Modena and Gruamon in Pistoia, seem barbaric and childish beside the Pisan pulpit ; and if it have to show no revivification of an antique type more admirable than the bust called Sigelgaita Rufolo upon the pulpit, dated 1272, at Ravello, nor any bit of verisimilitude more accurate and better expressed than the groups of parents and children among Antelami’s portal sculptures of the early part of the thirteenth century at the cathedral of Borgo San Donnino near Parma, these rare ex- amples show only that like ideas and capacities were already astir here and there in other natures than that in which they had their fullest fruition. More nearly in Niccolo’s style than other contemporary instances (perhaps the work of a scholar), are the reliefs of the Virgin’s life from Ponte alio Spino in the left transept of Siena cathedral, with the stocky figures, luxuriant hair, sweeping drapery, and strong, well- modelled faces familiar in both pulpits and sarcophagus. Of Niccolo’s life apart from his sculptures little is definitely known, Vasari’s full details of his achievements as an archi- tect having proved untrustworthy. A contemporary docu- ment describes his father Pietro as coming from Apulia, but the interpretation of this record is uncertain, and the more rigid style of the South Italian sculptures of the time is in marked contrast with the free and apparently independent imitation of the antique in Niccolo’s works. E. Dobbert, “ Die Pisani ” in Vol. Ill of Dohme, “ Kunst und Kuenstler des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit,” 1878 ; A. L. Frothingham, Jr., “The Revival of Sculpture in NICCOLO DI PIETRO PISANO 7 Europe in the Thirteenth Century,” Am. J. of Archaeo- logy, Vol. I, pp. 34 {., 37 2 f. ; O. Wulff, review of W. Hiaz- intow u Die Wiedergeburt der Italienischen Skulptur in den Werken Niccolo Pisano’s,” Moscow, 1900 (in Rus- sian) ; Repertorium fur Kunstwissenschaft, XXVI, 5, 1903, p. 428. 404. Relief of the Adoration of the Magi ; from the pulpit in the Baptistery at Pisa. Of marble ; the pulpit finished in 1260. The pulpit at Pisa is of the general design of the later one at Siena, reproduced in the cast next to be described. Hexagonal in shape, it stands free within the circular church, each of five faces of the parapet adorned with a relief. That from which the present cast is taken is the second in order from the entrance stairway, the first representing the Nativity, the others the Presentation, the Crucifixion, and the Last Judg- ment. In his conception of all these motives Niccolo adhered closely to ecclesiastical tradition ; but in their rendering, the half-symbolic, careless, or helpless indi- cation of the subjects imaged, with which the church had hitherto contented itself, is replaced by a far from unskilful representation of ample and majestic pre- sences, in attitudes easy and measured, with faces full of dignity and repose, and clad in draperies both grace- ful and true to reality. This remarkable innovation betokens the full possession of great powers and rich experience, and in its frank acceptance of classical ideals amply justifies Niccolo Pisano’s fame as the earli- 8 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE est representative of humanism, the harbinger of the Renaissance in Italy. The Madonna, clothed in flowing drapery, is seated at the right in a chair with claw feet, and holds in her lap the child, who grasps a casket presented by the Mage kneeling before him. The second Mage, who is bearded like the first and of the same facial type, kneels behind him ; the third, who has a smooth face, and rounder, more youthful features, stands behind the two. Their horses appear on the left, two prancing with arched necks, the third with down-stretched head and pawing the ground as if snuffing after grass. Above, an angel watches the group, and behind the Madonna appears the figure of Joseph. The influence upon Niccolo of the classical models he had before him in ancient sarcophagi at the time built into the outer walls of the cathedral, but afterward transported to the Campo Santo, may here be recognized in the noble Junonian face and pose of the Madonna, a free copy of the Phaedra in one of these, in her dress, and in the Apollo-like figure of the young- est Mage, whose crown is a chaplet of flower forms in- stead of the conventional ornament used for his compan- ions. The other reliefs of both pulpits follow the style of later Roman times in a fault, that of the overcrowd- ing of the figures, conspicuously absent in the present one, which in its composition is more like a reminiscence of Greek sculpture. The horses are remarkably spirited and realistic, and the head of Joseph a high type of manly beauty. The drapery of the first Mage, whose NICCOLO DI PIETRO PISANO 9 stiffness suggests at first a less skilful hand, may be de- signed to represent the action of pressing forward upon one knee. 436. Pulpit in the Cathedral at Siena. Of marble ; executed between March, 1266, and Novem- ber, 1268. On the 29th of September, 1265, the year of Dante’s birth, in the Baptistery at Pisa, under the shadow of the new pulpit, and in the presence of two of the cathedral councillors who had commissioned it, Niccolo Pisano signed a contract with an envoy from Siena for a similar pulpit to be erected in Siena cathedral. By March of the following year he was to remove to Siena with his three assistants, Arnolfo, afterward the architect of S. Croce in Florence, Lapo, and a third unnamed, there to remain until his work was done ; four visits to Pisa of a fortnight each being allowed him each year in the in- terest of his personal affairs and existing engagements, but not for new orders. A forfeit in case of any failure to fulfil his contract guarded its due performance, and was made a claim against his heirs ; and in return the Sienese agreed to pay him at stated rates for the mar- ble he furnished, and for the labor, food, and lodging of himself, his aids, and his horses, and exempted him from all taxes during the progress of the work. His son Giovanni might accompany him on half pay. The out- come of this compact was the completion, within two years and a half, of the great work of art which has o ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE ever since been the most conspicuous ornament of Siena cathedral. The cast reproduces the pulpit alone, without the elab- orate marble stairway, the work of Bernardino di Gia- como, added in 1543. The pulpit is octagonal in form, and is supported by nine columns, eight at the angles of the octagon and one in the centre. Two of the former rest upon lions, one devouring a horse, the other a stag ; and two upon lionesses suckling their young. In the cast the last three animal groups are not reproduced, the figure of a lion devouring a horse being repeated under all four columns. This motive, which is frequent under the pulpits and portals of Romanesque churches in Italy, recalls St. Peter’s comparison of Satan to a “ roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour,” and is thought to have symbolized the victory of the church over the powers of darkness. Yet it is found also in classical sculpture, as in the lions devouring rams on the sarcophagus, No. 58A, in the Cortile of the Vatican, or the lion eating a horse, No. 195, of the Sala degli Ani- mali. All the columns have spreading capitals of acan- thus leaves, and in several birds perch among the foliage. The capitals are not exactly reproduced in the cast, which has two that are not in the pulpit, and lacks two that occur there. The base of the central column rests upon an octago- nal drum, on the faces of which eight figures of women, seated, are sculptured in high relief, portraying the lib- eral arts, the trivium and quadrivium of ancient scholar- NICCOLO DI PIETRO PISANO I ship, one of the earliest representations of this subject in sculpture . 1 The first of the trivium, Grammar, in- structs a child from a book ; the figure next to the right, haggard with long vigils, is Logic ; next, Rhetoric proves her point, indicating with her finger the confirmatory pas- sage. The trivium is separated from the quadrivium by the figure of Philosophy, the sovereign of all, dressed in a magnificently embroidered robe and bearing a flaming horn of plenty, typifying the love of wisdom. Next fol- lows Arithmetic counting on her fingers, Geometry mea- suring upon a tablet with compasses (her forearm, hand, and compasses lacking), Music playing upon a harp, the stretched fingers of her left hand perhaps alluding to the mathematical basis of her art, and Astronomy gaz- ing at the heavens in an astrolabe. From the exterior columns spring trefoil arches, the spandrils of which are filled with reliefs representing prophets, and in two cases perhaps sibyls, who, according to early Christian legend, also foretold Christ’s coming. In the cast the same two reliefs of prophets are repro- duced in all the arches, but in the pulpit itself they vary from arch to arch. At the angles of the octagon formed by the arches eight figures of women are placed, four seated and four standing. These represent virtues, and are of exceptional beauty. Of the five called car- dinal, the Christian virtue of Humility, and the four of Paganism, Justice, Prudence, Temperance, and Forti- 1 Paolo D’Ancona, “ Le rappresentazioni allegoriche delle arti liberali nel medio evo e nel renascimento,” L’ Arte, V, 1902, p. 219 ff. 2 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE tude, the latter may be identified by the dead lion at her side. Of the three theological virtues, Faith is recog- nizable by the scroll with “Fides,” Hope glances up- ward, and Charity carries a flaming horn, the symbol of love. Upon the arches rests an octagonal parapet, bearing on its exterior faces seven elaborate reliefs. Base and summit of the parapet are emphasized by rich mouldings ; but at the angles, instead of the simple lines and slender columns of the previous pulpit at Pisa, eight statues or groups are placed. The whole adornment of the parapet thus gives the impression of a continuous relief bent into octagonal shape, and emphasized at the angles by masses of sculpture on a larger scale. This plastic continuity is a characteristic of the separate panels themselves, which in general represent not one scene but several, placed in immediate juxtaposition and sometimes hardly to be sep- arated. Their subject is the same epitome of Gospel history and eschatology that in more condensed form appeared on the Pisan pulpit, the angle figures and groups referring in a measure to the motives of the pan- els they separate. Beginning at the right-hand newel-post of the entrance, the angle figure is that of the Virgin of the Annuncia- tion, and the adjoining relief is devoted to scenes from the story of the Nativity. In the upper left-hand corner the Visitation is portrayed, to the right, the angels sing to the shepherds, below, the beasts worship at the manger beside the Madonna, while the Christ child sleeps, and still NICCOLO DI PIETRO PISANO 13 lower, to the left, Joseph sits watching two maids bathe the infant. The next relief represents the Adoration of the Magi, the intervening angle statue being a priestly figure bearing a book and perhaps typifying either prophe- cies of Christ or his wider Epiphany through the preach- ing of the gospel. Below, on the left, the Wise Men are still on their journey, mounted on prancing horses and pointing or looking forward. Their Eastern origin is indi- cated by the camels that precede, ridden by two slaves with woolly hair and negroid features. Above and on the right the Adoration itself is imaged, the first Mage kneeling to kiss the foot of the child, while the others behind him open their caskets. The Madonna is crowned and veiled, and at her side is an angel, bearing in one hand a fleur-de-lis, symbol of the Virgin’s purity, and with the other pointing to the babe. On the left three mounted attendants intently watch the scene, while be- low, on the right, another holds the horses of the Wise Men. The next angle is occupied by a statue of the Virgin, standing, with the babe in her arms. The relief beyond images the Presentation in the Temple and the Flight into Egypt. As in the other reliefs, the architectural forms used here to represent the temple are not intro- duced as an actual background for the figures, but are unrelated to them in size and in position, and only sym- bolize the theatre of the scene represented. The high priest Simeon holds the child in his arms. Behind the Madonna Joseph appears, carrying the “pair of turtle- 14 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE doves or two young pigeons,” brought as the customary sacrifice. Above, and on the right, Herod deliberates with his councillors, while in the centre below an angel warns Joseph in a dream, and to the right the Madonna and child are seated on the ass, beside which Joseph walks with his hand on its bridle, and followed by an attendant bearing a whip on his shoulder. It has lately been suggested that in the figure appearing above Joseph in the Presentation, Niccolo Pisano has given a portrait of himself, and that the figure occupying the like position in the Pisan relief of the same subject fulfils the same function. The action of the Siena figure pointing at the temple before which he stands, gives color to the sup- position ; for in this architecture the choir walls of a large church have been removed to show within it an- other building resembling the Baptistery at Pisa in its original form before its completion by a Gothic dome. This curious device seems chosen to convey some special meaning. Further, both figures are less typical, more portrait-like in features as in dress, than any of the others in either relief, with the possible exception of one just above the warning angel in that at Siena, whose simi- lar clothing and corresponding action would seem to make it a pendant to the supposed portrait, perhaps that of some co-worker. The fact that this obvious, albeit far from certain, interpretation of a singular detail in this familiar relief should not before have been proposed, is an illustration of the gaps that still exist in our obser- vation of even the most important monuments of art. NICCOLO DI PIETRO PISANO 15 The next angle is occupied by a group of angels blow- ing on trumpets. The relief beyond represents the Slaughter of the Innocents. In the upper margin Herod sits attended by a councillor and two soldiers, and with outstretched finger gives the word of command for the massacre. The sculptor has shrunk from no violence of attitude or facial contortion in his effort to express the horror of the event, which has nevertheless exceeded his powers of representation, and doubtless transcends the limits of the art. The poses of the two children in the lower left-hand corner are exceptionally veracious and beautiful. The sculptures at the succeeding angle are full of sym- bolism. At the base stands a figure of Christ, extraordi- narily realistic and perfect in attitude, modelling, and ex- pression. From his right side issues the tree or stem of Jesse (a representation of the genealogy of Christ) in the form of a conventionalized vine which bears for clusters human heads and busts (those of the line of descent from Jesse). At the right foot of Christ are a lion’s whelp and a monster, half bird, half snake, in allusion to the verse, “The young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under foot.” Appearing beneath his left foot is a gro- tesque head. Above, between two cherubim, appears a down-stretched hand, the symbol of the guidance of the Father, and below it a bird, possibly a symbol of the Spirit. A representation of the Crucifixion occupies the adjoining panel. The cross stands upon a pyramidal mound, within which lies a skull, symbolizing the scene i6 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE of the Crucifixion (Golgotha, the place of a skull). On the left is the figure of John, with bent head, and face distorted with grief ; and behind him the Madonna faints in the arms of her attendants. On the right is a group of Roman soldiery, half crouching in fear, one of whom averts his face as if hastening away. Of the figures above, next the cross, one bears the sponge and the other the spear (broken off). Behind the latter appear the heads of two Jews who rail at the sufferer. The upper margin of the relief is occupied by angels, one holding what appears to be a ciborium, perhaps for a chalice to catch the blood of Christ. Of much character and ver- ity is the enigmatic figure in the upper right-hand corner whom an angel grasps by the shoulder. At the next angle is the lectern, formed as usual by an eagle with outstretched wings, the symbol of the Evan- gelist John. The symbols of the other Evangelists appear beneath ; an angel with a book (St. Matthew), an ox (St. Luke), and a lion (St. Mark). These symbols are the four beasts of the vision of Ezekiel (chap, i, vv. 5 to 10) and of Revelation (chap, iv, v. 7). In Jewish tradition they were interpreted to signify the four Archangels, or the four major prophets ; but early in Christian his- tory they became the distinctive attributes of the writers of the four Gospel narratives. The last two panels of the pulpit represent the Judg- ment Day ; the group at the angle between them being that of Christ seated as judge, beneath him the cross NICCOLO DI PIETRO PISANO 1 7 supported by two angels carrying the instruments of the Passion, and above on either side two cherubim. The angel on the right carries the spear, the nails, and a scourge, the other another scourge, and the crown of thorns. Both are noticeable for their rich priestly dress. In response to the local fondness for embroidered stuffs shown also in old Sienese paintings, Niccolo has clothed many other figures throughout the pulpit in the costume of the time, highly ornamented. The right hand of Christ, that turned toward the saved, is lifted ; his left hand, toward the lost, points downward. In the former relief the figures are arranged in regular horizontal lines, most of the faces being turned toward Christ. The first is that of the Virgin, crowned, and attended by three angels ; and among the throng which follow appear pro- phets, warriors, ecclesiastics, noblemen, and gentlewo- men, a few bearing lamps. In the lowest line, the elect emerge in their cerements from graves or from tombs. The regular arrangement and the quiet attitudes of this relief contrast strongly with the confusion and violence of the following scene of condemnation. Monsters and imps, dragons and serpents of frightful form, seize and devour their victims, who appeal for mercy or struggle to escape in vain. Angels with mild faces but implacable hands aid in preventing the flight of the doomed. The air of weariness and boredom in all the devils, especially in the horned devil at the right, apparently Beelzebub him- self, is most marked, and would seem to indicate an inten- i8 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE tion on the part of the sculptor, or his ecclesiastical advisers, to admit to the place of torment no satisfactions at all, not even devilish ones. The horned devil lazily rests his hand on the head of one of the lost, thereby aiding the dragon, which has begun to swallow him, to accomplish the task. At his feet an imp with knitted brows bites through the shoulder- joint of his victim as a boy might bite with circumspection at a nut. Crowned heads and priestly robes are seen among the lost, and some faces compare with any among the saved, doubtless not without an expressive intention. Two are conferring over a scroll, perhaps signifying a heretical book. A group of angels sounding trumpets of doom com- pletes the circle of sculptures on the pulpit. Compared with the work of Niccolo Pisano’s predeces- sors in Italy, the Siena pulpit represents an advance truly wonderful as the work of a single man ; compared with his own previous effort at Pisa, less an advance than a change in artistic intention. The technical deficiencies of his earlier sculptures may still be noted, — the squat proportions of his figures, and their disproportion one with another, the drill holes left as they were bored (much less noticeable here than in the sarcophagus at Bologna), the heavy and angular draperies. But the antique models have been left behind ; and the sculptor has been thrown upon his own enthusiasm for what is beautiful and full of meaning in the tangible world about him, and dramatic and passionate in his weighty subject-matter. In its superabundance of significant form, in its abandonment GIOVANNI PISANO 19 of the measure of the earlier work, the Siena pulpit is a step toward the art of his son and successor, Giovanni. Giovanni Pisano: lived from about 1250 to about 1320. Although Giovanni Pisano was his father’s assistant through many years, the most characteristic works of the two, the pul- pits at Pisa and Pistoia, could hardly be more different in style. The simple rounded forms and the peaceful, naive expressiveness of Niccolo’s sculptures are replaced in those of Giovanni by angular and complex modelling, full of hidden and impassioned meaning. The spirit of the coming Re- naissance, its frank joy in the life of the senses, no sooner appeared in Niccolo than it gave place in his son to the spirit of the Gothic north, inclined to pungent, even painful sensa- tions, full of emotionality, and tending to use appearances mainly as the vehicle of an imaginative burden. The poetic content of Giovanni’s works is often stormy and powerful, often delicate and beautiful, often veracious and living, but always stirring and always preponderant over their charm to the eye. Yet his neglect of the technical finish that marked the works of Niccolo was doubtless due but in part to the ascendancy, in his artistic purpose, of suggestion over sense- impression ; in part doubtless it resulted from the difficulty and multifarity of the conceptions that thronged from his fancy, which he had neither the skill nor the time to carry out in detail, and thus either sketched or left to subordinates. The reliefs on the fountain at Perugia, the last work of Nic- colo, are full of the evidences of Giovanni’s cooperation. His two principal works are two pulpits, that in S. Andrea at Pistoia (1301), his masterpiece, and that executed for the cathedral 20 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE at Pisa (13 n), fragments of which are preserved in the cathe- dral and the Campo Santo. Of the latter, begun in 1278, Giovanni was the architect ; and he had also to do with the building of Siena cathedral. . I. B. Supino in Archivio Storico dell’ Arte, 1895 f. ; L. Justi in Jahrbuch der K. p. Kunstsamml ungen, XXIV, 1903, p. 247 f. 466 . Statue of the Madonna and Child ; from the altar of Madonna dell’ Arena, Padua. Of marble ; probably executed shortly after the erection of the chapel in 1303. A. Tolomei, “La Cappella degli Scrovegni e 1 * Arena di Padova,” Padua, 1881. The Madonna, standing veiled and crowned, and clad in an inner garment gathered at the waist by a cord, and a fringed mantle clasped at the breast by a brooch, holds the child, seated, fully clothed, on her left arm, and turns toward him her head, poised on its long neck. Her atti- tude, sinuous and angular as a twisted pillar, exemplifies the architectural suggestiveness of Gothic sculpture. The child has a mature face, and meets his mother’s look of fascinated absorption with a glance both grave and intelligent. The inscription on the base of the statue reads, “ deo gratias opus jonis, magistri nicoli de pisis ” (Thanks be to God. The work of John, son of Master Nicholas of Pisa). It is thought that the statue of the founder of Madonna dell’ Arena, the Paduan Enrico Scrovegno, which stands in a side chapel near the altar, may also be the work of Giovanni. The present group may be compared with that called “Pisa,” pre- served, with other remains of Giovanni’s pulpit for Pisa GIOVANNI PISANO 21 cathedral, in the Museo Civico of that city ; and with statuettes of the Madonna and Child in the cathedrals of Pisa and Prato, all of which are thought from his hand. In the style of Giovanni Pisano. 467. Recumbent Effigy of Enrico Scrovegno ; from his tomb in Madonna dell’ Arena, Padua. Of marble. The will of Scrovegno, who died in 1335, states that the tomb had already been built. The tomb of Scrovegno consists of a sarcophagus, panelled in black marble and ornamented with simple mouldings, attached to the wall of the chapel on two stone consoles, and bearing his effigy in a niche above, with marble curtains held apart by statuettes of angels and showing at the back three shields with armorial bear- ings. The surface on which the effigy lies is tilted up at the back so that the face looks towards the spectator. The tall, spare figure lies stretched out in a pose of much truth to the rigor of death, with the head fallen to the right on its cushion, the hands crossed and pointed down- wards, and the feet not quite symmetrically placed. The clothing is the civil costume of the time, a pointed cap and a plain mantle tight fitting at the neck and wrists, the skirts being twisted a little uneasily about the feet. The scruples of present criticism over assigning this marble to Giovanni Pisano need not obscure to us the fidelity and intelligence with which the author of one of the first portraits since Roman times has reproduced the furrowed features and veined hands of the overburdened man of affairs who found his last resting-place beneath it. 22 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE Andrea di Cione, called Orcagna : died probably in 1368. There were two great masters to divide between them the artistic inheritance of Giovanni Pisano, and to add to it of their own riches, — the painter Giotto and the sculptor Andrea Pisano. The former carried still further Giovanni’s exactitude of observation and to his dramatic vigor added simplicity and restraint. Andrea Pisano, at once pupil of Giovanni and co-worker with Giotto on the campanile at Florence, learned from these two to image a stirring situation in the fewest forms, while he surpassed both in his knowledge of the human frame and of drapery, and crowned his works with a touch of grace and beauty all his own. The traditions of both artists were united in Orcagna, a painter whose frescoes, despite their rigid stateliness, recall the simple dignity of Giotto, and a sculptor whose reliefs beneath their Gothic angularity reveal something of the sweetness and delicacy of Andrea Pisano. His principal work as painter is the great fresco of the Last Judgment, Heaven and Hell, covering the three walls of the Strozzi chapel in S. Maria Novella, in Florence. As sculptor and architect his monument is the church of Or San Michele in Florence, whose construction he supervised and to which he contributed the high altar in the form of a tabernacle in- closing Bernardo Daddi’s much revered picture of the Virgin. 126, 127. Two Reliefs from the Tabernacle in the church of Or San Michele in Florence ; the Marriage of the Virgin and the Annunciation. Of marble ; the tabernacle completed, according to an inscription, in 1359. v. Moeller, “ Das Stabbrechen auf den Darstellungen des Sposalizio,” Repertorium fiir Kunstwissenschaft, XXV, 1903, p. 288. ANDREA ORCAGNA 23 The sculptures reproduced in the present casts are two of the series of eight small octagonal reliefs repre- senting scenes from the life of the Virgin, which Or- cagna introduced about the base of the tabernacle. The subjects of the others are the Birth of the Virgin and her Presentation in the Temple, the Nativity and the visit of the Wise Men, and the Purification and Death of the Virgin. The back of the tabernacle is occupied by a large relief of her Entombment and Assumption, the most considerable work of the sculptor. The present reliefs occupy the front of the altar, the Marriage on the left and the Annunciation on the right, separated by a hexagonal relief containing an angelic figure symbolic of one of the Christian virtues. The Marriage of the Virgin is represented as taking place under a canopy. In the centre, clad in the robes of his office, stands the High Priest, in whose left hand the right wrist of the Virgin lies in maidenly passivity, while her left hand hides in the folds of her dress. Op- posite her stands Joseph, carrying over his left shoulder the suitor’s wand, whose budding over night in the Tem- ple into leaf and flower was, according to old legend, the miraculous sign of his acceptance. Although the Vir- gin’s head is deeply inclined, and her body bent back- ward, after the custom of Gothic sculpture, she still overtops her betrothed. Behind the High Priest ap- pear the heads of four witnesses ; behind Joseph one of the rejected suitors breaks his wand in despair, and the other lifts his hand to strike his successful rival. 24 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE In the relief of the Annunciation the Virgin is seated at the right upon a dais, clothed in a long mantle carried up over her head like a hood, and with her arms crossed upon her bosom. A dove flies toward her from above, and the angel Gabriel kneels opposite, holding his right hand uplifted and bearing upon his left shoulder a branch with lily buds. His long locks float behind him as if he had just alighted. In Mary’s lap lies an open book in- scribed with the words which the Bible story puts in her mouth, “ ecce ancilla ” (Lo, the handmaid of the Lord), and two other books lie upon the bench beside her. She is again represented of heroic stature. Jacopo della Quercia: born about 1374; died at Siena 1438. In several cities of central Italy there exist works of sculpture bearing the sign-manual of a distinguished artistic personality, which although they date between the works of the Pisans and their still more distinguished successors in Florence, give no sign of having either followed the former or influenced the latter. These are the works of Jacopo della Quercia, Sienese ; born perhaps at the little village called Quercia Grossa near the city. In these sculptures the poetic content of the forms has been enriched by an expressiveness of bodily activity and power novel both in degree and char- acter. Their exuberant physical attributes and their volumi- nous draperies separate them widely from the severity of Orcagna, the simple charm of Andrea, the calm grace of Niccolo Pisano, or even the passion of Giovanni. Such a conception as that of the row of infantile figures surrounding JACOPO DELLA QUERCIA 25 the sarcophagus of Ilaria del Carretto and bearing in many true and charming attitudes their superabundant garland, was wholly new in Italian sculpture ; and the suggestion of supple movement in the reliefs of the Fonte Gaia at Siena was hardly surpassed afterward among the Florentines. Once the most conspicuous of Quercia’s achievements, the Fonte Gaia, can now be judged, like Giovanni Pisano’s Pisan pulpit, only by dilapidated fragments. Not time, but the vio- lence of enemies, is responsible for the injury suffered by the tomb of Ilaria del Carretto, which only Italian reverence for beauty saved from total destruction when in 1429 her tyrant husband, Paolo Guinigi, was expelled from Lucca. The sculptures about the portal of S. Petronio in Bologna, the font in the Baptistery at Siena, and the altar of S. Frediano in Lucca, all well preserved, complete the list of Quercia’s principal works. 412 . 1 . Recumbent Effigy of Ilaria del Carretto (died 1405) ; from her tomb in the cathedral at Lucca. Of marble ; executed in 1406. The tomb of Ilaria del Carretto appears to have been originally placed in the south transept of Lucca cathe- dral. After her husband’s expulsion it was taken for safe-keeping to the sacristy, where Vasari saw it a cen- tury later. In 1842 it was set against the wall in the north transept. The two ends of the sarcophagus had been lost and have not been recovered, and until 1890 one side also was missing. In that year the Queen of Italy had the missing side brought from the Uffizzi Pal- ace in Florence, where it had found a resting-place, and 26 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE joined to the tomb, which was at the same time moved from the wall and set in the middle of the transept. The figure upon the tomb is that of a tall and beautiful young woman. She is clad in a long mantle without orna- ment, girt high about the waist, cut open at the shoul- ders, with a high curving collar and with flowing skirts, which are draped over her feet. Upon her head, resting on two cushions, is placed the headdress called a bour- relet, embroidered with flowers. Her curling hair falls in ringlets over her forehead, and at the side is bound with ribbons, concealing her ears. The full sleeves of an inner garment appear through the openings of the mantle and are gathered into tight bands upon the crossed wrists, expanding again in flowing turnover cuffs. Her feet rest against the figure of a dog crouch- ing upon the edge of her drapery and looking up alertly ; the image, as Vasari says, of her fidelity to her husband. The photograph at the side of the cast shows the sar- cophagus and the line of genii with the ponderous wreath. Lorenzo Ghiberti : born in Florence in 1378 ; died there in November, 1455. In the year 1401 the Guild of Merchants in Florence de- termined that the northern entrance of the Baptistery in that city should be adorned with a pair of bronze doors in the style of those which Andrea Pisano had executed seventy years before for the main portal opposite the cathedral. Ar- tists from various parts of Italy competed for the honor of LORENZO GHIBERTI 2 7 this important commission, Jacopo della Quercia among them. The prize was awarded to Lorenzo Ghiberti, then a young man of but twenty-three, and before unknown as a sculptor. On this great undertaking, he and his assistants, among them Donatello, eight years his junior, were engaged during twenty- one years. A few months before the doors were finally placed in position the commission was given Ghiberti to execute an- other pair for the southern portal, the style in this instance being left to his own choice. Twenty-three years later these also were complete, and in the opinion of the cathedral au- thorities so far surpassed the original doors of Andrea Pi- sano that the later were removed from the main to the south- ern portal and Ghiberti’s installed at the principal entrance in their stead. Beside these two great masterpieces the list of Ghiberti’s chief works includes three statues, of John the Baptist, St. Matthew, and St. Stephen, for niches on the fa- cade of the church of Or San Michele in Florence ; two re- liefs, of the Baptism of Christ and of John the Baptist brought before Herod, for the font of the Baptistery in Siena ; the reliquary of St. Hyacinth in the Museo Nazionale at Flor- ence, and that of St. Zenobius in the choir of the cathedral at Florence. At seventy-six he was again at work upon the Baptistery, having received the commission to place a frieze about the doors of Andrea Pisano. While still engaged upon this labor he died, and it was completed by his son Vittorio. In the works of Ghiberti there reveals itself once more an artistic personality original and gifted in the highest degree. His application of perspective to relief, his use of an orna- ment of natural forms, resulted in effects hitherto undreamed of in the art. Representations of landscape or architecture in sculpture had before Ghiberti been either symbolic or at 28 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE most fragmentary in character ; but in his hands they became, through the indication of distance by lessening size and roundness, a potent means of increasing the complexity of a relief without destroying its unity. In ornament his prolific inspiration reflects the exhaustless variety of the fauna and flora about him. With this independence in the choice of method he combined a capacity for the invention of grace- ful form that has rarely been equalled in any age. A similar sense of beauty and a similar realistic ornamentation reap- peared in the terra-cottas of the school of the Robbia, but pictures in bronze as impressive as Ghiberti’s reliefs have not since been seen in sculpture. Ghiberti himself has not escaped the condemnation always visited upon any artist who chooses to adopt a style necessarily less fruitful in his own art than in another. Effects of distance are not a pure matter of form, but of light and color also, and can be repre- sented but imperfectly by any devices of modelling. More- over, the shadows from forms in high relief falling on forms in low relief contradict the perspective effect aimed at by this gradation. Further, in enlarging the scope of his repre- sentation to cover the whole visual field, Ghiberti included many objects, trees, sward, cliffs, clouds, by nature lacking in plastic interest ; and one important feature, the sky itself, which, wherever represented, is but an empty expanse in the composition. Yet, granting that in Ghiberti’s reliefs sculpture attempts a task in part impossible and in part un- rewarding, it is still true that the genius who needed the ex- citement of this hopeless aim to spur him to his highest effort was one of an elevation, a fecundity and a skill capable of turning imminent defeat into signal victory. LORENZO GHIBERTI 29 119. Relief of the Sacrifice of Abraham ; design sub- mitted in the competition for the northern doors of the Baptistery at Florence. In the Museo Nazionale (Bargello) at Florence. Of bronze ; executed 1402. The shape of the design, that of a panel in Andrea Pisano’s doors, was prescribed in the terms of the com- petition. The rocky background of the scene represented forms a prominent feature of the relief. On the right Isaac kneels naked on an altar piled with fagots. Abra- ham at his side, grasping him by the shoulder, poises the knife, the flying end of his outer garment suggesting a rapid movement. His whole pose, whatever of arrange- ment it may betray, still expresses the gatheringof force for a relentless thrust. Above, an angel bends out of the sky and points to the summit of the crag behind Abra- ham, where a ram lying down seeks to disentangle his horns from a growth of cactus. Below the crag two at- tendants talk together, one pointing toward Abraham ; while an ass stands between them and scratches his neck against a jutting rock. Isaac’s mantle is flung on the rocks before the altar ; and a lizard crawls beside it. 482. Relief of John the Baptist before Herod ; from the font in the Baptistery at Siena. Of bronze ; finished in 1427. The portico of Herod’s palace, forming the background of the relief, is represented on a smaller scale than the figures grouped within and before it. This symbolic 30 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE treatment of architectural accessories is found also in the first Baptistery doors, which Ghiberti had just fin- ished. In the companion relief to the present, that of the Baptism of Christ, both the realistic background and the varied groups of many figures suggest the panels of the second doors, for which the artist had already re- ceived the commission. These two reliefs from the font at Siena maybe said, therefore, to mark the turning-point in Ghiberti’s career. On the right the Baptist, clothed in his coat of camel’s hair and his leathern girdle, stands unmoved amid a group of soldiers, and stretches upward his right arm in judgment upon the king. Herod confronts him, wearing elaborate armor and seated with Herodias upon a throne panelled with graceful scroll-work. Bending forward, his left hand upon a mound, or globe of sovereignty, with the right he directs the seizure of the prophet. Herodias, in a dress and cap of simple drapery without ornament, gazes toward him, her hand at her bosom in a movement of resentment. The energetic attitude of the soldier about to execute Herod’s command is in marked contrast with the listless grace of the youth beyond, who with the remaining figures of the group seems to have little to do with the action. 96. Eastern Doors of the Baptistery at Florence. Of bronze, originally gilded. Except on the more exposed parts of the sculptures the gilding has now almost entirely disappeared under a layer of the accumulated dust of cen- LORENZO GHIBERTI 31 turies. The contract for the eastern doors was signed January 2, 1425. On the 24th of June, 1443, Ghiberti announced the completion of six of the reliefs, and in 1447 that of the remaining four. In 1451 the authorities ordered the completion of the ornamental frieze within twenty months from February 1 of that year. On April 2, 1452, Ghiberti received the order to gild the doors, and during the summer they were placed in position. H. Brockhaus, “ Forschungen iiber Florentinischen Kunst- werke,” 1902. “ Die Paradiesesthiir Lorenzo Ghiber- tis.” The cast reproduces the whole portal, both doors and surrounding frieze. The latter occupies a continuous panel about the doorway, and consists of a succession of clusters of fruit, flowers, and leaves, where birds perch and a squirrel crouches. The stems of the clusters are bound by ribbons, and two spiral scrolls connect them into two garlands, each springing out of a vase at a foot of the panel, and upheld at the corner above by a massive ring, while the two join in the centre of the lintel at another ring, from which an eagle, a device found on both Ghiberti’s arms and those of the Guild of Mer- chants, stretches its wings for flight. The inner surfaces of the doorway are occupied by arabesques in low relief. Each door consists of five panels, separated by simple mouldings, and together inclosed in a rich border con- taining, in niches above and below the panels four re- cumbent figures, in niches to right and left of each panel twenty standing figures, and in niches at the corners of each panel twenty-four human heads, all sculptured nearly or wholly in the round. The intervening spaces 32 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE of the border are filled with designs in relief, each dif- ferent from every other, those above the standing figures consisting generally of conventional scroll-work, and those below generally of natural flower forms. The mouldings below the central panels of the doors contain the inscrip- tion, “ LAURENTII CIONIS DE GHIBERTIS MIRA ARTE fabricatum ” (wrought by the wondrous art of Lorenzo Cione Ghiberti). The four recumbent figures, with the air of antique river-gods, are apparently of allegorical significance. All the statuettes are understood to represent biblical char- acters, and many of them may be identified. The row nearest the top of the doors contains, in order from left to right, two prophets, distinguished by their scrolls. Esther (?), a figure of especial charm ; and Saul (?), with sword and shield. The second row contains, in the same order, Amos, in the dress and pose of an antique orator ; Jonah, grasping a fish ; Rachel (?) ; and Samson, one of Ghiberti’s rare studies of the nude, with his left arm about a pillar from the Temple of Dagon, and holding in his right hand the ass’s jawbone. In the third row, Joel, recalling the St. Stephen of the front of Or San Michele, a figure wholly modern both in its expressive pose and its complex drapery ; Deborah, with the scroll symbol- izing her prophetic mission ; another prophet ; and Jere- miah, with his finger on his lips and bearing a book. In the fourth row, Miriam, with her timbrel ; Aaron, in the stately attire of his sacerdotal office ; Joshua, praying to arrest the sun ; and David, in full armor. In the lowest LORENZO GHIBERTI 33 row, Judith, with the head of Holophernes ; and three prophetic figures. The heads in the intervening circular niches are of great variety and truth to nature, and two of them, ac- cording to Vasari, are actual portraits, — that of Ghiberti himself at the left of the moulding between the second and third panels from the bottom of the right-hand door, and that of his stepfather, Bartoluccio, next on the left. The subjects of the ten reliefs were not Ghiberti’s own choice, but were selected for him from Old Testament history by the jurist Leonardo Bruni of Arezzo, at the request of the Florentine authorities. In sending the list of motives, twenty in all, with eight prophets, to make up the number of panels in the earlier doors, Bruni wrote they had been chosen both on account of their adaptability to artistic embodiment and their intrinsic importance ; and added that he wished he might be at hand to make the artist comprehend their full signifi- cance. Whether in the desire to illustrate this, or in the development of ancient traditions of his art, Ghiberti chose to unite in almost every panel several scenes pre- senting different moments in a single story ; at the same time, by differences in the size and relief of the figures, and with the aid of a background drawn in perspective, giving the multifarious forms in each relief a plastic unity unattained in the crowded panels of his predecessors. Even when, as in some of the reliefs, the same actors reappear, it is generally in different planes, and the re- sulting poetic disunity in the composition is less obtru- 34 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE sive than in earlier art. Ten motives were finally decided upon : (i) The Creation and the Fall of Man ; (2) Cain and Abel ; (3) Noah ; (4) Abraham ; (5) Jacob and Esau ; (6) Joseph and his Brethren ; (7) Sinai ; (8) Jericho ; (9) The Battles of the Israelites ; (10) King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. These subjects Ghiberti arranged in their chronological order, in five rows of two each, beginning with the topmost panel of the left-hand door, which contains the Creation, and ending with the lowest panel of the right-hand door, containing King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. In their treatment he chose to employ three varieties of conception, distinguished by the predominant importance given respectively to land- scape, to architecture, and to the representation of throngs of persons. Between these three he divided the ten panels symmetrically, the four uppermost being scenes out of doors, the middle two scenes about palaces, and the lower four scenes of public ceremony or of war. The reliefs thus image, perhaps purposely, three stages in the history of humanity : that of the wanderer, that of the settler, and that of the citizen. The scene of the first relief is a landscape with a grove of tall trees on the left, a rivulet, representing one of the four rivers of Eden, flowing across the central foreground, and a high portal standing alone on the right, the frag- mentary representation of the boundary wall of the gar- den. In the lower left-hand corner, God the Father, in the person of a venerable man with flowing drapery and long waving hair and beard, grasps the hand of Adam, LORENZO GHIBERTI 35 reclining nude in the hollow of a rock, and motions him to rise. A group of four angels attends the Deity, fold- ing their wings in attitudes of submissive and adoring interest. In the centre Adam lies stretched out asleep, his head upon his hand in the shadow of a hedge, while the figure of Eve floats from his side, buoyed up by cherubs, her right wrist resting in the left hand of the Deity, who in the person of the same venerable man raises his right hand to command her appearance. An- other group of angels gather above with outstretched wings to gaze upon her. This group, actually disposed upon the relief in the form of a flat arch, Ghiberti’s skill in perspective transforms into a horizontal circle which the spectator hardly realizes is at most but half com- plete. In the left background the serpent is coiled about the central tree of the grove, and turns its woman’s head toward Eve, who offers the apple to Adam, standing oppo- site, one hand deprecating, the other accepting the gift. The representation of the devil with the head of a wo- man appears to be of Anglo-Saxon origin (the Venerable Bede in the seventh century) and recalls the Talmudic legend of Adam’s demon-wife Lilith, the predecessor of Eve. Above, in the centre of the relief, the Deity appears descending amid clouds in a circular nimbus, holding a sceptre and attended by a retinue of angels. Before him there flies through the gateway of the garden an angel with four wings who raises his hands in a men- ace against the guilty pair standing without and prepar- ing to fly. 36 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE On a height at the left of the second relief is seen a thatched hut, and before its door Adam and Eve seated, clothed, and holding one the spade, the other the distaff, which are the emblems of their fallen condition. By- Eve’s side one baby boy plays with the end of her wisp of flax, while his brother watches him from his father’s knee. Below, in a nook of the rocks, Abel sits at ease, his staff against his shoulder, watching the flock brows- ing before him amid herbage. As in the reliefs of the Nativity at Pisa and Siena, one of the sheep is in the act of scratching his ear with his hind foot. By Abel’s side his dog sits erect, an image of canine fidelity. In the foreground below, Cain is ploughing with a yoke of young oxen, who twist their necks impatiently as he puts his foot upon the plough in beginning a new furrow. A cleft in the rocks, whence a brook issues from beneath tall trees, bounds these peaceful scenes. Beyond it, on a mountain top, Cain and Abel kneel with folded hands beside two altars, the glance of Abel following the flame ascending from his offering of meat, and that of Cain fixing itself upon his offering of fruit under its backward bending flame. From the sky the Deity raises two fin- gers of his right hand in blessing on the one sacrifice, and with outstretched left hand warns back the other. Below, in the scene of the murder, Abel falls forward, his hand at the nape of his neck, while Cain’s bludgeon on its topmost swing seems to lift the murderer well-nigh off his feet as he hurls it forward in the final stroke. In the foreground below, Cain, a figure of defiance, tightly LORENZO GHIBERTI 37 grasps the fatal weapon, and raises his right arm in a careless response to the questioning Deity in the sky above him. In the background of the third relief an immense pyramidal outline, representing the ark, rises amid a moun- tainous landscape. Why Ghiberti should have chosen to depict the ark as a form rather of the architecture of sta- bility than of the architecture of buoyancy is a puzzling question. From a window at the apex of the pyramid birds fly in all directions, and through a door at the base the family of Noah emerge with gestures of wonderment over the scene before them. A lion, an elephant, and other animals have preceded them, and at their feet lies the body of a victim of the deluge. Below on the right, they are again seen assembled about an altar, lifting their hands in thanksgiving and prayer. A bundle of fagots lies ready, and a ram stands near. From the sky the Deity sends down his favorable reply, bending from a nimbus surrounded by an arch of angels with outspread wings, the symbol perhaps of the bow in the clouds. On the left, under a vine-clad arbor, Noah lies in a drunken stupor, while Shem and Japheth, walking backward and carrying between them a mantle, prepare to hide the disgrace their brother Ham has witnessed and is reporting to them. The fourth relief presents two scenes from the story of Abraham, — the appearance of the angels in the plains of Mamre, and the sacrifice of Isaac. In the left fore- ground Abraham kneels before his heavenly visitants, 38 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE and with uplifted hands begs them to accept his hospi- tality. The basin of water for their feet is before them, and under a tree near by stands the table. Sarah appears in the door of the tent beyond, holding its drapery aside over one shoulder, and puts forth her hand to second Abraham’s appeal. The foremost angel inclines his head and extends the forefingers of his right hand in blessing upon the suppliant. In the central background of the relief rises a grove of tall pine-trees, and beyond on a hill- top the youthful figure of Isaac, with his arms pinioned behind him in his mantle, crouches upon the altar under the knife, which is grasped, as Abraham lifts it, by an angel descending out of clouds and pointing to a ram lying near, caught in bushes. Under a thicket at the foot of the hill, out of sight, two servitors while away the time in talk, a sack and a jug at their feet. Before them their beast of burden, a notable example of Ghiberti’s methods of perspective modelling, drinks at a rivulet, whisking his tail, and turning up-stream toward a fountain issuing under an arch of rock. With the fifth relief, the middle panel of the left-hand door, the background changes from landscape to archi- tecture. The scene is a stately loggia in the style of Ghiberti’s own time, with Corinthian pilasters, round arches receding in perspective, and a flat roof. The sub- ject of this relief, the unlovely story of Esau’s fatuity and Jacob’s deceit, failed perhaps to inspire the artist ; cer- tainly it did not furnish him with motives for all his figures. The group of serving women on the left, plastic- LORENZO GHIBERTI 39 ally of the first importance through its high relief and its suggestions of caressing drapery and agile movement, has for the story no significance at all. Of enigmatic interpretation are the figures standing on the roof (Jacob’s dream ?) and reclining on a couch under drapery (the birth of the brothers ?). The remaining groups portray the successive steps in Jacob’s usurpation of the birth- right. Under the central arch Esau drops his bow and hastens towards his brother for the mess of pottage, which is to be the price of the rights of the elder. By the left-hand pillar Isaac, infirm and blind, prays his favorite son to bring him venison from the field. The figure of Esau, from his head with its rich crown of curls, to his feet in their pose of boyish diffidence, is an ideal of immature grace. His two dogs follow at his heels, already nosing after their quarry. A glimpse of landscape on the right shows Esau on his way, with his bow on his shoul- der. In the background, underneath the right-hand arch, Jacob has brought Rebecca the kid of the goats which is to be the counterfeit of Esau’s venison, and in the fore- ground kneels with constraint at Isaac’s feet to receive his benediction. Rebecca looks on intently while with his left hand the old man feels of the goatskin on the smooth of Jacob’s neck and raises his right hand in bless- ing upon the deceiver. In the upper background of the next relief Joseph’s brethren are gathered in the desert at a well, about to deliver him to the Midianites. Lifted above the well- curb by one brother, he raises his arms beseechingly, 40 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE while a second points him out to the chief of the Midian- ites, who counts money from a bag into the hand of a third. On the left, two attendants of the chief, and a camel. The architectural setting of the scenes below presents in perspective on the right a circular colonnade or open market, and on the left the front of Joseph’s palace (or perhaps an apartment therein, disconnected in Ghiberti’s intent from the colonnade), both in the early Renaissance style of the previous relief. Among the arches of the colonnade attendants pass and repass, bear- ing sacks of grain. In the right foreground a command- ing figure (Joseph ?) watches the distribution of the food. A camel is being laden, and a youth at his flank strains at a heavy sack, for which a second holds ready the camel’s saddle. To the right another strokes the camel’s nose, and to the left a mother and her child are carrying away their share of grain, in a sack on the woman’s head and a bag in the child’s arms. The lower left-hand corner of the relief images the discovery of Joseph’s drinking and divining cup in the sack of the youngest brother Benjamin. On the left the Egyptians, all wearing tur- bans, and two with long beards, led by the steward of Joseph’s house ; and on the ground before them the sacks, Benjamin’s open and displaying the missing cup. While the previous group of the distribution suggested none of the terrors of famine, the mien and attitudes of Joseph’s brethren here are full of the dramatic expression of inno- cent distress. One rends his clothing, another hides his face in its folds, another looks at the Egyptians in silent LORENZO GHIBERTI 41 despair, his chin upon his wrist, another tears his cheeks, others stretch out empty hands in mute protestation, while the boy Benjamin stands in front, holding his open palms apart and gazing fearlessly up at the accusing stew- ard before him. In the background above, Joseph’s tender revenge upon his brethren is over, and clasping Benjamin to his bosom, he holds out his hand to the rest, one of whom lies prostrate before him. Two figures of women at the foot of the throne form a pendant to this scene. A like purely plastic function in the relief is fulfilled by the tall figure in the central foreground holding a bag, whose stature separates him from the adjacent group of Joseph’s brethren and makes him the symmetric counter- part of the woman with her child opposite. Unlike the preceding reliefs, the seventh represents a single scene, the giving of the law upon Mount Sinai in the presence of the children of Israel. This is the first of the four devoted to episodes in the national life of the Jews. But for a palm and a few other trees the landscape setting is rocky and barren. In the background on the left, the encampment of the Israelites before Sinai, and below, a body of water, perhaps representing the Red Sea. On the right, a mountain where Joshua kneels and hides his face, while Moses, on the summit, receives from the hand of the Deity the two tables of the testi- mony. The Deity appears in the same stern semblance and with the same large retinue of angels amid clouds as in the scene of the Expulsion in the first relief. Here the foremost angels are blowing trumpets, and at the 42 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE appalling sight and sound the people gathered below lift up their hands and hide their faces in amazement and terror. These movements are conspicuous only toward the right of the throng, those farther away appearing to stand quietly together. But it was perhaps Ghiberti’s in- tention to express through this distinction a crowd both as it appears at a distance when the individuality of its members is mainly lost, and as, when approached, it opens up and reveals separate figures of varied character and in divers attitudes. The eighth relief embodies two motives : below in the foreground, the passage of the Jordan by the children of Israel, and above in the background, the march of Joshua round the walls of Jericho. A gorge, with the conical tents of the camp of Israel and a thick plantation of trees, separates the two scenes ; and the dry bed of Jor- dan divides the lower into halves. From the left bank Joshua, in a chariot drawn by three horses, directs the crossing of the river. Before him in the middle distance priests, bearing the ark of the covenant, halt in mid-stream until the people pass. In the foreground the hosts of Israel on their way ; among them on the left tribesmen of Reu- ben, Gad, and Manasseh armed for the impending assault upon Jericho : and on the right representatives of the twelve tribes carrying twelve stones from the midst of the river for a memorial of the miraculous disappearance of its waters. In front of the tents beyond appear groups of spectators, including warriors, elders, and women. Along the extreme upper border of the relief the roofs and palace LORENZO GHIBERTI 43 fronts of Jericho rise over battlemented walls already seamed and falling into ruin at the sound of Joshua’s trum- pets. Below, his column crosses the plain before the doomed city, led by seven priests blowing on trumpets and a group of others bearing the ark. As Joshua halts and with a movement of his staff summons forward the multitude, his bust frames itself in the gateway of the city in the distance. The rereward follows, a crowd of unarmed men with women and children ; the warriors, in the Bible story, having gone before the trumpeters. In these rich pictures of the solemn and stirring pomp of a nation’s march to conquest, Ghiberti shows his equal mas- tery of a subject-matter at the opposite pole from the pastoral dramas with which the series of reliefs began. In the foreground of the ninth relief an actual battle is imaged, in the background the triumphant return of the victors. From the gateway of Jerusalem, represented as a walled city crowning a height and crowded with splen- did architecture, a young girl with a tabret descends to meet David, hastening up on foot with the head of Goliath, followed by King Saul on horseback. According to the Bible account of this crisis in Jewish history, the women thus came out of all the cities of Israel, singing and dan- cing, and saying to one another, “ Saul hath slain his thousands and David his ten thousands.” In the fore- ground the two signal victories that gained these plaudits are united by a poetic license into one battle-scene, the middle distance being devoted to the rout of the Ammon- ites, the triumph that won for Saul the crown of Israel, 44 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE and the extreme foreground to David’s later combat with Goliath the Philistine. Toward the left, on the bank of the brook whence the smooth stone came that felled the giant, a crowd of Jewish warriors press forward, jos- tling one another, eager to see his end. The great bulk of Goliath lies prone before them, the spear like a weaver’s beam at his side, while David, kneeling on his arm, a shepherd’s scrip girt round one shoulder, and sling and staff underfoot, has just delivered with the giant’s own sword a heavy blow at his neck. The dismay of the Phil- istines at the fall of their champion is indicated in a single figure at the extreme right, turning stealthily away and looking back with frightened eyes. In the middle dis- tance on the left, Saul, in full armor, his mantle floating in the wind, stands in his chariot amid a circle of the upturned faces of men-at-arms with battle-axes, flanked by dignitaries on horseback, and points with his leader’s staff toward the enemy. Before him a line of horsemen, one brandishing a sword, another thrusting with a lance, plunge onward into a confused melee of poised weapons and the heads and limbs of men and animals, represent- ing the actual shock of the battle. A soldier has fallen between the ranks, and beside him an Ammonitish spears- man aims his javelin to repel the attack of a figure in full armor rushing forward on the Jewish side, his battle- axe flat in air above his head, the ideal of a mediaeval warrior in the heat of action. His mailed foot rests on the instep of a swordsman striding forward behind him and looking back, all unconscious. A range of broken hills LORENZO GHIBERTI 45 divides the field of battle from the umbrageous valley in the background leading toward Jerusalem. The tenth and last relief has for its single subject- matter the manifestation of Jewish glory, in the person of King Solomon, to the world without, in the person of the Queen of Sheba, the culminating event in the national progress of which the previous reliefs have shown the successive steps. The scene is a terrace, from which flights of steps lead forward and downward into a fore court and upward and backward into an open, loggia-like temple set between other dignified buildings. The two sovereigns, clad in flowing drapery, stand together in the middle of the terrace, the king holding in his left hand the right hand of the queen, whose train and crown are borne by attendants behind her. Courtiers range them- selves on either hand, the men near by on the terrace, and the women in two groups in the background on the steps of the temple. On the extreme right, musicians with pipes, cymbals, and drums. In the left background appears a rectangular, palanquin-like construction, with two occupants, whose interpretation is not evident. Below the parapet, where the retinue of the queen mingle freely with the people of Jerusalem, the scene is as lively and varied as it is dignified and ceremonious within the temple area. Two children, leaning on the wall, the arm of one about the neck of the other, appear to find this the more interesting half of the spectacle. The followers of the queen, some mounted on horses, look about with gestures of astonishment and admiration at what they 46 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE see ; two find interested circles of listeners to their stories of far countries and the way ; a third bears a falcon on his wrist, a large shaggy dog accompanies a fourth, and on the head of a fifth a monkey perches, absorbed in the children on the parapet. From this vivid transcript of street life the eye wanders gladly back to the stately pair amid their train upon the terrace, and to the quiet tracery of graceful architecture that rises and bends and meets above them, greeting each element of the work with equal satisfaction in its turn. It is a fact of much interest that the architecture of Solomon’s Temple in this relief is a suggestion of the interior of Florence cathedral as it would appear from the entrance of the Baptistery opposite, where Ghiberti’s doors were about to be placed; but a suggestion with which are combined not only features of the biblical de- scription of the Temple but variations from the cathedral design, which as titular aid to Brunelleschi, the actual architect of this new wonder and pride of the city, Ghi- berti may have proposed in vain. The upper chambers of the Bible record (i Kings ch. v.) here appear as a triforium, which is lacking in Florence cathedral ; and from the size of the onlookers in the windows it is plain that the biblical measures rather than the much greater dimensions of the cathedral are here imaged. Further, it is apparently the shallow proportions named in the Bible which have led Ghiberti to simplify his perspective by representing a nave of two bays instead of the four of the cathedral. Independent departures from its plan LORENZO GHIBERTI 47 are, first, an additional illumination, which will be ac- cepted as an improvement by those to whom its interior is a dim if not a gloomy memory. More windows are in- dicated in the cupola, and those of the apse are extended to the ground. Again, the mixture of Gothic and Renais- sance forms in the cathedral is replaced in Ghiberti’s temple by the pure Renaissance style. The relation, apparently intentional, of this imaginary architecture to the scriptural temple and the actual cathedral had already been lost sight of in Vasari’s time, and has but recently been called to the attention of the interested ; another proof, if another were needed, of the aptness of every age to study the art of the past through literary sources, rather than in the monuments themselves. 120 . Three Reliefs of the Miracles of St. Zenobius ; from the front and ends of the reliquary under the altar of the chapel of St. Zenobius in the cathedral of Flor- ence. Of bronze ; cast in 1446. The contract between Ghiberti and the cathedral au- thorities for the reliquary of St. Zenobius was signed April 18, 1439. The work consists of an oblong box of simple design, finished with plain mouldings, varied by a row of dentils along the upper cornice, and adorned with four reliefs on the four sides. The relief on the back represents two groups of angels bearing between them a large wreath about the words (in Latin), “ The head of St. Zenobius, in whose honor this beautifully 48 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE ornamented casket was prepared.” During the seven- teenth century the remaining bones of the saint were joined to the head. The reliefs of the front and ends depict miracles of resurrection wrought by Zenobius. The general likeness of these panels to those of the second doors would of itself serve to determine their date approximately, even were they not otherwise known to be the work of Ghiberti’s later years ; while the ex- quisite elegance and precision of modelling that still characterizes them in every part suggests what the doors may have lost in these respects through their cen- turies of exposure to the weather. Zenobius lived between the years 334 and 415, was an ardent defender of the Nicene Creed and vigorous opponent of Julian the Apostate, and being recommended by Ambrose of Milan to Pope Damasus, was called to Rome, made a deacon of the Roman Church, and finally consecrated Bishop of Florence. The miracle to which the front of the reliquary is devoted is that of the re- surrection of a child in answer to the saint’s prayers. A pious woman of Florence having undertaken a journey to Rome, intrusted her child to the care of the bishop. Just before her return the child died, and at the order of Zenobius the body was brought to a public place, where in answer to his passionate supplications life re- turned to it. The scene is laid outside Florence, which appears amid its battlements in the right background. The Baptistery may be distinguished within by its py- ramidal roof, and on the hill beyond San Miniato is seen LORENZO GHIBERTI 49 at the head of its long stairway. The mountains in the left background are true in form to those about Florence, and the church in the centre is possibly to be identified with San Spirito or S. M. del Carmine (both since re- built) across the Arno on the road toward Rome. The witnesses of the miracle are gathered in an open space between young trees in two groups reaching from the foreground on either hand far into the middle distance. Between them, with widespread arms the mother makes her way upon her knees toward the child supine before her, its curls flung off its face and one arm thrown back- ward over its head. The saint, kneeling opposite, his mitre on the ground beside him, stretches his hands to heaven in prayer. Before him the child appears again, standing alive with folded hands and earnest look. In this rupture of the poetic unity of the relief at its cardi- nal point (whether this figure be regarded as the spirit or the bodily presence of the child) Ghiberti emphasizes anew his fidelity to the nai've traditions of his youth and of his predecessors. Of the two groups, that on the left is conceived in attendance upon the mother and that on the right upon the bishop, the former expressing in gesture and attitude their sympathy in her bereave- ment, and the latter their wonder over the divine favo*’ shown Zenobius. The relief at the right end of the reliquary represents the resurrection, through the bishop’s prayers, of one of two messengers sent him by St. Ambrose. The body had remained in the mountains, the survivor bringing the 5 ° ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE news. In a region of rocks and trees the bishop kneels by the side of the victim, who lies stretched upon the ground amid herbage. On the left the other messenger turns away, lifting his hands and looking back as if in sudden horror. The strain and whirl of his clothing con- trast markedly with the motionless fall of the drapery over the corpse at his feet. The Deity appears in a nim- bus above, wearing a bishop’s mitre and mantle instead of the flowing drapery and cap seen in the doors, and lifts his hand in blessing. The relief at the left end represents the restoration to life of a boy run over by a cart drawn by oxen. The scene is in the fields, a tree and crag appearing on the right. The child lies under the massive wheel of the cart, which the oxen continue to draw onward in spite of desperate efforts by the drivers. On the left a woman with outstretched arms appeals to them for redoubled exertions. Others behind her give themselves to lamen- tation, and a boy at her side is on his knees in prayer. The saint appears beyond the cart, throwing up his hands as if in joyful thanksgiving at the mercy promised by the Deity, who descends to the rescue in a nimbus with trailing clouds. Donato di Niccolo di Betti Bardi, called Donatello ; born in Florence in 1386; died there 1466. Among the assistants of Ghiberti upon the northern doors of the Baptistery, there was one the achievements of whose DONA TELLO 51 independent artistic career were to reveal in even more com- manding fashion the very contrary of his master’s tastes and aptitudes. The scene of Ghiberti’s chief activity for fifty years was the quarter circuit of a single building, and he died in the second stage of his journey around it, at work in the same style and material upon the doorway opposite where he had begun. Donatello, artificer in the round more than in relief, of tombs and monuments as well as statues and panels, and in stone, wood, and clay, as well as marble and bronze, helped adorn not only the baptistery, the cathedral, and Or San Michele, but the campanile and the sacristy of San Lo- renzo, made at least one journey to Rome (1433, perhaps also 1403), spent nine years in Padua (1444-1453), several in Siena (1425, 1458-1461), and worked also in Venice, Mantua, Modena, Ferrara, and Prato, only at the end of his life return- ing to Florence, to leave unfinished at his death two pulpits for the church of S. Lorenzo. Ghiberti, again, revelled in the representation of floral forms, of which the scantiest use is made in Donatello’s work ; and figures of women, evidently not a subject of preference with Donatello, a celibate by nature as in fact, are numerous and beautiful in Ghiberti’s reliefs. Moreover, the exquisite and painstaking finish in all Ghiberti’s sculptures is as characteristic as the disregard of it in most of those of Donatello, and the inclination of the one toward ideality, toward things as we would wish them to be, as clear as the inclination of the other toward reality, toward things as they force themselves upon us. It may be questioned whether the true feeling of the casual beholder of the sculptures attributed to Donatello is not one of wonder that works very commonly unpleasing in subject and not infrequently barbarous in execution should bear so 5 2 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE renowned a name. Yet Andrea della Robbia was proud to have been chosen as one of Donatello’s pall-bearers, Michel Angelo praised him, was by Cellini and by others named with him, and in the criticism of the immediate present has even been rated below him. It is true Michel Angelo qualified his praise by blaming Donatello’s lack of finish ; and if indeed his work partakes of the nature of improvisation, if it put before us the unelaborated result of an initial conception, this fact may help to solve our wonder. Inexhaustibly prolific of plas- tic ideas, the new, the fresh, the untried seem alone capable of engaging Donatello’s independent spirit ; hence his roving life, his many-sided activity, his role of innovator ; hence also un- ripeness and bizarrerie in much that he produced. Further, not only the character of Donatello’s work, but anecdotes about him, those of his fatuous St. Louis and his adored “ Zuccone,” make evident that with him effectiveness of expression was the controlling passion, both its vehicle and its content being secondary. This trait is the “ terribilitk ” of subsequent criti- cism : his startling vigor of representation and carelessness of how it came to pass, his penetrating intensity of verity and indifference to what he revealed. In so far as either of these two inferences is justified, it points to a deficiency in Dona- tello’s artistic personality. For he who leaves incomplete leans upon the imagination of the spectator ; and he in whose art expressiveness is consummate, but neither its matter worthy nor its form admirable, fulfils a necessary but not the sufficient condition of the highest artistic accomplishment. But only as casual beholders could that which Donatello left undone blind us to what he did. The critical principle of judgment by merit rather than defect, none other than the counsel of common-sense to judge by what is rather than by DONA TELLO 53 what is not, nowhere needs more emphasis than in the study of Donatello. To weigh his real capacity, it is not the impish and malformed cherubs, perhaps his in conception only, in the Prato pulpit, the cathedral organ-loft, and the Paduan altar, that must be brought in evidence, nor the forbidding Madonna reliefs ascribed to him, nor a prying study in emacia- tion like the Magdalen of the Baptistery, nor a figure of fun like the “ Zuccone,” nor the bronze Cupid and the marble David with their whimsical dress, nor the extraordinary group of Judith and Holophernes at Florence; but the dreamy and romantic bronze David of the Bargello, the noble figure of St. Mark on Or San Michele, the soldier personified in the statue of St. George, the half-oriental fascination of the Ma- donna at Padua, the crucifix in the same church by which he redeemed his ill success with the same motive at S. Croce, the bust of Uzzano, with its rough intensity of life, the winning grace of the Annunciation at S. Croce, the dramatic variety of the sacristy doors at S. Lorenzo, the overflowing and over- whelming tumult of the loftily conceived scenes on the pulpits of the same church, or the horse and rider of the Gattamelata tomb at Padua, whose union of daring, sincerity, and measure places it at the summit of his art. These, with others like them, make up a sum of work whose abundance, originality, variety, and power assure to Donatello, all deductions made, a permanent place among the greatest sculptors. Before him Italian sculpture was mainly an art of relief, ideal in its motives, and employing draped figures. He left it an art also of statues, of portraiture, and of the nude, enriching it in each of these types with examples which remain among its masterpieces. An apparent crudity in many of Donatello’s works is in 54 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE reality the dextrously calculated exaggeration demanded for distant effect; for a real rudeness in others his assistants alone are responsible. The resolution with which he shaped his figure of St. Mark to produce its impression at the intended height brought about its rejection when first shown upon the ground ; and the same bold economy of ineffective finish, recognized and admired from Vasari onward, is found in his numerous other statues for the campanile and Or San Michele. The deep-set eyes of the “Zuccone,” impressive from their niche, appear from close at hand, we are told, as if dug out with a spade. Likewise the genii of the cathedral gallery and the Prato pulpit, separately far from satisfying, unite at their proper distance into a brilliant and charming picture of child- ish movement. The setting and the height for which they were designed are therefore integral elements of these monu- mental works, which, as gallery objects, in general fail of their intended effect. Again, such a mass of sculpture as that for which Donatello made himself responsible demanded more than two hands, however rapid and busy and long engaged. In no small share of the work that goes by his name, the idea at most is Donatello’s, the execution at least that of far in- ferior skill. This is true of most of his cherub figures, as well as of all four of the tombs counted among his achievements (1425-1429), those of Pope John XXIII in the Baptistery at Florence ; of Cardinal Brancacci in the church of S. An- gelo a Nilo at Naples ; of the scholar Bartolommeo Aragazzi in the cathedral at Montepulciano, and of Giovanni de’ Medici, father of Cosimo the Elder, in the sacristy of S. Lo- renzo. His chief aid in these works was the architect Mi- chelozzo, to whom and to other assistants they are now in greater part ascribed. The small relief of the Assumption on DONA TELLO 55 the sarcophagus of Brancacci witnesses to the refinement of which Donatello’s own chisel was capable. Late in life he was unable to begin, much less to complete, numbers of his thronging commissions. He died a pensioner of the Medici, to whom his faithful allegiance speaks in the wealth of adorn- ment he contributed to the family church of S. Lorenzo, and in his choice to be buried there, near his lifelong patron and friend, Cosimo the Elder. 402.2 and 130. Statue of St. George and Relief of St. George and the Dragon ; from a niche on the north fagade of the church of Or San Michele in Florence ; the statue now in the Museo Nazionale. Of marble ; executed about 1416. When in 1406 the Guilds of Florence decided to orna- ment the four fagades of Or San Michele, the church they had built seventy years before, with niches contain- ing statues of their patron saints, the commission for three of the niches, that of the Guild of Weavers with a statue of St. Mark, that of the Guild of Butchers with a statue of St. Peter, and that of the Guild of Armorers with a statue and relief of St. George, fell to Donatello. The statue of St. George has been removed to the Museo Nazionale, and is now represented by a cast. The relief still remains in its original position, below the figure. The statue represents a young man-at-arms standing bareheaded with feet planted well apart, and resting a narrow shield on the ground before him by the point. His legs and arms are protected by full armor, but his 56 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE hands are bare, and through the thin tunic that he wears the modelling of his body is visible. A scanty mantle is loosely tied about his neck and falls over his left arm, the tip reaching the ground. The face is realistic in type, and alive with bitter ardor, from the racehorse nostrils to the knit brow and widely opened eyes. In an illu- mination that dulls some of its intensity, it easily be- comes animal below and vacant above, the mouth and nose speaking of bodily instincts, and the forehead fur- rowing itself in an unintelligent frown. The living imple- ment of destruction for which the Guild of Armorers existed stood clearly before them in the person of this well-grown, loose-limbed stripling, wrought by the sculp- tor with unerring naivete out of many memories of the mercenaries of his time. The relief, which shows marks of its long exposure to the weather, images the combat of St. George with the dragon. According to the familiar legend, there once lived near a Libyan city a dragon, which the citizens kept at bay only by daily sacrifices, first of their flocks and then of their children. On the day the lot finally fell on the king’s daughter, St. George, passing by and wondering at her tears, encountered the beast, transfixed him with his lance, led him back to the city with the princess, and there decapitated him before all the people. In the relief St. George is on horseback, in the act of thrusting the dragon through the neck, while the prin- cess, a figure full of grace but of a rustic sturdiness of build, stands near in an attitude of surprise and suspense. DONA TELLO 57 There is a lift and swing in both the horse and his rider to which the somewhat petty dragon seems hardly equal to opposing adequate resistance. The stocky proportions of the two human figures, and the comparative empti- ness of the relief as a whole, suggest the limitations of the long and low field at the artist’s command for his simple motive. A background appearing at present to have been indicated rather than elaborated shows on the left the dragon’s den, on the right a palace, and toward the centre forms of trees signifying a wilderness. 481 . Relief of Herod’s Feast ; from the font in the Bap- tistery at Siena. Of bronze ; completed 1425. The old font in the Baptistery at Siena had long been considered a disgrace to the community (“ sozzo e vitu- peroso ”) when in 1416 the cathedral authorities yielded to the citizens’ demand for a new one, and commissioned Jacopo della Quercia to build the present hexagonal basin of marble. Of the six bronze reliefs which were to orna- ment it two were intrusted to him in a contract of 1417, and by 1419 one of them appears to have been nearly completed. But the multiplicity of Quercia’s engage- ments led to long delays with the other, and at last the cathedral account-book records, under date of August 18/1425, a payment to Donatello of Florence, “who has made for us one of the two subjects that were assigned to Master Jacopo.” This was the relief of Herod’s feast. The suggestion for the elaborate perspective back- 58 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE ground of this relief, and for the grouping of figures within it by rounder or flatter modelling, was not received from Ghiberti, whose intricate bronzes for the second Baptistery doors were only just begun, but very proba- bly came from Quercia, whose single contribution to the hexagon, the relief of “ Zacharias in the Temple/’ shows likewise a vista of round arches, one partly walled up as they are here, and giving a view of figures in low relief beyond. It is even argued that a minor peculiarity of the faces in “ Herod’s feast,” the thickening of the brow at the root of the nose, was borrowed from Quercia, in all whose later work it appears, while hardly before and sel- dom afterward in that of Donatello. Yet the immaculate architecture and faultless figures of the “ Zacharias ” relief become in “ Herod’s feast” palaces and people in all the imperfection of actuality, and the superhuman self-command of Quercia’s personages is replaced in those of Donatello by all the explosive vivacity of common life. Nor did Quercia here or elsewhere avail himself of the old image-maker’s license to represent a figure twice in the same scene, as Donatello does in the interest of dra- matic definiteness, with the servant bringing the head of the Baptist. According to the story in the Gospels, Herodias, the sister-in-law and wife of King Herod, exasperated at the Baptist’s condemnation of Herod for marrying her, in- cited her daughter Salome to demand of the king, who had been captivated by the girl’s dancing, and had sworn to give her whatever she asked, the head of John on a DON A TELLO 59 charger. Although Herod revered John, nevertheless, on account of the oath, he sent forthwith and commanded his head to be brought. The scene is a palace interior of Roman architecture. In the background three women (Herodias and Salome?) bold-faced and bedizened, meet the servant returning with the Baptist’s head. In the middle distance two fig- ures resembling Roman soldiers, and a player on the viol, intent on his music. In the foreground the sudden entry of the executioner has surprised Salome midway in her dance, with arms stretched sidewise as if for the start of a pirouette. Herod recoils in horror from the ghastly object thrust at him by his subordinate, and at his side two children make haste to escape. Behind the table a councillor recalls to the unnerved king his late command, and another shrinks far away, covering his eyes. A group of onlookers stand by Salome. The table service, a fowl, a slice of broiled food, and a hastily thrown napkin, attest Donatello’s minute interest in things as they really look. 131. Relief of Dancing Cherubs ; from the external pulpit of the cathedral at Prato. Of marble ; ordered in 1428, begun in 1433, and finished in 1438. The external pulpit of the cathedral at Prato (from which the girdle of the Virgin is periodically shown the people) consists of a small circular gallery, under a mush- room-like roof or sounding-board of wood, carried, at 6o ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE some distance from the ground, about the right-hand corner of the front of the church, which is here rounded out in the form of a heavy column. It is supported on a circle of consoles springing from a moulded base which originally rested on two bronze capitals, one having dis- appeared. The outer surface of the parapet forming the pulpit proper is adorned by a series of seven reliefs of dancing cherubs, the panels being separated by pairs of fluted columns. The background of the reliefs is mosaic work gilded. The commission for the pulpit was given to Donatello and Michelozzo jointly, the latter having, it is thought, contributed the architectural part of the work at least. The motive selected by or prescribed to Donatello for the reliefs was a succession of baby figures dancing, playing, and singing in honor of the Virgin, to whom the pulpit was dedicated. Perhaps the designer found childish figures best fitted to low parapet reliefs ; or, it may be, chose to give to children the praise of mother- hood. Some of the figures exhibit a maturer grace, but in most the stiff -legged capering of infants is suggested to the life. Regarded closely, the faces show either con- temporary Italian childhood, or the carver’s skill, in no very favorable light ; but together and at their distance the reliefs are gay with intricate movement. In that, from which the cast was taken, the third counting from the front of the church, the cherub on the left strides forward beating cymbals, to the music of which the others dance with locked hands in a whirling circle. DONA TELLO 6l Mr. Perkins remarks upon the “ deep and angular edge- cuttings” of the figures in the foreground, “which mark clear shadows upon the flatter relief of the figures be- hind them, and render their outlines distinct even at a considerable distance.” 460. Statue of David with the head of Goliath ; in the Museo Nazionale at Florence. Of bronze; executed for Cosimo de’ Medici, perhaps about 1430. David is represented as a boy of fifteen or sixteen, with slender limbs, smooth face, and long waving hair fall- ing over his shoulders. He is naked but for his wide- brimmed rustic hat with its wreath of leafage secured by ribbons, and his singular high boots open at the toes like sandals. While the form of these may in the main be Donatello’s invention, yet they recall the footwear of Diana in many antique representations of the goddess, and like the wreathed hat (petasus, the cap of Mer- cury ?) may convey an allusion to David’s life as hunter and shepherd. The giant’s head under his conqueror’s feet is incased in a helmet adorned with two large wings, on one of which David has planted his right foot, the left resting on Goliath’s neck. The uplifted visor of the helmet displays an elaborate relief of winged genii draw- ing a chariot ; a decoration of pagan flavor, marking Goli- ath as the follower of false gods. The motive is based upon that of an antique cameo now in Naples, showing Bacchus drawn in a chariot by Cupids. The gem for- 62 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE merly belonged to the Medici, and was copied by Dona- tello in a medallion for their palace in Florence. The two great wings were unknown in Greek or Roman ar- mor, and unexpectedly suggest another heathenism than the classic, that of the heroes of Teutonic tradition. But the main conception of the David as a figure nearly naked is doubtless due to the influence of antiquity. It is the first nude statue of modern times, and its execu- tion before Donatello’s authenticated journey to Rome in 1433 would tend to confirm the legend of an earlier visit in 1403. The boy’s right hand grasps the giant’s sword ; and his left, akimbo on his hip, holds a stone. He looks downward, as if at the great body before him. A heavy garland closely encircles the base of the statue. 44 . Twelve Reliefs of Singing and Playing Cherubs ; from the high altar of the church of San Antonio (II Santo) at Padua. Of bronze. The altar of which these reliefs originally formed a part was ordered in 1446 and consecrated in 1450. In the seventeenth century it was taken down and the parts distributed about the church ; but within the past few years they have been restored to their original place. In 1443 Donatello, then nearly sixty years old and widely known in Italy, was invited to Padua to take part in the work of adorning the church of San Antonio, or “ II Santo,” as the great Paduan saint was himself called in his lifetime. The high altar of bronze with its rich DONATELLO 63 sculptured ornament was the principal result of this commission, although while in Padua Donatello com- pleted also the still more famous equestrian statue of Gattamelata for the square before the church. The ar- chives of II Santo record the names of many assistants in the work, casters, sculptors, gilders, and painters, and it is now surmised that hardly more than the sketches for the altar sculptures may have been furnished by Donatello himself. In the twelve reliefs of singing and playing cherubs, from which the present casts were taken, the motives of the master appear to have been interpreted by scholars of very different degrees of skill. The cherub blowing the flute is at once conspicuous through its rude workmanship, while there is much re- finement of execution in some of the other figures. For the most part they stand at rest while they sing or play, but one rises on tiptoe as he blows the double flute, and another, perhaps the most striking in conception, dances and shouts as he shakes his tambourine. 57. Relief of Christ mourned by Cherubs; in the Vic- toria and Albert Museum, South Kensington. Its ori- ginal location is not known, but it was evidently designed for an altar front. Of marble; perhaps executed about 1450. J. C. Robin- son, “ Catalogue of Italian Sculptures in the South Ken- sington Museum,” London, 1862. The body of Christ is supported in a sitting posture by two cherubs, the left arm over the shoulder of one, 64 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE and the drooping head supported by the hand of the other. The lips of the former are parted as if for a cry, while the latter returns his glance with a face half con- cealed by his hand. Behind, two cherubs with their hands at their temples, and a third turned away and shouting as if to spread the news. The features of Christ are at rest but for a painful contraction of the brows, and with the body are of the type of a man of the common people. Beside the main bending lines re- sulting from the disposition of the bodies and members of the group, the relief is full of fine curves formed by hair, wings, and irregularly flowing drapery, exemplifying the very delicate low relief called “ stiacciato ” (crushed flat), a form ascribed to Donatello, but in which he had many successors. 139. Bust in Relief of St. John the Baptist as a Boy ; in the Museo Nazionale at Florence. Of the gray sandstone called pietra serena. The Baptist is represented as a boy of ten or twelve, seen in profile, with his shirt of camel’s hair upon his bosom and light drapery over his shoulders. About his head, with its flying wavy locks, is the nimbus symbolic of sainthood, and upon his shoulder the reed cross spe- cially attributed to the Baptist. (“ A reed shaken by the wind.”) Though no characterization of the youthful prophet may have been attempted in the work, it is achievement enough to have given in this unassuming face, with its lip drawn upward by the ambitious little DONATELLO 65 nose, the image of a real boy, more serious and gentle than most, but as naively unconscious as any. Attributed to Donatello. 56 . Bust in Relief called St, Cecilia; in the possession of Lord Wemyss. Of stone. The relief represents a beautiful young woman, with bent head and downcast glance, and wearing a low-necked tunic without ornament and a cap with wide upturned edge. Over her head is the suggestion of a nimbus. Her hair is bound over her forehead and into a knot be- hind by a narrow ribbon with long gracefully curving ends. The work is executed in very low relief, and its sketchy, soft modelling, with the gentle idealism of the face, has led later critics to question whether Desiderio da Settignano (1428-1464) or perhaps some other sculp- tor a whole century later, may not have been its author rather than Donatello. 162 . Relief of a Lion’s Head; in the sacristy of San Lo- renzo, Florence. Of marble. Only the lion’s face appears, with his long mane flow- ing to a point under his chin. It is of much less conven- tional type than that of Donatello’s “ Marzocco,” the heraldic lion of Florence, formerly in the Palazzo Vec- chio, and now preserved in the Bargello. 66 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE Luca della Robbia: born in Florence in 1400. Very- little is known of his personal history. He appears to have learned the trade of a goldsmith, and to have led a quiet and frugal life, absorbed in artistic labor with his nephews, Andrea and Simone. He never married. In 1471 he was elected president of the guild of artists in Florence, but was obliged to decline on account of ill health. In the same year he made his will, by which he constituted his nephew Simone heir to all his property ; for, as he wrote, the whole of it was not the equivalent of the art which he had taught his nephew Andrea, and by which the latter had proved well able to sup- port his family. He died eleven years later, on the 20th of February, 1482. The work of Luca della Robbia alone among Italian sculp- tors of the fifteenth century can be compared with that of Ghiberti or Donatello in quality and influence. While inspired by a genius widely different, it not only reached an equal artistic level, but was the origin of a special style continued by others of his name throughout the succeeding century. This style was that of reliefs in colored and glazed terra-cotta. There exist in Florence and elsewhere many examples of reliefs in painted terra-cotta, dating from before Luca’s time, but the invention of a preservative glaze is apparently due to him. He seems to have reached middle life before beginning to work in clay, thenceforth devoting himself almost exclusively to this material, doubtless on account of its cheapness and the durability the process of glazing had proved to give it. His earliest known sculptures, the marble reliefs for one of the organ lofts in the cathedral at Florence (1431-1437), are at the same time the most celebrated from his hand. Whether or no there is truth in Vasari’s report that his previous years LUCA DELLA ROBBIA 67 as a sculptor were spent at Rimini in the service of the Mala- testa, it is certain that other work of importance must have preceded productions of perfect maturity like these. From the same decade date five small marble reliefs of the Arts and Sciences on the Campanile (1437), an d tw0 reliefs of events in the life of St. Peter (1438) preserved, still unfinished, in the Bargello. Later he executed the marble and terra-cotta taber- nacle now in the church of S. Maria at Peretola, near Flor- ence (1442), the marble tomb of Bishop Federighi, now in S. Trinitk (1457), and the bronze doors of the new sacristy in the cathedral beneath his organ loft (ordered 1446, completed 1467). In terra-cotta his earliest complete work is the relief of the Resurrection in the arch over the same sacristy door (1443). Other sculptures in this material, of which contem- porary documents prove him the author, are the relief of the Ascension over the old sacristy door opposite (1446), the lunette of the Madonna and saints over the portal of S. Do- menico in Urbino (1449), and the two kneeling angels in the old sacristy of the cathedral, his only statues. Vasari ascribes to him also a lunette of the Madonna with saints over a door in the Via dell’ Agnolo in Florence, a like lunette now in the Bargello, several of the armorial bearings of the Guilds of Florence over niches on the fa$ade of Or San Michele, and the decorated ceilings of two chapels in San Miniato, of the Pazzi chapel in Santa Croce, and of S. Giobbe at Venice. While the attribution of these last two works to Luca della Robbia has been contested, three reliefs not mentioned by Vasari, upon three altars in the church at Impruneta, a few miles south of Florence, are now generally recognized as his. Another im- portant work, the terra-cotta group of the Visitation in the church of S. Giovanni fuor Civitas in Pistoia, formerly attrib- 68 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE uted to Fra Paolino (1490-1547) and by some to Andrea della Robbia, has of late been referred to Luca himself. A number of smaller works, mostly reliefs of the Madonna and Child, both in and out of Italy, are now by common consent ascribed to Luca, although upon internal evidence only. There is in the sculptures of Luca della Robbia a trait of calm nobility, both in composition and expression, which recalls the spirit of antique art, although evidently inspired from within and not derived from without. Like those of antiquity again, the expressive interest of his creations is that of character rather than event, poetry rather than drama. The individuality and truth of his figures is such as to suggest portraiture ; yet the living model has in each case given but the hint for an ideal creation, often of the highest beauty. Not the least striking sign of the vigor of his artistic imagina- tion is the inexhaustible variety of the plastic motives he was able to invent within the narrow limits of a few subjects. The same fecundity of fancy, together with an exquisite sense of beauty in form and color, is exhibited in his decorative designs of flowers and fruit, in which, in the humbler material, he was the worthy successor of Ghiberti. 468 . Ten Reliefs of Singing, Playing, and Dancing Youths and Children; from the organ loft of the cathedral of Florence, now preserved in the Cathedral Museum. Of marble ; executed between 1431 and 1437. B. Marrai, “ Le Ricomposizioni della Cantoria di Luca della Robbia,” Arte Italiana, IX, 1900, p. 82. In 1431 the authorities of the cathedral of Florence intrusted Luca della Robbia with the task of erecting an LUCA DELLA ROBBIA 69 elaborate marble gallery over the door from the dome into the new sacristy on the north, to inclose a large organ which was to be installed in this position. Two years later, in 1433, the commission for a similar though smaller gallery to be built over a door opposite, leading from the dome on the south into the old sacristy, was given to Donatello. The two galleries were each finished in about six years. Both were ornamented with reliefs, those of Luca forming ten separate panels representing groups of singing, playing, and dancing children and youths, while those of Donatello were united into a con- tinuous frieze, representing frolicking genii. Vasari, writing a century later, tells us the galleries were thirty feet from the floor of the church ; and while he admits that in Luca’s sculptures “ the throats of the singers can be seen swelling, and the hands of those resting their music on the shoulders of the smaller can be seen beating time,” he criticises the artist for giving them a fineness of finish invisible at that distance. Donatello’s figures, he says, were simply sketched, and yet to look at them one would think them alive and in motion. In 1688, on the occasion of the marriage of Prince Fer- dinand, both parapets with the panels were taken down, and large galleries of carved wood substituted for them. They remained in storerooms more than a century, in 1822 being removed to the Uffizzi Gallery. In 1845 the lower portions also were taken down with the woodwork of 1688 and replaced by the present stone galleries, the work of the architect Baccani. Neglected and forgotten 70 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE in the cathedral storerooms for twenty years, in 1867 they were discovered and placed, without arrangement, in the courtyard of the National Museum, whither the parapets had also been brought. In 1883 the Cathedral Board of Works proposed to restore both old galleries to their original position, but the National Art Commission fa- vored their erection in the large hall of the Museo Na- zionale, and as a compromise it was decided to establish the present Cathedral Museum, where they were finally set up under the supervision of the architect, Professor Dal Moro, and where they have since remained. The gallery of Donatello was almost intact, but the crowning cornice and the pilasters separating the reliefs in Luca’s work had been lost, and these portions were renewed. The organ loft of Luca consists of a narrow balcony resting on five consoles springing from a marble back- ground containing four reliefs in the four spaces. The parapet of the balcony is divided into four similar spaces by the restored pilasters over the consoles, and within these, and on each end of the gallery, are six more reliefs. The rich cornice, newly replaced, crowns the work, and below the consoles runs another. Upon narrow friezes beneath these two cornices, and upon a third at the base of the parapet, are incised the words of the 150th Psalm, in the Vulgate. The first two verses of the psalm, whose burden is a general exhorta- tion to praise the Lord, are written, with many abbrevia- tions, across the uppermost frieze ; and the remainder, which consist of exhortations to praise him with various LUCA DELLA ROBBIA 7 1 instruments, in the dance and with the voice, are extended across the second and abbreviated across the lowest, this arrangement bringing the successive exhortations approx- imately under the successive reliefs, to which they prove to give the key. These later verses are as follows : — “ Praise him with the sound of the trumpet (the first relief) : praise him with the psaltery (the second) and harp (the third). Praise him with the timbrel (the fourth) and dance (the fifth) : praise him with stringed instru- ments and organs (the sixth). Praise him upon the loud (in the Vulgate ‘ well-sounding ’) cymbals (the seventh); praise him upon the high-sounding (in the Vulgate ‘jubi- lant ’) cymbals (the eighth). Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord (the ninth and the tenth, on the narrow ends of the gallery).” In the first relief three youths on the left blow upon trumpets supported in their right hands, the tubes of two being long and straight, and that of the third bent round upon itself like a trombone. In the background opposite them are visible the heads and shoulders of three players upon flutes, the one on the left still per- forming, while the other two have taken theirs from their mouths to glance away. The motive of the foreground group of this relief is particularly worthy of an attention which it seems thus far to have escaped. Four little girls, with locked fore- fingers, are carrying out the evolution familiar still to all children, by which a circle facing inward and joining hands is transformed, by passing in succession under the 72 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE arch made by the lifted arms of a pair of the group, into a circle facing outward. The two on the left have al- ready run under and are facing outward, the second just managing to retain her balance as she is twisted about by a backward pull from the first ; the third, with flying hair and a smiling face, bends under the arch raised over her by the first and fourth, while the latter stands poised upon one foot for the final whirl which is to bring a new order out of the pretty confusion. The choice of a mo- tive like this, which joins a far-away past with the imme- diate present, offers a bit of evidence as noteworthy as it is charming of Luca’s close adherence to the realities of life about him. In the second relief three young women stand facing the spectator, each holding against her body a triangular zither-like instrument, of which she is represented as plucking the strings. All three are singing, one with bent head as if listening to the instrument on her bosom, one with head thrown back and upward glance as if wholly given over to her song. At their feet are seated two naked boys, also playing on psalteries. In the back- ground five youths stand listening, two with their hands on the shoulders of two of the singers, and one with lips parted to join in the music. In the third relief two young women play upon the lute, one of them singing also; and in the background stand four others, in various attitudes of attention. Their costume, the long clinging tunic and the full mantle, is mediaeval in type ; while the players on the psaltery in LUCA DELLA ROBBIA 73 the preceding relief wear over a tight-sleeved inner gar- ment a robe like a classical chiton, fastened in knots at the shoulders, and gathered into a hanging fold about the waist. At the feet of the lute-players two naked boys are seated, looking downward and pointing upward, to direct the spectators below to the singers above. The license by which these two figures, plastically a unit with the relief, are given a significance linking its ideal world with the real situation for which it was designed, is one which Luca did not elsewhere permit himself in these sculptures. Although in strictness an artistic solecism, so delicate a mingling of the real and the ideal makes less the impression of disharmony than of playfulness. In the fourth relief two youths are carrying small drums in the left hand, while beating them with sticks held in the right. A third wears his slung about his neck, and blows on a pipe held in his left hand. Two others are spectators in the background. In front of the drummers two nearly naked boys face each other in a lively dance, one showing in his left palm a twig, this emblem perhaps identifying their play, to the public of Luca’s time, with some childish game. The two smaller boys, peeping out on the extreme right and left, intensify the action of the relief by showing its effects ; one forced to hold his hands over his ears while still laughing at the hubbub, the other thoroughly dismayed thereby and clinging to the skirt of the figure before him. In the fifth relief seven little girls with flying drapery and hair, and wearing heavy wreaths of leaves and flowers, 74 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE dance in a circle, each holding her right-hand neighbor by the forefinger. Their representation in a ring shows them in every variety of aspect, both back and side and front, and in every grade of relief from flat to round. All are singing and one or two shouting at the very tops of their voices. In the sixth relief a group of eight children stand about a ninth, who is seated and holds on his knee a small organ of which he touches the keys with his right hand while moving the bellows with the left. On the right two of his companions are playing, one a harp, the other a lute. All the figures are clothed in light drapery, the players on the organ and lute in a short cloak fastened by a clasp on the right shoulder, like the Greek chlamys. All have an air of pensive quiet, markedly in contrast with the tumult of the preceding scenes, and for which the motive is doubtless to be sought in the impressiveness of organ tones. The parted lips of all of the group seem sometimes to represent whispered singing, and some- times only absorbed attention. The organ is the portable instrument commonly used in the fifteenth and earlier centuries, from which the imposing mechanism now known by that name, with its pedals and many pipes, had hardly in Luca’s time begun to develop. In the seventh relief the “ well-sounding cymbals ” of the Vulgate are interpreted as the tambourine. The fig- ures are seven children, six arranged in symmetrical groups of three, on either side a seventh in the central foreground. In each of these groups the figure nearest LUCA DELLA ROBBIA 75 the centre of the relief is farthest in the background, and is that of a listener, with uplifted glance, and hands, in the one case folded and in the other crossed. The next figure occupies in each group the middle distance, and is that of a player who has stopped to listen, holding his tambourine before him in both hands. The outer- most figure of each group is in the foreground, and re- presents a player holding his tambourine in the right hand and beating it with the left. The groups are coun- terparts also in their drapery, the left-hand player being clothed and the right-hand one nude, while the left-hand intermediate figure is nude and the right-hand one clothed, both listening figures being clothed. The ideal character given the relief by these regular arrangements is still further emphasized by the cherub’s wings repre- sented on the shoulders of the outermost figures. The player in the centre is not beating his tambourine, but running the tips of his fingers over it after the familiar habit of performers on that instrument. He is naked and carries about his neck a heavy garland of laurel leaves and berries, a long ribbon flying from his right arm. The end of another garland is visible on the right. The representation of plant forms, of which these gar- lands and the wreaths already mentioned are instances, was to become in later years an important branch of Luca’s art. In the eighth relief the “cymbals of jubilation” of the Vulgate are cymbals as we now know them. Seven children, not far out of babyhood, move in procession 76 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE from right to left of the relief toward the centre of the gallery, six of them beating their cymbals as they go, the seventh visible only as a profile in the background. The three foreground figures have flying drapery, twisted or fastened by clasps on shoulder and side. The foremost runs on tiptoe, with head thrown back and fly- ing locks ; the second at the top of his speed with a long low stride. This active movement has unfastened a clasp of the boy’s drapery, and it flies back from his bare shoulder as he runs. The figures in the background are clothed and move more sedately, the central one not shouting with the others. Of the eight reliefs on the front of the balcony, the upper four, on the face of the parapet, are principally composed of figures of youths. The four occupying the more modest position between the consoles below con- tain figures of small children only. It is noticeable, fur- ther, that while the order of the eight reliefs is given by the inscriptions running beneath them, the artist has chosen so to interpret his motives as to make the four central reliefs scenes of quiet and the four outer reliefs on the right and left scenes of movement. It is as if we were present at a solemn festival where the mood of the participants lightened from one of gravity at the heart of the throng to one of gayety on the outskirts. The ninth and tenth reliefs we may believe to have been transcriptions from the life of which the balcony they adorn was thereafter to be the scene. In the ninth two youths, dressed in close-fitting inner garments, and LUCA DELLA ROBBIA 77 with long mantles wrapped round the waist and thrown over the arm, face the spectator, with arms upon each other’s shoulders, and hold between them a long scroll which they read attentively while they sing. The fore- head of one contracts with his effort, and on his right shoulder the long forefinger of the other stretches out to beat time to the music. On his left shoulder rests the hand of a third singer standing between them, equally intent on the music and grasping his cloak with his other hand. In the background appear two other figures, both listening in rapt attention, one turning aside and gazing up with his cheek on his hand. In the tenth relief a group of five choristers, three youths behind and two boys in front, are crowded to- gether singing from the same book, a heavy volume which the boys hold between them. The youth on the right helps hold down the page with one hand, while his companion allows his fingers to stray among the curly locks of the boy before him, both singing earnestly meanwhile with tense lips and knitted brows. The third, who is younger, follows rather than leads in the music, his retiring position and relaxed attitude indicating much less assurance in its delivery. One of the boys throws his head to one side and beats time with his foot in the fervor of his song. The other, a striking image of boyish grace and vigor, sings carefully, but with a certain sto- lidity. The two background figures are listeners, one raising his hand as if in admiration. 78 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE 129. Relief of St. Augustine, reading, attended by Two Angels ; one of ten panels in the doors of the new (north) sacristy in the cathedral at Florence. Of bronze; ordered 1446, completed 1467. In 1437, just before the completion by Luca della Rob- bia and by Donatello of the two choir galleries of the cathedral at Florence, the latter was commissioned to furnish two doors of bronze for the portal under Luca’s gallery. When nine years later Donatello was called to Padua, without, as we are told, having even begun them, the commission was intrusted to three younger artists, Luca, Michelozzo, and Maso di Bartolommeo. The work which was the result of their collaboration, and which, although completed in the rough within two years, re- mained unfinished for nineteen years longer, is attributed in greater part to Luca, and is counted among his prin- cipal achievements. It consists of ten reliefs framed in heavy and simple mouldings, with quatrefoils reduced to trefoils at all the corners, these containing heads, per- haps portraits, sculptured in the round. This ornamenta- tion was doubtless suggested by that of Ghiberti’s earlier and simpler doors for the Baptistery ; but only in a sin- gle detail, the angel of St. Matthew, does Luca’s work remind one of the later and more elaborate fruit of Ghi- berti’s half century of labor on the Baptistery portals, then well toward its close. The five panels of each door are together inclosed in a plain double moulding, and the stone portal in which the whole is set is almost wholly devoid of ornament. The simplicity and even bareness LUCA DELLA ROBBIA 79 of the work as a whole is in part attributable to the same- ness of the subjects prescribed by the cathedral admin- istration for the reliefs — in each case a seated figure attended on either hand by an angel. But to no sculptor could such a commission have been given with greater hope of a successful artistic outcome than to the origi- nator of the endless variations upon the single theme of Madonna and Child which afterward issued from the studio of the Robbia ; and within the strait limits assigned him Luca produced a work of which detailed study wholly removes any impression of monotony given by a first glance. In order from left to right and from top to bottom, the panels contain representations of the Virgin and Child, St. John the Baptist, the four Evangel- ists, St. John, St. Matthew, St. Luke, and St. Mark, with their symbols ; and the four fathers of the church, St. Augustine, St. Jerome, St. Gregory, and St. Ambrose. Of all the twenty angel figures there is not one in which the discovery of some special interest, whether in the pose, the action, or the flow of the drapery, does not reward the attentive spectator. There is dignity and sweetness in the Madonna, simplicity and character in the prophet and the evangelists, and a suggestion of ecclesiastical pomp in the fathers of the church. The present cast reproduces the relief of St. Augustine, who is represented in his episcopal robes, wearing the mitre, seated between two youthful angels carrying two books, of one of which he turns the leaves, while with the index finger of the left hand he keeps his place in the other. 8o ITALIAN RENASSANCE SCULPTURE In this double occupation there is a suggestion, possibly intentional, of the impetuous temperament of the Afri- can author of the Confessions. Attributed to Luca della Robbia. 413 . 1 . Group of the Visitation; in the church of San Giovanni fuor Civitas, Pistoia. Of white enamelled terra-cotta ; details in colors. Date unknown. A. Marquand, “ The Madonnas of Luca della Robbia,” Am. Journal of Archaeology, IX, 1894, p. n. The group of which the present cast is a reproduction stands in a niche in the nave of the little church of San Giovanni fuor Civitas at Pistoia. In regard to its his- tory nothing is known. It was formerly thought to be the work of Fra Paolino (1490-1547), a painter of Pistoia, pupil of Fra Bartolommeo. Of late years it has been attributed on internal evidence to one of the Rob- bia, being assigned at first to Andrea, and later to Luca himself. A work hitherto little remarked, it is now counted among the masterpieces of Renaissance sculp- ture ; the change not only witnessing to the closer study now given all monuments of past art, but significant also of the growth in modern esteem of the qualities of simple verity in conception and execution of which this group is so conspicuous an example. The theme known in Christian art as the Visitation is that of the meeting of the young mother of Christ with the aged mother of John the Baptist before the birth of their children, as the incident is related in the 1 LUCA DELLA ROBBIA 8l Gospels. “ And Mary arose in those days and went into the hill country with haste, into a city of Judah ; and entered into the house of Zacharias and saluted Elizabeth.” Unlike many of the representations of the Visitation, where both figures stand erect, and in closer accord with the spirit of the Bible text, this group shows Elizabeth kneeling in an attitude of noble and devout humility. “ And Elizabeth spake with a loud voice and said, . . . ‘ And whence is this to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me ? ’ ” She has fallen to her knees even before Mary has reached her, and as the Virgin pauses, abashed by this mark of reverence, seeks to draw her gently to herself. We may thus, perhaps, without doing violence to the sculptor’s intent, interpret the distance at which the figures are placed, the unstable pose of Elizabeth, as if moving for- ward upon her knees, the mute deprecation of Mary’s hands upon her shoulders, and the attitude of the Vir- gin, as if midway in a reluctant step. The ascription of the work to Fra Paolino was possibly inspired by local pride ; for it is in the style as well as the material of the Robbia, and not only its dignified simplicity and the quality of its workmanship, but the delicacy and eleva- tion of the conception and the refined and portrait-like verisimilitude of the two types, warrant the attribution to the greatest artist of that name. 82 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE Andrea della Robbia : born at Florence in 1435 ( x 437 0 j died there in 1525 (1528 ?). The heir to his uncle’s art, as Luca had both declared and provided in his will, Andrea della Robbia led, like him, a long and uneventful life in his native city, wholly devoted to the labors of the studio. He had seven sons, of whom five at least appear to have been aids in his work ; two, Giovanni and Girolamo, eventually attain- ing distinction in their art, the former as the sculptor of many well-known works in various parts of Tuscany, including, as some have thought, the reliefs on the fagade of the hospital of the Ceppo at Pistoia, the latter as the decorator of the Chateau of Madrid, built by Francis the First of France in the Bois de Boulogne at Paris. Both Andrea and his sons devoted themselves almost exclusively to sculpture in enam- elled terra-cotta, in which material the workshop of the Rob- bia became in the second and third generation the scene of an amazing productivity, more abundant by far than in Luca’s day. It is remarkable that in all this immense mass of sculp- ture there is so little repetition, and that so few examples fail to reach an artistic level at least respectable. But a small number of works are known to be Andrea’s on the evidence of Vasari, or documentary proof; but many more are attrib- uted to him without reserve on the ground of their identity in style with these. The artistic individuality thus revealed is one of great distinction and rare charm, if of less fecundity and elevation than Luca’s. Andrea grew to love complexity in his draperies and attitudes, and rich detail in the accesso- ries of his compositions ; his works are more decorative, less works of independent art, than those of Luca. It is doubtless not by chance that the sculptures of the contemporary, among the Robbia, of the great preacher Savonarola, to whom art ex- ANDREA DELLA ROBBIA 83 isted as a means of grace, breathe a more markedly religious spirit than is found either among the simple verities of Luca or in the more pronounced naturalism of the Ceppo reliefs. Yet Andrea’s works are much more than formal decorations ; the sweetest and most peaceful of his faces are never masks, nor have the most conventional of his figures lost the spark of life. Andrea seems always to have found a special inspira- tion in the representation of infancy. His only work in mar- ble, the altar at S. Maria delle Grazie near Arezzo, contains seventeen heads of cherubs and five complete figures of in- fants ; and the best known of all his sculptures are the round reliefs of infants in swaddling clothes placed between the exterior arches of the Spedale degli Innocenti in Florence, each one a new exponent of the charm of babyhood. Beside these two works, Vasari enumerates the following as from Andrea’s hand : two reliefs executed for citizens of Arezzo (one has since been lost) ; a Madonna in S. Maria in Grado in Arezzo, and a Crucifixion in the church of the Brother- hood of the Trinity in the same city (now in the Lady chapel of the cathedral) ; several reliefs (an Annunciation, Adora- tion, Crucifixion, Ascension, and Assumption, among his most important works) at the convent of La Verna in the mountains north of Arezzo ; and nine medallions with a re- lief of the meeting of St. Francis and St. Dominic in the Loggia di S. Paolo at Florence. Among the other sculptures to which, mainly on internal evidence, the name of Andrea is now by common consent attached, the following may be mentioned : a lunette with the Madonna and saints over the main portal of the cathedral at Prato (1489); a frieze with medallions of the four Evangelists in the interior of the dome of Madonna dei Carceri at Prato ; a reredos representing ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE the Coronation of the Virgin at the convent of the Osser- vanza in the outskirts of Siena ; a lunette of the Annuncia- tion over the doorway of the church of S. Maria degli Inno- centi in Florence ; a Madonna between two angels over a door in the vestibule of the Opera del Duomo at Florence ; a relief of the Madonna and Child with the insignia of the guild of architects on the base, now in the Museo Nazionale at Florence ; and several sculptures attributed to his declin- ing years ; a lunette with the Madonna and saints over the main doorway of the cathedral at Pistoia (1509), and three lunettes of the Madonna, St. Peter, and St. Thomas Aquinas over the doorways of Madonna della Quercia at Viterbo. The number of works which, while not universally recognized as Andrea’s, are attributed to him by one or another author- ity, is very large, including many Madonnas and a few more important compositions. 413 . Four Reliefs of Infants ; from the facade of the Hos- pital of the Innocents at Florence. Of enamelled terra-cotta ; the drapery partly tinted with brown, the background blue. Date unknown, but probably an early work. The reliefs reproduced in the present casts are part of a series of ten adorning the spandrels of arches on the front of the hospital for foundlings at Florence. Each of the series represents a baby boy with head and arms bare, and with drapery muffled about the feet and drawn about the legs and flanks with narrow bands of like material. All face the spectator, as they might lie in the beds of the hospital of whose purpose they are ANDREA DELLA ROBBIA 85 the symbols. No one of the figures is a replica of any other ; but with their extended arms and inclined heads all alike seem to appeal for succor to the passers-by below. Most of them submit quietly to the confinement of their swaddling clothes, and the ineffectual disarray of the drapery of others, revealing the frail little bodies within, deepens the impression of their helplessness. The artist has availed himself of a sculptor's license in making both faces and figures more mature than those of babies still in the cradle ; but in the verity of its types, as well as in the simplicity and naivete of their conception arid execution, the work suggests the influ- ence of Luca, and is accordingly assigned to the earlier years of Andrea’s career. In the four centuries that have elapsed since it was put in place, the hands of the figures have suffered much mutilation, but they are otherwise well preserved. 414.3. Relief of the Annunciation ; over the door of the church of S. Maria in the court of the Hospital of the Innocents at Florence. Of enamelled terra-cotta. The figures white, on a blue ground. Date unknown, but probably a work of Andrea’s middle life. As in the relief of the same subject at La Verna, there is here no attempt to represent the scene of the Annun- ciation as it might have occurred, but only to exhibit the personages concerned therein, with certain symbolic ac- companiments. Floating clouds make of the background 86 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE an image of heaven, in which, at the centre, God the Father in the likeness of a venerable man appears sur- rounded by a circle of cherubim. Before him, on its mis- sion earthward, flies the dove, which seems just to have issued from his outstretched hands, and whose halo marks it as the symbol of the Holy Spirit. The earth, on which the angel Gabriel has alighted, and where Mary kneels, is represented by a course of masonry like the coping of a wall. Directly in the centre, as if to emphasize by a decorative use its purely ideal significance, stands a jar of the lilies, always the sign, in this scene, of Mary’s im- maculate nature. In his left hand the angel carries others, perhaps the image of the unspotted purity still to be hers in the motherhood he announces. The border of the relief is one of the friezes of cherubs so favorite with Andrea, and which appear to perpetuate the faces of so many beautiful Florentine children of his day. In com- parison with almost any of the works ascribed to Luca, this relief is of much greater formality of design and con- ventionality in detail (excepting the cherubs’ heads). The attitudes, faces, and members are stiffened, sharpened, and refined toward ideals not natural but ecclesiastical ; the draperies have become much involved, less apparently for artistic ends than for the sake of the emotional atmos- phere of troubled forms. The art of the Robbia is in a new stage ; but if less an art than before, it is other than art by an impressiveness both noble and powerful. ANDREA DELLA ROBBIA 87 414 . 2 . Relief of the Meeting of St. Francis and St. Dominic ; from the Loggia di S. Paolo in Florence. Of terra-cotta ; enamelled, excepting on the face and hands. The loggia completed in 1495. The Loggia di S. Paolo is an arcade in front of the former convalescent hospital of the same name on the Piazza S. Maria Novella in Florence. It was erected be- tween 1490 and 1495 from Brunelleschi’s designs, and decorated in terra-cotta, as Vasari relates, by Andrea della Robbia. Beside the lunette here reproduced, the decora- tions comprise eleven medallions, nine of circular form, with figures of saints and representations of Christ heal- • ing the sick, and two semicircular in shape, with portraits, supposed to be officials of the hospital. While these smaller reliefs may have been in part the work of Andrea’s assistants, the principal one is conceded by all to be from the hand of the master. The lunette represents the two great leaders of thirteenth-century Christendom, the gentle preacher to the birds and the zealous pursuer of heretics meeting in an affectionate embrace. No his- torical event appears to be referred to, the relief, like other portrayals of the two saints in company, typifying either a personal regard traditional between them, or the feelings of amity binding on all their true followers. The dress of the left-hand figure — the gray habit and the cord — identifies it as that of S. Francis ; while the white tunic and the black cloak of the figure on the right is the costume of the Dominican order. It is not, perhaps, dis- cerning too much to find a designed contrast of character 88 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE between the two ; for the bending form, inclined head, and animated face of the figure on the right suggest the suavity and force of the man of affairs, while the passive rigidity of the recluse and the mystic seems to speak in the less yielding attitude and the immobility of feature of the figure on the left. But apart from any expressive- ness of its subject, and considered simply as a represen- tation of two aged and reverend men greeting one another with the kiss of peace, the relief is one of the most notable among the many masterly artistic renderings of the daily life about them to be found in the works of the Robbia. Attributed to Andrea della Robbia. 414 . 4 . Relief of the Madonna and Child; under the portico of the Accademia delle Belle Arti at Florence. Of enamelled terra-cotta; white figures on a blue back- ground. Date unknown. The relief from which the present cast was made is one of many representations of the Madonna and Child, designed as the reredos of small altars or shrines, as- cribed to Andrea or to those under his direct influence. According to the illustration of the similar relief also under the portico of the Academy, given at page 105 of Cavalucci and Molinier’s work on the Della Robbia, the panel here reproduced is in the original surrounded by a frame representing flowers and fruit and supported by an ornamental bracket. The motive seems to have been a favorite one either with Andrea or his patrons, ANDREA DELLA ROBBIA 89 for several other reproductions of it exist elsewhere in Florence. 905. Relief of the Assumption of the Virgin ; in the Metropolitan Museum, New York city. Of enamelled terra-cotta ; white figures on a background of dark blue, with traces of other colors in many details. The head and hands of the Virgin, the head of one of the cherubs, and those of the three saints on the right, together with portions of feet, are modern restorations. Date un- known. A. Marquand, “ Andrea della Robbia’s Assump- tion of the Virgin in the. Metropolitan Museum,” Am. Journal of Archaeology, VII, 1891, p. 422. This work consists of a large central panel flanked with ornamented pilasters bearing an entablature surmounted by a flat arched pediment. The motive of the relief in the tympanum of the pediment — flying angels symmet- rically placed — is of ancient use in Christian sculpture and one often repeated in the works of the Robbia. The entablature contains a frieze of infants’ heads, carried out with the variety and charm that is characteristic of this special form of ornamentation in the works of Andrea della Robbia. The decoration of the pilasters is a florid design of scroll-work, a want of entire uniformity which appears between the two in the original (not in the pre- sent cast), being perhaps an accident of the studio. They and the panel between them doubtless originally rested upon a predella, or row of smaller panels, the work being designed as the reredos of an altar. In spite of the grave mutilation it has suffered, and in spite of 90 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE wholly inadequate attempts at *restoration, the work still preserves under closer scrutiny what may well be the greater part of its original effectiveness. The event known in ecclesiastical tradition as the As- sumption of the Virgin is her bodily resurrection and translation into heaven on the third day after her entomb- ment. According to the legend, the twelve apostles, gathered together miraculously from all parts of the world, were witnesses of the scene and found the open tomb filled with flowers. In representations of the As- sumption as a mystery of religion, of which the present relief follows one of the accepted types, the place of the apostles is taken by a company of saints of the church. The saint here placed on the left of the centre may be identified (by the stigmata and the cross) as St. Francis of Assisi, and the saint on the right (by the tablet) as S. Bernardino of Siena. The other two have no distinctive attributes, but the figure with mitre and crozier has been recognized as S. Donato, Bishop of Arezzo. The effect of all these figures but the last is much interfered with by the poor quality of the modern heads. Between the two in the centre appears the panelled side of the tomb with its springing flowers, of which still others show beyond S. Bernardino. The Virgin is represented seated, holding up her joined hands, and closely surrounded by seven winged baby heads. The oval panel with pointed ends within which she sits, and to which the heads form a border, is the mandorla or amande mystique of church iconography, the symbol of the Immaculate Concep- ANTONIO FEDERIGHI 9 * tion, perhaps in allusion to the rod of Aaron (Numbers xvii, 8), that miraculously budded and bore almonds in the wilderness. An eighth baby head with wings forms a pendant to the oval. Like those in the frieze, this has six wings, the number signifying the seraphic state, while the others have two or four, the number distinguishing cherubs. On either side of the Virgin fly four angels with pipes, on which all but one are playing. Their limbs, from the knee down, are represented as concealed by clouds, after the still lingering habitudes of more primi- tive art. The figure of the Virgin in the centre serves as the point of union between the two scenes, — that of the resurrection from earth, represented by the tomb and the saints ; and that of the reception into heaven, represented by the retinue of playing angels, and by those in frieze and pediment. The latter bear the crown that awaits the Virgin, the scene of whose bestowal in heaven forms another favorite theme in Christian sculpture. With the present relief may be compared those of the same subject similarly treated at La Verna, at Santa Fiora nel Monte Amiata, and at Foiano, all works of the Robbia, although the first only is admitted without dis- pute to be from the hand of Andrea. Antonio Federighi, called de’ Tolomei : born in Siena, and died there in 1490. Federighi is one of the less distinct figures in the history of the art of his time and country. In former years some of the sculptures on which his fame now 92 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE chiefly rests were credited to others : the holy-water basins in the cathedral to his greater predecessor, Jacopo della Quer- cia; the right-hand stone bench in the Casino dei Nobili to Lorenzo Marina and aids. Federighi himself, although prob- ably not more than a youth at Quercia’s death, has generally been counted among his scholars, not only because younger and a Sienese, but because his work suggests Quercia as that of no other sculptor does. There can at least be assumed between the two a kinship of artistic nature that the sight of the achievements of the elder artist strengthened in the younger. As architect he was engaged, from 1451 to 1456, upon the cathedral at Orvieto, and later upon that at Siena. The arcade called the Loggia del Papa was begun by him, and his style is recognized in other buildings and in other plastic works about the town, even in one or two sculptures formerly reputed to be antiques. But in some of those to which Federighi’s name is given the cooperation at least of less skilful hands is apparent. 558 . Holy-Water Basin; one of two near the main por- tal of the cathedral at Siena. Of marble; executed in 1462 and 1463. A. Schmarsow, “ Antonio Federighi de’ Tolomei,” Repertorium fur Kunst- wissenschaft, XII, 1889, p. 286. In the strongly modelled ornamentation of this basin, as in that of its fellow, we seem to find an echo of the flamboyant leafage of Quercia’s altar at S. Frediano in Lucca, and of the ponderous wreath about his sarcopha- gus of Ilaria del Carretto in Lucca cathedral. In the original, even the interior contributes its share of exu- ANTONIO FEDERIGHI 93 berant decoration, the artist having therein carved re- presentations of fishes. The classical motives in which that one of the two basins which is here reproduced especially abounds are not characteristic of Quercia, and their presence helps to explain the former opinion that the works were in part of antique origin. In this basin the decoration of both bowl and stem is in three seg- ments corresponding to the three sides of the truncated pyramid forming the base. This rests upon the heads of three four-winged genii, two of the wings of each clasp- ing the angle of the pyramid as if to steady it, while the other two are spread wide as if for support upon the shallow circular basin in which the whole work is set. The ornamentation of each face of the base consists of a rich garland descending from the upper corners of the pyramid and containing in the bend a shell. The heavy stem above is alternately drawn in and expanded in a series of curves and bands of ornament, of which latter the most conspicuous consists of a circle of shells of different shapes carved in high relief. Each garland rises from its corner of the base until it winds about the feet of a genius standing, just below the mouldings supporting the bowl, upon a dolphin. Upon the stem be- tween the three genii appear, carved in low relief, above, conventional patterns of palm leafage, and below, repre- sentations of genii at play in the water. At first sight the three eagles which, with outstretched wings and feet against the stem, bear up the bowl between them, form a break in the allusions to water found everywhere 94 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE else in the decorations, but they prove to hold in their claws three eels, with tails curling far upward under the bowl. This is deeply fluted up to a heavy margin, in which three consoles are spaced equally with three heads of winged genii. Between these the ornament consists of a honeysuckle pattern, of which the lowest ramifi- cations are held in the mouths of two dolphins bent about either side of a shell. It is noteworthy that while the purpose of the basin as a receptacle for water is everywhere expressed in the ornament, this is of a purely classical character, and entirely devoid of any reference to Christian faith or practice. The monument is in this way even more strongly at variance with the spirit of its purpose than were it a veritable product of antiquity, for none of its motives would then have been without an original religious significance. This purely secular character emphasizes the work as the product of an ar- tistic atmosphere very diverse from that of contemporary Florentine sculpture, which was still full of thoughts of another world. The germ of whole-souled delight in mundane existence, which had lain unfruitful for the millennium since antiquity, found nowhere in Italy more congenial soil than in the overflowing fancy of the sculp- tor of these basins. Antonio Rossellino : born 1427 ; died in Florence 1478. Vasari singles out for special commendation the delicacy of finish of Rossellino’s work, and of the man writes that his ANTONIO ROSSELLINO 95 graces of character won from all who knew him the reverence paid a saint. The name of Rossellino (meaning a species of olive-tree) was a sobriquet. His father was Matteo di Gio- vanni Gamberelli, and of his four brothers, all carvers in stone, one, Bernardo, eighteen years his senior, also attained distinction both as sculptor and as architect. Antonio’s name first appears on the roll of the assistants in Bernardo’s atelier, and in 1457 he executed for the cathedral at Empoli a nearly life-size nude statue of St. Sebastian, which ranks high among similar achievements of Tuscan sculpture at that period. In 1461 he received the order for a work which was to prove his masterpiece, the tomb of the Cardinal of Portugal in S. Miniato at Florence. The admiration excited by this tomb led to a commission for its reproduction in Naples, over the remains of Maria of Arragon in the Cappella Piccolomini in the church of Monte Oliveto. In the same chapel, the reredos of the altar, which is also from Antonio’s hand, contains a panel reproducing in greater elaboration the motives of his round relief of the Nativity at Florence, of which the cast is described below. In 1473 he executed three panels for the pulpit of Prato cathedral. Many reliefs of the Madonna and Child in various museums in Europe are attributed to Rossel- lino, and one in the church of Santa Croce at Florence, the “ Madonna del Latte.” His work is full of represen- tations of childhood, one of the most charming examples being the statue of St. John the Baptist as a boy, in the Museo Nazionale at Florence. As a sculptor of the real, Rossellino is known by two masterly busts of men, — one of the physician Giovanni di San Miniato, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, the other of Matteo Palmieri, of which the cast is described below. 96 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE 478. Relief of the Nativity ; in the Museo Nazionale at Florence. Of marble ; date unknown, but regarded as a work of his maturity. In this relief, and in the closely similar panel at Naples, the methods of perspective effect employed by Ghiberti in his second bronze doors for the Baptistery at Florence, finished during Rossellino’s earlier years, are applied for the first time in marble. Groups of figures appear in an elaborate landscape, at different distances indicated by their larger or smaller size and rounder or flatter model- ling. The Naples panel represents only the single step of transferring a Ghiberti relief to another material ; it retains the square field, and in a conspicuous detail — a circle of angels dancing upon the cloud about a mountain- top — recalls Ghiberti’s Creation of Man. But the Flor- entine work presents another novelty in the use of a^pop- ulous scene like those of the older artist as the background for a round relief of the Madonna and Child like others by Rossellino himself and his contemporaries. The more purely imitative character of the Naples panel suggests priority in date ; but it is perhaps quite as likely that the round relief with its mixture of styles was the tentative essay, and the panel the maturer achievement. Whether the outcome of a more complete or of a less complete mastery of the two manners it reflects, their blending in the present relief has been most fortunate. As in the contemporary round reliefs of the Madonna, the mother and her infant form an independent group, here distin- ANTONIO ROSSELLINO 97 guished not only through their superiority in size to the background figures, but by their position among an attend' ant circle of cherubs forming a frame for the rest of the composition. While the simple motive of the Adoration thus dominates the work — often indeed called by that name — others of great beauty and interest are combined with it in a rich and harmonious unity. The cherubs’ heads are in high relief, each pair separated by a star be- tween two clouds. The mantle of the Madonna trails among them, and with the body of the child and his cushion half covers the two lowermost. The figure of the Madonna is one of especial charm. Behind her on the left in the middle distance Joseph appears seated, the fin- gers of one hand thrust through his beard. Beyond, the stable, stone with a thatched roof ; and the ox and the ass feeding. On the right, beyond and above a crag like those in Ghiberti’s landscapes, two scenes image the part played by the shepherds in the story of the Nativity. In the extreme background a flock of sheep, the level lines of their backs testifying to their nocturnal quiet, are gathered between their two keepers. One of these is seated near trees at the foot of a declivity, and is absorbed in playing on bagpipes. The other stands at ease with crossed feet, leaning on his staff ; and both he and the dog at his side glance up at an angel descending toward them. Below, in the middle distance, the two appear again, walking side by side, with staves over their shoul- ders, from one of which a lamb is suspended by the feet. The other shepherd looks up, his hand before his 9 8 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE forehead, as if bewildered and blinded by light from heaven. A replica of this relief, in terra-cotta and varying from it in many details, is preserved in the Berlin Museum, and is thought to have been the original model for the work. 464. Bust of Matteo Palmieri ; in the Museo Nazionale at Florence. Of marble; signed and dated 1468. The roughness of surface of this bust is explained by its exposure for many years to the weather at the door of the family mansion. Palmieri is here represented at the age of sixty-three. Fervor of nature as well as force of mind speaks in the coarsely hewn, almost quizzical face. A carelessness in dress even, the gaping opening below the collar, contributes to the suggestion of character. Palmieri was historian as well as diplomat, and left a poem in manuscript, “ Citta di Vita,” which was burned, by decree of the church, after his death. Desiderio da Settignano : born at Settignano, a village near Florence, in 1428 ; died 1464. Of Desiderio’s short life but few details are known. He is reported to have been a pupil of Donatello, and without doubt was mainly influenced by his works, although Donatello himself was already in his prime and famous when Desiderio was born, and was absent in Padua during his adolescent years. Yet it is not as the DESIDERI 0 DA SETTIGNANO 99 bearer of any artistic tradition that Desiderio is chiefly remem- bered, but as the possessor of a certain happy grace of style, which was a purely personal gift. Vasari quotes an epigram placed on his tomb, one of many called forth by his untimely end, that in a way anticipates the epitaph of Raphael in the Pantheon : “Nature, fearing he might excel her, cut off his days ; but in vain ; for the marble he had made to live for- ever gave him in turn immortality.” His chief works are the marble tomb of Carlo Marsuppini in Santa Croce at Florence, and the marble tabernacle of the Sacrament in the church of San Lorenzo. Vasari enumerates many other works now either lost or of uncertain identification. A bust of a young woman, formerly in the gardens of the Palazzo Strozzi at Florence, but now in the Berlin Museum (No. 412.4 below), was long admired as the bust of Marietta Strozzi mentioned by Vasari ; but the names of both artist and model have since been associated with another bust in the Berlin Museum (No. 62) and with still another, discovered of late years in a muti- lated condition in the same gardens. A number of other busts of young women and of boys, apparently portraits, have the same delicacy of form and of workmanship, and convey the same suggestions of soft flesh and of gaily coursing blood that are wrought into the figures on the tomb and the taber- nacle, and are hence by one or another authority attributed to Desiderio. Among them is the relief called St. Cecilia, heretofore ascribed to Donatello, of which the cast is men- tioned above, and the busts of boys and of a young woman about to be described. A relief of the Madonna and Child on the Panciatichi Palace, Via Cavour, Florence, is also thought to be by Desiderio. 100 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE 413.7. Sarcophagus with Two Attendant Genii; from the tomb of Carlo Marsuppini, in the church of Santa Croce at Florence. Of marble. Marsuppini died 1455. Carlo Marsuppini, at first professor of belles lettres, then secretary to Pope Eugene IV, and for the ten years before his death in 1455 secretary of state to the Flor- entine commonwealth, was a man of great reputation among his contemporaries for learning and literary ability. Only a few verses of minor importance survive him, and he is chiefly remembered through the master- piece of sculpture erected in Santa Croce over his remains. In this tomb Desiderio followed the general scheme .of that set up a few years before in the same church by the architect and sculptor, Bernardo Rossel- lino, in memory of Leonardo Bruni, Marsuppini’s prede- cessor in the secretaryship. The plan of this tomb, which was original with Rossellino, was that of a shallow niche, containing a sarcophagus with the recumbent effigy of the dead, flanked by Corinthian pilasters bear- ing an entablature surmounted by an arch ornamented with boyish figures bearing a heavy garland and contain- ing a round relief of the Madonna and Child supported on either side by an angel. In accordance with the bent of Desiderio’s talent, the changes introduced by him in this design transformed the tomb from a work primarily of architectural interest into one whose chief importance is derived from its wealth of sculptures. The particular character of these was a smiling grace in which the DESIDERIO DA SETTIGNANO IOI youthful artist expressed his own fortunate endowment quite without reference to the solemn purpose of his work. Vasari writes that the leafage sculptured at the ends of the sarcophagus, “although somewhat thorny and dry, was regarded as most beautiful, little antique work having at that time been discovered,” and himself praises the feathery plumage on the wings beneath, the deceptive verisimilitude of the shell between them, and the charming vivacity of the boyish and angelic figures about the monument. Of these, the two little winged sprites, supporting emblazoned shields by ribbons in their hands and about their necks, which stand at the base of the two pilasters, are instinct with the infantile life Desiderio so loved to portray. Attributed to Desiderio da Settignano. 450, 458. Two Busts of Boys ; the former in the Dreyfus collection at Paris. Of marble. These busts represent baby boys, not far from the same age, and with the same light drapery across their shoulders. The former, which is modelled with a fasci- nating lifelikeness, has also been ascribed to Donatello. 412. Bust of a Young Woman (called a Princess of Urbino) ; in the Berlin Museum. Of fine limestone. A plaster bust in the collection of Lord Wemyss at London is so similar to this in the bearing, the facial 102 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE expression, and the arrangement of the hair of the sub- ject, although its rounder and more developed features and figure suggest riper years, that it is thought to have been the model for the present work. It has been re- marked that a certain want of flexibility in the forms of the bust here reproduced is not characteristic of Desi- derio. But theproud composure of face and attitude, the coolly scrutinizing glance of the beautiful young gentle- woman it portrays, are rendered with an insight, a fidelity, and an imaginative grace that would do honor to any sculptor. The simple elegance of the embroid- ered bodice, with its fine inner tunic, and the unassum- ing perfection of the headdress, where nothing is stiff or pronounced, nor is a hair awry, add their share to the effect of patrician distinction, possibly a little over- conscious of itself. The Barberini Palace at Rome, where the bust was formerly preserved, was built for Pope Urban VIII of that family, during whose pontifi- cate in 1626 the Duchy of Urbino became part of the States of the Church. Antonio Pollaiuolo: born 1429 (1433 ?) ; died 1498. In several ways Pollaiuolo is an exceptional figure among the sculptors of Florence. He is known to us not only as sculp- tor, but as painter, engraver, and goldsmith, in which latter art he excelled all others of his time. He and his brother Piero are said to have been the first in Florence to study artistic anatomy by means of the dissection of human corpses, ANTONIO POLLAIUOLO 103 a rupture with traditional opinion which lessens our wonder at the paucity of specifically religious subjects among An- tonio’s works. His style had its novel side as well ; for the forms of Florentine sculpture, complex and exuberant as they had grown in the work of Ghiberti, approached the point of extravagance first in that of Pollaiuolo. He was the son and pupil of a goldsmith, and, as one of Ghiberti’s assistants on the eastern Baptistery doors, is said to have sculptured the quail perched upon ears of wheat in the centre of the left-hand frieze. Already in Vasari’s time “the needs of the city in time of war ” had brought many of Pollaiuolo’s achievements as a goldsmith to the melting-pot, and their only representa- tives are now a panel of the Birth of John the Baptist and the lower part of a crucifix, both from the silver altar of the Bap- tistery and preserved in the Cathedral Museum. Drawings for paintings attributed to his brother still survive and illus- trate the remark of Cellini in his “ Oreficeria,” that Polla- iuolo’s designs were of aid to other artists ; but the exact share of each brother in the paintings that go by the family name is not clearly made out. Pollaiuolo was one of the contestants in the competition for the monument to Francesco Sforza at Milan, in which Leonardo da Vinci was victor, and a design for the monument preserved in the Royal Print Col- lection at Munich is ascribed to him. In sculpture, beside the bust mentioned below, a bronze group of Hercules and Cacus is preserved in the Museo Nazionale at Florence ; but the principal works of Pollaiuolo are two bronze tombs, of Pope Sixtus IV (1493) and Pope Innocent VIII, in St. Peter’s at Rome, whither he was called by the latter pontiff to erect a monument for his predecessor, and where he remained to perform the same office for his patron. Both tombs are de- 104 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE partures from types current in his day. That of Sixtus IV is a development from the motive of a figure lying in state. A recumbent effigy of the pope rests upon a broad low base with concave sides richly ornamented with symbolic figures of women in lower or higher relief. That of Innocent VIII is a mural tomb, in its original form exhibiting a motive not wholly dissimilar to that of the tomb of Bishop Salutati, to be de- scribed below, executed many years before by Mino da Fiesole. Above a recumbent effigy of the pope on an elaborate sar- cophagus, he appears again seated, surrounded by symbolic figures of women. In the arched panel which crowns the work, and in front of which the sarcophagus was originally placed, the figure of Charity with a horn of plenty occupies a field whose central position and oval outline would otherwise identify it as the “ amande mystique ” of the Madonna. 414. Bust of a Soldier in Armor ; in the Museo Nazio- nale at Florence. Of terra-cotta. Date and provenience unknown. In this bust both arms have been broken off at the shoulder, and on the small casque crowning the long, even shock of hair, two scaly legs with claws are all that remains of a dragon crest. These mutilations in- terfere but little with the interest of the work, perhaps because their ragged look is not out of keeping with an air of gaminerie in the head itself. In this, the level eyes, the unmoved mouth, the stiff, straight neck, the hair rolling back as if in the movement of glancing up to meet some challenge, all vigorously image the boyish fighter for fighting’s sake. To the same end the cuirass ANTONIO POLLAIUOLO 1 05 is ornamented with reliefs of heroic themes ; on the left Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra, on the right, by a piquant opposition, Samson, his long hair streaming in the wind, swinging the broken withes with which the Philistines had sought to bind him ; and in the centre a profile head with the laurel crown of victory. The his- tory of this work is not needed to fasten the authorship of so sympathetic a rendering of the pugnacious mood upon the venturesome spirit that cut loose from Ghi- berti, entered the lists with da Vinci, and dared to choose the figures of beautiful women for the sole dec- oration of papal tombs. The shallow modelling of the eyes is noticeable also in the terra-cotta bust of Charles VIII in the Museo Nazionale, of which Pollaiuolo has been surmised the author. Formerly attributed to Pollaiuolo ; now thought to be by Verrocchio. 449. Bust of a Young Man ; in the Museo Nazionale at Florence. Of terra-cotta. Date and provenience unknown. The quiet dignity of this bust represents a wholly different artistic atmosphere from that in which Polla- iuolo worked, and it is not surprising that another name than his is now associated with it. A sobriety of air, lacking neither in character nor in charm, has given it the title of the young cleric or scholar, but whether the serious-minded young Florentine it portrays was a real person or the fancy of the sculptor is not known. io6 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE Andrea di Michele di Francesco de’ Cioni, called del Verrocchio : born in Florence, 1436 ; died in Venice, 1488. Like Pollaiuolo, Verrocchio began his artistic career in the workshop of a goldsmith, Giuliano de’ Verrocchi, by whose surname he was thereafter to be known. Like Pollaiuolo again, his contribution to the silver altar of the Baptistery, a panel of the Decollation of St. John the Baptist, completed in 1480, is the only surviving specimen of his skill in that art. While Vasari names no one as Verrocchio’s master, he is reported by other old authorities to have aided Donatello, then a septuagenarian, in executing the marble basin for the sacristy of San Lorenzo, and is spoken of as his pupil. It is no small factor in Verrocchio’s own fame that in another art from that by which he is chiefly known, he should have left behind him pupils as distinguished as the painters Lorenzo di Credi, Perugino, and above all Leonardo da Vinci. The single existing picture known to be by Verrocchio, an unfin- ished Baptism of Christ in the Accademia delle Belle Arti in Florence, contains the figure of an angel by Leonardo in view of whose marked superiority to the rest of the work Verrocchio is said to have renounced the art of painting. Vasari relates that Verrocchio used to study the human fig- ure with the aid of casts from life, and there are in existence several portrait busts that are thought to exhibit his style. It was doubtless his early collaboration with Donatello that brought to Verrocchio the commission for the tomb erected in the sacristy at S. Lorenzo on the order of Lorenzo de’ Medici in memory of his father Piero and of his uncle Gio- vanni. This tomb, finished in 1472, consists of a red por- phyry sarcophagus, ornamented with bronze foliage, doubtless originally gilded, and set in an archway of which the remain- VERROCCHIO 107 in g opening is filled with a bronze network representing cord- age. The conception is novel, and the execution a masterly example of the caster’s art. On further commissions from Lorenzo de’ Medici, Verrocchio executed the bronze group of a Cupid holding a Dolphin, and the bronze statue of David, of both of which the casts are described below. In 1477 his powerful patron decided in favor of Verrocchio in a disputed competition with Pollaiuolo for a cenotaph to Car- dinal Forteguerra in the cathedral at Pistoia, but Verrocchio never completed the work, and of the monument as it stands only the upper figures in relief are his. That of Faith and the figure of the Madonna in a terra-cotta relief in the Hospital of S. Maria Nuova at Florence resemble one another like two beautiful sisters, and the latter work, with another in marble in the Museo Nazionale, has also been attributed to Verrocchio. To the adornment of a chapel for St. Peter’s at Rome, just then in process of construction by Pope Sixtus IV (on the site of the present Coro dei Canonici), Verrocchio contributed several large silver statues of the apostles, which in the last century were stolen from their place and never re- covered ; and to the same period belongs the fragment from the lost monument to Francesca Tornabuoni, of which the cast is described below. Better fortune attended Verrocchio’s next important work, the bronze group of Christ and St. Thomas, still standing in a niche on the front of Or San Michele in Florence, ordered in 1464, completed in 1483. The niche had many years before been made ready by Dona- tello for the projected group, but the authorities were hope- lessly divided as to whether he or Ghiberti should furnish it, and the task was intrusted to Verrocchio only after the death of both the others. Before it was completed, in io8 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE 1479, Verrocchio received another and even more important commission, this time from the Republic of Venice, which the famous condottiere, Bartolommeo da Bergamo, called Colleoni, had made heir to all his wealth upon the condition that a statue of himself should be erected in that city. If Vasari is right in saying that a capacity for infinite pains made amends in Verrocchio for a lack of natural facility, it was again, as perhaps in the unfinished painting in Flor- ence and the unfinished tomb in Pistoia, to prove unequal to the task it set itself, for Verrocchio died nine years later of a chill received after casting the figure of the horse. He had once abandoned the work because the commission for the figure had been withdrawn to be given to Bellano of Padua, and although at first forbidden on pain of death to reenter Venice, had ended by returning to his great task on condition of fulfilling it all himself. His body was brought back to Florence by his faithful pupil Lorenzo di Credi, to whom he had in vain endeavored by his will to have the pro- secution of the work intrusted ; and the monument was com- pleted by a Venetian artist, Alessandro Leopardi, called therefrom Alessandro del Cavallo. It is still impossible to say with exactness how much of the credit for the greatest equestrian statue in the world is due to the latter, and how much to the man who originally conceived it, and who but for an unkind fate might be named as its sole author. 461 . Statue of David; in the Museo Nazionale at Florence. Of bronze; executed for Lorenzo de’ Medici before 1476. David is represented as a slim youth in early adoles- cence, standing at ease, with the left arm akimbo, and grasping in his right hand the short sword of Goliath, VERROCCHIO I09 whose severed head lies against the raised left foot of the boy. A kind of kilted corselet, and the high hunting- sandals, also worn by Donatello’s David, executed for Lorenzo’s grandfather Cosimo forty years before, are all his clothing. His glance is directed outward, as if toward bystanders, and not at the giant’s body. The single reference in the work to the biblical origin of its subject is perhaps to be found in the curious ornament on the border of David’s armor, like an imitation of Hebrew lettering. The right arm still tense, and with swollen veins, is all that tells of a conflict. Otherwise the figure is not that of a victor in mortal encounter, standing, like Donatello’s David, as if absorbed in the vast bulk become his prey, but that of a charming boy, with curly locks, gentle glance, and sweet pouting lips, in a posture somewhat constrained, as if ill at ease under admiration. With its emphatic and detailed modelling, the statue is even more effective in the cast than is that of Donatello with its rounder and smoother forms, and appears of even greater verity, less an Apollo than a modest and graceful urchin of the Florentine streets, lean and immature still, but with the promise of perfec- tion in build. 400 . 5 . Statue of a Cupid holding a Dolphin ; crown- ing the fountain in the courtyard of the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence. Of bronze ; executed for Lorenzo de’ Medici perhaps about 1474. IIO ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE This little group was not originally designed for the sombre courtyard of the Palazzo Vecchio, but for the Medicean Villa at Careggi, on the hills northwest of Florence, built by Cosmo de’ Medici and a favorite re- treat of his grandson, Lorenzo. The conception of the work, that of an infantile genius holding a struggling fish, recalls two motives of classical art, preserved to us in the group of Eros and the Dolphin at Naples (No. 549 in our collection of casts) and in the Boy with a Goose in the Louvre and elsewhere (our No. 568, at present withdrawn from exhibition). The actors are those of the former group, the dimensions those of the latter ; while the situation is half way between the fraternal play of the first and the desperate comedy of combat in the second. Although neither Lorenzo, in giving the commission, nor Verrocchio, in executing it, may have had any antique work in mind, a little suspicion of the theatrical in the lackadaisical head of this Cupid, with its sweet mouth and elaborated locks, and in his jaunty dancing step and poise of elbows, suggests a borrowed motive, — one not invented but imitated. The fish is hardly realistic, except in the convulsive twist of his tail ; and the sentiment of the work seems less a natural pleasure in the pranks of childhood than an admiration for the art which can commemorate them. In the cast the wings are fastened on outside the drapery ; and if attached similarly in the original would appear an after- thought, although so intimately a part of the design that this can hardly be believed; or perhaps Verrocchio VERROCCHIO III allowed himself this inconsistency in a creation so fanci- ful. Whatever its origin, the work remains a master- piece, not only of a rarely harmonious flow of line on every side, from wings to tips of toes, but of a vigor of configuration and of light and shade one would hardly have believed possible within its diminutive compass. The power of Verrocchio’s modelling, his love for strongly marked and complicated form, is especially conspicuous from the direction in which the fish’s head points. 480. Panel from the Tomb of Francesca Tornabuoni ; in the Museo Nazionale at Florence. Of marble; executed after 1477. E. Miintz, “A. Verroc- chio et le tombeau de Francesca Tornabuoni,” Gazette des Beaux Arts, 1891, VI, p. 277; F. Schottmiiller, “Zwei Grabmaler der Renaissance und ihre antike Vorbilder,” Repertorium fur Kunstwissenschaft, XXV, 1902, p. 401. According to Vasari, the first work in marble ex- ecuted by Verrocchio was a tomb in S. Maria sopra Minerva at Rome, erected by Francesco Tornabuoni in memory of a dearly loved wife, and containing, beside three figures of Virtues, a panel above the sarcophagus, representing the death of the mother at the birth of her child. The present panel, another representing the pre- sentation of the child to its father, also preserved at the Museo Nazionale, and four figures of Virtues in the col- lection of Madame Andre at Paris, are accepted as frag- jj ments of this work. Vasari’s account of it is thought inexact both in the name of the husband (for Francesco read Giovanni), the description of the work (for a single 1 1 2 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE panel read a double one, for three Virtues read four), and possibly also in respect to its original place (for S. Maria sopra Minerva at Rome read S. Maria Novella at Flor- ence). The painful subject of the work is represented with an earnest fidelity not throughout free from extrava- gance. The deathbed of the mother is a wild tumult of outlines, in marked contrast with the quiet modelling in the other scene. The figure in armor on the extreme left of the latter has the long curling locks and rounded cheeks of Verrocchio’s St. Thomas at Or San Michele, but other figures are less well proportioned, and seem to bear witness to the inexperience of the artist in the carving of marble. A Roman sarcophagus with the story of Alcestis, now preserved in the Villa Faustina at Cannes, but formerly in Rome, is surmised to have served Verrocchio as a model in the composition of these reliefs. Mino da Fiesole: born 1431 at Poppi, in the upper val- ley of the Arno; died nth July, 1484, at Florence. The sculptures attributed to Mino da Fiesole possess an excep- tional sweetness and grace that have from the first won for them the highest favor with the public. The critics, begin- ning even with Vasari, while acknowledging this quality in Mino’s works, have always dwelt upon the monotony of their beauty, and upon a frequent incapacity, and even rudeness, in the sculptor’s handling of his conceptions. Vasari writes that Mino was inspired less by nature than by the example of Desiderio da Settignano, who employed him as a stonecutter, MINO DA FIESOLE 1 13 and whose works he copied in his earliest essays at sculpture. Such an introduction to the art may explain not only Mino’s exclusive devotion to the manner of his young master, but also the lack of training to which Vasari alludes in calling him “ more gifted than grounded in art,” and of which his sculptures give ample evidence. They are full of charming ideas inadequately worked out, like the productions of an amateur, and at times exhibit technical Shortcomings which are truly amazing ; as in the panel representing Herod’s feast, from the pulpit in Prato cathedral (1473), with its childishly ill-proportioned and ill-modelled figures. Mino never amended his defective style ; and his success and the lasting popularity of his works bear witness to high artistic qualities which his faults could not conceal. The cathedral at Fiesole and the near-by monastery of the Badia contain five of Mino’s most elaborate works. At Fiesole a reredos with figures of the Madonna and Child between SS. Leonard and Remigius, a work of great refinement, in an architectural setting of much elegance ; and the tomb of Bishop Salutati (d. 1466), novel in conception, beautifully decorated, and containing in the bust of the Bishop a study from the real whose living truth is unsurpassed in the work of any of Mino’s contemporaries. Other portrait busts, either signed by, or on other grounds ascribed to Mino, are of not unlike quality ; among them those of Piero de’ Medici (about 1454) and Rinaldo della Luna (1461) in the Museo Nazionale at Florence; Niccolo Strozzi (1454) in the Berlin Museum ; and Diotisalvi Neroni (1464) in the Dreyfus collection in Paris. The church of the Badia contains a reredos (completed 1470) like that at Fiesole, with figures of SS. Lorenzo and Leonard (a tabernacle in similar form at S. Pietro in Perugia), and in the transepts 14 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE two tombs, one that of Bernardo Giugni (d. 1466), the other and finer (1469-81) in memory of Count Hugo of Andeburg (d. 1006), the benefactor of the monastery; both in the style of Desiderio’s Marsuppini monument at Santa Croce. The charming relief of the Madonna and Child, formerly over the door of the church, is now preserved in the Museo Nazionale at Florence. Vasari names two other works in that city which are still preserved : a ciborium, or tabernacle for the eucha- rist, in the Cappella Medici at Santa Croce (executed for the convent of the Muratte), and another in the church of S. Am- brogio. Similar tabernacles ascribed to Mino exist in Rome in the churches of S. Marco and S. Maria in Trastevere, another in the Baptistery at Volterra ; but of several more important works which Mino executed in that city only scat- tered fragments remain. The tomb of Paul II (d. 1471) in old St. Peter’s was taken down when the present church was begun, and parts of it are preserved in the Grotte of the Vatican. Four panels illustrating the life of St. Jerome, preserved in the Museo Artistico-Industriale, are now supposed to be frag- ments of the altar in the chapel of that saint (now destroyed) in S. Maria Maggiore (1463), ordered of Mino, according to Vasari, by Cardinal d’Estouteville. Of much higher quality, and among the most fascinating of Mino’s creations, are the remains at S. Maria Maggiore of the ciborium erected over the high altar, Mino’s largest work, including reliefs of the Na- tivity, the Assumption, and other subjects. Vasari writes that while in Rome Mino aided in sculpturing tombs for various cardinals ; and portions of those of Cardinal Forteguerri (S. Maria in Trastevere), Riario (SS. Apostoli), Ammannati (S. Agostino), and others, are now thought to be from his hand. The list of sculptures recognized as Mino’s includes a number MINO DA FIESOLE 115 of others, both in Italy and in museums and collections else- where ; and many more are with greater or less reason attrib- uted to him. 462 . Bust of Rinaldo della Luna; in the Museo Nazio- nale at Florence. Of marble; dated 1461. The bust bears the inscription, “ rinaldo della luna sue etatis anno xxvii opus mini ne mcccclxi ” (Ri- naldo della Luna in the twenty-seventh year of his age. The work of Mino, 1461). The young man is represented bareheaded, his curling hair, abundant though fine, ra- diating with precision from the crown of his head in curving lines like the striations of a shell. He wears a tunic richly embroidered in a floral design, and over it a plaited cloak without sleeves or collar, trimmed about the openings for neck and arms with fur. His sober, homely face, with its gentle mouth and averted, half- downcast glance, is of a like spiritual type to that of the young cleric mentioned above (No. 449), and one which we are glad should have its place in the ancient Florence of our fancy. Especially noteworthy is the interest and care with which the artist has rendered the many bosses and hollows of the striking head he was given to repro- duce, — its rounded forehead, eyes protruding and set aslant, large irregular nose (the tip has been broken and replaced), accentuated cheekbones, cheeks fallen away, full lips hanging forward — yet without failing to create from these verities a work of exceptional dignity and charm. 1 1 6 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE 413.6. Bust of Bishop Salutati ; from his tomb in the cathedral at Fiesole. Of marble. The tomb was ordered at least two years be^ fore the Bishop’s death, in 1466. It may well be imagined that Bishop Salutati himself had something to say as to the design of a tomb begun during his lifetime. Such a supposition might explain its novel form, — that of a sarcophagus resting in heavy trestles upon two consoles, and inclosing, with these and pilasters below, a field of porphyry panelling, about a bust of the Bishop. Furthermore, the panelling, at first sight over-complex, proves to outline a cross, bearing the head of the Bishop in the position of the head of Christ on a crucifix, a motive whose choice suggests the prelate rather than the artist. The outcome at Mino’s hands of a departure from Florentine tradition in this tomb was most fortunate ; the monument is universally praised as well for the grace of its plan as for the rich- ness and taste of its decoration. The bust rests on a bracket ornamented with a shield bearing heraldic de- vices. Above it the head of the cross is outlined by an arched moulding containing a shell. The Bishop appears in the robes of his office, with a richly embroidered mantle over an inner tunic of the delicate texture Mino knew so well how to represent, and with a mitre splen- didly adorned as if by precious metals and stones. His strongly marked but not markedly forceful face is pre- sented with a verisimilitude that leaves us in no doubt as to the manner of man whom Mino thus immortalized. BENEDETTO DA MAIANO II 7 424 . Bust of John the Baptist as a Boy ; in the Louvre. Of marble. L. Courajod in the “ Gazette des Beaux Arts,” March, 1881, p. 195. The sketchy imaginativeness of this bust, compared with the ingenuous fidelity of those just mentioned, shows that Mino when left to himself had a very differ- ent conception of the sculptor’s task from that of the close observation and following of nature. Apart from the symbolic mantle of goat’s hair, the work is an ideal of certain of the graces of childhood dear to Mino as to his master Desiderio, — its tender rounded forms, its timidity, its appealing innocence. A similar bust, also attributed to Mino, is preserved in the private collection Della Bordella at Florence. Benedetto da Maiano : born 1442 in Florence, whither his father had removed from Maiano, on the slopes of Fie- sole ; died there May 24, 1497. Benedetto’s name will al- ways recall those of two rich merchants of Florence, Filippo Strozzi and Pietro Mellini, of whom the two existing busts from his hand are faithful portraits, and to whose enlightened liberality he owed the commissions for the Strozzi Palace and the pulpit in S. Croce, two artistic monuments each well-nigh foremost of its kind in Italy. The date on the bust of Mellini, “ano 1474,” places it among the earliest of Bene- detto’s sculptures, and the pulpit is thought to have been executed not much later, although the admirable design and skilful perspective of its reliefs, the faultless execution of its statuettes, and the richness and refinement of its ornament 1 18 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE give evidence of fully matured powers. The palace was be- gun from Benedetto’s designs in 1489 ; and two years later Filippo Strozzi’s will mentions his tomb, already commenced in S. M. Novella, with the bust, now preserved in the Louvre. Benedetto had begun his career as a wood-carver and in- layer, in association with his brother Giuliano, seven years his senior, who had executed among other works the doors of the cabinets (1463) in the cathedral sacristy. In becom- ing, the one architect, the other sculptor, the two brothers had not parted company. In the cathedral of Faenza, upon which Giuliano was engaged from 1474, the altar of St. Sa- vinus is from Benedetto’s hand, and contains six of the smaller reliefs which, still further reduced in size, became a characteristic feature of Benedetto’s designs, and in which he was without a rival among his contemporaries. Both brothers were again engaged upon the interior decoration of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, to which Benedetto con- tributed the sculptured ornament of the door leading from the Salade’ Gigli into the Sala d’ Udienza, originally crowned on either side with the cherubs holding garlands, now pre- served in the Museo Nazionale, and in the centre by the graceful statue of S. John as a youth, in the same gallery. For the sacristy of the cathedral at Loreto, upon whose construc- tion Giuliano was employed from 1481 to i486, Benedetto exe- cuted a Lavabo with figures of angels, still charming in spite of mutilation. In 1480 the two, with a third brother, Giovanni, built near Prato, on a farm bought a few years before, a shrine called afterward “ dell’ Ulivo,” and adorned it with a seated group of the Madonna and Child in unglazed terra- cotta, full of simple dignity, and a Pieta in marble, both now preserved in Prato cathedral. Giuliano’s relations with the BENEDETTO DA MAI A NO 1 19 Neapolitan court later drew Benedetto to Naples, where in 1489, the year before Giuliano died, he completed a reredos of the Annunciation for the Mastrogiudice chapel in the church of Monte Oliveto, in plan like Rossellino’s altar in the same church, but individual in the striking architectural perspective of the central panel, and in the cameo-like re- finement of execution of the seven predella reliefs. The little hill town of S. Gimignano south of Florence contains two of Benedetto’s chief works, the earlier and more delicately modelled altar of S. Fina in the chapel of that saint, proba- bly built by him after Giuliano’s designs in the church called the Collegiata (enlarged 1466 by Giuliano), and the tomb of S. Bartolo (1494) in S. Agostino, both with old gilding and coloring. At Siena the church of S. Domenico contains a ciborium with kneeling angels, in its upper portion recalling Quercia’s font in the Baptistery, but finished below with the small reliefs and rich ornament characteristic of Benedetto. At his death in 1497 he willed all his property, reserving life interests for his relatives, to the Company of the Bigallo, among the contents of his studio being an unfinished statue of S. Sebastian and a group of the Madonna and Child (both now preserved in the Oratory of the Misericordia in Flor- ence), whose breadth of style is in noticeable contrast with the minute elaboration of Benedetto’s more familiar works, and which by their resemblances to Michel Angelo’s Sleep- ing Captive (in the Louvre) and his Madonna of Bruges form a link between the art of the fifteenth and that of the sixteenth century. 20 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE 463 . Bust of Pietro Mellini ; in the Museo Nazionale at Florence. Of marble. The bust bears the inscription, “ benedictus MAIANUS FECIT. PETRI MELLINI FRANCISCI FILII IMAGO hec. ano 1474.” (This is the image of Pietro Mellini, son of Francesco, made by Benedetto da Maiano in the year I474-) The Florentine sculptors of the fifteenth century took very seriously their commissions for portrait busts. Benedetto especially, with his supreme care for detail, has not spared Mellini a single wrinkle, nor even the want of balance in the two large ears. Close-cropped hair lends emphasis to the rugosities of the homely visage, and stalwart shoulders beneath the embroidered mantle complete the impression of a man of the people, part of the vigorous citizenry that won for Florence wealth and power. The bust was acquired by the Uffizzi Gallery in 1825 from a tradesman in Florence. 412 . 3 . Bust of Filippo Strozzi ; in the Louvre. Of marble. Executed about 1491-93. The bust bears the inscription, “ philippus stroza mathei filius benedic- tus de maiano fecit.” (Filippo Strozzi, son of Matteo, by Benedetto da Maiano.) This bust, originally designed for Filippo Strozzi’s tomb in S. M. Novella in Florence, and preserved for centuries in the Strozzi Palace as a family possession, was in 1878 bought by the Louvre. A bust in terra- cotta of the same subject, bought from the Strozzi Palace in 1877 by the Berlin Museum, is thought to have been MATTEO CIVITALI 1 21 the model for the marble. The costume is the same as in Mino’s bust of Rinaldo della Luna, — an embroidered coat under a sleeveless and collarless mantle trimmed with fur and hanging upon the breast in regular folds. The physical type, both simply and forcibly indicated, is that of a man well endowed for the courtly life in which Filippo Strozzi found his fortune. Matteo Civitali: born in Lucca, July 20, 1435 (J une 5 ? 1436?); died October 12, 1501. Vasari’s only reference to Civitali places him among the scholars of Jacopo della Quercia ; and while the record of Quercia’s death, October 20, 1438, preserved in the archives of Siena cathedral, nega- tives this supposition, there are characteristics in Civitali’s style which go far to explain such a tradition. The full-length figures in the round which form so important a part of Civi- tali’s work never attain the grandiose quality of Quercia’s personages, but they too are built on a large model, there is a like originality and vigor in their pose and their facial ex- pression, and a similar richness and even superabundance in their drapery. Quercia is represented by two masterpieces at Lucca, the tomb of Ilaria del Carretto and the reredos at S. Frediano, and these works may well have influenced Civi- tali, although the years of his pupilage in art were doubtless passed among the Florentines. The tomb of Pietro Noceto (1472) in the right transept of Lucca cathedral, Civitali’s first important work, closely follows the scheme of Bernardo Rossellino’s tomb of Leonardo Bruni at Santa Croce in Flor- ence (the two small figures on the cornice are probably a 122 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE later addition). It was Antonio Rossellino who was called from Florence to settle the price of the monument; and in the most widely known of Civitali’s works, the relief of Faith, now in the Museo Nazionale at Florence, and the two kneel- ing angels (1473-76) from an altar of the Sacrament (since destroyed) in the cathedral at Lucca, a spiritual elevation like that of Antonio’s art finds still more consummate expression. Apart from one large commission executed at Genoa in his later years, the statues and reliefs in the chapel of S. Giovanni in the cathedral, Civitali’s activity was confined almost ex- clusively to his native city. There he early found a patron, the apostolic secretary, Domenico Bertini, whose own tomb in the cathedral, executed in 1479 during his lifetime, is but one, and the most modest, among a number of works of sculpture with which at his command Civitali adorned the churches of Lucca. In the cathedral, beside this tomb and the altar of the Sacrament just mentioned, Civitali executed on Bertini’s order, between 1482 and 1484, the octagonal Tempietto for the much revered crucifix called the Volto Santo, with a statue of S. Sebastian, still standing between two pillars on the left side of the nave. The device of Bertini, the words “Ut vivam vera vita” (That I may live the true life), reappears upon the statue of the Virgin on an external angle of the church of S. Michele (1479), as well as upon the tomb of S. Romano (1490) in the church of that name, and proves these works due to the same liberal donor. Civitali had long been an important figure in his native city. About 1477 he and his brother had petitioned the city for facilities to print books from movable types, a volume of Petrarch’s Trionfi, subsequently issued by the latter, being one of the earliest fruits of the new invention in Italy. The elaborate MATTEO CIVITALI 123 altar of St. Regulus in the right transept of the cathedral, the sculptor’s most considerable work, is dated 1484. He had before (1478) executed a parapet (since displaced) for the choir, and later sculptured the present pulpit (1484) and holy water basins (1498). In 1490 he constructed for the Republic of Lucca a bridge (since destroyed) across the Serchio, a few miles above the town. In 1495 he was proposed as the sculp- tor of an equestrian statue of Charles VIII, projected as a memorial of the entry of the French into Italy. The statues and reliefs at Genoa occupied him for several years after 1491 or 1492; and while the reliefs, like those on the altar of St. Regulus, show Civitali at his weakest, the six statues, of Adam, Eve, Isaiah, Zechariah, Habakkuk, and the mother of the Baptist (a singular selection), prove him at his best one of the most powerfully impressive sculptors of his time. His five Madonnas, those of the Noceto tomb, the church of S. Michele and the altar of St. Regulus, the Madonna at S. Trinita, called “delle Tosse ” (1480), and that of the relief of the Annunciation in the museum at Lucca, do not rival those of his Florentine contemporaries ; but several represen- tations of Christ ascribed to him, one on the tomb of S. Ro- mano, two busts at the museums of Florence and Lucca, and two half-length figures in churches near Lucca, at Lammari (1481) and Segromigno (1482), are noteworthy in their union of two main aspects of his art, — its religious quality and its use of emphatic and expressive modelling. 479 . Relief of an Allegorical Figure of Faith ; in the Museo Nazionale at Florence. Of marble. It has been surmised that this relief, of whose pro- 24 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE venience nothing is known save that it was acquired by the Uffizzi Gallery in 1830 from the prior of a church at Paterno near Florence, may be one panel of the relief with three figures mentioned by Vasari as existing at the time in the church of S. Michele in Lucca, but which is no longer to be found there. Taking its design and its subject together, the evidence is strong that the work is in fact the first segment of a triple relief. For the bench on which the figure is seated is terminated on the left, but demands to be continued on the right, and the niche and figure are not in the centre of the stone, but to the right of it, as if forming a unity with others beyond ; while likewise the virtue personified is commonly named with others, and these two in number, Hope and Charity. The three theological virtues were also the subject of the triple relief forming the base of Donatello’s tomb of Pope John XXIII in the Baptistery at Florence (1427) which Civitali is thought to have had in mind in composing his altar of St. Regulus ; and it is not impossible that the lost relief of S. Michele may have been another reminis- cence of the same monument. The rough-hewn back- ground of the present panel even suggests how the work came to leave S. Michele; for if unfinished, it may have been only provisionally set up there. The relief, which is signed O M C L (Opus Mathei Civitali Lucensis), represents a girlish, almost childish, figure seated before a shallow niche upon a bench with griffin’s feet, and turn- ing, with hands and glance uplifted, toward a chalice, con- taining the elements of the Eucharist, which rests upon FIFTEENTH CENTURY 125 a cherub’s head carved over the edge of the niche, as if floating in the air before it. An infantile suggestion in the nai've, half-awkward fall of short folds of drapery from her undeveloped shoulders is borne out as well by the carelessly simple arrangement of her hair, falling mod- estly over the temples and twisted and pulled through in a loose knot behind, as by the sweet immaturity of her fea- tures. The light mantle is continued below in voluminous folds, which conceal the lower limbs and serve to centre the expressive interest of the figure in the head and arms uplifted in adoration. Through their truth to childhood, these tell as eloquently of unquestioning faith as the rapt gaze of Civitali’s kneeling angels tells of beatific vision. In the Style of the Fifteenth Century. 124. Relief of the Madonna and Child. This cast came into the possession of the Museum in 1876 and was then attributed to Mino da Fiesole. A stucco relief, with traces of old painting, closely similar to the present, is preserved in the Berlin Museum (No. 70. Bode and Tschudi, “ Beschreibung der Bildwerke der Christlichen Epoche ”). It was obtained in Florence in 1885, and is described as one of a number of replicas of an unknown original referred to Antonio Rossellino. The low relief and fineness of line suggest Donatello’s influ- ence, and are exemplified in his “ Christ mourned by Cherubs ” of which the cast is described above. The Madonna on the exterior of the Panciatichi Palace in 26 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE Florence, formerly attributed to Donatello but now to Desiderio da Settignano, exhibits the same manner ; and the medallion with the Madonna and Child on the Mar- suppini tomb in S. Croce, by this sculptor, has likewise features in common with the present cast. 58 . Relief of the Madonna and Child ; in the possession of the Czar of Russia. Of marble. This work is similar in general character to that just mentioned, and is also represented in the Berlin Museum by a painted relief in stucco (No. 69) which was obtained in Florence in 1828. The catalogue of the Museum de- scribes this as one of many replicas of a marble original in the Victoria and Albert Museum belonging to Ros- sellino’s earlier years, but it differs from that work, at- tributed at South Kensington to the school of Donatello without further specification, by considerable variations throughout the composition in the direction of gentler and more flowing modelling, and would appear to be a replica of the present relief. 465 . Bust of John the Baptist as a Boy ; in the Museo Nazionale at Florence. Of marble. The bust bears the inscription, “ego vox claman- tis in de$to ” (“I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness ”). In refinement of finish, in the somewhat rigid modelling, and in the cool dignity of its expression, FIFTEENTH CENTURY 2 7 this work also suggests the authorship or influence of Antonio Rossellino. Several representations of the same subject are ascribed to him, and the present, if not the equal of the figure at the Museo Nazionale, or the busts at the church of the Vanchettoni in Florence, and at the Pinacoteca at Faenza, sufficiently resembles these masterpieces to be the work of a pupil. 405. Bust of an Unknown Woman, veiled ; in the Museo Nazionale at Florence. Of bronze; date unknown. V. Rossi, “II Museo Nazio- nale di Firenze,” Arch. Storico dell’ Arte, VI, 1893, p. 15. The closed eyes and naturalistic irregularities of the features indicate that this bust may have been sculptured from a death-mask. According to Vasari it was common during the fifteenth century in Florence “to take casts from the heads of those who died ; so that one can see in every house in Florence, upon mantels, doors, win- dows and cornices, innumerable such portraits, so well done and natural that they seem alive.” As a portrait of Annalena Malatesta, the bust was formerly attrib- uted to the Sienese artist Lorenzo di Pietro, whose sobriquet of Vecchietta was given him, it is said, on account of the many portraits of elderly persons he executed ; and later it was identified with Donatello’s portrait of the Contessina de’ Bardi, wife of Cosimo the Elder. The quiet face, with its gleam of a smile and the soberly falling veil, close bands, and simple tunic with- out collar, have been interpreted by some critics as the features and dress of a nun. 128 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE 59. Bust of a Monk (called Savonarola) ; in the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, London. Of terra-cotta. This bust is thought to be of Florentine origin, and has been called a portrait of Savonarola, to whose au- thenticated likenesses it bears some resemblance. But the face gives token of a gentler spirit, and one of less intellectual range than could have dominated in Florence as Savonarola did. 412.4, 400. Two Busts of Women; at the Berlin Mu- seum (formerly called Marietta Strozzi) and at the Louvre. Of marble; ascribed to the latter part of the fifteenth century. L. Courajod, “ Observations sur deux bustes du Louvre,” Gazette des Beaux Arts, XXVIII, 1883, p. 24; W. Bode, “Florentiner Bildhauer,” 1902, p. 204 f. ; G. Ca- rotti, “ Opere di maestri Italiani nel Museo di Chambery,” Arch. Storico dell’ Arte, IV, 1891, p. 37 ; A. Michel, E. Muntz, and E. Molinier in “ Les Arts,” No. 4, pp. 37 ff. No external evidence exists bearing upon the author- ship of either of these works ; and the conclusions of different authorities, based upon their character, agree only in ascribing both to Italy and to the latter part of the fifteenth century. The same style of dress, of which the lines form a triangle upon the breast, the same close arrangement of the hair, the same pose, the same deli- cate lips and half-shut eyes with lids slightly aslant, are found in the bust at the Museo Nazionale in Florence, inscribed with the name of Battista Sforza ; and a bust FIFTEENTH CENTURY 129 in the Hofmuseum at Vienna, another at Palermo, others in the Andre and Dreyfus collections in Paris, the latter inscribed with the name of Beatrice of Arragon, and still another in the Bardini collection at Florence, pos- sess many of the same distinctive characters. In the Collection Garriod of the Museum at Chambery, in France, there is preserved a marble mask of a woman, showing also a portion of the neck, which bears a strik- ing resemblance to the bust of the Ambras collection. The Berlin Museum contains another similar mask, and still others exist in several provincial museums in France. The similarities between these masks and busts, the former perhaps intended for effigies in other material, have been thought by some authorities to prove them the product, if not of the same artistic personality, at least of one artistic influence ; and the source of this influence has been sought in the Dalmatian artist, Fran- cesco Laurana, the sculptor of a statue of the Madonna in the cathedral at Palermo (1469), and of another over the portal of S. Barbara at Naples (1474), as well as of other works. Another view not only doubts this attri- bution, but bases the likenesses between the works in question on an identity of method rather than of author- ship, interpreting them as copies from death-masks, which in their uniform pose, half-closed lids, and accen- tuated features preserve some trace of the rigidity of their models. A later opinion refers them to an un- known “ Master of busts and masks of women.” Of the present two busts, the former was until 1877 preserved 30 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE in the Strozzi Palace in Florence under the name of Marietta Strozzi, and was ascribed to Desiderio da Set- tignano. Already in 1 8 1 8 the latter formed part of the collection belonging to the French government at Ver- sailles, and in an inventory of that date is referred to the age of St. Louis (1215-70). Of the former Mr. Per- kins wrote, “ It would be difficult to point out a bust which more thoroughly combines those peculiar fea- tures of the best quattrocento work, high technical ex- cellence, refinement of taste, delicacy of treatment, and purity of design.” The latter has been spoken of as “ very far from, and perhaps better than, any type of regular beauty ; an image of grace, modesty, and viva- cious intelligence which is unquestionably the faithful reproduction of its original.” 400 . 3 . Recumbent Effigy of Guidarello Guidarelli ; in the Accademia delle Belle Arti at Ravenna. Of marble. The front of the draped couch is not repro- duced in the cast. Originally in the chapel of S. Liberio, in the church of S. Francesco at Ravenna, designated in Guidarello’s will, dated March 6, 1 501, as his place of burial. Corrado Ricci, “ La Statua di Guidarello,” Ravenna, 1897. The face of this dead warrior is the vivid image both of a character and a fate. The members, honorably arrayed and decently disposed for their long sleep, are those of any man-at-arms ; but the features are those of a gallant knight, beautiful in body as well as lofty in spirit, overtaken, in the flower of his years, by violent death. In a time and a land where the enemy might FIFTEENTH CENTURY ‘ 131 speedily have avenged too open a lament over the pathos of his deed, these fallen cheeks and bloodless lips and darkening eyes could tender their mute witness without challenge. The sculptor, in centring the artistic inter- est of his work in the noble and dolorous visage, seems to have aimed to reveal, as far as his chisel could, the personality of the subject and the manner of his end ; and the inquiry into these becomes therefore of unusual interest. Of a family originally Florentine, but promi- nent for a century in Ravenna, Guidarello wore the col- lana of nobility, seen about the neck of the effigy, by special favor of Emperor Frederick III, and is described by the chroniclers of the time as distinguished alike in letters and in war. He had an important share in the enterprise of Caesar Borgia against Faenza, and in March of 1501 found himself at Imola, where, in the intervals of military councils, Caesar and his condottieri amused themselves with balls and parties of pleasure. Whether through a rivalry of love or of ambition, or through whatever other cause of enmity, he was there mortally wounded, “ in secret ” and “ by the hand of a savage Roman,” as a poet of Ravenna dared to write the fol- lowing year ; and there a few days later he died. By his will he left the servant who had been wounded with him money for his transportation to Florence and cure there. His wife, Benedetta Dal Sale, was directed to bury him with his ancestors in the chapel of S. Liberio at Ravenna, and to spend six hundred ducats, or more at her discre- tion, in the ornamentation of the tomb and the chapel. 132 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE At that time the chief sculptors of Venice, then sover- eign over Ravenna, were Pietro Solari, called Lombardo (d. 1515), and his sons Antonio (d. 1516) and Tullio (d. 1532) ; and Pietro had already (1480) executed in Ravenna at the same church of S. Francesco the tomb of Dante (since remodelled). The commission in Bene- detta’s gift would thus naturally have fallen to the younger Lombardi, and by two chroniclers of Ravenna the tomb of Guidarello is so assigned, by one of them expressly to Tullio. In several figures on the tomb of the Doge Vendramin at Venice, ascribed to the two brothers, the heads have called forth especial praise ; and that of Guidarello possesses a dignity particularly characteristic of Tullio. Another of Pietro’s pupils, one Severo di Ravenna, has of late been mentioned as the possible author of the effigy ; but the style of his only signed work has been likened both to that of Pietro and that of Tullio, and would not warrant a positive claim in his favor. Compared with the Tuscan author of the figure of Ilaria del Carretto, the northern artist, whoever he may have been, that executed the effigy of Guidarello seems less the sculptor and more the carver of monu- ments, since much of his work lacks imaginative inter- est. Yet in the face of Guidarello the sorrow of his untoward end reflects itself as truthfully as does the happy fortune of a death before the flying foe in another North Italian work, the effigy of Gaston de Foix at Milan, “though dead, all joyful in countenance,” as Vasari writes, “ over the victory won.” FIFTEENTH CENTURY 133 124 .M. Bust of a Young Woman; in the Galerie Wicar of the Palais des Beaux Arts at Lille, France. Of wax, painted ; the drapery and pedestal of painted terra- cotta. L. Gonse, “ Le Musee Wicar,” Gazette des Beaux Arts, 1878, XVII, p. 197 ; H. Grimm, “ Der Liller Mad- chenkopf,” Jahrbuch der K. p. Kunstsammlungen, IV, 1883, p. 104. This bust, together with a large collection of drawings by Italian masters and several other objects of art, was bequeathed to his native town of Lille by the painter J. B. Wicar, who had spent almost all his life in Italy, and who died in Rome in 1834. The scale is three quarters that of life, and the subject a young girl of about sixteen, with drapery about her shoulders, and wearing her hair, which is not modelled in detail, in a simple roll around the back of the head. Drapery and pedestal differ from the head itself not only in material but in style, and were to all appearance added in the eighteenth century, possibly in preparing the bust for sale. Upon its arrival at Lille several fissures in the neck and breast threatened the destruction of the work, and in repairing these it was discovered that the bust was hollow, consisting of a sheet of wax about a third of an inch in thickness, which had apparently been run in a mould and finished with a hot iron. The coloring is not in the wax, but has been applied with a brush, the flesh being a uniform dull amber, the hair a reddish gold, the lips carmine, the pupils of the eyes, which are slightly in relief, a sombre sapphire. The head is a little turned and bent, and the faint contraction of the eyelids 134 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE and tension of the lips, perhaps also the forehead mod- elling, with its hint of a clouded brow, give the full face an air of veiled sadness. But all critics agree that this vanishes in the profile, whose untroubled charm speaks of an underlying happiness of nature to which its sor- rows are still strangers. So refined a complexity in a work so unassuming both in kind, in subject, and in manner, has from the first lent great interest to the question of its origin, in regard to which no external evidence whatever exists, save the line in Wicar’s inven- tory describing it as a “ Wax bust of the time of Ra- phael.” The single certainty is the haunting beauty of the work ; and it is from this fire that all the smoke of discussion over it has arisen. It was early attributed to Raphael himself, less on account of the soft flow of line which it exhibits in common with the two sculptures ascribed to Raphael’s initiative (the Elijah in S. Maria del Popolo at Rome and the Infant and Dolphin in the Hermitage Gallery) than for want of another more likely suggestion than that of the inventory. The discovery, in 1852, in an ancient Roman tomb at Cumae, of the two heads in wax now preserved in the Naples Museum, led later to the hypothesis of its antique origin, long maintained in the catalogue of the Musee Wicar (1856), and which is corroborated by the arrangement of the hair and the broad flat shape of the cheeks (as in the Venus of Melos). In 1859 it was again claimed for mod- ern art as the work of the Florentine Orsino Benintendi, who, as Vasari relates, attained, under Verrocchio’s guid- FIFTEENTH CENTURY 135 ance, great distinction in the art of sculpture in wax with the aid of casts from the real. By a later and much debated theory it is neither wholly ancient nor wholly modern, being a portrait bust of the young girl, the dis- covery of whose corpse, wonderfully preserved within heavy layers of aromatic substances, in an ancient tomb on the Via Appia in 1485, so deeply impressed all classes in Rome that, in the few days before Pope Innocent VIII was forced to order the body removed and secretly reinterred, twenty thousand people flocked to see the marvel. A contemporary letter remarks upon the care of the ancients, not only to immortalize a noble spirit, but also a body endowed by nature with extraordinary beauty ; and if a quasi-antique, the survival of the Lille head alone among similar products of fifteenth-century art may be due not to chance but to a modern reverence for the portrait that vied with the ancients in their piety toward the original. But the opinion of subsequent critics has not been favorable to this ingenious supposi- tion ; and a modification of that last before mentioned has been proposed, which refers the bust to the influence of Verrocchio’s distinguished pupil, Leonardo da Vinci. The Lille head, with its ambiguity of mood, has been called the counterpart in sculpture of Leonardo’s por- trait of Mona Lisa at the Louvre, named “ La Gioconda,” from the smiling mouth that belies her serious and pene- trating glance. This last view acknowledges the head to be modelled from the real ; but finds in the very elusive- ness of its emotional expression the clue to the author- ship of the work. 36 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE Michel Angelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni : born March 6, 1475, at Caprese, in the upper valley of the Tiber, not far from Arezzo ; died in Rome, February 17, 1564. The art of Michel Angelo everywhere preserves one fundamental character. The suggestion of sublimity is never wholly absent from any work of his, and has become a fixed association of his name. As Goethe wrote, he saw the world with larger eyes than we. Nor was the scale of his personality or of his fortunes that of common humankind. The energy, both physical and mental, put forth throughout his ninety years was that of a giant ; what he accomplished, although at the limit of human achievement in all three arts of external form, was but the fragmentary execution of still grander plans ; and it was in the service, not of nobles or of kings, but of the ecclesiastical monarchs of Christendom, that all his ma- turity was spent. Of his greater undertakings, the tomb of Pope Julius II (1505-45) and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (1508-12) were begun, and the latter finished, under that pontiff ; the fruitless labor on the faQade of S. Lorenzo in Florence (1516-20) and the designs for the adjacent Lau- rentian Library were commanded by his successor Leo X ; the sacristy of the same church, with the tombs of the Medici princes (1523-34), was the commission of Clement VII ; and the Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel ( I 535 - 4 I ) an d the dome of St. Peter’s (1547), those of Paul III and his successors during Michel Angelo’s remaining years. An array of masterpieces for less august patrons antedated and won for Michel Angelo the notice of the popes. When in 1490 Lorenzo de’ Medici, regretting that the previous brilliant generation of sculptors had left no heirs in Florence, opened a school of the art in his garden on the Piazza S. Marco, he MICHEL ANGELO 137 little thought that the net so spread would snare forthwith an eaglet of higher flight than any foregoer. Until Lorenzo’s death in 1492 Michel Angelo was an inmate of his house, and the companion of his son Giovanni, later Leo X, and of his nephew Giulio, later Clement VII. A mask of a Faun that is said to have gained the boy this favor is preserved in the Museo Nazionale in Florence ; and the Casa Buonarroti, until its gift to the city in 1858 the family home since Michel Angelo’s time, contains two panels from these earlier years, — a Madonna in the low relief familiar in the works of Dona- tello and his followers, and a Battle of the Centaurs, in high relief, for which the idea was given by Politian, and which shows, as Michel Angelo himself later said, what wrong he did his nature in not devoting himself unremittingly to sculp- ture. The Hercules of heroic size which was his first work after the shock of Lorenzo’s death in 1492 was presented, many years later, to Francis the First of France, and stood in the palace gardens at Fontainebleau until 1713, when they were remodelled and it was lost. Upon the expulsion of his patrons from Florence in 1494, Michel Angelo fled to Bologna, where, at the instance of Gianfrancesco Aldovrandi, he added three statuettes — a kneeling angel and figures of SS. Pe- tronius and Proculus — to the tomb of S. Domenico, just left unfinished by Niccolo dell’ Area. A statue of John the Baptist as a youth, in the Berlin Museum, is now thought to be that later commissioned in Florence by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici ; but of a sleeping Cupid, of the same date, all trace is now lost. At Rome, in 1497, he executed for the banker Jacopo Galli a Cupid, which by some critics is identi- fied with the statue in the Museum at South Kensington ; and the figure of Bacchus, now in the Museo Nazionale at 38 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE Florence; and in 1498, for the French ambassador, Jean de Groslaye de Villiers, the Pieta called Madonna della Febbre, now in St. Peter’s. Three years later he received from the cathedral authorities in Florence an order for the colossal statue of David now standing in the Accademia delle Belle Arti. It was completed in 1504, in his thirtieth year, and gave him the name of the greatest sculptor the world had ever seen. While engaged upon it he executed, on the commission of Pietro Soderini, then the chief of the Florentine state, a life-size David with the head of Goliath, in bronze, which was afterwards sent as a present to Florimond Robertet, secretary of finance to Louis XII of France, but of which nothing is now known. The marble figure of the Dying Adonis, also of life size, now in the Museo Nazionale, is thought to date from this time. The circular painting representing the Holy Family, preserved in the Tribune of the Uffizzi Gallery, was executed for Angelo Doni in 1503 ; and before 1505, perhaps at Carrara, the marble group of the Madonna and Child, — since that date in the chapel of the Sacrament in Notre Dame at Bruges, — for the Flemish merchants, Jean and Alexandre Mouscron. These earlier works, and the great frescoes in the Sistine chapel, were all that Michel Angelo ever finished. Already he had undertaken several commissions destined to unfulfil- ment. Of the fifteen statuettes ordered in 1501 for the Picco- lomini chapel in Siena cathedral by Cardinal Piccolomini, later Pius III, but four were ever executed, apparently in part only by his hand ; of the twelve statues of Apostles for pilasters of Florence cathedral, ordered in 1503, but one, a St. Matthew, now in the Accademia at Florence, was ever even begun ; neither a commission that could have much attracted MICHEL ANGELO 139 him. Unfinished also are the two round reliefs of the Ma- donna executed for gentlemen of Florence, and now preserved in the Museo Nazionale in Florence and the Royal Academy in London. Upon the completion of the David, in the autumn of 1504, Michel Angelo was called to prepare a cartoon for one of the two principal walls of the council chamber in the Palazzo Vecchio, constructed on the suggestion of Savonarola for pop- ular assemblies, Leonardo da Vinci receiving the commission for the other. Both cartoons, that of Leonardo depicting the battle of Anghiari, and that of Michel Angelo representing Florentine soldiers surprised by English cavalry while bathing, excited intense admiration, but both have been lost, and both artists soon after abandoned their tasks, Michel Angelo to fol- low the call of Julius II to Rome. The grandeur of plan of the papal commissions which from this time forward occupied him, and the jealousies and rivalries they excited, suffice to explain their untoward fate. The colossal bronze statue of Julius II over the door of S. Petronio at Bologna, which occu- pied Michel Angelo during 1507 and 1508, was pulled down by the enemies of the pope three years later, and sent to Ferrara to be melted into cannon by the same Duke Alfonso for whom Michel Angelo twenty years afterward painted his picture, since lost, of Leda and the Swan. The sepulchre of Julius as finally carried out in S. Pietro in Vincoli at Rome was but a fragment of the original undertaking, from which the Medici popes, his successors, called Michel Angelo away, i first to spend four years in designing a fa9ade for S. Lorenzo in Florence, and in quarrying and transporting the necessary marble, and later, before a stone had been placed, to begin their magnificent mortuary chapel next the same church, in 140 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE turn abandoned, its sculptures less than half completed, upon the death, in 1534, of Clement VII. To Clement’s ambassador Valori, Michel Angelo had presented in 1529 an Apollo which is identified with the unfinished statue bearing that name in the Museo Nazionale. The unfinished group of Victory, also in the Museo Nazionale, is thought to have formed part of the original design for the tomb of Julius II. Only the dome of S. Peter’s and the frescoes of the Sistine chapel were ulti- mately completed, the former in general accordance with his model of wood still preserved in the Vatican, the latter by his own hand, unaided even in the grinding of his colors. But the absence of the statues upon consoles, which in the model for S. Peter’s form a circle above the drum, makes itself felt in the present outline of the dome, and the change in the ground plan of the church, in the next century, from a Greek to a Latin cross, has in great part nullified the effect, both external and internal, which its crowning feature was intended to produce ; while the process of adding drapery to the naked figures in the Last Judgment, continued for years by other hands, both before and after Michel Angelo’s death, and the gradual darkening of its surface by altar smoke, have left it almost a ruin. The ceiling of the chapel remains nearly as he completed it ; but even upon this it is said that the impatience of Julius denied him time for the last finishing touches, and thirty years later the two lunette pictures which occupied the altar wall were painted out by Michel Angelo himself to make room for the corresponding parts of the Last Judgment. Among undertakings that never advanced beyond the stage of designs, or perhaps even of fancies, may be mentioned a colossus which he conceived of carving out of the mountains overlooking the sea at Carrara, to be a landmark for sailors ; MICHEL ANGELO 141 a tomb to receive the remains of Dante, which, in joining in the petition for their return from Ravenna in 1519, Michel Angelo declared himself ready to erect in Florence ; a colos- sal group of Samson triumphing over the Philistines, commis- sioned in 1528 by the Signoryof Florence as a pendant to the David ; a fresco of the Fall of Lucifer planned for the entrance wall of the Sistine chapel as a counterpart to the Last Judg- ment ; a church of unparalleled magnificence to be erected in Rome by the citizens of Florence, in honor of S. Giovanni, of which both Michel Angelo’s plan and the model made from it have perished ; a chapel in Santa Croce, to contain his tomb and to be ornamented with pictures and statues, for which he received the permission of the clergy of the church, but was denied that of its secular guardians. Such was the partial way in which alone the world of Michel Angelo’s time, and he himself, could make use of his transcend- ent powers. Only the fear of the displeasure of Paul III pre- vented him in 1534 from retreating to Urbino, whither he had sent to buy house and lands, there to complete the sepulchre of Julius II undisturbed and under the protection of the Duke ; and late in life, after a visit to the mountain monasteries of Spo- leto, he wrote that less than half of himself came back to Rome, for “ truly in the forest only one finds peace.” Of his own pro- ductions he said that he would have completed few or none, had he aimed to content himself. Whatever the labor spent upon a task, for any imperfection of material, or accident of his impetuous workmanship, he would recommence or abandon it. The appearance of a dark vein in a marble figure of Christ, ordered in 1514 by Roman gentlemen for the church of S. Maria sopra Minerva, caused him to reject it and begin the present statue, upon whose faulty completion by other hands 142 . ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE he would have furnished a third had his patrons consented to surrender the masterpiece. The universality of his genius, moreover, involved him in many labors which either gave his spirit no adequate outlet, like the fortification of the hill of San Miniato at Florence against the Spanish in 1527 and the later fortification of the Vatican ; or, as in his poetry, disputed his powers with their more natural channels. Other memorials of his devotion to Florentine liberty are the unfinished bust of Brutus now in the Museo Nazionale, begun, it is thought, in 1 539> honor of the slayer of the tyrant Duke Alessandro de’ Medici; and his message to the King of France in 1545, offering to erect for him without cost in the Piazza della Sig- noria an equestrian statue of bronze, if he would but give Florence back her freedom. His sonnets are the reflection of his friendships, with Vittoria Colonna, Marchioness of Pescara, with the young Tommaso Cavallieri and others, and of the lofty philosophic and religious attitude of his maturer years. In 1549, at the end of seven years’ slow labor over the two frescoes in the Pauline chapel of the Vatican, the “ Conver- sion of St. Paul ” and the “ Martyrdom of St. Peter,” he con- fessed that “ painting was no art for old men.” The marble Pietk which he intended should adorn his grave had been abandoned because miswrought, and is preserved unfinished in the Palazzo Rondanini at Rome. A larger group repre- senting the same subject, undertaken afterward (1550), was broken to fragments in a fury of disappointment over the recalcitrance of the marble. Restored by the young sculptor Calcagni after its abandonment by Michel Angelo, it now stands behind the high altar of Florence cathedral. There remained architecture, and of great achievements in this art his last years were full. The Campidoglio was remodelled MICHEL ANGELO ■ 143 after his designs, part of the baths of Diocletian transformed into the present imposing church of S. Maria degli Angeli, and the Farnese Palace completed. At his death he was still burdened with the whole responsibility for St. Peter’s, a labor of profound love for which he refused all pay, and which he did not live to see completed. Unprecedented funeral honors, months in preparation, were paid him in Florence, and he was buried in S. Croce, where his faithful friend and passionate admirer, Vasari, designed the present tomb. 43. Relief of the Madonna and Child with St. John ; in the Royal Academy, Burlington House, London. Of marble; executed between 1501 and 1505. Vasari, who mentions both this relief and the similar panel now in the Museo Nazionale at Florence, assigns no reason why either was left partly in the rough ; and in these as in other works of Michel Angelo, some critics have assumed an ideality of purpose best attained through their incompleteness. In the sculpture of the present day, the works of Rodin, with the rough-hewn masses in which their finished portions are imbedded, are still more unequivocal illustrations of the artistic impulse here im- puted to Michel Angelo. These two panels, and espe- cially the present one, seem rather to illustrate Michel Angelo’s own definition of sculpture as the art that “ works by removing,” in distinction from painting, the art that works by adding. His conception seems to be everywhere dawning upon us out of the stone, further advanced in the Madonna’s head and the child’s body 144 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE than in the figure of the Baptist, but nowhere as yet per- fectly visible. Over the whole surface of the work the marks of the toothed chisel still appear, and as in the Florentine relief, run in all directions, bearing witness to Michel Angelo’s facility with both hands in sculpture. In the Florentine panel, the book lying forgotten in the lap of the mother, and into which the child plunges his elbow as he stands with crossed feet against her knee, has been interpreted as a volume of Scripture, open at a prophecy of Christ’s life, and their attitude as one of boding revery over the fate therein foretold. But the intended motive may have been only a childlike inconstancy, for the Lon- don relief presents purely a scene of play, the child grasp- ing his mother’s arm with both hands, and bending in a long stride over her knee, as if to escape something, apparently to be wrought into the shape of a bird, held toward him by the little St. John. The faint outlines of the Madonna’s right hand indicate that it was to be placed on St. John’s shoulder, to bar his further approach ; but this part of the panel is still almost wholly imprisoned in the stone. The atmosphere of restlessness in both re- liefs is a marked innovation in representations of this sub- ject, always one of composure if not repose in the work of earlier sculptors, and which in less powerful hands might have surrendered its dignity with its calm. Com- pared with panels by Donatello or Rossellino (such as those reproduced in Nos. 1 3 1 and 478 of the present collec- tion), they show also a marked difference of method in relief sculpture. In these earlier works all the parts, even MICHEL ANGELO 1 45 those in highest relief, are very greatly flattened, while many of Michel Angelo’s rich and vigorous forms have the undistorted proportions of the round. In the Floren- tine panel the Madonna’s head is of the massive type of the Aurora of the Medici tombs, or the Leah of the Julius monument, while in the London work it has the gentler character of the Bruges Madonna or the Madonna della Febbre. The present relief was made, according to Vasari, for Taddeo Taddei of Florence. In the early part of this century it was in the possession of the painter Wicar, the then owner of the Raphaelesque head in wax reproduced in No 124.M of the present collection, and was obtained from him for the Royal Academy by Sir George Beau- mont, the generous lover of art and friend of the poet Wordsworth. 897. Head from the Colossal Statue of David ; in the Accademia delle Belle Arti at Florence. Of marble ; executed, between September, 1501, and Jan- uary, 1504. By a decree of the Board of Works of Florence ca- thedral, dated August 16, 1501, Michel Angelo received a commission to “make, complete, and perfectly finish the so-called giant of marble nine ells high, existing in the cathedral works, blocked out, and badly blocked out heretofore by Master Augustine.” The surname of Master Augustine is illegible in the archives, but a pre- vious decree of the board, dated August 18, 1464, assigns to Agostino di Duccio, the sculptor of the delicate and 146 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE elaborate facade of S. Bernardino at Perugia, the com- mission for a “gughante” nine ells high, representing a prophet, to be blocked out in the quarry at Carrara, and set up on one of the buttresses of Florence cathe- dral. It was undoubtedly this “gughante,” two years afterward withdrawn unfinished from Agostino’s hands, that lay in the cathedral works, mishewn, and with a hole bored completely through it, as Vasari writes, the despair not only of its own sculptor but all others, until in 1501 Andrea Sansavino asked leave to make a statue from it by adding other pieces. Before granting his re- quest the Board of Works sent for Michel Angelo, then fresh from his Roman successes, the Bacchus and the Madonna della Febbre, and upon his offer to carve a figure out of the immense piece as it stood, the order was given him and the work begun. The special diffi- culty of his task, the choice of a design possible within the limits already sketched in the marble, was so tri- umphantly met by Michel Angelo that if in a few places, as along the backbone, the necessary relief was wanting, portions of the original surface of the stone were still to be seen at the completion of the work, upon the crown of the head and at the base. When finished the statue was slung in an ingenious cradle of rope and four days later reached the Piazza della Signoria, where it was set up, in accordance with Michel Angelo’s preference, on one side the entrance to the Palazzo Vecchio, after a discussion in which Leonardo and others advocated other positions. The first night out of the workshop on MICHEL ANGELO 147 the way to the Piazza it was stoned by young mischief- makers, and in 1527 the left arm was broken by a missile thrown in a popular tumult ; but it was not until 1846 that marks of injury from the weather led to an agita- tion for its removal, which resulted in the building of the pavilion, attached to the Accademia delle Belle Arti, where the statue has stood since 1873. David is represented as a powerful stripling, wholly nude, with the overgrown extremities and articulations of a boy in his early teens, though with a muscular development suggesting much maturer years. He stands erect and glances towards the left, the sling he has pre- pared for Goliath thrown over his back, its pouch with the stone grasped in his uplifted left hand, and the end of the thongs in his right, which hangs loosely at his thigh, though already nerving itself for its effort. The knitted brows, the riveted gaze, the distended nostrils, the weight thrown on the right foot, leaving the left free for a stride forward, unite to express the moments of suspense when “the Philistine came on and drew nigh unto David,” as he stood waiting his opportunity and measuring the distance of his formidable foe. For the moment all is ease and balance in the massive figure ; only the gathering storm in the face foretells the light- ning speed and force of the blow impending. The head is thought to bear some resemblance to that of Dona- tello’s St. George, of which the motive and bearing are much the same. To another renowned work, the immense antique groups in marble called the Horse Tamers, on 1 48 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE Monte Cavallo in Rome, Michel Angelo may have owed both the inspiration for his boyish colossus and the sug- gestion for a freedom of pose and verity and beauty of modelling, in which, according to his contemporaries, he even outdid antiquity. 885. Group of the Madonna and Child; in a niche of black marble over the altar of the chapel of the Sacra- ment in the church of Notre Dame at Bruges. Of marble; executed between 1501 and 1505. The conception of this work more nearly approaches the ideal of lofty serenity which before Michel Angelo’s time was invariably associated with its subject than any other of his Madonnas. The place and purpose for which it was designed and which it has since filled are clearly signified in the quiet clasp of the hands, in the symmet- rical and even drooping lines of the Madonna’s figure, and in the downward glance of both the brooding faces. Yet even in an object of devotion for an altar, Michel Angelo has not failed to suggest a momentary pose, in the action of the Madonna to retain her book upon her lap, in the right foot raised upon a jutting rock, and especially in the figure of the child, whose feet upon his mother’s mantle slip from the verge of the stone as he supports himself by his arm thrown over her knee. The Madonna’s drapery, here as in the Pieta the setting of a nude figure, is simpler and less voluminous than in that group, in harmony with the infantile form it sur- rounds and binds into one with that of the mother, and, MICHEL ANGELO 149 as in Michel Angelo’s other Madonnas, is completed by a cloth over the head like a hood. The child’s head is of exaggerated size, as in the reliefs just mentioned. Critics have noted a certain softness of finish in this work which seems to betray another hand than Michel Angelo’s, but the evidence, as well external as internal, is irresistible that the design at least is his in all its particulars. The bodily type of both figures, the noble melancholy of the Madonna’s face, the style of her dress and drapery, are indubitably the product of Michel Angelo’s imagination. In 1521 Albrecht Diirer notes in his journal of a trip to the Netherlands that he saw in Bruges “ in Our Lady, the alabaster image of Mary that Michel Angelo of Rome made.” It is true that Condivi, the pupil and biographer of Michel Angelo, describes the Madonna ex- ecuted for the Mouscron family of Flanders as a bronze ; but he wrote thirty years after Durer’s journey, and the niche Pierre Mouscron built for the “ alabaster image,” and his grave at its feet, witness to a veneration that would not have been felt for a copy. 404.1. Statue of Moses; from the tomb of Pope Julius II in the church of S. Pietro in Vincoli at Rome. Of marble. In Michel Angelo’s studio for forty years. C. Justi, “Michel Angelo,” 1900, pp. 203-348. “Die Tra- • goedie des Grabmals.” “ The tragedy of the sepulchre ” of Julius II., as Con- divi calls the ill-starred commission which was the first given Michel Angelo by any papal patron, accomplished 150 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE itself in five long acts, covering nearly half the artist’s life. The tomb was ordered in 1505, and not completed until after 1 542. In one of his letters Michel Angelo himself laments his lost years “ bound to this sepulchre ” as one of the captives he carved for its base might be conceived to do. At first designed as a great rectangu- lar mass to stand isolated in the tribune of the old church of St. Peter’s, and to be ornamented on all sides with more than forty statues of heroic size, beside reliefs, it was robbed of its main distinction at the death of Julius in 1513 by the decision to give it the tradi- tional position of a mural tomb. Three years later, in 1516, the ground area of the design was diminished by one half, and the number of statues reduced to nine- teen. Sixteen years later, in 1532, the place in St. Peter’s was relinquished for the much humbler destination of S. Pietro in Vincoli, the dimensions of the tomb being still further reduced, and the number of statues to be fur- nished by Michel Angelo being cut down to six. Ten years later, in 1542, upon Michel Angelo’s petition, the completion of all of these except the Moses was given over to Raphael da Montelupo, the contract freeing Michel Angelo from all further responsibility for the tomb, that a “ perpetual silence may be imposed upon this business of the sepulchre, as far as Michel Angelo is concerned.” Two other statues, those of the Contem- plative and the Active Life, which at this late moment, by a remarkable display of creative resource, Michel Angelo produced to replace the figures of two captives, MICHEL ANGELO r 5 x the “ Slaves ” of the Louvre, withdrawn because dispro- portionate to the new design, were in the end finished by his own hand. A few years later the tomb was at last erected as it stands. After all, Julius II is not buried beneath it, but in St. Peters. Meanwhile it was first the pope himself who grew indifferent to the undertaking, then his successors who drew Michel Angelo away from it, involving him in a lawsuit with the disappointed heirs of Julius ; and later even his associates in the work who thwarted him by their “ ignorant and brutal ” quarrels ; until at length Michel Angelo, wishing only to be free, allowed what would to befall his conception, even to the patching and remodelling that make of the existing design the travesty of its expected glory. The present position of the statue of Moses differs from that for which it was planned in that it fills a recess on a level with the eye, instead of standing free upon a cornice some twelve feet from the ground ; and in that it is central in the tomb instead of being one of several figures similarly placed. The perpendicular lines of the right-hand side of the statue have further been thought to indicate that this side, and not the back, as at pre- sent, was originally intended to be placed against the wall of the tomb. What the monument would have been from which a group of such statues should look down it is difficult to fancy ; and they were neither the sole nor the main adornment of the great pyramid of sculpture that Michel Angelo dreamed would one day stand alone 152 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE in the silence of the apse of St. Peter’s. The visitors from every nation who daily bend their steps toward S. Pietro in Vincoli amply confirm the saying of that Cardinal of Mantua who declared in Michel Angelo’s studio : “This single statue does honor enough to Pope Julius’s tomb.” Condivi writes of the figure : “ Among the three statues from the hand of the master, truly marvellous is that of Moses, leader and captain of the Hebrews. With the air of a thinker and a sage, he sits holding under his right arm the tables of the law ; and rests his chin upon his left hand as if worried and careworn, long locks of his beard issuing through his fingers in a way beautiful to see. His face, full of vivacity and character, is adapted to awaken both affection and terror, as was perhaps the case in reality. In accordance with cus- tomary descriptions, he has two horns upon his head, toward the top of his brow. His mantle, the coverings of his feet, his bare arms, and all the other particulars of his dress, are taken from the antique. A work of won- derful skill, especially in so revealing the nude beneath beautiful drapery as to make the total perfection of the body visible.” The two horns issuing from the forehead in all older representations of Moses are the result of a mistranslation, in the Septuagint, of the passage describ- ing the dazzling brightness of his face on descending from Sinai (Ex. xxxiv, 29), the Hebrew word for rays mean- ing also horns as we speak of a “pencil ” of light. The head is sometimes criticised for alack of cranial capacity ; MICHEL ANGELO 53 and in defence of the opinion that the statue is not now seen at the designed angle, it is noted that neither this defect, nor that of a certain clumsiness in the drapery of the right knee, is noticeable from the side. Condivi makes no mention of any purpose on Michel Angelo’s part to image a special event in the career of Moses, and in an account written during the life of the artist, this silence is in itself evidence that a characterization of his subject was what he sought. Yet the statue as we see it at once suggests the moment on Mt. Sinai when the idolatrous acclamation of the golden calf first fell on Moses’ ear. The piercing, sidewise glance seems at- tracted by some unwelcome sound ; the left leg is drawn back as if in the next moment the mighty figure would spring from its seat ; even the arms have a startled swing. Nevertheless, according to the Bible story, Moses was not then seated, but on his way ; nor was the sin of his people unknown to him, for the Deity had foretold it upon the mount, and not he but Joshua mistook the uproar of the festival for the din of conflict. The various indications of the statue in extant sketches of the de- sign, which are regarded as proceeding at least from Michel Angelo’s time, likewise present less a historical personage than a symbolical figure ; and from the side of the statue, when the averted glance becomes a gaze toward the spectator, its dramatic significance gives place to an overwhelming expression of bodily and mental vigor. In spite of all criticisms and divergencies of inter- pretation, it is agreed that no human presence more 54 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE sublime than Michel Angelo’s Moses is known to sculp- ture. 295. Head from One of the Two Statues of Captives designed for the Tomb of Pope Julius II ; in the Louvre. Of marble ; probably begun soon after the tomb was first planned in 1505. O. Ollendorf, “Michel Angelo’s Ge- fangene im Louvre,” Zeitschrift fiir Bildende Kunst, IX, 1897-98, p. 273. In a letter to Pope Paul III, dated July 20, 1542, Michel Angelo writes in regard to two partly wrought figures of captives, forming part of what he had thus far accomplished on the monument to Pope Julius, that having originally entered into a much more ambitious design, they were in no way suited to the plan as since reduced ; and he proposes to substitute for them two figures, of the Active and the Contemplative Life (Leah and Rachel), an offer in the event accepted. Two years later, after an illness during which he had been cared for in the Strozzi Palace at Rome, Michel Angelo, out of gratitude, gave the two statues of captives to Roberto degli Strozzi. He in turn presented them to King Fran- cis the First of France, who gave them to the Consta- ble Anne de Montmorency, the portal of whose magni- ficent chateau at Ecouen they adorned until removed by Richelieu to a castle in Poitou, whence the last Mare- chal de Richelieu brought them to Paris, his widow plac- ing them in her hotel in the Faubourg du Roule, and leav- ing them there in a stable on changing her residence. MICHEL ANGELO 1 55 In this neglect they were found by Alexandre Lenoir, who purchased them in 1793 for the French nation. According to Condivi, the figures of captives grouped in pairs on either side of niches about the base of the Julius monument symbolized the Arts reduced to impo- tence by the death of their greatest patron. Vasari speaks of them as the representatives of subjugated provinces; and as Julius had hardly entered upon his career of conquest in 1505, they are by this interpreta- tion prophecies of a coming glory; but there is no foun- dation for either of these allegorical readings in the figures themselves. Four rough-hewn statues in a grotto in the Boboli Gardens in Florence are, it is thought, other figures of captives for the monument to Pope Julius, but their different dimensions connect them with another plan than that for which those of the Louvre were designed. Neither from these grotto figures, which may have been the “ certain marbles ” that occupied Michel Angelo, according to Condivi, after the abandon- ment of the facade of S. Lorenzo, nor from contempo- rary sketches, can it now be definitely determined what other aspects of an unavailing struggle against an over- powering fate had presented themselves to Michel Angelo’s imagination. The two statues in the Louvre image two extremes of conduct under captivity, — the highest pitch of resistance and its absolute cessation. That from which the present head was taken — the head of the other statue is still unfinished — portrays a youth of magnificent beauty of form and melancholy loveliness 156 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE of feature standing, slightly reclined, against a support to which he is attached by a light band of drapery about the breast. His eyes are closed ; one hand is under his drooping head, the other at his breast ; his limbs give way as if overborne by the massive body. The surren- der of so powerful a frame to a restraining force seem- ingly so frail argues weariness of life rather than spent energy. The lines of Tennyson, — “ . . . I am sick of Time, And I desire to rest,” or those of Shakespeare, — “ . . . My long sickness Of health and living now begins to mend, And nothing brings me all things,” fail, in that they are still speech, of the impressiveness of this marble. No work of Michel Angelo has met with higher praise, and none has been more variously interpreted. It has been called an emotional masterpiece, his happiest turn of expression, the most beautiful of his works, and de- scribed as sleep, or exhaustion after vain efforts for freedom, or a moment of respite from suffering ; and again as a representation of the genius of eternal rest, or an embodiment of the instant of transition from life to immortality. Doubtless the enigma existed even in Michel Angelo’s thoughts, and directly resulted from his choosing to intrust the expression of an entire abandon- ment of effort to a figure but lightly confined and still standing erect. MICHEL ANGELO 57 614, 613. Tombs of the Medici ; in the new sacristy of the church of S. Lorenzo in Florence. Tomb of Giuliano de’ Medici (d. 1516 ), Duke of Nemours : with figures of Night and Day. Tomb of Lorenzo de’ Medici (d. 1519 ), Duke of Urbino ; with figures of Evening and Dawn. Of marble ; begun in 1521 and left unfinished in 1534. The commission for the new sacristy at S. Lorenzo in Florence, given to Michel Angelo by Leo X in 1519, was one that might well have inspired in the mind of the artist reflections upon Time, the devourer of all things, upon the irony of fate and the vanity of human wishes. In 1512, after eighteen years’ exile, Giuliano de’ Medici the younger, son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, had returned to Florence as the virtual head of the state. In the following year his only surviving brother, Gio- vanni, had become Pope Leo X. In 1515, through his marriage with Philiberte de Savoie, aunt of the young King Francis the First, Giuliano had made the brilliant alliance which was eventually to bring his grandniece Catherine to the throne of France as the queen of Henry II. His cousin Giulio had been made Cardinal, and his nephew Lorenzo the younger, with the aid of Pope Leo, was preparing to wrest from its rightful possessor the Dukedom of Urbino. Supported by the prestige of France, of which Giuliano’s title as Due de Nemours was the symbol — Nemours being a duchy of the French crown — and backed by the power of the church, the future of the ancient line of the Medici as masters of Florence seemed assured. There was even 58 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE dreamed for his nephew Lorenzo a kingdom which should make the family lords of united Italy ; and sharing in this hope Machiavelli dedicated to him the famous “ Principe.” Only length of days was needed to reaffirm their power, and rightful male offspring to perpetuate it ; but neither was granted them. In i5i6Giuliano died, leaving no issue by his royal wife, and one illegitimate son, Ippolito, who was to die at twenty-four as a car- dinal. Lorenzo, to whom his uncle had given over the government of Florence in 1513, survived him but three years, leaving one legitimate daughter, Catherine, and a putative son, Alessandro, by a Moorish slave ; and the control of the city passed to Cardinal Giulio, himself an illegitimate son. The rightful line of Cosimo the Elder had received its deathblow and would expire with Pope Leo. From his long-cherished and magnificent plans for a fagade at S. Lorenzo, the pope thus suddenly made the last heir of the ancient name turned forthwith to the project of a mortuary chapel, which should pre- serve the memory of the two dukes upon whom the hopes of their line for continued political ascendency had so confidently rested. A letter from Cardinal Giulio dated November 20, 1520, acknowledges Michel Angelo’s sketch for the pro- posed sacristy, and affidavits of quarrymen dated in April, 1521, preserved in the municipal archives of Carrara, re- cord his orders for three hundred cartloads of marble to be on shipboard by October, 1522, together with several figures to be rough-hewn, among them a seated Madonna. MICHEL ANGELO 59 The death of Pope Leo a few months later, the political schemes and pecuniary anxieties of the cardinal, and renewed menaces of legal proceedings from the heirs of Pope Julius, put a stop for two years to all progress on the new commission. But in November, 1523, Cardinal Giulio ascended the papal throne as Clement VII, and although he began at once to occupy Michel Angelo with injudicious commissions, first the Laurentian Library, then a tabernacle for S. Lorenzo, and later even a colos- sus for the Medicean gardens, the work continued to ad- vance for three years, with long interruptions due to the threatening insistence of the heirs of Julius. In May of 1527, the fourth year of Clement’s pontificate, the troops of Charles V were masters of Rome, and the pope a pris- oner in the Castle of S. Angelo. On receipt of the news the Florentines at once exiled the two young heirs of the Medici name, Ippolito and Alessandro, and prepared for a final fight for liberty. Michel Angelo, divided at first between two allegiances, was not long in yielding to the call of his native city in a peril that before many months became desperate, and in 1529 was appointed director of the fortifications. In August of 1530, after a resistance whose noble enthusiasm recalled the days of Savonarola, Florence surrendered to the imperial power, with which the pope had already come to terms, and in 1531 Ales- sandro returned to undertake at twenty years the gov- ernment of the conquered city. The church tower of S. Niccolo oltr Arno is said to have afforded Michel Angelo a refuge during the first few days after the end of the i6o ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE siege ; but Clement had no wish to lose his services, and November saw him again at work upon the tombs, al- though for a long time thereafter in a state of depression, physical and mental, that awakened the gravest fears for his life. During the plague that visited Florence before the siege, his best loved brother, Buonarroto, had died in his arms. Now at last he consented to accept the aid of others in the completion of the monument to Pope Julius, as well as in the sculptures of the sacristy; and his time for several years was divided between the two commis- sions. In spite of the papal protection, his life was inse- cure in Florence. He had irritated the young tyrant Alessandro by refusing to plan a fortress which should dominate the city ; and it was by a favor of heaven, Con- divi writes, that when on September 25, 1534, Clement VII died, Michel Angelo was in Rome and beyond the reach of Alessandro’s violence. He never returned to Florence ; and work upon the sacristy stopped at once and finally. In 1537 the sarcophagus of Lorenzo was opened and the remains of his murdered son Alessandro depos- ited therein ; and when in 1875, in the course of repairs to the monument, it was reopened, the two bodies were found as they had been placed, with the head of one lying between the feet of the other. The Medici chapel is a quadrangular vaulted apartment, corresponding in form and size to Brunelleschi’s sacristy of 1421 across the church, and lighted from the lantern crowning its dome. Along the entrance wall stand Michel Angelo’s unfinished group of the Madonna and Child, and MICHEL ANGELO 161 two statues of patron saints of the Medici, SS. Cosmo and Damian, the former by Giovanni da Montorsoli, the latter by Raphael da Montelupo. The altar, in a large niche and bearing candlesticks designed by Michel An- gelo, occupies the opposite wall ; while of the remaining two each is filled by the tomb of one of the Dukes, in a setting of pilasters, niches, and cornices. The project, as at first conceived by Pope Leo and Cardinal Giulio to- gether, appears to have included also a tomb for the father of each, Lorenzo the Magnificent and Giuliano his brother. Upon the resumption of the work by Giulio alone, after his election as the second Medici pope, tombs were pro- posed not only for the two “ Magnifici ” of Florence, and the two dukes allied by marriage with France, but for the two popes through whom the family had obtained its notable ecclesiastical distinction. But of this larger plan nothing further is heard. The lost sketch of 1520, incor- porating Michel Angelo’s first ideas, showed four tombs standing free in the chapel ; but limitations of space for- bade this arrangement, and extant sketches either exe- cuted or inspired by Michel Angelo show mural tombs, either arranged in pairs, with figures both upon the sar- cophagi and beneath and above in niches, or, as in that dated June 16, 1 524, single and substantially of the existing form. In a letter dated 1526 Michel Angelo enumerates eleven figures which he proposes to make with his own hand ; four, representing rivers, to be placed upon the ground : the four upon the sarcophagi ; the two portrait statues, and the Madonna “ that goes in the tomb at the 1 62 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE head.” If we may interpret this phrase as a reference to a tomb for the entrance wall, where the Madonna and saints now stand, and may connect it with one of the sketches showing two sarcophagi, a central figure of the Madonna, and figures in niches on either side, this may have been the place and these the statues destined for the double monu- ment of the two Magnifici, Lorenzo and Giuliano. They are then fragments of a lost Medici tomb ; one which the artist’s burdens, his patron’s difficulties, and the long tra- gedy of the siege combined to render impossible of execu- tion. Again there had lain in Michel Angelo’s imagina- tion a work of sculpture, in union with architecture and painting, more magnificent than any the world possesses ; and again the powers of hand and brain that could have brought it forth were ready, both in himself and in the aids about him ; but again the fates willed otherwise, al- though by a happier decree determining its abandonment instead of its unworthy completion. The four figures of rivers were never begun ; the group of the Madonna has remained incompletely carried out, it is said on account of the insufficiency of the block ; all the symbolic figures were left likewise in greater or less measure rough- hewn ; neither the four figures for niches on either side the dukes, nor the eight for tabernacles over the doors were ever executed ; the walls were never adorned with paintings ; the elaborate decoration of the vaulting that Giovanni da Udine brought to within a fortnight of com- pletion remained at that point, and has since been white- washed over ; only the statues of the two dukes and of the MICHEL ANGELO 163 saints were finished, and all were left about the chapel to be put in place without Michel Angelo’s supervision. At the time of Vasari’s visit, a year or two after the death of Clement VII, the figures were still upon the ground. On two occasions, just before the murder of Alessandro in 1537, and in 1562, not long before Michel Angelo’s death, the same faithful friend attempted, but in vain, to arrange with the family for the completion of the sacristy under the direction of its designer. Both figures and walls had been shamefully smoked by the braziers of the priests, and the use of the chapel as a sacristy has since been discontinued. The architecture of the two tombs is identical in all but two bits of ornament which appear in that of Lo- renzo only. A heavy cornice divides the wall at less than half its height into a panelled surface below and a row of three niches above, separated by double pilasters and crowned by an entablature. The side niches, which are empty, are treated as doors with rounded pediments, to which in the central niche, occupied by the figure of the duke, corresponds a panel, as if for an inscription. The surface below the cornice forms a background for the simple and comparatively small sarcophagus, which rests on two supports rising from a heavy foundation slab, and is covered by a massive convex top. This re- peats the form of the pediments over the side niches above, but is interrupted at the centre directly beneath the figure of the duke, the two segments giving the two symbolical figures upon them the position of pendants 6 4 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE to the portrait statue above and between them. The architecture is that of a sculptor, a background providing for the advantageous disposition of a group of sculptured figures, but showing behind them little adornment other than the mouldings which emphasize its elements. Neither of the portrait statues can claim to be a like- ness of its subject, or even a close characterization. The composer of a sonnet in defence of suicide, he who resigned his sovereignty in Florence after a year, is repre- sented with muscles bared, and in an attitude expres- sive of energy latent ; while it is the victor in a fight for a dukedom, the possessor of no inconsiderable strength of character, and, according to the indications of his skeleton, of exceptional physical force, whose body is covered and whose attitude is one of abstraction, if not of irresolution. The heads represent types characteris- tic of Michel Angelo, that of Giuliano not unlike the unfinished Madonna, and showing the lack of cranial capacity so often a disappointment in Michel Angelo’s figures ; and the frames are of the imposing build he so delighted in representing. The two figures fit their names chiefly in that one images the commander, the other the warrior. With the staff of authority lightly held across his knees, Giuliano sits in an attitude of ease, but not inaction, as one who might grant an audi- ence or judge a cause. In the tension of the brow and the shadows about the mouth there speaks, if not sym- pathy, at least consideration ; if not justice tempered with mercy, at least the will to comprehend and deal MICHEL ANGELO 1 65 adequately. Yet it is in the massive body, with its powerful and harmonious lines and volumes, with its impressively modelled breast and knees and hands and feet, and with its wonderful attire, surely such as was never worn, or even imagined before, save by Michel Angelo, that the interest of the figure is mainly con- tained. Full sleeves and a yoke with grotesques, one scowling, the others laughing, as if the extremes between which the face above holds the balance, a heavily fringed skirt about the waist, and leggings ending at the calf and midway of the foot, give the figure a curious am- biguity between clothed and nude. In the figure of Lorenzo, the thoughtful, “il pensoso,” as Vasari calls it, the opposite emphasis prevails. He is represented fully clothed, and in spite of his striking pose and the original details of his martial dress, the weight of interest centres in the face, and even in the eyes, shadowed under his strange helmet carved partly in the semblance of a lion’s head. With Giuliano it is areas of light, in the face, the arms, the breast and abdo- men, that chiefly attract the eye, and with Lorenzo spots of darkness, in the helmet, the head and shoulders, the right side, and below the knees. These effects of light and shadow, unquestionably intended by Michel Angelo, since he worked upon the groups in the sacristy under the high lighting he had himself arranged for them, are lost in a lower light such as the present casts receive. In the pose of body and members also, this figure bal- ances that of Giuliano. The lines of the knees and 66 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE hands run upward from left to right ; the opposite in each case to their direction in the figure of Giuliano. The features also are rounder, the hands plumper; and this may have been an intentional verisimilitude, for Lorenzo died still a youth, his uncle later in life. Deep sunken as he seems in thought, it is not listless dreaming that would forget the right hand in its twisted pose, or maintain the casket, carved like a bat in allusion to the figures of Evening and Dawn below, upon its uncertain support. His glance seeks in the future an outlet for the fire that smoulders within him. In the statue of Giuliano also, though the left hand rests, the right hand fingers the staff nervously. In both allegorical groups by which the portrait statues are accompanied, the expression of an uncertain position upon an insufficient base, so frequent with Michel Angelo, is emphasized to the point of discomfort. The impossibility that human beings should thus main- tain themselves gives to these representatives of the flight of the hours the aspect rather of floating above than of resting upon the inclines they occupy ; and thereby, perhaps, Michel Angelo sought to convey the fugitive essence of the abstractions they embody. A written interpretation of one of the groups, still pre- served in Michel Angelo’s own hand upon a scrap of paper containing a sketch, runs as follows : “ Day and Night speak and say : We have brought with our rapid flight Duke Giuliano to death ; it is entirely just that he should revenge himself upon us ; and his vengeance is MICHEL ANGELO 167 this ; that he through his death has deprived us, who have killed him, of light, and with his closed eyes has shut ours also, that no longer illuminate the world. What would he have done with us had he lived ? ” There is little hint of such speech in the figures as they were ultimately carried out, but the quotation reveals the fundamental idea from which Michel Angelo worked. It determines also the names of the group it mentions ; those of the figures upon Lorenzo’s tomb being affixed by tradition only, confirmed by the correspondence of their sex with the gender of the Italian words, “II Cre- puscolo” and “L’ Aurora.” Contrasts corresponding to those presented by the two portrait figures may be found as well in their sym- bolic attendants. Night and Day below the statue of Giuliano appear, like that figure, studies in surfaces of light. The broad bosom and mighty thigh of Night are illuminated throughout ; while the whole figure of Day is a blaze of splendor, the great head peering over his shoulder like the rising sun, an expressive counterpart to the unconscious and averted face of Night. The dark surfaces in the other figures, under the supporting arms of both, under the breast of Dawn, along the whole body of Evening, and in the pendant extremities, draw the eye like those of Lorenzo above them — although only in a vertical light like that of the chapel. The feet reach below the sarcophagus, almost into its shadow ; and thus reclined at length in flowing curves, the two bodies vividly image the relaxation of a period between sleep 1 68 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE and waking. Their attitude is closely symmetrical, the heads and shoulders set similarly above the horizontal line of the thighs, the right foot of Evening crossed in front as the left foot of Dawn is supported from behind. But the figure of Evening sinks into sleep, that of Dawn stirs from it ; his head droops, and his right arm and leg have found positions of rest, while her head and arm are in movement, and her left leg prepares for an effort to rise. To this pattern of dreamy quiescence the steeper slopes and sharper angles of the group of Night and Day offer a marked contrast. In the striking motive of the two knees drawn high up, the same instinct of plas- tic balance has served to indicate in Day the vigor of waking life, and in Night its reflection in troubled sleep. Her contorted arms and the abandonment of weariness in her bent neck reinforce this impression, and the sym- bols carved about this figure alone of the four complete it ; beneath her foot a heavy bundle of poppies, upon her head the crescent and a star, in the angle of her knee an owl, at her side the mask of dreams, both empty and unhumanly expressive. Who has stood by a bedside of suffering and seen its victim, exhausted by tossing in pain, suddenly grow still for an instant of unconscious- ness, needs not be told the inner significance of an atti- tude like this, or of the tangled drapery and momentary pose of the Ariadne of the Vatican, to which the statue of Night has been likened. The motive of another of the figures, that of Evening, its members dissolved in fatigue, its body hugging the ground, has been related MICHEL ANGELO 69 in like manner to that of an antique work, the Farnese Hercules of the Naples Museum, as he stands winded and sweating, all his gigantic energy utterly spent. The portentous political change whose crowning events, the sack of Rome and the siege of Florence, fell within the period of Michel Angelo’s work upon the Medici tombs, has been conceived to reflect itself in these, the masterpieces of his chisel ; as if he had wrought into them his lament over the lost liberties of his native land. But the chronology of the work negatives the idea ; for his letter to Fattucci in 1 526, before the storm of war that was to overwhelm Florence had begun to gather, records that all of the figures except one of the portraits were already begun. We must conclude that it was only by an application to later conditions of an originally wider spiritual meaning, and one already em- bodied in the sleeping captive of the Louvre, that Michel Angelo, in response to Strozzi’s compliment in verse, affixed to the figure of Night, wrote asking in her name for undisturbed unconsciousness, in words whose beauty cannot be transferred from the Italian : — “ Caro m’ e ’1 sonno, e piu 1’ esser di sasso ; Mentre che ’1 danno e la vergogna dura, Non veder, non sentir m’ e gran ventura. Pero non mi destar, deh ! parla basso.” 1 1 Strozzi wrote : “ Night, whom thou seest so gently sleeping, was carved by an Angel from this stone ; and, sleeping, lives. If thou believe it not, awake her and she will speak to thee.” Michel Angelo replied, “ Sleep is dear to me, still more to be of stone. While ruin and disgrace abide, neither to see nor hear is happy fortune. Therefore awake me not ; prithee, speak low.” 170 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE Attributed to Michel Angelo. 42 . Statue known as Cupid ; in the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington. Of marble ; supposed to have been executed in 1497. J. C. Robinson, “ Catalogue of Italian Sculpture,” South Kensington Museum, 1862, p. 133. Current critical opinion is inclined to indorse the attribution of this statue to Michel Angelo, founded, at its discovery fifty years ago, upon considerations of style alone. In 1852 Professor Miliarini and the sculptor San- tarelli, examining together the sculptures in the Gual- fonda gardens in Florence in the interest of a Roman collector, Signor Gigli, came upon this statue in a cellar, and at once concluded it to be Michel Angelo’s work. The left arm was missing, the right wrist fractured, and there were marks of bullets upon it in various places. With its companions it had doubtless during centuries before been the ornament of the gardens, after the Italian custom which had brought to Michel Angelo himself in the gardens of Lorenzo the Magnificent the first impulse toward the art of sculpture. In 1859 it was purchased for the South Kensington Museum, where it now stands, the left arm being a restoration by Santa- relli. Of external evidence connecting such a figure with Michel Angelo there is none other than the men- tion in several contemporary records of a life-size marble Cupid (or Apollo, according to one) which, together with a statue of Bacchus, he executed during his first stay in Rome for a Roman gentleman, Jacopo Galli. MICHEL ANGELO 171 Eight years after Michel Angelo’s death the latter statue was disposed of by Galli’s heirs and came to Florence, where it now stands in the Museo Nazionale ; but of the former nothing was heard until the discovery of the present figure in our own time. The statue represents a youth whose perfectly devel- oped body and members indicate approaching manhood. He kneels upon his right knee, with the right hand upon the ground before him, and holds his left arm uplifted. The action commonly ascribed to the figure, that of stooping to reach a fallen arrow, is conjectural, for the left hand holds a bow only by the fancy of the sculptor that restored it, and there is no hint of an arrow upon the ground or in the right hand, which grasps a bulkier object. Yet the quiver at his side seems at least to fix the subject as either Apollo or Cupid ; and regard- ing it as a representation of one of these gods, a concep- tion emerges that suggests the same origin as the Bac- chus. The expression of both is vivid, even violent, but there is in neither figure the grandeur that should reveal the deity. The Bacchus images a young tippler whose body already begins to show his excesses, and whose drunken glance betrays a mind habituated to vacuity ; the present figure, a being active and powerful, but without a trace of tenderness or sprightliness or pas- sion. In neither of these statues, which with the Adonis of the Museo Nazionale are his only larger illustrations of pagan antiquity, has Michel Angelo shown any incli- nation to penetrate deeply into the spirit of ancient 72 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE mythology. One must admire in this figure the expres- sion of elastic strength in the momentary attitude, and the masterly beauty of the composition, from whatever point of view beheld ; and both are evidences of Michel Angelo’s authorship. The drapery and the hair are not wholly complete, and this fact might seem a confirma- tion were not all the known products of his chisel at this time distinguished by their perfect and elaborate finish. ITALIAN RENAISSANCE ORNAMENT 576 . BRESCIA. Casa Raimondi. Console. 510 , 583 . 1 . FLORENCE. S. Croce. Console and bracket; from the pulpit by Benedetto da Maiano. S. Croce. Relief of the Annunciation with figures of saints : Della Robbia. S. Lorenzo. Fragment of cornice from the tombs of the Medici by Michel An- gelo. S. Trinita. Frieze from the tomb of Francesco Sassetti by Giuliano di San Gallo. The relief on the right represents the myth of Meleager, apparently follow- ing an antique sarcophagus, still preserved in Florence. F. Schottmiiller, “ Reper- torium fur Kunstwissenschaft,” XXV, 1902, p. 406. 593- LODI. Church of the Incoronata. Con- sole. 557, 578. LUCCA. Cathedral. Two panels from the altar of St. Regulus by Matteo Civitali ( 1484 ). 594- MILAN. S. Maria della Passione. Ornament from the tomb of Archbishop Birago by Andrea Fusina ( 1495 ). 575 a. Ospedale Maggiore. Sarcophagus of Daniel Birago. 449-o- 414. 128. 74 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE ORNAMENT 55 W- PADUA. S. Antonio. Seven panels in flat relief ; from the pillars of the Cappella del Santo, by Giovanni Minello, Jacopo San- savino, and others (sixteenth century). 566. PAVIA. Certosa. Capital. 569- PISA. Cathedral. Base of a pilaster in the choir by Staggio Stagi (sixteenth century). 5 ° 4 ’ ROME. S. Maria Sopra Minerva. Panel from the tomb of Juan de Coca, Bishop of Calahorra in Spain (1477). 9 * 4 - S. Maria della Pace. Fragment of ornament from the tomb of Beatrix and Lavinia Ponzetti (1508). 505 » 955 » 95 & S. Maria del Popolo. Frieze and two panels from the tombs of Cardinals Basso and Sforza in the choir by Andrea Sansa- vino (1505-1507). 587- Sistine Chapel. Panel from the choir- screen (fifteenth century). 559 > 560, 563- SIENA. Cathedral. Two balusters and two 564- panels from the stairway of the pulpit, by Bernardino di Giacomo (1543). 57 °- Church of Fontegiusta. Capital (about 1500). 575 " TORTONA. S. Francesco. Part of a tomb called dei Greci. 583. Cathedral. Panels (sixteenth century). 514, 515, 516. VENICE. S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. Panels. 517 to 528. SS. Giovanni e Paolo. Panels and other fragments of ornament. 57 2 ' S. Maria dei Miracoli. Pilaster from the choir arch. ITALIAN RENAISSANCE ORNAMENT 175 571 . S. Maria dei Miracoli. Capital from another pilaster. 536-543- S. Maria dei Miracoli. Various orna- ment. 529-535- S. Michele on Cemetery Island. Various ornament. 544-5 5°> 567. 574» 579- 449 - 1 - Palace of the Doges. Various orna- ment. Palace of the Doges. Coat of arms of the Barberigo family over a door in the rear of the palace. 512, 513- S. Marco. Detail. Unnumbered: Various fragments of ornament in the style of the Ital- ian Renaissance. Of the casts described above the following are gifts from various donors : Nos. 119, 120, 124, and 126 to 131, from C. C. Perkins (1876) ; No. 295, from Mrs. Andrew C. Wheelwright (1877) ; No. 885, from Dr. William Sturgis Bigelow (1881) ; No. 897, from Thomas R. Gould (1881); No. 905, from the Trustees of the Metropolitan Museum, New York (1884); No. 162, from Charles G. Loring (1885); No. 400.3, from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Ravenna, Italy (1889) ; Nos. 41 2.1 and 124.M, from A Class of Young Ladies (1889 and 1891); No. 400, from Miss Mary Amory Greene (1890); Nos. 400.5 and 449.1, from Denman W. Ross (1890, 1892) ; No. 449.0, from A. W. Longfellow, Jr. (1893) ; No. 458, from Miss Alice A. Gray (1895) 5 Nos. 449 and 450, from Quincy A. Shaw (1896). The figures of Night and Day in No. 614 are loaned by the Boston Athenaeum, and Nos. 139 and 914 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. INDEX OF PLACES BERLIN Royal Museum Bust of a Young Woman (called a Princess of Urbi- no) ; attributed to Desiderio da Settignano Bust of a Woman (formerly called Marietta Strozzi) ; in the style of the Fifteenth Century BRUGES Church of Notre Dame Group of Madonna and- Child; Michel Angelo . . ENGLAND Collection of Lord Wemyss Bust in Relief called St. Cecilia; attributed to Do- natello FIESOLE Cathedral Bust of Bishop Salutati ; Mino da Fiesole .... FLORENCE Accademia delle Belle Arti Relief of the Madonna and Child; attributed to Andrea della Robbia Head from the Colossal Statue of David ; Michel Angelo Baptistery Eastern Doors ; Lorenzo Ghiberti Cathedral Three Reliefs of the Miracles of St. Zenobius ; Lorenzo Ghiberti Relief of St. Augustine ; Luca della Robbia . . . Page IOI 128 148 65 116 88 M5 30 47 78 INDEX OF PLACES 1 77 Cathedral Museum Ten Reliefs of Singing, Playing, and Dancing Youths and Children; Luca della Robbia . . . . Church of San Lorenzo New Sacristy: Tombs of the Medici; Michel An- gelo Old Sacristy : Relief of a Lion’s Head ; attributed to Donatello Church of Santa Croce Sarcophagus with Two Attendant Genii; Desi- derio da Settignano . . Church of Or San Michele Interior: Two Reliefs from the Tabernacle; Or- cagna The Marriage of the Virgin : the Annunciation . . . Exterior: Relief of St. George and the Dragon; Donatello Hospital of the Innocents Fafade : Four Reliefs of Infants; Andrea della Robbia Court: Relief of the Annunciation; Andrea della Robbia Loggia di S. Paolo Relief of the Meeting of St. Francis and St. Dominic ; Andrea Della Robbia Museo Nazionale Relief of the Sacrifice of Abraham ; Lorenzo Ghi- berti Statue of St. George; Donatello Statue of David with the Head of Goliath ; Dona- tello Bust in Relief of St. John the Baptist as a Boy; Donatello Relief of the Nativity ; Rossellino Bust of Matteo Palmieri ; Rossellino Bust of a Soldier in Armor ; Antonio Pollaiuolo 68 157 65 100 22 55 84 85 87 29 55 61 64 96 98 104 178 INDEX OF PLACES Bust of a Young Man ; formerly attributed to Pollaiuolo, now thought to be by Verrocchio 105 Statue of David; Verrocchio 108 Panel from the Tomb of Francesca Tornabuoni ; Verrocchio hi Bust of Rinaldo della Luna; Mino da Fiesole . . 115 Bust of Pietro Mellini; Benedetto da Maiano ... 120 Relief of an Allegorical Figure of Faith ; Matteo Civitali 123 Bust of St. John the Baptist as a Boy; Style of the Fifteenth Century 126 Bust of an Unknown Woman, veiled; Style of the Fifteenth Century 127 Palazzo Vecchio Statue of a Cupid holding a Dolphin; Verrocchio 109 LILLE, FRANCE Palais des Beaux Arts Bust of a Young Woman ; Style of the Fifteenth Century 133 LONDON Burlington House Relief of the Madonna and Child with St. John; Michel Angelo 143 Victoria and Albert Museum ; South Kensington Relief of Christ mourned by Cherubs ; Donatello . 63 Bust of a Monk (called Savonarola) ; Style of the Fif- teenth Century 128 LUCCA Cathedral Recumbent Effigy of Ilaria del Carretto; Jacopo della Quercia 25 NEW YORK Metropolitan Museum Relief of the Assumption ; attributed to Andrea della Robbia 89 PADUA Madonna dell’ Arena Statue of the Madonna and Child ; Giovanni Pisano 20 INDEX OF PLACES 79 Recumbent Effigy of Enrico Scrovegno ; Style of Giovanni Pisano Church of S. Antonio (II Santo) Twelve Reliefs of Singing and Playing Cherubs ; Donatello PARIS Dreyfus Collection Bust of a Boy ; attributed to Desiderio da Settignano Louvre Bust of John the Baptist as a Boy ; Mino da Fiesole Bust of Filippo Strozzi ; B. da Maiano Bust of an Unknown Woman; Style of the Fifteenth Century Head from one of the Two Statues of Captives designed for the Tomb of Pope Julius II; Michel Angelo PISA Baptistery Relief of the Adoration of the Magi ; Niccolo Pi- sano PISTOIA Church of S. Giovanni fuor Ci vitas Group of the Visitation; attributed to Luca della Robbia PRATO Cathedral Relief of Dancing Cherubs ; Donatello RAVENNA Accademia delle Belle Arti Recumbent Effigy of Guidarello Guidarelli ; Style of the Fifteenth Century ROME Church of S. Pietro in Vincoli Statue of Moses ; Michel Angelo SIENA Cathedral Pulpit ; Niccolo Pisano Holy Water Basin ; Antonio Federighi 21 62 101 117 120 128 154 7 80 59 130 149 9 92 i8o INDEX OF PLACES Baptistery Relief of John the Baptist before Herod; Lo- renzo Ghiberti 29 Relief of Herod’s Feast; Donatello 57 (Cbe jfttoerjibe Electrotyped and printed by H . O. Houghton < 5 ^ Co. Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. ARRANGEMENT OF CASTS IN THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE ROOM