Donatello Part 8

Carpaccio introduced them into his pictures,[135] and Botticelli used them so freely that they almost became the ruling element of decoration in the "Calumny." Gems are incidentally introduced in Donatello's bust of the so-called Young Gattamelata, and on Goliath's helmet below the Bronze David. The Medusa head occurs on the base of the Judith, on the Turin Sword hilt, and on the armour of General Gattamelata. So much of Donatello's work has perished that it is almost annoying to see how well these Medici medallions are preserved--the work in which his individuality was allowed little play, and in which he can have taken no pride.

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

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Alinari_

THE BRONZE DAVID

BARGELLO, FLORENCE]

[Sidenote: The Bronze David.]

According to Vasari, the Bronze David was made for Cosimo before the exile of the Medici, and consequently previous to Donatello's second journey to Rome. It was removed from the courtyard of the palace to the Palazzo Pubblico, where it remained for many years. Doni mentions it as being there in 1549,[136] and soon afterwards it was replaced by Verrocchio's fountain of the Boy squeezing the Dolphin. It is now in the Bargello. The base has been lost. Albertini says it was made of variegated marbles.[137] Vasari says it was a simple column.[138] It has been suggested that the marble pillar now supporting the Judith belonged to the David, but the David is even less fitted to this ill-conceived and pedantic shaft than Judith herself. The David soon acquired popularity; the French envoy, Pierre de Rohan, wanted a copy of it. It was certainly a remarkable innovation, being probably the first free-standing nude statue made in Italy for a thousand years.

There had been countless nude figures in relief, but the David was intended to be seen from every side of Cosimo's _cortile_. There was no experimental stage with Donatello; his success was immediate and indeed conclusive. David is a stripling. He stands over the head of Goliath, a sword in one hand and a stone in the other, wearing his helmet, a sort of sun-hat in bronze which is decorated with a chaplet of leaves; below his feet is a wreath of bay. It is a consistent study in anatomy. The David is perhaps sixteen years old, agile and supple, with a hand which is big relative to the forearm, as nature ordains.

The back is bony and rather angular; the torso is brilliantly wrought, with a purity of outline and a _morbidezza_ which made the artists in Vasari's time believe the figure had been moulded from life. One might break the statue into half a dozen pieces, and every fragment would retain its vitality and significance. The limbs are alert and full of young strength, with plenty more held in reserve: it is heroic in all respects except dimension. The face is clear cut, and each feature is rendered with precision. The expression is one of dreamy contemplation as he looks downwards on the spoils and proof of conquest. David hath slain his tens of thousands! Finally the quality of the statue is enhanced by the care with which the bronze has been chiselled. Goliath's helmet, and David's greaves, on which the _fleur de lys florencee_ has been damascened, are decorated with unfailing tact. The embellishment is in itself a pleasure to the eye, but it is prudently contained within its legitimate sphere; for Donatello would not allow the accessory to invade the statue itself, which is the chief fault of the rival David by Verrocchio. Donatello's statue marks an epoch in the study of anatomy. It is a genuine interpretation of a very perfect piece of humanity; but his knowledge compared with that of his successors was empiric. Leonardo's subtle skill was based upon dissection. Michael Angelo likewise studied from the human corpse, distasteful as he found the process. Donatello had no such scientific training: he had no help from the surgeon or the hospital, hence mistakes; his doubt, for instance, about the connection between ribs and pectoral bones was never resolved. But, notwithstanding this lack of technical data, the Bronze David has a distinction which is absent in statues made by far more learned men. Donatello's intuition supplied what one would not willingly exchange for the most exact science of the specialist. The David was an innovation, but the phrase must be guarded. It was only an innovation so far as it was a free-standing study from the nude. Nothing is more misleading than the commonplace that Christianity was opposed to the representation of the nude in its proper place. The early Church, no doubt, underwent a prolonged reaction against all that it might be a.s.sumed to connote; one might collect many quotations from patristic literature to this effect. But the very articles of the Christian Creed militated against the ultimate scorn of the human body: the doctrine of the Resurrection alone was enough to give it more sanct.i.ty than could be derived from all the polytheism of antiquity. The Baptism of Christ, the descent into Limbo, and the Crucifixion itself, were scenes from which the use of drapery had to be less or more discarded. The porches and frontals of Gothic churches abounded in nude statuary, from scenes in the Garden of Eden down to the Last Judgment. Abuses crept in, of course, and the Faith protested against them. The advancing standard of comfort and, no doubt, a steadily deteriorating climate, diminished the everyday familiarity with undraped limbs. Clothes became numerous and more normal; the artist came to be regarded as the purveyor of what had ceased to be of natural occurrence. He was encouraged by the connoisseur, lay and cleric, who found his literature in antiquity, and then demanded cla.s.sical forms in his art. The nude was arbitrarily employed: there was no biblical authority for a naked David, and Donatello was therefore among the first to err in this respect. The taste for this kind of thing sprang from humanism, and throve with h.e.l.lenism, till a counter-reaction came suddenly in the sixteenth century. Michael Angelo was hotly attacked for his excessive study from the nude as prejudicial to morals.[139] Ammanati wrote an abject apology to the Accademia del Disegno for the very frank nudity of his statues.[140] Some of the work of Bandinelli and Bronzino had to be removed. What was a rational and healthy protest has survived in grotesque and ill-fitting drapery made of tin--very negation of propriety. Although needed for biblical imagery, the nude in Italy was always exotic; in Greece it was indigenous. From the time of Homer there had been a worship of physical perfection. The Palaestra, the cultivation of athletics in a nation of soldiers, the religions of the country, with its favourable atmosphere, climate, and stone, all combined to make the nude a normal aspect of human life. But it was not the sole inspiration of their art: in Sparta, where there was most nude there was least art; in Italy, when there was worst art there was most nude.

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

[Footnote 137: _Giu aba.s.so e Davit di bronzo sopra la colonna fine di marmo variegato._ "Memoriale."]

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

[Footnote 139: "Due dialogi di Giovanni Andrea Gilio da Fabriano,"

1564; a tiresome and discursive tirade.]

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Alinari_

CANTORIA

IN OPERA DEL DUOMO, FLORENCE]

[Sidenote: Donatello and Childhood.]

Michael Angelo strove to attain the universal form. His world was peopled with t.i.tans, and he realised his ambition of portraying generic humanity: not, indeed, by making conventional, but by eliminating everything that was not typical. The earliest plastic art took clay and moulded the human form; the next achievement was to make specific man--the portrait; lastly, to achieve what was universal--the type. The progress was from man, to man in particular, and ultimately to man in general. There was a final stage when the typical lost its type without reverting to the specific, to the portrait. The successors of Michael Angelo were among the most skilful craftsmen who ever existed; but their knowledge only bore the fruit of unreality.

Donatello did not achieve the typical except in his children: it was only in children that Michael Angelo failed. He missed this supreme opportunity; those on the roof of the Sistine Chapel are solemn and grown old with care: children without childhood. With Donatello all is different. His greatness and t.i.tle to fame largely rest upon his typical childhood: his sculpture bears eloquent witness to the closest observation of all its varying and changeful moods. Others have excelled in this or that interpretation of child-life: Greuze with his sentimentalism, the Dutch painters with their stolidity. In Velasquez every child is the scion of some Royal House, in Murillo they are all beggars. They are too often stupid in Michelozzo: in Andrea della Robbia they are always sweet and winsome; Pigalle's children know too much. Donatello alone grasped the whole psychology. He watched the coming generation, and foresaw all that it might portend: tragedy and comedy, labour and sorrow, work and play--plenty of play; and every problem of life is reflected and made younger by his chisel. How far the sculptors of the fifteenth century employed cla.s.sical ideas is not easily determined. There was, however, one cla.s.sical form which was widely used, namely, the flying _putti_ holding a wreath or coat-of-arms between them: we find it on the frieze of the St. Louis niche, and it is repeated on Judith's dress. The wreath or garland, of which the Greeks were so fond, became a favourite motive for the Renaissance mantelpiece. The cla.s.sical _amoretti_, of which many versions in bronze existed, were also frequently copied. But there was one radical difference between the children of antiquity and those of the Renaissance. Though children were introduced on to cla.s.sical sarcophagi and so forth, it is impossible to say that it was for the sake of their youth. There are genii in plenty; and in the imps which swarm over the emblematic figure of the Nile in the Vatican the sculptor shows no love or respect for childhood. There is no child on the Parthenon frieze, excepting a Cupid, who has really no claim to be reckoned as such. Donatello could not have made a relief 150 yards long without introducing children, whether their presence were justified or not. He would probably have overcrowded the composition with their young forms. Whether right or wrong, he uses them arbitrarily, as simple specimens of pure joyous childhood. Antique sculpture, too, had its arbitrary and conventional adjuncts--the Satyr and the Bacchic attendants; but how dreary that the vacant s.p.a.ces in a relief should have to rely upon what is half-human or offensive--the avowedly inhuman gargoyles of the thirteenth century are infinitely to be preferred. Donatello was possessed by the sheer love of childhood: with him they are boys, _fanciulli ignudi_,[141] very human boys, which, though winged and stationed on a font, were boys first and angels afterwards. And he overcame the immense technical difficulties which childhood presents. The model is restive and the form is immature, the softness of nature has to be rendered in the hardest material. The lines are inconsequent, and the limbs do not yet show the muscles on which plastic art can usually depend. Nothing requires more deftness than to give elasticity to a form which has no external sign of vigour. So many sculptors failed to master this initial difficulty--Verrocchio, for instance. He made the bronze fountain in the Palazzo Pubblico, and an equally fine statue of similar dimensions now belonging to M. Gustave Dreyfus. Both have vivacity and movement, but both have also a fat stubby appearance; the flesh has the consistency of pudding, and though soft and velvety in surface is without the inner meaning of the children on the Cantoria. In this work, where Donatello has carved some three dozen children, we have a series of instantaneous photographs. n.o.body else had enough knowledge or courage to make rigid bars of children's legs: here they swing on pivots from the hip-joint. It is the true picture of life, rendered with superlative skill and _bravura_. But Donatello's children serve a purpose, if only that of decoration. At Padua they form a little orchestra to accompany the duets. The singing angels there are among the most charming of the company; and whether intentionally or not, they give the impression of having forgotten the time, or of being a little puzzled by the music-book! But Donatello fails to express the exquisite modulation by which Luca della Robbia almost gives actual sound to his Cantoria: where one sees the swelling throat, the inflated lungs, the effort of the higher notes, and the voice falling to reach those which are deep. Luca's children, it is true, are bigger and older; but in this respect he was unsurpa.s.sed, even by painters whose medium should have placed them beyond rivalry in such a respect.

The choir of Piero della Francesca's Nativity is so well contrived that one can distinguish the alto from the tenor; but Luca was able to do even more. He gives cadence, rhythm and expression where others did no more than represent the voice. Donatello's dancing children are more important than his musicians. He was able to give free vein to his fancy. We have flights of uncontrollable children, romping and rioting, dashing to and fro, playing and laughing as they pa.s.s about garlands among them. And their self-reliance is worth noticing; they are absorbed in their dance--children dance rather heavily--and only a few of them look outwards. There is no self-consciousness, no appeal to the spectator: they are immensely busy, and enjoy life to the full. Then we have a more demure type of childhood: they are shield-bearers on the Gattamelata monument, or occupy an a.n.a.logous position on the lower part of the Cantoria. Others hold the cartel or epitaph as on the Coscia tomb. And again Donatello introduces children as pure decoration. The triangular base of the Judith, for instance, and the bronze capital which supports the Prato pulpit, have childhood for their sole motive. He smuggles children on to the croziers of St.

Louis and Bishop Pecci: they are the supporters of Gattamelata's saddle: they decorate the vestments of San Daniele. They share the tragedy of the Pieta, and we have them in his reliefs. The entire frieze of the pulpits of San Lorenzo is simply one long row of children--some two hundred in all.

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Alinari_

CANTORIA (DETAIL)

FLORENCE]

[Sidenote: The Cantoria.]

The Cantoria, or organ-loft, of the Florentine Cathedral was ordered soon after Donatello's return from Rome, and was erected about 1441.

It was placed over one of the Sacristy doors, corresponding in position with Luca della Robbia's cantoria on the opposite side of the choir. The ill-fortune which dispersed the Paduan altar and Donatello's work for the facade likewise caused the removal of this gallery. Late in the seventeenth century a royal marriage was solemnised, for which an orchestra of unusual numbers was required, and the two _cantorie_ were removed as inadequate. The large brackets remained _in situ_ for some time, but were afterwards taken away also.

The two galleries have now been re-erected at either end of the chief room of the Opera del Duomo. But the size of the galleries is considerable, and they occupy so much of the end walls to which they are fixed, that it is impossible to see the sides or outer panels of either cantoria. In the case of Luca's gallery, the side panels have been replaced by facsimiles, and the originals can be minutely examined, being only four or five feet from the ground, and very suggestive they are. As the side panels of Donatello's gallery are equally invisible in their present position they might also be brought down to the eye level. Comparison with Luca's work would then be still more simplified. But though in a trying light, and too low down, the sculpture shows that it was Donatello who gave the more careful attention to the conditions under which the work would be seen. The delicacy and grace of Luca's choir make Donatello's boys look coa.r.s.e and rough-hewn. But in the dim Cathedral, where Donatello's children would appear bold and vivacious, the others would look insipid and weak. Moreover, the lower tier of Luca's panels beneath the projection and enclosed by the broad brackets, would have been in such a subdued light that some of the heads in low-relief would have been scarcely emphasised at all. In reconstructing Donatello's gallery an error has been made by which a long band of mosaic runs along the whole length of the relief, above the children's heads. M. Reymond has pointed out that the ground level should have been raised in order to prevent what Donatello would undoubtedly have avoided, namely, a blank and meaningless stretch of mosaic.[142] M. Reymond's brilliant suggestion about a similar point in regard to the other cantoria, a criticism which has been verified in a remarkable manner, ent.i.tles his suggestion to great weight. The angles of the cantoria where the side panels join the main relief lack finish: something like the pilasters which cover the angles of the Judith base are required. As for the design, the gallery made by Luca della Robbia has an advantage over Donatello's in that the figures are not placed behind a row of columns. There is something tantalising in the fact that the most boisterous and roguish of all the troop is concealed by a pillar of spangled white and gold. These pillars were perhaps needed to break the long line of the relief: but they have no such significance, as, for instance, the row of pillars on the Saltarello tomb,[143] behind which the Bishop's effigy lies--a barrier between the living and the dead, across which the attendant angels can drop the curtain.

Donatello's gallery is, perhaps, over-decorated. There is less gilding now than formerly, and the complex ornament does not materially interfere with the broad features of the design: but a little more reserve would not have been amiss.

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

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Alinari_

THE PRATO PULPIT]

[Sidenote: The Prato Pulpit.]

The second work in which Donatello took his inspiration exclusively from childhood is at Prato. It is an external pulpit, fixed at the southern angle of the Cathedral facade, and employed to display the most famous relic possessed by the town, namely, the girdle of the Virgin. The first contract was made as early as 1428 with Donatello and Michelozzo, _industriosi maestri_, to whom careful measurements were given.[144] The sculptors promised to finish the work by September 1, 1429. Five years later, there was still no pulpit, and having vainly invoked the aid of Cosimo, they finally sent to Rome, where Donatello had by then gone, and a revised contract was made with the industrious sculptors, though Michelozzo is not mentioned by name.[145] The work was finished in about four years, and within three weeks of signing the new contract one of the reliefs was completed; it may, of course, have been already begun. Its success was immediate.

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

[Footnote 144: 14, vii. 1428.]

[Footnote 145: 27, v. 1434.]

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

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

[Footnote 148: Psalm cl.]

[Footnote 149: Psalm cxlix.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Alinari_

BRONZE AMORINO