Earl of David Lindsay Crawford

“ But the genius of Donatello shines through the finishing-touches of his assistants. Drama is replaced by tragedy; and in these panels the concluding incidents of the Passion are pictured with intense earnestness and pathos. But Donatello would not allow gloom to monopolise his composition. The paradox of the pulpits consists in the frieze of putti above the reliefs: putti who dance, play, romp, and run about. Some of them are busily engaged in moving a heavy statue: others are pressing grapes into big cauldrons. The boy dragging along a violoncello as big as himself is delightful. ”

“ If Ghiberti had made pictures instead of reliefs, the atmosphere would keep the objects in their right places, while differences of colour would give distinction to certain parts and the chief figures would still predominate. In other reliefs Ghiberti lavished so much care on landscape and architecture that the figures become of secondary importance: on one relief a tree casts its shadow on a cloud. [172] Ghiberti, in fact, with all his plastic elegance, with a grace, suavity and sense of beauty which Donatello never approached, was a painter at heart. ”

“ George are tentative and ill-drawn. The children of the Cantoria, the great singing gallery made for the Cathedral, are dancing upon a ground strewn with flowers and fruit. The idea was charming, but in executing it Donatello could only make cut flowers and withered fruit. There is no life in them, no savour, and the energy of the children seems to have exhausted the humbler form of vitality beneath their feet. ”

“ Donatello has concentrated his crowd into the centre: at the sides the miracle passes unheeded. A fat man is soliloquising with his hand reposing on an ample stomach: a boy with a long stick and something like a knapsack on his back is attracting the attention of a young woman, who seems absorbed in watching the miracle: her child tries to pull her along to go closer. ”

“ However much Donatello may have allowed a free hand to his assistants in this statue, the fine qualities of the head are attributable to a strict adherence to his own sketch. The last of the great bronze figures is the crucifix above the high altar. It is magnificent, apart from the technical qualities which rival Donatello's most brilliant achievements. All the lines droop together in a wonderful cadenza; the face is transfigured by human pain, but all the superhuman power remains. ”

“ The ambiguity is not without humour. Sculpture, indeed, had no reason to ape or imitate painting. Sculpture, in fact, was in advance of painting during the first half of the fifteenth century. Donatello, Luca della Robbia, Jacopo della Quercia, and Ghiberti were greater men in sculpture than their contemporaries in painting. The arts were in rivalry; the claim for precedence was zealously canvassed. The sculptors claimed superiority because their art was older, because statuary has more points of view than one. You can walk round it, while a picture has only one light and one view. ”

“ But wherever Gonzaga's features lack distinction this portrait shows fine qualities and good breeding. Nothing could better illustrate how minute are the plastic details which will revolutionise a countenance; how easily noble and handsome features can degenerate into what is sordid and vulgar. In this bust the chin, though receding, is far from weak; the lips are full but not sensual; the nose has the faint aquiline curve of distinction. ”

“ Even in Michael Angelo's sculpture, when we consider its massive scale, the extent and number of his commissions, and the ease with which he worked his material, it is astonishing how few free-standing groups were made. His grouping was applied to the relief. The free group is, of course, the most comprehensive vehicle of intensified emotion or action; it gives an opportunity of doubling or trebling the effect on the spectator. Sculpture has never realised to the full the chances offered by grouped plastic art of heroic proportions. ”

“ It is inexplicable that modern criticism should withdraw from Donatello all the free-standing or portrait-busts of boys, while going to the opposite extreme in ascribing to him an enormous number of Madonnas. We know that Donatello was passionately fond of carving children on his reliefs: we also know that only two versions of the Madonna can be really authenticated as his work. Why should Donatello have made no busts of boys when it is not denied that he was responsible for something like one hundred boys in full-length ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [Pg 104] the Sistine Chapel are solemn and grown old with care: children without childhood. With Donatello all is different. His greatness and title to fame largely rest upon his typical childhood: his sculpture bears eloquent witness to the closest observation of all its varying and changeful moods. ”

“ The criticism was not very sagacious, and one would least expect it from Michael Angelo, of whose work so much was left unfinished. But, at any rate, Donatello commanded his approval, and contributed something to one of the greatest artists of the world. But the ideals of Michael Angelo were too comprehensive to be derived from one source or another, too stupendous to spring from individuals. He sought out the universal form: he took mankind for his model; and while he typified humanity he effectively denationalised Italian sculpture. ”

“ Next to one of these pipers is a child playing the lute, delicious in every respect: he is made by the genius, the other by the hack. They contrast in every particular—drapery, anatomy, face and technique. The lutist is admirable as he looks down at his instrument to catch the note; capital also is the boy playing the double pipe, with the close drapery swirling about his plump limbs, as one sees in San Francesco of Rimini, that temple dedicated to Isotta and to Childhood. ”

“ He stands upright, his legs rather apart, and the shield in front of him, otherwise he is quite unarmed; the St. George in the niche is alert and watchful: in the bas-relief he manfully slays the dragon. The head is bare and the throat uncovered; the face is full of confidence and the pride of generous strength, but with no vanity or self- [Pg 41] consciousness. Fearless simplicity is his chief attribute, though in itself simplicity is no title to greatness: with Donatello, Sophocles and Dante would be excluded from any category of greatness based on simplicity alone. ”

“ She is ugly, with no redeeming feature. The pose is awkward, the drapery graceless, the contour thick, and her face, peering out of the thick veil, is altogether displeasing. One has no right to look for beauty in Donatello's statues of adults: character is what he gives. But neither does one expect this kind of vagary. There is great merit in the plaintive and wistful ugliness of the Zuccone: Here the ugliness is wanton, and therefore inexcusable. The Crivelli tomb and the Baptist in San Giovanni Fiorentino have been already described. ”

“ Greek art can, of course, show no sign of the Christian virtues of death. Like the Egyptians, their object was to present the dead as still alive, even where the aid of fiction had to be invoked. To them sleep and death are often indistinguishable; often again one is left in doubt as to which of the figures on a funeral relief represents the departed. With death the human body, having ceased to be the home of life, ceased also to be a welcome theme of art. ”

“ A man born blind has a sense of touch which gives him pleasure from sculpture, which is better suited to theology, which has greater durability, and so forth. The painter replied that, if a statue has more than one point of view, a picture containing many figures can give even greater variety. Then the argument of utility denies the essence of art, which is to imitate nature, not to adorn brackets and pilasters; but even if decoration be an end in itself, painting can be used where sculpture would be too heavy. ”

“ Cinelli thought it classical, and it resembles an undoubted antique in the Louvre. Donatello has clearly taken classical motives; the winged feet and the serpents twining between them are not Renaissance in form or idea. But the statue itself is closely akin to the Cantoria children, but being in bronze shows a higher polish, and, moreover, is treated in a less summary fashion. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Donatello did not forget that the crucified Christ, when represented by the sculptor, had to preserve all the immortality of the Son of God. His contadino Christ in Florence has its interest in art; this Christ marks the summit of his plastic ability; but it shows that, without any appeal to terror or emotionalism, without, indeed, suppressing the signs of physical pain, Donatello was able to give an overwhelming portrait of Christ's agony. The celestial and the terrestrial are unified and fused into one tremendous concentration of human suffering, tempered by divine power. ”

“ It is a riot of woe, and the more solemn figures who are engaged with the dead body have grown grey with care. This relief dates a new departure: the Entombment and other episodes of the Passion henceforward lose their calm emblematic character, and are fraught with tragedy and gloom. Donatello's relief became the prototype for the Bellini, for Mantegna, and a host of artists who, without, perhaps, having seen the original, drew their inspiration from what it had already inspired. ”

“ Below is a broad stone relief of children holding the scroll between them, as on the Coscia tomb in Florence. Above is a lunette containing painting, the whole composition being framed by a severe moulding, and surmounted by the family crest and badge. They are most remarkable. The two recumbent figures lie calm and peaceful: they show the ennobling aspect of death, the belief in a further existence. This sculptor with his sensitive touch makes us realise the migration. To "make the good end" was, indeed, a product of Christianity: antiquity was content if a man parted from life "handsomely." ”