The Tuscan sculpture of this period stands, I think, midway between
the serene perfection of the buildings (being itself sprung from the
architecture of the Gothic time), and the splendid but fragmentary
accomplishment of the paintings, many of whose disturbing problems, of
anatomy and anatomic movement, it shared to its confusion. It is not
for beautiful bodily structure or gesture, such as we find even in
poor antiques, that we should go to the Florentine sculptors, save,
perhaps, the two Robbias. It is the almost architectural distribution
of space and light, the treatment of masses, which makes the
immeasurable greatness of Donatello, and gives dignity to his greatest
contemporary, Jacopo della Quercia. And it is again an architectural
quality, though in the sense of the carved portals of Pistoia, the
flutings and fretwork and surface pattern of the Baptistery and S.
Miniato, which gives such poignant pleasure in the work of a very
different, but very great, sculptor, Desiderio. The marvel (for it is
a marvel) of his great monument in Santa Croce, depends not on
anatomic forms, but on the exquisite variety and vivacity of surface
arrangement; the word symphony (so often misapplied) fitting exactly
this complex structure of minute melodies and harmonies of rhythms and
accents in stone.
But the quality of Tuscan sculpture exists in humbler, often anonymous
and infinitely pathetic work. I mean those effigies of knights and
burghers, coats of arms and mere inscriptions, which constitute so
large a portion of what we walk upon in Santa Croce. Things not much
thought of, maybe, and ruthlessly defaced by all posterity. But the
masses, the main lines, were originally noble, and defacement has only
made their nobleness and tenderness more evident and poignant: they
have come to partake of the special solemnity of stone worn by frost
and sunshine.