CHAPTER III

SCULPTURE

Niccola Pisano--Obscurity of the Sources for a History of Early Italian

Sculpture--Vasari's Legend of Pisano--Deposition from the Cross at

Lucca--Study of Nature and the Antique--Sarcophagus at Pisa--Pisan

Pulpit--Niccola's School--Giovanni Pisano--Pulpit in S. Andrea at

Pistoja--Fragments of his work at Pisa--Tomb of Benedict XI. at

Perugia--Bas-reliefs at Orvieto--Andrea Pisano--Relation of Sculpture to

Painting--Giotto--Subordination of Sculpture to Architecture in

Italy--Pisano's Influence in Venice--Balduccio of Pisa--Orcagna--The

Tabernacle of Orsammichele--The Gates of the Florentine Baptistery

--Competition of Ghiberti, Brunelleschi, and Della Quercia--Comparison

of Ghiberti's and Brunelleschi's Trial-pieces--Comparison of Ghiberti

and Della Quercia--The Bas-reliefs of S. Petronio--Ghiberti's

Education--His Pictorial Style in Bas-relief--His Feeling for the

Antique--Donatello--Early Visit to Rome--Christian Subjects--Realistic

Treatment--S. George and David--Judith--Equestrian Statue of

Gattamelata--Influence of Donatello's Naturalism--Andrea Verocchio--His

David--Statue of Colleoni--Alessandro Leopardi--Lionardo's Statue of

Francesco Sforza--The Pollajuoli--Tombs of Sixtus IV. and Innocent

VIII.--Luca della Robbia--His Treatment of Glazed Earthenware--Agostino

di Duccio--The Oratory of S. Bernardino at Perugia--Antonio

Rossellino--Matteo Civitali--Mino da Fiesole--Benedetto da

Majano--Characteristics and Masterpieces of this Group--Sepulchral

Monuments--Andrea Contucci's Tombs in S. Maria del Popolo--Desiderio da

Settignano--Sculpture in S. Francesco at Rimini--Venetian

Sculpture--Verona--Guido Mazzoni of Modena--Certosa of Pavia--Colleoni

Chapel at Bergamo--Sansovino at Venice--Pagan Sculpture--Michael Angelo's

Scholars--Baccio Bandinelli--Bartolommeo Ammanati--Cellini--Gian

Bologna--Survey of the History of Renaissance Sculpture.

In the procession of the fine arts, sculpture always follows close upon

the steps of architecture, and at first appears in some sense as her

handmaid. Mediaeval Italy found her Pheidias in a great man of Pisan

origin, born during the first decade of the thirteenth century. It was

Niccola Pisano, architect and sculptor, who first breathed with the breath

of genius life into the dead forms of plastic art. From him we date the

dawn of the aesthetical Renaissance with the same certainty as from

Petrarch that of humanism; for he determined the direction not only of

sculpture but also of painting in Italy. To quote the language of Lord

Lindsay's panegyric: "Neither Dante nor Shakspere can boast such extent

and durability of influence; for whatever of highest excellence has been

achieved in sculpture and painting, not in Italy only but throughout

Europe, has been in obedience to the impulse he primarily gave, and in

following up the principle which he first struck out."[56] In truth,

Niccola Pisano put the artist on the right track of combining the study of

antiquity with the study of nature; and to him belongs the credit not

merely of his own achievement, considerable as that may be, but also of

the work of his immediate scholars and of all who learned from him to

portray life. From Niccola Pisano onward to Michael Angelo and Cellini we

trace one genealogy of sculptors, who, though they carried art beyond the

sphere of his invention, looked back to him as their progenitor. The man

who first emancipated sculpture from servile bondage, and opened a way for

the attainment of true beauty, would by the Greeks have been honoured with

a special cultas as the Hero Eponym of art. It remains for us after our

own fashion to pay some such homage to Pisano.

The chief difficulty with which the student of early art and literature

has to deal, is the insufficiency of positive information. Instead of

accurate dates and well-established facts he finds a legend, rich

apparently in detail, but liable at every point to doubt, and subject to

attack by plausible conjecture. In the absence of contemporary documents

and other trustworthy sources of instruction, he is tempted to substitute

his own hypotheses for tradition and to reconstruct the faulty outlines of

forgotten history according to his own ideas of fitness. The Germans have

been our masters in this species of destructive, dubitative, restorative

criticism; and it is undoubtedly flattering to the historian's vanity to

constitute himself a judge and arbiter in cases where tact and ingenuity

may claim to sift the scattered fragment of confused narration. Yet to

resist this temptation is in many cases a plain and simple duty.

Tradition, when not positively disproved, should be allowed to have its

full value; and a sounder historic sense is exercised in adopting its

testimony with due caution, than in recklessly rejecting it and

substituting guesses which the lack of knowledge renders unsubstantial.

Tradition may err about dates, details, and names. It is just here that

antiquarian research can render valuable help. But there are occasions

when the perusal of documents and the exercise of what is called the

higher criticism afford no surer basis for opinion. If in such cases a

legend has been formed and recorded, the student will advance further

toward comprehending the spirit of his subject by patiently considering

what he knows to be in part perhaps a mythus, than by starting with the

foregone conclusion that the legend must of necessity be worthless, and

that his cunning will suffice to supply the missing clue.[57]

Thus much I have said by way of preface to what follows upon Niccola

Pisano. Almost all we know about him is derived from a couple of

inscriptions, a few contracts, and his Life by Giorgio Vasari. It is clear

that Vasari often wrote with carelessness, confusing dates and places, and

taking no pains to verify the truth of his assertions. Much of Niccola's

biography reads like a legend in his pages--the popular and oral tradition

of a great man, whose panegyric it was more easy in the sixteenth century

to adorn with rhetoric than to chronicle the details of his life with

scrupulous fidelity. A well-founded conviction of Vasari's frequent

inaccuracy has induced recent critics to call in question many hitherto

accepted points about the nationality and training of Pisano. The

discussion, of their arguments I leave for the appendix, contenting myself

at present with relating so much of Vasari's legend as cannot, I think,

reasonably be rejected.[58]

Before the sculptor appeared in Niccola Pisano, he was already a famous

architect; and it must always be remembered that he and his school

subordinated the plastic to the constructive arts. It was not until the

year 1233, or 1237, according to different modern calculations, that he

executed his first masterpiece in sculpture.[59] This was a "Deposition

from the Cross," in high relief, placed in a lunette over one of the side

doors of S. Martino at Lucca. The noble forms of this group, the largeness

of its style, the breadth of drapery and freedom of action it displays,

but, above all, the unity of its design, proclaimed that a new era had

begun for art. In order to appreciate the importance of this relief, it

is only necessary to compare it with the processional treatment of similar

subjects upon early Christian sarcophagi, where each figure stands up

stiff and separate, nor can the controlling and combining artist's thought

be traced in any effort after composition. Ever since the silver age of

Hadrian, when a Bithynian slave by his beauty gave a final impulse to the

Genius of Greece, sculpture had been gradually declining until nothing was

left but a formal repetition of conventional outlines. The so-called

Romanesque and Byzantine styles were but the dotage of second childhood,

fumbling with the methods and materials of an irrecoverable past. It is

true, indeed, that unknown mediaeval carvers had shown an instinct for the

beautiful as well as great fertility of grotesque invention. The façades

of Lombard churches are covered with fanciful and sometimes forcibly

dramatic groups of animals and men in combat; and contemporaneously with

Niccola Pisano, many Gothic sculptors of the North were adorning the

façades and porches of cathedrals with statuary unrivalled in one style of

loveliness.[60] Yet the founder of a line of progressive artists had not

arisen, and, except in Italy, the conditions were still wanting under

which alone the plastic arts could attain to independence. A fresh start,

at once conscious and scientific, was imperatively demanded. This new

beginning sculpture took in the brain of Niccola Pisano, who returned from

the bye-paths of his predecessors to the free field of nature, and who

learned precious lessons from the fragments of classical sculpture

existing in his native town. As though to prove the essential dependence

of the modern revival upon the recovery of antique culture, we find that

his genius, in spite of its powerful originality and profoundly Christian

bias, required the confirmation which could only be derived from

Graeco-Roman precedent. In the Campo Santo at Pisa may still be seen a

sarcophagus representing the story of Hippolytus and Phaedra, where once

reposed the dust of Beatrice, the mother of the pious Countess Matilda of

Tuscany. Studying the heroic nudities and noble attitudes of this

bas-relief, Niccola rediscovered the right way of art--not by merely

copying his model, but by divining the secret of the grand style. His work

at Pisa contains abundant evidence that, while he could not wholly free

himself from the defects of the later Romanesque manner, betrayed by his

choice of short and square-set types, he nevertheless learned from the

antique how to aim at beauty and freedom in his imitation of the living

human form. A marble vase, sculptured with Indian Bacchus and his train of

Maenads, gave him further help. From these grave or graceful classic forms,

satisfied with their own goodliness, and void of inner symbolism, the

Christian sculptor drank the inspiration of Renaissance art. In the

"Adoration of the Magi," carved upon his Pisan pulpit, Madonna assumes the

haughty pose of Theseus' wife; while the high priest, in the

"Circumcision," displays the majesty of Dionysus leaning on the neck of

Ampelus. Nor again is the naked vigour of Hippolytus without its echo in

the figure of the young man--Hercules or Fortitude--upon a bracket of the

same pulpit. These sculptures of Pisano are thus for us a symbol of what

happened in the age of the Revival. The old world and the new shook hands;

Christianity and Hellenism kissed each other. And yet they still remained

antagonistic--fused externally by art, but severed in the consciousness

that, during those strange years of dubious impulse, felt the might of

both. Monks leaning from Pisano's pulpit preached the sinfulness of

natural pleasure to women whose eyes were fixed on the adolescent beauty

of an athlete. Not far off was the time when Filarete should cast in

bronze the legends of Ganymede and Leda for the portals of S. Peter's,

when Raphael should mingle a carnival of more than pagan sensuality with

Bible subjects in Leo's Loggie, when Guglielmo della Porta should place

the naked portrait of Giulia Bella in marble at the feet of Paul III. upon

his sepulchre.[61]

Niccola, meanwhile, did not follow his Roman models in any slavish spirit.

They were neither numerous nor excellent enough to compel blind imitation

or to paralyse inventive impulse. The thoughts to be expressed in marble

by the first modern artist were not Greek. This in itself saved him from

that tendency to idle reproduction which proved the ruin of the later

neo-pagan sculptors. Yet the fragments of antique work he found within his

reach, helped him to struggle after a higher quality of style, and

established standards of successful treatment. For the rest, his choice of

form and the proportions of his figures show that Niccola resorted to

native Tuscan models. If nothing of his handiwork were left but the

bas-relief of the "Inferno" on the Pisan pulpit, the torsos of the men

struggling with demons in that composition would prove this point. It

remains his crowning merit to have first expressed the mythology of

Christianity and the sentiment of the Middle Ages with the conscious aim

of a real artist. And here it may be noticed that, a true Italian, he

infused but little of intense or mystical emotion into his art. Niccola is

more of a humanist, if this word may be applied to a sculptor, than some

of his immediate successors. The hexagonal pulpit in the Baptistery of

Pisa, the octagonal pulpit in the cathedral of Siena, the fountain in the

marketplace of Perugia, and the shrine of S. Dominic at Bologna, all of

them designed and partly finished between 1260 and 1274 by Niccola and his

scholars, display his mastery over the art of sculpture in the maturity of

his genius. So highly did the Pisans prize their fellow-townsman's pulpit

that a law was passed and guardians were appointed for its

preservation--much in the same way as the Zeus of Pheidias was consigned

to the care of the Phaidruntai.

Niccola Pisano founded a school. His son Giovanni, and the numerous pupils

employed upon the monuments just mentioned at Siena, Bologna, and Perugia,

carried on the tradition of their master, and spread his style abroad

through Italy. Giovanni Pisano, to whom we owe the Spina Chapel and the

Campo Santo at Pisa, the façade of the Sienese Duomo, and the altar-shrine

of S. Donato at Arezzo--four of the purest works of Gothic art in

Italy--showed a very decided leaning to the vehement and mystic style of

the Transalpine sculptors. We trace a dramatic intensity in Giovanni's

work, not derived from his father, not caught from study of the antique,

and curiously blended with the general characteristics of the Pisan

school. In spite of the Gothic cusps introduced by Niccola into his

pulpits, the spirit of his work remained classical. The young Hercules

holding the lion's cub in his right hand upon his shoulder, while with his

left he tames the raging lioness, has the true Italian instinct for a

return to Latin style. The same sympathy with the past is observable in

the self-restraint and comparative coldness of the bas-reliefs at Pisa.

The Junonian attitude of Madonna, the senatorial dignity of Simeon, the

ponderous folding of the drapery, and the massive carriage of the neck

throughout, denote an effort to revivify an antique manner. What,

therefore, Niccola effected for sculpture was a classical revival in the

very depth of the Middle Ages. The case is different with his son

Giovanni. Profiting by the labours of his father, and following in his

footsteps, he carried the new art into another region, and brought a

genius of more picturesque and forcible temper into play. The value of

this new direction given to sculpture for the arts of Italy, especially

for painting, cannot be exaggerated. Without Giovanni's intervention, the

achievement of Niccola might possibly have been as unproductive of

immediate results as the Tuscan Romanesque, that mediaeval effort after the

Renaissance, was in architecture.[62]

The Gothic element, so cautiously adopted by Niccola, is used with

sympathy and freedom by his son, whose masterpiece, the pulpit of S.

Andrea at Pistoja, might be selected as the supreme triumph of Italian

Gothic sculpture. The superiority of that complex and consummate work of

plastic art over the pulpit of the Pisan Baptistery, in all the most

important qualities of style and composition, can scarcely be called in

question. Its only serious fault is an exaggeration of the height of the

pillars in proportion to the size of the hexagon they support. Like the

pulpits of the Baptistery, of the Duomo of Pisa, and of the Duomo of

Siena, it combines bas-reliefs and detached statues, carved capitals, and

sculptured lions, in a maze of marvellous invention; but it has no rival

in the architectonic effect of harmony, and the masterly feeling for

balanced masses it displays. The five subjects chosen by Giovanni for his

bas-reliefs are the "Nativity," the "Adoration of the Magi," the "Massacre

of the Innocents," the "Crucifixion," and the "Last Judgment." In the

"Nativity" our Lady is no longer the Roman matron of Niccola's conception,

but a graceful mother, young in years, and bending with the weakness of

childbirth. Her attitude, exquisite by the suggestion of tenderness and

delicacy, is one that often reappears in the later work of the Pisan

school--for example, in the rough _abozzamento_ in the Campo Santo at

Pisa, above the north door of the Duomo at Lucca, and at Orvieto on the

façade of the cathedral; but it has nowhere else been treated with the

same sense of beauty. The "Massacre of the Innocents," compared with this

relief, is a tragedy beside an idyll. Here the whole force of Giovanni's

eminently dramatic genius comes into full play. Not only has he treated

the usual incidents of mothers struggling with soldiers and bewailing

their dead darlings, but he has also introduced a motive, which might well

have been used by subsequent artists in dealing with the same subjects.

Herod is throned in one corner of the composition; before him stand a

group of men and women, some imploring the tyrant for mercy, some defying

him in impotent despair, and some invoking the curse of God upon his head.

In the "Adoration of the Magi," again, Giovanni shows originality by the

double action he has chosen to develop. On one side the kings are

sleeping, while an angel comes to wake them, pointing out the star. On the

other side they fall at the feet of the Madonna. It will be gathered even

from these bare descriptions that Giovanni introduced a stir of life and

movement, and felt his subjects with a poetic intensity, alien to the

ideal of Graeco-Roman sculpture. He effected a fusion between the grand

style revived by Niccola and the romantic fervour of the modern

imagination. It was in this way that the tradition handed down by him

proved inestimably serviceable to the painters.

The bas-reliefs, however, by no means form the chief attraction of this

pulpit. At each of its six angles stand saints, evangelists, and angels,

whose symbolism it is not now so easy to decipher. The most beautiful

groups are a company of angels blowing the judgment trumpets, and a winged

youth standing above a winged lion and bull. These groups separate the

several compartments of the bas-reliefs, and help to form the body of the

pulpit. Beneath, on capital's of the supporting pillars, stand the Sibyls,

each with her attendant genius, while prophets lean or crouch within the

spandrils of the arches. Thus every portion of this master-work is crowded

with figures--some detached, some executed in relief; and yet, amid so

great a multitude, the eye is not confused; the total effect is nowhere

dissipated. The whole seems governed by one constructive thought,

projected as a perfect unity of composition.[63]

A later work of Giovanni Pisano was the pulpit executed for the cathedral

of Pisa, now unfortunately broken up. An interesting fragment, one of the

supporting columns of the octagon which formed the body of this structure,

still exists in the museum of the Campo Santo. It is an allegorical statue

of Pisa. The Ghibelline city is personified as a crowned woman, suckling

children at her breast, and standing on a pedestal supported by the eagle

of the Empire. She wears a girdle of rope seven times knotted, to betoken

the rule of Pisa over seven subject islands. At the four corners of her

throne stand the four human virtues, Prudence, Temperance, Justice, and

Fortitude, distinguished less by beauty of shape than by determined energy

of symbolism. Temperance is a naked woman, with hair twisted in the knots

and curls of a Greek Aphrodite. Justice is old and wrinkled, clothed with

massive drapery, and holding in her hand the scales. Throughout this

group there is no attempt to realise forms pleasing to the eye; the

sculptor has aimed at suggesting to the mind as many points of

intellectual significance as possible. In spite of ugliness and hardness,

the "Allegory of Pisa" commands respect by vigour of conception, and

rivets attention by force of execution.

A more popular and pleasing monument by Giovanni Pisano is the tomb of

Benedict XI. in the church of S. Domenico at Perugia. The Pope, whose life

was so obnoxious to the ambition of Philip le Bel that his timely death

aroused suspicion of poison, lies asleep upon his marble bier with hands

crossed in an attitude of peaceful expectation.[64] At his head and feet

stand angels drawing back the curtains that would else have shrouded this

last slumber of a good man from the eyes of the living.[65] A contrast is

thus established between the repose of the dead and the ever-watchful

activity of celestial ministers. Sleep so guarded, the sculptor seeks to

tell us, must have glorious waking; and when those hands unfold upon the

Resurrection morning, the hushed sympathy of the attendant angels will

break into smiles and singing, as they lead the just man to the Lord he

served in life.

Whether Giovanni Pisano had any share in the sculpture on the façade of

the cathedral at Orvieto, is not known for certain. Vasari asserts that

Niccola and his pupils worked upon this series of bas-reliefs, setting

forth the whole Biblical history and the cycle of Christian beliefs from

the creation of the world to the last judgment. Yet we know that Niccola

himself died at least twelve years before the foundation of the church in

1290; nor is there any proof that his immediate scholars were engaged upon

the fabric. The Orvietan archives are singularly silent with regard to a

monument of so large extent and vast importance, which must have taxed to

the uttermost the resources of the ablest stone-carvers in Italy.[66]

Meanwhile, what Vasari says is valuable only as a witness to the fame of

Niccola Pisano. His manner, as continued and developed by his school, is

unmistakable at Orvieto: but in the absence of direct information, we are

left to conjecture the conditions under which this, the closing if not the

crowning achievement of thirteenth-century sculpture, was produced.

When the great founder of Italian art visited Siena in 1266 for the

completion of his pulpit in the Duomo, he found a guild of sculptors, or

_taglia-pietri_, in that city, numbering some sixty members, and governed

by a rector and three chamberlains. Instead of regarding Niccola with

jealousy, these craftsmen only sought to learn his method. Accordingly it

seems that a new impulse was given to sculpture in Siena; and famous

workmen arose who combined this art with that of building. The chief of

these was Lorenzo Maitani, who died in 1330, having designed and carried

to completion the Duomo of Orvieto during his lifetime.[67] While engaged

in this great undertaking, Maitani directed a body of architects,

stone-carvers, bronze-founders, mosaists, and painters, gathered together

into a guild from the chief cities of Tuscany. It cannot be proved that

any of the Pisani, properly so called, were among their number. Lacking

evidence to the contrary, we must give to Maitani, the master-spirit of

the company, full credit for the sculpture carried out in obedience to his

general plan. As the church of S. Francis at Assisi formed an epoch in the

history of painting, by concentrating the genius of Giotto on a series of

masterpieces, so the Duomo of Orvieto, by giving free scope to the school

of Pisa, marked a point in the history of sculpture. It would be difficult

to find elsewhere even separate works of greater force and beauty

belonging to this, the first or architectural, period of Italian

sculpture; and nowhere has the whole body of Christian belief been set

forth with method more earnest and with vigour more sustained.[68] The

subjects selected by these unknown craftsmen for illustration in marble,

are in many instances the same as those afterwards painted in fresco by

Michael Angelo and Raphael at Borne. Their treatment, for example, of the

creation of Adam and Eve, adopted in all probability from still earlier

and ruder workmen, after being refined by the improvements of successive

generations, may still be observed in the triumphs of the Sistine Chapel

and the Loggie.[69] It was the practice of Italian artists not to seek

originality by diverging from the traditional modes of presentation, but

to prove their mastery by rendering these as perfect and effective as the

maturity of art could make them. For the Italians, as before them for the

Greeks, plagiarism was a word unknown, in all cases where it was possible

to improve upon the invention of less fortunate predecessors. The student

of art may, therefore, now enjoy the pleasure of tracing sculpturesque or

pictorial motives from their genesis in some rude fragment to their final

development in the master-works of a Lionardo or a Raphael, where

scientific grouping of figures, higher idealisation of style, the

suggestion of freer movement, and more varied dramatic expression yield at

last the full flower that the simple germ enfolded.

Among the most distinguished scholars of Niccola Pisano's tradition must

now be mentioned Andrea da Pontadera, called Andrea Pisano, who carried

the manner of his master to Florence, and helped to fulfil the destiny of

Italian sculpture by submitting it to the rising art of painting. Under

the direction of Giotto he carved statues for the Campanile and the façade

of S. Maria del Fiore; and in the first gate of the Baptistery, he

bequeathed a model of bas-relief in bronze, which largely influenced the

style of masters in the fifteenth century. To overpraise the simplicity

and beauty of design, the purity of feeling, and the technical excellence

of Andrea's bronze-work, would be difficult. Many students will always be

found to prefer his self-restraint and delicacy to the more florid manner

of Ghiberti.[70] What we chiefly observe in this gate is the control

exercised by the sister art of painting over his mode of conception and

treatment. If Giovanni Pisano developed the dramatic and emphatic

qualities of Gothic sculpture, Andrea was attracted to its allegories; if

Giovanni infused romantic vehemence of feeling into the frigid classicism

of his father, Andrea diverged upon another track of picturesque

delineation. A new sun had now arisen in the heavens of art. This was the

sun of Giotto, whose genius, eminently pictorial, brought the Italians to

a true sense of their aesthetical vocation, illuminating with its

brightness the elder and more technically finished craft of the

stone-carver. Sculpture, which in the school of Niccola Pisano had been

subordinate to architecture, became a sub-species of painting in the hands

of Andrea.

It was thus, as I have elsewhere stated, that the twofold doom of plastic

art in Italy was accomplished. In order to embody the ideas of

Christianity, art had to think more of expression than of pure form.

Expression is the special sphere of painting; and therefore sculpture

followed the lead of the sister art, as soon as painting was strong enough

to give that lead, instead of remaining, as in Greece, the mistress of her

own domain. On the deeper reasons for this subordination of sculpture to

painting I have dwelt already, while showing that a large class of

subjects, where physical qualities are comparatively indifferent and of no

account, were forced upon the artist by Christianity.[71] Humility and

charity may be found alike in blooming youth or in ascetic age; nor is it

possible to characterize saints and martyrs by those corporeal

characteristics which distinguish a runner from a boxer, or a chaste

huntress from a voluptuous queen of love. Italian sculpture abandoned the

presentation of the naked human body as useless. The emotions written on

the face became of more importance than the modelling of the limbs, and

recourse was had to allegorical symbols or emblematic attitudes for the

interpretation of the artist's thought. Andrea Pisano's figure of Hope,

raising hands and eyes toward an offered crown, seems but a repetition of

the motive expressed by Giotto in the chiaroscuro frescoes of the Arena

chapel.[72] Owing to similar causes, drapery, which in Greece had served

to illustrate the structure or the movement of the body it clothed, was

used by the Italian sculptors to conceal the limbs, and to enhance by

flowing skirt or sinuous fold or agitated scarf some quality of the

emotions. The result was that sculpture assumed a place subordinate to

painting, and that the masterpieces of the early Italian carvers are

chiefly bas-reliefs--pictures in bronze or marble.[73]

In a like degree, though not for the same reason, sculpture in Italy

remained subordinate to architecture, until such time as the neo-Hellenism

of the full Renaissance produced a crowd of pseudo-classic statues,

destined to take their places--not in churches, but in the courtyards of

palaces and on the open squares of cities. The cause of this fact is not

far to seek. In ancient Greece the temple had been erected for the god,

and the statue dwelt within the cella like a master in his house.

Christianity forbade an image of the living God; consequently the Church

had another object than to roof the statue of a deity. It was the

meeting-place of a congregation bent on worshipping Him who dwells not in

houses made with hands, and whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain. The

vast spaces and aërial arcades of mediaeval architecture had their meaning

in relation to the mystic apprehension of an unseen power. It followed of

necessity that the carved work destined to decorate a Christian temple

could never be the main feature of the building. It existed for the

Church, and not the Church for it.[74]

Through Andrea Pisano the style of Niccola was extended to Venice. There

is reason to believe that he instructed Filippo Calendario, to whom we

should ascribe the sculptured corners of the Ducal Palace. Venice,

however, invariably exercised her own controlling influence over the arts

of aliens; so we find a larger, freer, richer, and more mundane treatment

in these splendid carvings than in aught produced by Pisan workmen for

their native towns of Tuscany.

Nino, the sculptor of the "Madonna della Rosa," the chief ornament of the

Spina chapel, and Tommaso, both sons of Andrea da Pontadera, together with

Giovanni Balduccio of Pisa, continued the traditions of the school founded

by Niccola. Balduccio, invited by Azzo Visconti to Milan, carved the

shrine of S. Peter Martyr in the church of S. Eustorgio, and impressed his

style on Matteo da Campione, the sculptor of the shrine of S. Augustine at

Pavia.[75] These facts, though briefly stated, are not without

significance. Travellers who have visited the churches of Pavia and Milan,

after studying the shrine, or _arca_ as Italians call it, of S. Dominic at

Bologna, must have noticed the ascendency of Pisan style in these three

Lombard towns, and have felt how widely Niccola's creative genius was

exercised. Traces of the same influence may perhaps be observed in the

tombs of the Scaligers at Verona.[76]

The most eminent pupil of Andrea Pisano, however, was a Florentine--the

great Andrea Arcagnuolo di Cione, commonly known as Orcagna. This man,

like the more illustrious Giotto, was one among the earliest of those

comprehensive, many-sided natures produced by Florence for her everlasting

glory. He studied the goldsmith's craft under his father, Cione, passing

the years of his apprenticeship, like other Tuscan artists, in the

technical details of an industry that then supplied the strictest method

of design. With his brother, Bernardo, he practised painting. Like Giotto,

he was no mean poet;[77] and like all the higher craftsmen of his age, he

was an architect. Though the church of Orsammichele owes its present form

to Taddeo Gaddi, Orcagna, as _capo maëstro_ after Gaddi's death, completed

the structure; and though the Loggia de' Lanzi, long ascribed to him by

writers upon architecture, is now known to be the work of Benci di Cione,

yet Orcagna's Loggia del Bigallo, more modest but not less beautiful,

prepared the way for its construction. Of his genius as a painter, proved

by the frescoes in the Strozzi chapel, I shall have to speak hereafter. As

a sculptor he is best known through the tabernacle of Orsammichele, built

to enshrine the picture of the Madonna by Ugolino da Siena.[78]

In this monument Orcagna employed carved bas-reliefs and statuettes,

intaglios and mosaics, incrustations of agates, enamels, and gilded glass

patterns, with a sense of harmony so refined, and a mastery over each kind

of workmanship so perfect, that the whole tabernacle is an epitome of the

minor arts of mediaeval Italy. The subordination of sculpture to

architectural effect is noticeable; and the Giottesque influence appears

even more strongly here than in the gate of Andrea Pisano. This influence

Orcagna received indirectly through his master in stone carving; it

formed, indeed, the motive force of figurative art during his lifetime.

The subjects of the "Annunciation," the "Nativity," the "Marriage of the

Virgin," and the "Adoration of the Three Kings," framed in octagonal

mouldings at the base of the tabernacle, illustrate the domination of a

spirit distinct both from the neo-Romanism of Niccola and the Gothicism of

Giovanni Pisano. That spirit is Florentine in a general sense, and

specifically Giottesque. Charity, again, with a flaming heart in her hand,

crowned with a flaming brazier, and suckling a child, is Giottesque not

only in allegorical conception but also in choice of type and treatment of

drapery.

While admiring the tabernacle of Orsammichele, we are reminded that

Orcagna was a goldsmith to begin with, and a painter. Sculpture he

practised as an accessory. What the artists of Florence gained in delicacy

of execution, accuracy of modelling, and precision of design by their

apprenticeship to the goldsmith's trade, was hardly perhaps sufficient to

compensate for loss of training in a larger style. It was difficult, we

fancy, for men so educated to conceive the higher purposes of sculpture.

Contented with elaborate workmanship and beauty of detail, they failed to

attain to such independence of treatment as may be reached by sculptors

who do not carry to their work the preconceptions of a narrower

handicraft. Thus even Orcagna's masterpiece may strike us not as the

plaything of a Pheidian genius condescending for once to "breathe through

silver," but of a consummate goldsmith taxing the resources of his craft

to form a monumental jewel.[79]

The façade of Orvieto was the final achievement of the first or

architectural period of Italian sculpture. Giotto, Andrea Pisano, and

Orcagna, formed the transition to the second period. To find one

characteristic title for the style of the fifteenth century is not easy,

since it was marked by many distinct peculiarities. If, however, we

choose to call it pictorial, we shall sufficiently mark the quality of

some eminent masters, and keep in view the supremacy of painting at this

epoch. A great public enterprise at Florence brings together in honourable

rivalry the chief craftsmen of the new age, and marks the advent of the

Renaissance. When the Signory, in concert with the Arte de' Mercanti,

decided to complete the bronze gates of the Baptistery in the first year

of the fifteenth century, they issued a manifesto inviting the sculptors

of Italy to prepare designs for competition. Their call was answered by

Giacomo della Quercia of Siena, by Filippo Brunelleschi and Lorenzo di

Cino Ghiberti of Florence, and by two other Tuscan artists of less note.

The young Donatello, aged sixteen, is said to have been consulted as to

the rival merits of the proofs submitted to the judges. Thus the four

great masters of Tuscan art in its prime met before the Florentine

Baptistery.[80] Giacomo della Quercia was excluded from the competition at

an early stage; but the umpires wavered long between Ghiberti and

Brunelleschi, until the latter, with notable generosity, feeling the

superiority of his rival, and conscious perhaps that his own laurels were

to be gathered in the field of architecture, withdrew his claim. In 1403,

Ghiberti received the commission for the first of the two remaining gates.

He afterwards obtained the second; and as they were not finished until

1452, the better part of his lifetime was spent upon them. He received in

all a sum of 30,798 golden florins for his labour and the cost of the

material employed.

The trial-pieces prepared by Brunelleschi and Ghiberti are now preserved

in the Bargello.[81] Their subject is the "Sacrifice of Isaac;" and a

comparison of the two leaves no doubt of Ghiberti's superiority. The

faults of Brunelleschi's model are want of repose and absence of

composition. Abraham rushes in a frenzy of murderous agitation at his son,

who writhes beneath the knife already at his throat. The angel swoops from

heaven with extended arms, reaching forth one hand to show the ram to

Abraham, and clasping the patriarch's wrist with the other. The ram

meanwhile is scratching his nose with his near hind leg; one of the

servants is taking a thorn from his foot, while the other fills a cup from

the stream at which the ass is drinking. Thus each figure has a separate

uneasy action. Those critics who contend that the unrest of

sixteenth-century sculpture was due to changes in artistic and religious

feeling wrought by the Renaissance, would do well to examine this plate,

and see how much account must be taken of the artist's temperament in

forming their opinion. Brunelleschi adhered to the style and taste of the

fifteenth century at its commencement; but the too fervid quality of his

character impaired his work as a sculptor. Ghiberti, on the other hand,

translated the calm of his harmonious nature into his composition. The

angel leans from heaven and points to the ram, which is seated quietly and

out of sight of the main actors. Isaac kneels in the attitude of a

submissive victim, though his head is turned aside, as if attracted by the

rush of pinions through the air; while Abraham has but just lifted his

hand, and the sacrifice is only suggested as a possibility by the naked

knife. The two servants are grouped below in conversation, one on each

side of the browsing ass. This power of telling a story plainly, but

without dramatic vehemence; of eliminating the painful details of the

subject, and combining its chief motives into one agreeable whole, gave

peculiar charm to Ghiberti's manner. It marked him as an artist

distinguished by good taste.

How Delia Quercia treated the "Sacrifice of Isaac" we do not know. His

bas-reliefs upon the façade of S. Petronio at Bologna, and round the font

of S. John's Chapel in the cathedral of Siena, enable us, however, to

compare his style with that of Ghiberti in the handling of a subject

common to both, the "Creation of Eve."[82] There is no doubt but that

Della Quercia was a formidable rival. Had the gates of the Baptistery been

entrusted to his execution, we might have possessed a masterpiece of more

heroic style. While smoothness and an almost voluptuous suavity of outline

distinguish Ghiberti's naked Eve, gliding upheld by angels from the side

of Adam at her Maker's bidding, Della Quercia's group, by the

concentration of robust and rugged power, anticipates the style of Michael

Angelo. Ghiberti treats the subject pictorially, placing his figures in a

landscape, and lavishing attendant angels. Della Quercia, in obedience to

the stricter laws of sculpture, restrains his composition to the three

chief persons, and brings them into close connection. While Adam reclines

asleep in a beautiful and highly studied attitude, Eve has just stepped

forth behind him, and God stands robed in massive drapery, raising His

hand as though to draw her into life. There is, perhaps, an excess of

dramatic action in the lifted right leg of Eve, and too much of pantomimic

language in the expressive hands of Eve and her Creator. The robe, again,

in its voluminous and snaky coils, and the triangular nimbus of the Deity,

convey an effect of heaviness rather than of majesty. Yet we feel, while

studying this composition, that it is a noble and original attempt,

falling but little short of supreme accomplishment. Without this

antecedent sketch, Michael Angelo might not have matured the most complete

of all his designs in the Sistine Chapel. The similarity between Delia

Quercia's bas-relief and Buonarroti's fresco of Eve is incontestable. The

young Florentine, while an exile in Bologna, and engaged upon the shrine

of S. Dominic, must have spent hours of study before the sculptures of S.

Petronio; so that this seed of Della Quercia's sowing bore after many

years the fruit of world-renowned achievement in Rome.

Two other memorable works of Della Quercia must be parenthetically

mentioned. These are the Fonte Gaja on the public square of Siena, now

unhappily restored, and the portrait of Ilaria del Carretto on her tomb in

the cathedral of Lucca. The latter has long been dear to English students

of Italian art through words inimitable for their strength of sympathetic

criticism.[83]

Ghiberti was brought up as a goldsmith by his stepfather, and it is said

that while a youth he spent much of his leisure in modelling portraits and

casting imitations of antique gems and coins for his friends. At the same

time he practised painting. We find him employed in decorating a palace at

Rimini for Carlo Malatesta, when his stepfather recalled him to Florence,

in order that he might compete for the gate of the Baptistery. It is

probable that from this early training Ghiberti derived the delicacy of

style and smoothness of execution that are reckoned among the chief merits

of his work. He also developed a manner more pictorial than sculpturesque,

which justifies our calling him a painter in bronze. When Sir Joshua

Reynolds remarked, "Ghiberti's landscape and buildings occupied so large a

portion of the compartments, that the figures remained but secondary

objects,"[84] his criticism might fairly have been taxed with some

injustice even to the second of the two gates. Yet, though exaggerated in

severity, his words convey a truth important for the understanding of this

period of Italian art.

The first gate may be cited as the supreme achievement of bronze-casting

in the Tuscan prime. In the second, by the introduction of elaborate

landscapes and the massing together of figures arranged in multitudes at

three and sometimes four distances, Ghiberti overstepped the limits that

separate sculpture from painting. Having learned perspective from

Brunelleschi, he was eager to apply this new science to his own craft, not

discerning that it has no place in noble bas-relief. He therefore

abandoned the classical and the early Tuscan tradition, whereby reliefs,

whether high or low, are strictly restrained to figures arranged in line

or grouped together without accessories. Instead of painting frescoes, he

set himself to model in bronze whole compositions that might have been

expressed with propriety in colour. The point of Sir Joshua's criticism,

therefore, is that Ghiberti's practice of distributing figures on a small

scale in spacious landscape framework was at variance with the severity of

sculptural treatment. The pernicious effect of his example may be traced

in much Florentine work of the mid Renaissance period which passed for

supremely clever when it was produced. What the unique genius of Ghiberti

made not merely pardonable but even admirable, became under other hands no

less repulsive than the transference of pictorial effects to painted

glass.[85]

That Ghiberti was not a great sculptor of statues is proved by his work at

Orsammichele. He was no architect, as we know from his incompetence to do

more than impede Brunelleschi in the building of the dome. He came into

the world to create a new and inimitable style of hybrid beauty in those

gates of Paradise. His susceptibility to the first influences of the

classical revival deserves notice here, since it shows to what an extent a

devotee of Greek art in the fifteenth century could worship the relics of

antiquity without passing over into imitation. When the "Hermaphrodite"

was discovered in the vineyard of S. Celso, Ghiberti's admiration found

vent in exclamations like the following: "No tongue could describe the

learning and art displayed in it, or do justice to its masterly style."

Another antique, found near Florence, must, he conjectures, have been

hidden out of harm's way by "some gentle spirit in the early days of

Christianity." "The touch only," he adds, "can discover its beauties,

which escape the sense of sight in any light."[86] It would be impossible

to express a reverential love of ancient art more tenderly than is done in

these sentences. So intense was Ghiberti's passion for the Greeks, that he

rejected Christian chronology and reckoned by Olympiads--a system that has

thrown obscurity over his otherwise precious notes of Tuscan artists. In

spite of this devotion, he never appears to have set himself consciously

to reproduce the style of Greek sculpture, or to have set forth Hellenic

ideas. He remained unaffectedly natural, and in a true sense Christian.

The paganism of the Renaissance is a phrase with no more meaning for him

than for that still more delicate Florentine spirit, Luca della Robbia;

and if his works are classical, they are so only in Goethe's sense, when

he pronounced, "the point is for a work to be thoroughly good, and then it

is sure to be classical."

One great advantage of the early days of the Renaissance over the latter

was this, that pseudo-paganism and pedantry had not as yet distorted the

judgment or misdirected the aims of artists. Contact with the antique

world served only to stimulate original endeavour, by leading the student

back to the fountain of all excellence in nature, and by exhibiting types

of perfection in technical processes. To ape the sculptors of Antinous, or

to bring to life again the gods who died with Pan, was not yet longed for.

Of the impunity with which a sculptor in that period could submit his

genius to the service and the study of ancient art without sacrificing

individuality, Donatello furnishes a still more illustrious example than

Ghiberti. Early in his youth Donatello journeyed with Brunelleschi to

Rome, in order to acquaint himself with the monuments then extant. How

thoroughly he comprehended the classic spirit is proved by the bronze

patera wrought for his patron Ruberto Martelli, and by the frieze of the

triumphant Bacchus.[87] Yet the great achievements of his genius were

Christian in their sentiment and realistic in their style. The bronze

"Magdalen" of the Florentine Baptistery and the bronze "Baptist" of the

Duomo at Siena[88] are executed with an unrelenting materialism, not alien

indeed to the sincerity of classic art, but divergent from antique

tradition, inasmuch as the ideas of repentant and prophetic asceticism had

no place in Greek mythology.

Donatello, with the uncompromising candour of an artist bent on marking

character, felt that he was bound to seize the very pith and kernel of his

subject. If a Magdalen were demanded of him, he would not condescend to

model a Venus and then place a book and skull upon a rock beside her; nor

did he imagine that the bloom and beauty of a laughing Faun were fitting

attributes for the preacher of repentance. It remained for later artists,

intoxicated with antique loveliness and corroded with worldly scepticism,

to reproduce the outward semblance of Greek deities under the pretence of

setting forth the myths of Christianity. Such compromise had not occurred

to Donatello. The motive of his art was clearly apprehended, his method

was sincere; certain phases of profound emotion had to be represented with

the physical characteristics proper to them. The result, ugly and painful

as it may sometimes be, was really more concordant with the spirit of

Greek method than Lionardo's "John" or Correggio's "Magdalen." That is to

say, it was straightforward and truthful; whereas the strange caprices of

the later Renaissance too often betrayed a double mind, disloyal alike to

paganism and to Christianity, in their effort to combine divergent forces.

It may still be argued that such conceptions as sorrow for sin and

mortification of the flesh, unflinchingly portrayed by haggard gauntness

in the saints of Donatello, are unfit for sculpturesque expression.

A more felicitous embodiment of modern feeling was achieved by Donatello

in "S. George" and "David." The former is a marble statue placed upon the

north wall of Orsammichele; the latter is a bronze, cast for Cosimo de'

Medici, and now exhibited in the Bargello.[89] Without striving to

idealise his models, the sculptor has expressed in both the Christian

conception of heroism, fearless in the face of danger, and sustained by

faith. The naked beauty of the boy David and the mailed manhood of S.

George are raised to a spiritual region by the type of feature and the

pose of body selected to interpret their animating impulse. These are no

mere portraits of wrestlers, such, as peopled the groves of Altis at

Olympia, no ideals of physical strength translated into brass and marble,

like the "Hercules" of Naples or the Vatican. The one is a Christian

soldier ready to engage Apollyon in battle to the death; the other the

boy-hero of a marvellous romance. The body in both is but the shrine of an

indwelling soul, the instrument and agent of a faith-directed will; and

the crown of their conflict is no wreath of laurel or of parsley. In other

words, the value of S. George and David to the sculptor lay not in their

strength and youthful beauty--though he has endowed them with these

excellent gifts--so much as in their significance for the eternal struggle

of the soul with evil. The same power of expressing Christian sentiment in

a form of perfect beauty, transcending the Greek type by profounder

suggestion of feeling, is illustrated in the well-known low-relief of an

angel's head in profile, technically one of Donatello's most masterly

productions.[90]

It is no part of my present purpose to enumerate the many works of

Donatello in marble and bronze; yet some allusion to their number and

variety is necessary in order to show how widely his influence was

diffused through Italy. In the monuments of Pope John XXIII., of Cardinal

Brancacci, and of Bartolommeo Aragazzi, he subordinated his genius to the

treatment of sepulchral and biographical subjects according to

time-honoured Tuscan usage. They were severally placed in Florence,

Naples, and Montepulciano. For the cathedral of Prato he executed

bas-reliefs of dancing boys; a similar series, intended for the

balustrades of the organ in S. Maria del Fiore, is now preserved in the

Bargello museum. The exultation of movement has never been expressed in

stone with more fidelity to the strict rules of plastic art. For his

friend and patron, Cosimo de' Medici, he cast in bronze the group of

"Judith and Holofernes"--a work that illustrates the clumsiness of

realistic treatment, and deserves to be remembered chiefly for its strange

fortunes. When the Medici fled from Florence in 1494, their palace was

sacked; the new republic took possession of Donatello's "Judith," and

placed it on a pedestal before the gate of the Palazzo Vecchio, with this

inscription, ominous to would-be despots: _Exemplum salutis publicae cives

posuere. MCCCCXCV_. It now stands near Cellini's "Perseus" under the

Loggia de' Lanzi. For the pulpits of S. Lorenzo, Donatello made designs of

intricate bronze bas-reliefs, which were afterwards completed by his pupil

Bertoldo. These, though better known to travellers, are less excellent

than the reliefs in bronze wrought by Donatello's own hand for the church

of S. Anthony at Padua.[91] To that city he was called in 1451, in order

that he might model the equestrian statue of Gattamelata. It still stands

on the Piazza, a masterpiece of scientific bronze-founding, the first

great portrait of a general on horseback since the days of Rome.[92] At

Padua, in the hall of the Palazzo della Ragione, is also preserved the

wooden horse, which is said to have been constructed by the sculptor for

the noble house of Capodilista. These two examples of equestrian modelling

marked an epoch in Italian statuary.

When Donato di Nicolo di Betto Bardi, called Donatello because men loved

his sweet and cheerful temper, died in 1466 at the age of eighty, the

brightest light of Italian sculpture in its most promising period was

extinguished. Donatello's influence, felt far and wide through Italy, was

of inestimable value in correcting the false direction toward pictorial

sculpture which Ghiberti, had he flourished alone at Florence, might have

given to the art. His style was always eminently masculine. However tastes

may differ about the positive merits of his several works, there can be no

doubt that the principles of sincerity, truth to nature, and technical

accuracy they illustrate, were all-important in an age that lent itself

too readily to the caprices of the fancy and the puerilities of florid

taste. To regret that Donatello lacked Ghiberti's exquisite sense of

beauty, is tantamount to wishing that two of the greatest artists of the

world had made one man between them.

Donatello did not, in the strict sense of the term, found a school.[93]

Andrea Verocchio, goldsmith, painter, and worker in bronze, was the most

distinguished of his pupils. To all the arts he practised, Verocchio

applied limited powers, a meagre manner, and a prosaic mind. Yet few men

have exercised at a very critical moment a more decided influence. The

mere fact that he numbered Lionardo da Vinci, Lorenzo di Credi, and Pietro

Perugino among his scholars, proves the esteem of his contemporaries; and

when we have observed that the type of face selected by Lionardo and

transmitted to his followers, appears also in the pictures of Lorenzo di

Credi and is first found in the "David" of Verocchio, we have a right to

affirm that the master of these men was an artist of creative genius as

well as a careful workman. Florence still points with pride to the

"Incredulity of Thomas" on the eastern wall of Orsammichele, to the "Boy

and Dolphin" in the court of the Palazzo Vecchio, and to the "David" of

this sculptor: but the first is spoiled by heaviness and angularity of

drapery; the second, though fanciful and marked by fluttering movement, is

but a caprice; the third outdoes the hardest work of Donatello by its

realism. Verocchio's "David," a lad of some seventeen years, has the lean,

veined arms of a stone-hewer or gold-beater. As a faithful portrait of the

first Florentine prentice who came to hand, this statue might have merit

but for the awkward cuirass and kilt that partly drape the figure.

The name of Verocchio is best known to the world through the equestrian

statue of Bartolommeo Colleoni. When this great Condottiere, the last

surviving general trained by Braccio da Montone, died in 1475, he

bequeathed a large portion of his wealth to Venice, on condition that his

statue on horseback should be erected in the Piazza di S. Marco. Colleoni,

having long held the bâton of the Republic, desired that after death his

portrait, in his habit as he lived, should continue to look down on the

scene of his old splendour. By an ingenious quibble the Senators adhered

to the letter of his will without infringing a law that forbade them to

charge the square of S. Mark with monuments. They ruled that the piazza in

front of the Scuola di S. Marco, better known as the Campo di S. Zanipolo,

might be chosen as the site of Colleoni's statue, and to Andrea Verocchio

was given the commission for its erection.

Andrea died in 1488 before the model for the horse was finished. The work

was completed, and the pedestal was supplied by Alessandro Leopardi. To

Verocchio, profiting by the example of Donatello's "Gattamelata," must be

assigned the general conception of this statue; but the breath of life

that animates both horse and rider, the richness of detail that enhances

the massive grandeur of the group, and the fiery spirit of its style of

execution were due to the Venetian genius of Leopardi. Verocchio alone

produced nothing so truly magnificent. This joint creation of Florentine

science and Venetian fervour is one of the most precious monuments of the

Renaissance. From it we learn what the men who fought the bloodless

battles of the commonwealths, and who aspired to principality, were like.

"He was tall," writes a biographer of Colleoni,[94] "of erect and

well-knit figure, and of well-proportioned limbs. His complexion tended

rather to brown, marked withal by bright and sanguine flesh-tints. He had

black eyes; their brilliancy was vivid, their gaze terrible and

penetrating. In the outline of his nose and in all his features he

displayed a manly nobleness combined with goodness and prudence." Better

phrases cannot be chosen to describe his statue.

While admiring this masterpiece and dwelling on its royal style, we are

led to deplore most bitterly the loss of the third equestrian statue of

the Renaissance. Nothing now remains but a few technical studies made by

Lionardo da Vinci for his portrait of Francesco Sforza. The two elaborate

models he constructed and the majority of his minute designs have been

destroyed. He intended, we are told, to represent the first Duke of the

Sforza dynasty on his charger, trampling the body of a prostrate and just

conquered enemy. Rubens' transcript from the "Battle of the Standard,"

enables us to comprehend to some extent how Lionardo might have treated

this motive. The severe and cautious style of Donatello, after gaining

freedom and fervour from Leopardi, was adapted to the ideal presentation

of dramatic passion by Lionardo. Thus Gattamelata, Colleoni, and Francesco

Sforza would, through their statues, have marked three distinct phases in

the growth of art. The final effort of Italian sculpture to express human

activity in the person of a mounted warrior has perished. In this sphere

we possess nothing which, like the tombs of S. Lorenzo in relation to

sepulchral statuary, completes a series of development.

If Donatello founded no school, this was far more the case with Ghiberti.

His supposed pupil, Antonio del Pollajuolo, showed no sign of Ghiberti's

influence, but struck out for himself a style distinguished by almost

brutal energy and bizarre realism--characteristics the very opposite to

those of his master. If the bronze relief of the "Crucifixion" in the

Bargello be really Pollajuolo's, we may even trace a leaning to Verocchio

in his manner. The emphatic passion of the women recalls the group of

mourners round the death-bed of Selvaggia Tornabuoni in Verocchio's

celebrated bas-relief. Pollajuolo, like so many Florentine artists, was a

goldsmith, a painter, and a worker in niello, before he took to sculpture.

As a goldsmith he is said to have surpassed all his contemporaries, and

his mastery over this art influenced his style in general. What we chiefly

notice, however, in his choice of subjects is a frenzy of murderous

enthusiasm, a grimness of imagination, rare among Italian artists. The

picture in the Uffizzi of "Hercules and Antaeus" and the well-known

engraving of naked men fighting a series of savage duels in a wood, might

be chosen as emphatic illustrations of his favourite motives. The fiercest

emotions of the Renaissance find expression in the clenched teeth,

strained muscles, knotted brows, and tense nerves, depicted by Pollajuolo

with eccentric energy. We seem to be assisting at some of those combats _a

steccato chiuso_ wherein Sixtus IV. delighted, or to have before our eyes

a fray between Crocensi and Vallensi in the streets of Rome.[95] The same

remarks apply to the terra-cotta relief by Pollajuolo in the South

Kensington Museum. This piece displays the struggles of twelve naked men,

divided into six pairs of combatants. Two of the couples hold short chains

with the left hand, and seek to stab each other with the right. In the

case of another two couples the fight is over, and the victor is insulting

his fallen foe. In each of the remaining pairs one gladiator is on the

point of yielding to his adversary. There are thus three several moments

of duel to the death, each illustrated by two couples. The mathematical

distribution of these dreadful groups gives an effect of frozen passion;

while the vigorous workmanship displays not only an enthusiasm for

muscular anatomy, but a real sympathy with blood-fury in the artist.

There was, therefore, a certain propriety in the choice of Pollajuolo to

cast the sepulchre of Sixtus IV. in bronze at Rome. The best judges

complain, not without reason, that the allegories surrounding this tomb

are exaggerated and affected in style; yet the dead Pope, stretched in

pomp upon his bier, commands more than merely historical interest; while

the figures, seated as guardians round the old man, terrible in death,

communicate an impression of monumental majesty. Criticised in detail,

each separate figure may be faulty. The composition, as a whole, is

picturesque and grandiose. The same can scarcely be said about the tomb of

Innocent VIII., erected by Antonio and his brother Piero del Pollajuolo.

While it perpetuates the memory of an uninteresting Pontiff, it has but

little, as a work of art, to recommend it. The Pollajuoli were not great

sculptors. In the history of Italian art they deserve a place, because of

the vivid personality impressed upon some portions of their work. Few

draughtsmen carried the study of muscular anatomy so far as Antonio.[96]

Luca della Robbia, whose life embraced the first eighty years of the

fifteenth century, offers in many important respects a contrast to his

contemporaries Ghiberti and Donatello, and still more to their immediate

followers. He made his art as true to life as it is possible to be,

without the rugged realism of Donatello or the somewhat effeminate graces

of Ghiberti. The charm of his work is never impaired by scientific

mannerism--that stumbling-block to critics like De Stendhal in the art of

Florence; nor does it suffer from the picturesqueness of a sentimental

style. How to render the beauty of nature in her most delightful

moments--taking us with him into the holiest of holies, and handling the

sacred vessels with a child's confiding boldness--was a secret known to

Luca della Robbia alone. We may well find food for meditation in the

innocent and cheerful inspiration of this man, whose lifetime coincided

with a period of sordid passions and debased ambition in the Church and

States of Italy.

Luca was apprenticed in his youth to a goldsmith; but of what he wrought

before the age of forty-five, we know but little.[97] At that time his

faculty had attained full maturity, and he produced the groups of dancing

children and choristers intended for the organ gallery of the Duomo.

Wholly free from affectation, and depending for effect upon no merely

decorative detail, these bas-reliefs deserve the praise bestowed by Dante

on the sculpture seen in Purgatory:[98]--

Dinanzi a noi pareva si verace,

Quivi intagliato in un atto soave,

Che non sembrava immagine che tace.

Movement has never been suggested in stone with less exaggeration, nor

have marble lips been made to utter sweeter and more varied music. Luca's

true perception of the limits to be observed in sculpture, appears most

eminently in the glazed terra-cotta work by which he is best known. An

ordinary artist might have found the temptation to aim at showy and

pictorial effects in this material overwhelming. Luca restrained himself

to pure white on pale blue, and preserved an exquisite simplicity of line

in all his compositions. There is an almost unearthly beauty in the

profiles of his Madonnas, a tempered sweetness in the modulation of their

drapery and attitude, that prove complete mastery in the art of rendering

evanescent moments of expression, the most fragile subtleties of the

emotions that can stir a tranquil spirit. Andrea della Robbia, the nephew

of Luca, with his four sons, Giovanni, Luca, Ambrogio, and Girolamo,

continued to manufacture the glazed earthenware of Luca's invention. These

men, though excellent artificers, lacked the fine taste of their teacher.

Coarser colours were introduced; the eye was dazzled with variety; but the

power of speaking to the soul as Luca spoke was lost.[99]

After the Della Robbias, this is the place to mention Agostino di Gucci or

di Duccio,[100] a sculptor who handled terra-cotta somewhat in the manner

of Donatello's flat-relief, introducing more richness of detail and aiming

at more passion than Luca's taste permitted. For the oratory of S.

Bernardino at Perugia he designed the façade partly in stone and partly in

baked clay--crowded with figures, flying, singing, playing upon

instruments of music, with waving draperies and windy hair and the ecstasy

of movement in their delicately modelled limbs. If nothing else remained

of Agostino's workmanship, this façade alone would place him in the first

rank of contemporary artists. He owed something, perhaps, to his material;

for terra-cotta has the charm of improvisation. The hand, obedient to the

brain, has made it in one moment what it is, and no slow hours of labour

at the stone have dulled the first caprice of the creative fancy. Work,

therefore, which, if translated into marble, might have left our sympathy

unstirred, affects us with keen pleasure in the mould of plastic clay.

What prodigality of thought and invention has been lavished on the

terra-cotta models of unknown Italian artists! What forms and faces,

beautiful as shapes of dreams, and, like dreams, so airy that we think

they will take flight and vanish, lean to greet us from cloisters and

palace fronts in Lombardy! To catalogue their multitude would be

impossible. It is enough to select one instance out of many; this shall be

taken from the chapel of S. Peter Martyr in S. Eustorgio at Milan. High up

around the cupola runs a frieze of angels, singing together and dancing

with joined hands, while bells composed of fruits and flowers hang down

between them. Each angel is an individual shape of joy; the soul in each

moves to its own deep melody, but the music made of all is one. Their

raiment flutters, the bells chime; the chorus of their gladness falls like

voices through a star-lit heaven, half-heard in dreams and everlastingly

remembered.

Four sculptors, the younger contemporaries of Luca della Robbia, and

marked by certain common qualities, demand attention next. All the work of

Antonio Rossellino, Matteo Civitali, Mino da Fiesole, and Benedetto da

Majano, is distinguished by sweetness, grace, tranquillity, and

self-restraint--as though these artists had voluntarily imposed limits on

their genius, refusing to trespass beyond a traced circle of religious

subjects, or to aim at effects unrealisable by purity of outline, suavity

of expression, delicacy of feeling, and urbanity of style. The charm of

manner they possess in common, can scarcely he defined except by similes.

The innocence of childhood, the melody of a lute or song-bird as

distinguished from the music of an orchestra, the rathe tints of early

dawn, cheerful light on shallow streams, the serenity of a simple and

untainted nature that has never known the world--many such images occur

to the mind while thinking of the sculpture of these men. To charge them

with insipidity, immaturity, and monotony, would be to mistake the force

of genius and skill displayed by them. We should rather assume that they

confined themselves to certain types of tranquil beauty, without caring to

realise more obviously striking effects, and that this was their way of

meeting the requirements of sculpture considered as a Christian art. The

melody of their design, meanwhile, is like the purest song-music of

Pergolese or Salvator Rosa, unapproachably perfect in simple outline, and

inexhaustibly refreshing.

Though it is possible to characterise the style of these sculptors by some

common qualities observable in their work, it should rather be the aim of

criticism to point out their differences. Antonio Rossellino, for example,

might be distinguished by his leaning toward the manner of Ghiberti, whose

landscape backgrounds he has adopted in the circular medallions of his

monumental sculpture. A fine perception of the poetic capabilities of

Christian art is displayed in Rossellino's idyllic treatment of the

Nativity--the adoration of the shepherds, the hush of reverential

stillness in the worship Mary pays her infant son.[101] To the qualities

of sweetness and tranquillity rare dignity is added in the monument of the

young Cardinal di Portogallo.[102] The sublimity of the slumber that is

death has never been more nobly and feelingly portrayed than in the supine

figure and sleeping features of this most beautiful young man, who lies

watched by angels beneath a heavy-curtained canopy. The genii of eternal

repose modelled by Greek sculptors are twin-brothers of Love, on whom

perpetual slumber has descended amid poppy-fields by Lethe's stream. The

turmoil of the world is over for them; they will never wake again; they do

not even dream. Sleep is the only power that still has life in them. But

the Christian cannot thus conceive the mystery of the soul "fallen on

sleep." His art must suggest a time of waiting and a time of waking; and

this it does partly through the ministration of attendant angels, who

would not be standing there on guard if the clay-cold corpse had no

futurity, partly by breathing upon the limbs and visage of the dead a

spirit as of life suspended for a while. Thus the soul herself is imaged

in the marble "most sweetly slumbering in the gates of dreams."

What Vespasiano tells us of this cardinal, born of the royal house of

Portugal, adds the virtue of sincerity to Rossellino's work, proving there

is no flattery of the dead man in his sculpture.[103] "Among his other

admirable virtues," says the biographer, "Messer Jacopo di Portogallo

determined to preserve his virginity, though he was beautiful above all

others of his age. Consequently he avoided all things that might prove

impediments to his vow, such as free discourse, the society of women,

balls, and songs. In this mortal flesh he lived as though he had been free

from it--the life, we may say, rather of an angel than a man. And if his

biography were written from his childhood to his death, it would be not

only an ensample, but confusion to the world. Upon his monument the hand

was modelled from his own, and the face is very like him, for he was most

lovely in his person, but still more in his soul."

While contemplating this monument of the young cardinal, we feel that the

Italians of that age understood sepulchral sculpture far better than their

immediate successors. They knew how to carve the very soul, according to

the lines which our Webster, a keen observer of all things relating to

the grave and death, has put into Jolenta's lips:--

But indeed,

If ever I would have mine drawn to the life,

I would have a painter steal it at such time

I were devoutly kneeling at my prayers;

There is then a heavenly beauty in't; _the soul

Moves in the superficies_.

The same Webster condemns that evil custom of aping life and movement on

the monuments of dead men, which began to obtain when the motives of pure

repose had been exhausted. "Why," asks the Duchess of Malfi, "do we grow

fantastical in our death-bed? Do we affect fashion in the grave?" "Most

ambitiously," answers Bosola; "princes' images on their tombs do not lie

as they were wont, seeming to pray up to heaven; but with their hands

under their cheeks (as if they died of the toothache): they are not carved

with their eyes fixed upon the stars; but, as their minds were wholly bent

upon the world, the self-same way they seem to turn their faces." A more

trenchant criticism than this could hardly have been pronounced upon

Andrea Contucci di Monte Sansavino's tombs of Ascanio Sforza and Girolamo

della Rovere, if Bosola had been standing before them in the church of S.

Maria del Popolo when he spoke. Were it the function of monumental

sculpture to satirise the dead, or to point out their characteristic

faults for the warning of posterity, then the sepulchres of these worldly

cardinals of Sixtus IV.'s creation would be artistically justified. But

the object of art is not this. The idea of death, as conceived by

Christians, has to be portrayed. The repose of the just, the resurrection

of the body, and the coming judgment, afford sufficient scope for

treatment of good men and bad alike. Or if the sculptor have sublime

imagination, he may, like Michael Angelo, suggest the alternations of the

day and night, slumber and waking, whereby "our little life is rounded

with a sleep."

This digression will hardly be thought superfluous when we reflect how

large a part of the sculptor's energy was spent on tombs in Italy. Matteo

Civitali of Lucca was at least Rossellino's equal in the sculpturesque

delineation of spiritual qualities; but the motives he chose for treatment

were more varied. All his work is penetrated with deep, prayerful, intense

feeling; as though the artist's soul, poured forth in ecstasy and

adoration, had been given to the marble. This is especially true of two

angels kneeling upon the altar of the Chapel of the Sacrament in Lucca

Cathedral. Civitali, by singular good fortune, was chosen in the best

years of his life to adorn the cathedral of his native city; and it is

here, rather than at Genoa, where much of his sculpture may also be seen,

that he deserves to be studied. For the people of Lucca he designed the

Chapel of the Santo Volto--a gem of the purest Renaissance

architecture--and a pulpit in the same style. His most remarkable

sculpture is to be found in three monuments: the tombs of Domenico Bertini

and Pietro da Noceto, and the altar of S. Regulus. The last might be

chosen as an epitome of all that is most characteristic in Tuscan

sculpture of the earlier Renaissance. It is built against the wall, and

architecturally designed so as to comprehend a full-length figure of the

bishop stretched upon his bier and watched by angels, a group of Madonna

and her child seated above him, a row of standing saints below, and a

predella composed of four delicately finished bas-reliefs. Every part of

this complex work is conceived with spirit and executed with care; and the

various elements are so combined as to make one composition, the body of

the saint on his sarcophagus forming the central object of the whole.

To do more than briefly mention the minor sculptors of this group would be

impossible. Mino di Giovanni, called Da Fiesole, was characterised by

grace that tended to degenerate into formality. The tombs in the Abbey of

Florence have an almost infantine sweetness of style, which might be

extremely piquant, were it not that Mino pushed this quality in other

works to the verge of mannerism.[104] Their architectural features are the

same as those of similar monuments in Tuscany:--a shallow recess, flanked

by Renaissance pilasters, and roofed with a semicircular arch; within the

recess, the full-length figure of the dead man on a marble coffin of

antique design; in the lunette above, a Madonna carved in low relief.[105]

Mino's bust of Bishop Salutati in the cathedral church of Fiesole is a

powerful portrait, no less distinguished for vigorous individuality than

consummate workmanship. The waxlike finish of the finely chiselled marble

alone betrays that delicacy which with Mino verged on insipidity. The same

faculty of character delineation is seen in three profiles, now in the

Bargello Museum, attributed to Mino. They represent Frederick Duke of

Urbino, Battista Sforza, and Galeazzo Sforza. The relief is very low,

rising at no point more than half an inch above the surface of the ground,

but so carefully modulated as to present a wonderful variety of light and

shade, and to render the facial expression with great vividness.

Desiderio da Settignano, one of Donatello's few scholars, was endowed with

the same gift of exquisite taste as his friend Mino da Fiesole;[106] but

his inventive faculty was bolder, and his genius more robust, in spite of

the profuse ornamentation and elaborate finish of his masterpiece, the

tomb of Carlo Marsuppini in S. Croce. The bust he made of Marietta di

Palla degli Strozzi enables us to compare his style in portraiture with

that of Mino.[107] It would be hard to find elsewhere a more captivating

combination of womanly sweetness and dignity. We feel, in looking at these

products of the best age of Italian sculpture, that the artists who

conceived them were, in the truest sense of the word, gentle. None but men

courteous and unaffected could have carved a face like that of Marietta

Strozzi, breathing the very spirit of urbanity. To express the most

amiable qualities of a living person in a work of art that should suggest

emotional tranquillity by harmonious treatment, and indicate the

temperance of a disciplined nature by self-restraint and moderation of

style, and to do this with the highest technical perfection, was the

triumph of fifteenth-century sculpture.

An artist who claims a third place beside Mino and his friend, "il bravo

Desider si dolce e bello,"[108] is Benedetto da Majano. In Benedetto's

bas-reliefs at San Gemignano, carved for the altars of those unlovely

Tuscan worthies, S. Fina and S. Bartolo, we find a pictorial treatment of

legendary subjects, proving that he had studied Ghirlandajo's frescoes.

The same is true about his pulpit in S. Croce at Florence, his treatment

of the story of S. Savino at Faenza, and his "Annunciation" in the church

of Monte Oliveto at Naples. Benedetto, indeed, may be said to illustrate

the working of Ghiberti's influence by his liberal use of landscape and

architectural backgrounds; but the style is rather Ghirlandajo's than

Ghiberti's. If it was a mistake in the sculptors of that period to

subordinate their art to painting, the error, we feel, was aggravated by

the imitation of a manner so prosaic as that of Ghirlandajo. That

Benedetto began life as a _tarsiatore_ may perhaps help to account for his

pictorial style in bas-relief.[109] In estimating his total claim as an

artist, we must not forget that he designed the formidable and splendid

Strozzi Palace.

It will be observed that all the sculptors hitherto mentioned have been

Tuscans; and this is due to no mere accident--nor yet to caprice on the

part of their historian. Though the other districts of Italy produced

admirable workmen, the direction given to this art proceeded from Tuscany.

Florence, the metropolis of modern culture, determined the course of the

aesthetical Renaissance. Even at Rimini we cannot account for the carvings

in low relief, so fanciful, so delicately wrought, and so profusely

scattered over the side chapels of S. Francesco, without the intervention

of two Florentines, Bernardo Ciuffagni and Donatello's pupil Simone; while

in the palace of Urbino we trace some hand not unlike that of Mino da

Fiesole at work upon the mouldings of door and architrave, cornice and

high-built chimney.[110] Not only do we thus find Tuscan craftsmen or

their scholars employed on all the great public buildings throughout

Italy; but it also happens that, except in Tuscany, the decoration of

churches and palaces is not unfrequently anonymous.

This does not, however, interfere with the truth that sculpture, like all

the arts, assumed a somewhat different character in each Italian city. The

Venetian stone-carvers leaned from the first to a richer and more

passionate style than the Florentine, reproducing the types of Cima's and

Bellini's paintings.[111] Whole families, like the Bregni--classes, like

the Lombardi--schools, like that of Alessandro Leopardi, worked together

on the monumental sculpture of S. Zanipolo. In the tombs of the Doges the

old Pisan motive of the curtains (first used by Arnolfo di Cambio at

Orvieto, and afterwards with grand effect by Giovanni Pisano at Perugia)

is expanded into a sumptuous tent-canopy. Pages and genii and mailed

heroes take the place of angels, and the marine details of Roman reliefs

are copied in the subordinate decoration. At Verona the mediaeval tombs of

the Scaligers, with their vast chest-like sarcophagi and mounted warriors,

exhibit features markedly different from the monuments of Tuscany; while

the mixture of fresco with sculpture, in monuments like that of the

Cavalli in S. Anastasia, and in many altar-pieces, is at variance with

Florentine usage. On the terra-cotta mouldings, so frequent in Lombard

cities, I have already had occasion to touch briefly. They almost

invariably display a feeling for beauty more sensuous, with less of

scientific purpose in their naturalism, than is common in the Tuscan

style. Guido Mazzoni of Modena, called Il Modanino, may be mentioned as

the sculptor who freed terra-cotta from its dependence upon architecture,

and who modelled groups of overpowering dramatic realism. His "Pietà," in

the Church of Monte Oliveto at Naples, is valuable, less for its

passionate intensity of expression than for the portraits of Pontano,

Sannazzaro, and Alfonso of Aragon.[112] This sub-species of sculpture was

freely employed in North Italy to stimulate devotion, and to impress the

people with lively pictures of the Passion. The Sacro Monte at Varallo,

for example, is covered with a multitude of chapels, each one of which

presents some chapter of Bible history dramatically rendered by life-size

groups of terra-cotta figures. Some of these were designed by eminent

painters, and executed by clever modellers in clay. Even now they are

scarcely less stirring to the mind of a devout spectator than the scenes

of a mediaeval Mystery may have been.

The Certosa of Pavia, lastly, is the centre of a school of sculpture that

has little in common with the Florentine tradition. Antonio Amadeo[113]

and Andrea Fusina, acting in concert with Ambrogio Borgognone the

painter, gave it in the fifteenth century that character of rich and

complex decorative beauty which many generations of artists were destined

to continue and complete. Among the countless sculptors employed upon its

marvellous façade Amadeo asserts an individuality above the rest, which is

further manifested in his work in the Cappella Colleoni at Bergamo. We

there learn to know him, not only as an enthusiastic cultivator of the

mingled Christian and pagan manner of the _quattrocento_, but as an artist

in the truest sense of the word sympathetic. The sepulchral portrait of

Medea, daughter of the great Condottiere, has a grace almost beyond that

of Della Quercia's "Ilaria."[114] Much, no doubt, is due to the peculiarly

fragile beauty of the girl herself, who lies asleep with little crisp

curls clustering upon her forehead, and with a string of pearls around her

slender throat. But the sensibility to loveliness so delicate, and the

power to render it in marble with so ethereal a touch upon the rigid

stone, belong to the sculptor, and win for him our worship.

The list of fifteenth-century sculptors is almost ended; and already, on

the threshold of the sixteenth, stands the mighty form of Michael Angelo.

Andrea Contucci da Sansavino and his pupil Jacopo Tatti, called also

Sansovino, after his master, must, however, next be mentioned as

continuing the Florentine tradition without subservience to the style of

Buonarroti. Andrea da Sansavino was a sculptor in whom for the first time

the faults of the mid-Renaissance period are glaringly apparent. He

persistently sacrificed simplicity of composition to decorative

ostentation, and tranquillity of feeling to theatrical effect. The truth

of this will be acknowledged by all who have studied the tombs of the

cardinals in S. Maria del Popolo already mentioned,[115] and the

bas-reliefs upon the Santa Casa at Loreto. In technical workmanship Andrea

proved himself an able craftsman, modelling marble with the plasticity of

wax, and lavishing patterns of the most refined invention. Yet the

decorative prodigality of this master corresponded to the frigid and

stylistic graces of the neo-Latin poets. It was so much mannerism--adopted

without real passion from the antique, and applied with a rhetorical

intention. Those acanthus scrolls and honeysuckle borders, in spite of

their consummate finish, fail to arrest attention, leaving the soul as

unstirred as the Ovidian cadences of Bembo.

Jacopo Tatti was a genius of more distinction. Together with San Gallo and

Bramante he studied the science of architecture in Rome, where he also

worked at the restoration of newly discovered antiques, and cast in bronze

a copy of the "Laocoon." Thus equipped with the artistic learning of his

age, he was called in 1523 by the Doge, Andrea Gritti, to Venice. The

material pomp of Venice at this epoch, and the pride of her unrivalled

luxury, affected his imagination so powerfully that his genius, tutored by

Florentine and Umbrian masters among the ruins of old Rome, became at once

Venetian. In the history of the Renaissance the names of Titian and

Aretino, themselves acclimatised aliens, are inseparably connected with

that of their friend Sansovino. At Venice he lived until his death in

1570, building the Zecca, the Library, the Scala d'Oro in the Ducal

Palace, and the Loggietta beneath the bell-tower of S. Mark. In all his

work he subordinated sculpture to architecture, and his statuary is

conceived in the _bravura_, manner of Renaissance paganism. Whatever may

be the faults of Sansovino in both arts, it cannot be denied that he

expressed, in a style peculiar to himself, the large voluptuous external

life of Venice at a moment when this city was the Paris or the Corinth of

Renaissance Europe. At the same time, the shallowness of Sansovino's

inspiration as a sculptor is patent in his masterpieces of parade--the

"Neptune" and the "Mars," guarding the Scala d'Oro. Separated from the

architecture of the court and staircase, they are insignificant in spite

of their colossal scale. In their place they add a haughty grandeur, by

the contrast which their flowing forms and arrogant attitudes present to

the severer lines of the construction. But they are devoid of artistic

sincerity, and occupy the same relation to true sculpture as flourishes of

rhetoric, however brilliant, to poetry embodying deep thought or passion.

At first sight they impose: on further acquaintance we find them chiefly

interesting as illustrations of a potent civic life upon the wane,

gorgeous in its decay.

Sansovino was a first-rate craftsman. The most finished specimen of his

skill is the bronze door of the Sacristy of S. Marco, upon which he is

said to have worked through twenty years. Portraits of the sculptor,

Titian, and Pietro Aretino are introduced into the decorative border.

These heads start from the surface of the gate with astonishing vivacity.

That Aretino should thus daily assist in effigy at the procession of

priests bearing the sacred emblems from the sacristy to the high altar of

S. Mark, is one of the most characteristic proofs of sixteenth-century

indifference to things holy and things profane.

Jacopo Sansovino marks the final intrusion of paganism into modern art.

The classical revival had worked but partially and indirectly upon

Ghiberti and Donatello--not because they did not feel it most intensely,

but because they clung to nature far more closely than to antique

precedent. This enthusiasm inspired Sansovino with the best and strongest

qualities that he can boast; and if his genius had been powerful enough to

resist the fascination of merely rhetorical effects, he might have

produced a perfect restoration of the classic style. His was no lifeless

or pedantic imitation of antique fragments, but a real expression of the

fervour with which the modern world hailed the discoveries revealed to it

by scholarship. This is said advisedly. The most beautiful and spirited

pagan statue of the Renaissance period, justifying the estimate here made

of Sansovino's genius, is the "Bacchus" exhibited in the Bargello Museum.

Both the Bacchus and the Satyriscus at his side are triumphs of realism,

irradiated and idealised by the sculptor's vivid sense of natural

gladness. Considered as a restitution of the antique manner, this statue

is decidedly superior to the "Bacchus" of Michael Angelo. While the

mundane splendour of Venice gave body and fulness to Sansovino's paganism,

he missed the self-restraint and purity of taste peculiar to the studious

shades of Florence. In his style, both architectural and sculptural, the

neo-pagan sensuality of Italy expanded all its bloom.

For the artist at this period a Greek myth and a Christian legend were all

one. Both afforded the occasion for displaying technical skill in fluent

forms, devoid of any but voluptuous feeling; while both might be

subordinated to rich effects of decoration.[116] To this point the

intellectual culture of the fifteenth century had brought the plastic arts

of Italy, by a process similar to that which ended in the "Partus

Virginis" of Sannazzaro. They were still indisputably vigorous, and

working in accordance with the movement of the modern spirit. Yet the

synthesis they attempted to effect between heathenism and Christianity, by

a sheer effort of style, and by indifferentism, strikes us from the point

of view of art alone, not reckoning religion or morality, as

unsuccessful. Still, if it be childish on the one hand to deplore that the

Christian earnestness of the earlier masters had failed, it would be even

more ridiculous to complain that paganism had not been more entirely

recovered. The double-mind of the Renaissance, the source of its weakness

in art as in thought, could not be avoided, because humanity at this

moment had to lose the mediaeval sincerity of faith, and to assimilate the

spirit of a bygone civilisation. This, for better or for worse, was the

phase through which the intellect of modern Europe was obliged to pass;

and those who have confidence in the destinies of the human race, will not

spend their strength in moaning over such shortcomings as the periods of

transition bring inevitably with them. The student of Italian history may

indeed more reasonably be allowed to question whether the arts, if left to

follow their own development unchecked, might not have recovered from the

confusion of the Renaissance and have entered on a stage of nobler

activity through earnest and unaffected study of nature. But the

enslavement of the country, together with the counter-Reformation,

suspended the Renaissance in mid-career; and what remains of Italian art

is incomplete. Besides, it must be borne in mind that the confusion of

opinions consequent upon the clash of the modern with the ancient world,

left no body of generally accepted beliefs to express; nor has the time

even yet arrived for a settlement and synthesis that shall be favourable

to the activity of the figurative arts.

Sansovino himself was neither original nor powerful enough, to elevate the

mixed motives of Renaissance sculpture by any lofty idealisation. To do

that remained for Michael Angelo. The greatness of Michael Angelo consists

in this--that while literature was sinking into the frivolity of Academies

and the filth of the Bernesque "Capitoli," while the barefaced villanies

of Aretino won him credit, while sensual magnificence formed the ideal of

artists who were neither Greeks nor Christians, while Ariosto found no

subject fitter for his genius than a glittering romance, he and he alone

maintained the Dantesque dignity of the Italian intellect in his

sculpture. Michael Angelo stands so far apart from other men, and is so

gigantic a force for good and evil in the history of art, that to estimate

his life and labour in relation to the Renaissance must form the subject

of a separate chapter. For the present it is enough to observe that his

immediate scholars, Raffaello da Montelupo, and Gian Angelo Montorsoli,

caught little from their master but the mannerism of contorted form and

agitated action. This mannerism, a blemish even in the strong work of

Buonarroti, became ridiculous when adopted by men of feeble powers and

passionless imagination. By straining the art of sculpture to its utmost

limits, Michael Angelo expressed vehement emotions in marble; and the

forced attitudes affected in his work had their value as significant of

spiritual struggle. His imitators showed none of their master's sublime

force, none of that _terribilità_ which made him unapproachable in social

intercourse and inimitable in art. They merely fancied that dignity and

beauty were to be achieved by placing figures in difficult postures,

exaggerated muscular anatomy, and twisting the limbs of their models upon

sections of ellipses in uncomfortable attitudes, till the whole of their

work was writhen into uncouth lines. Buonarroti himself was not

responsible for these results. He wrought out his own ideal with the

firmness of a genius that obeys the law of its own nature, doing always

what it must. That the decadence of sculpture into truculent bravado was

independent of his direct influence, is further proved by the inefficiency

of his contemporaries.

Baccio Bandinelli and Bartolommeo Ammanati filled the squares of the

Italian cities with statues of Hercules and Satyrs, Neptune and

River-gods. We know not whether to select the vulgarity, the feebleness,

or the pretentiousness of these pseudo-classical colossi for condemnation.

They have nothing Greek about them but their names, their nakedness, and

their association with myths, the significance whereof was never really

felt by the sculptors. Some of Bandinelli's designs, it is true, are

vigorous; but they are mere drawings from undraped peasants, life studies

depicting the human animal. His "Hercules and Cacus," while it deserves

all the sarcasm hurled at it by Cellini, proves that Bandinelli could not

rise above the wrestling bout of a porter and a coal-heaver. Nor would it

be possible to invent a motive less in accordance with Greek taste than

the conceit of Ammanati's fountain at Castello, where Hercules by

squeezing the body of Antaeus makes the drinking water of a city spout

from a giant's mouth. Such pitiful misapplications of an art which is

designed to elevate the commonplace of human form, and to render permanent

the nobler qualities of physical existence, show how superficially and

wrongly the antique spirit had been apprehended.

Some years before his death Ammanati expressed in public his regret that

he had made so many giants and satyrs, feeling that, by exhibiting forms

of lust, brutality, and animalism to the gaze of his fellow-countrymen, he

had sinned against the higher law revealed by Christianity. For a Greek

artist to have spoken thus would have been impossible. The Faun, the

Titan, and the Satyr had a meaning for him, which he sought to set forth

in accordance with the semi-religious, semi-poetical traditions of his

race; and when he was at work upon a myth of nature-forces, he well knew

that at the other end of the scale, separated by no spiritual barrier, but

removed to an almost infinite distance of refinement, Zeus, Phoebus, and

Pallas claimed his loftier artistic inspiration. Ammanati's confession, on

the contrary, betrays that schism between the conscience of Christianity

and the lusts let loose by ill-assimilated sympathy with antique

heathenism, which was a marked characteristic of the Renaissance. The

coarser passions, held in check by ecclesiastical discipline, dared to

emerge into the light of day under the supposed sanction of classical

examples. What the Visconti and the Borgias practised in their secret

chambers, the sculptors exposed in marble and the poets in verse. All

alike, however, were mistaken in supposing that antique precedent

sanctioned this efflorescence of immorality. No amount of Greek epigrams

by Strato and Meleager, nor all the Hermaphrodites and Priapi of Rome, had

power to annul the law of conduct established by the founders of

Christianity, and ratified by the higher instincts of the Middle Ages. Nor

again were artists justified before the bar of conscience in selecting the

baser elements of Paganism for imitation, instead of aiming at Greek

self-restraint and Roman strength of character. All this the men of the

Renaissance felt when they listened to the voice within them. Their work,

therefore, in so far as it pretended to be a reconstruction of the antique

was false. The sensuality it shared in common with many Greek and Roman

masterpieces, had ceased to be frank and in the true sense pagan. To shake

off Christianity, and to revert with an untroubled conscience to the

manners of a bygone age, was what they could not do.

The errors I have attempted to characterise did not, however, prevent the

better and more careful works of sculpture, executed in illustration of

classical mythology, from having a true value. The "Perseus" of Cellini

and some of Gian Bologna's statues belong to a class of aesthetic

productions which show how much that is both original and excellent may be

raised in the hotbed of culture.[117] They express a genuine moment of the

Renaissance with vigour, and deserve to be ranked with the Latin poetry

of Poliziano, Bembo, and Pontano. The worst that can be said of them is

that their inspiration was factitious, and that their motives had been

handled better in the age of Greek sincerity.

Gian Bologna, born at Douai, but a Florentine by education, devoted

himself almost exclusively to mythological sculpture. That he was a

greater sculptor than his immediate predecessors will be affirmed by all

who have studied his bronze "Mercury," the "Venus of Petraja," and the

"Neptune" on the fountain of Bologna. Something of the genuine classic

feeling had passed into his nature. The "Mercury" is not a reminiscence of

any antique statue. It gives in bronze a faithful and spirited reading of

Virgil's lines, and is conceived with artistic purity not unworthy of a

good Greek period. The "Neptune" is something more than a muscular old

man; and, in its place, it forms one of the most striking ornaments of

Italy. It is worthy of remark that sculpture, in this stage, continued to

be decorative. Fountains are among the most successful monuments of the

late Renaissance. Even Montorsoli's fountain at Messina is in a high sense

picturesquely beautiful.

Casting a glance backward over the foregoing sketch of Italian sculpture,

it will be seen that three distinct stages were traversed in the evolution

of this art. The first may be called architectural, the second pictorial,

the third neo-pagan. Defined by their artistic purposes, the first

idealises Christian motives; the second is naturalistic; the third

attempts an idealisation inspired by revived paganism. As far as the

Renaissance is concerned, all three are moments in its history; though it

was only during the third that the influences of the classical revival

made themselves overwhelmingly felt. Niccola Pisano in the first stage

marked a fresh point of departure for his art by a return to Graeco-Roman

standards of the purest type then attainable, in combination with the

study of nature. Giovanni Pisano effected a fusion between his father's

manner and the Gothic style. The Pisan sculpture was wholly Christian; nor

did it attempt to free itself from the service of architecture. Giotto

opened the second stage by introducing new motives, employed by him with

paramount mastery in painting. Under his influence the sculptors inclined

to picturesque effects, and the direction thus given to sculpture lasted

through the fifteenth century. For the rest, the style of these masters

was distinguished by a fresh and charming naturalism and by rapid growth

in technical processes. While assimilating much of the classical spirit,

they remained on the whole Christian; and herein they were confirmed by

the subjects they were chiefly called upon to treat, in the decoration of

altars, pulpits, church façades, and tombs. The revived interest in

antique literature widened their sympathies and supplied their fancy with

new material; but there is no imitative formalism in their work. Its

beauty consists in a certain immature blending of motives chosen almost

indiscriminately from Christian and pagan mythology, vitalised by the

imagination of the artist, and presented with the originality of true

creative instinct. During the third stage the results of prolonged and

almost exclusive attention to the classics, on the part of the Italians as

a people, make themselves manifest. Collections of antiquities and

libraries had been formed in the fifteenth century; the literary energies

of the nation were devoted to the interpretation of Greek and Latin texts,

and the manners of society affected paganism. At the same time a worldly

Church and a corrupt hierarchy had done their utmost to enfeeble the

spirit of Christianity. That art should prove itself sensitive to this

phase of intellectual and social life was natural. Religious subjects were

now treated by the sculptors with superficial formalism and cynical

indifference, while all their ingenuity was bestowed upon providing pagan

myths with new forms. How far they succeeded has been already made the

matter of inquiry. The most serious condemnation of art in this third

period is that it halted between two opinions, that it could not be

sincere. But this double-mindedness, as I have tried to show, was

necessary; and therefore to lament over it is weak. What the Renaissance

achieved for the modern world was the liberation of the reason, the power

of starting on a new career of progress. The false direction given to the

art of sculpture at one moment of this intellectual revival may be

deplored; and still more deplorable is the corresponding sensual

debasement of the race who won for us the possibility of freedom. But the

life of humanity is long and vigorous, and the philosopher of history

knows well that the sum total of accomplishment at any time must be

diminished by an unavoidable discount. The Renaissance, like a man of

genius, had the defects of its qualities.

FOOTNOTES:

[56] _Sketches of the History of Christian Art_, vol. ii. p. 102.

[57] Since I wrote the paragraph above, I have chanced to read Mr.

Buskin's eloquent tirade against the modern sceptical school of critics

in his "Mornings in Florence," _The Vaulted Book_, pp. 105, 106. With the

spirit of it I thoroughly agree; feeling that, in the absence of solid

evidence to the contrary, I would always rather accept sixteenth-century

Italian tradition with Vasari, than reject it with German or English

speculators of to-day. This does not mean that I wish to swear by Vasari,

when he can be proved to have been wrong, but that I regard the present

tendency to mistrust tradition, only because it is tradition, as in the

highest sense uncritical.

[58] See Appendix I., on the Pulpits of Pisa and Ravello.

[59] The data is extremely doubtful. Were we to trust internal

evidence--the evidence of style and handling--we should be inclined to

name this not the earliest but the latest and ripest of Pisano's works.

It may be suggested in passing that the form of the lunette was

favourable to the composition by forcing a gradation in the figures from

the centre to either side. There is an engraving of this bas-relief in

Ottley's _Italian School of Design._

[60] Rheims Cathedral, for example, was begun in 1211. Upon its western

portals is the loveliest of Northern Gothic sculpture.

[61] Antonio Filarete was commissioned, soon after 1431, by Eugenius IV.,

to make the great gates of S. Peter's. The decorative framework

represents a multitude of living creatures--snails, snakes, lizards,

mice, butterflies, and birds--half hidden in foliage, together with the

best known among Greek myths, the Rape of Proserpine, Diana and Actaeon,

Europa and the Bull, the Labours of Hercules, &c. Such fables as the Fox

and the Stork, the Fox and the Crow, and old stories like that of the

death of Æschylus, are included in this medley. The monument of Paul III.

is placed in the choir of S. Peter's. Giulia Bella was the mistress of

Alexander VI., and a sister of the Farnese, who owed his cardinal's hat

to her influence. To represent her as an allegory of Truth upon her

brother's tomb might well pass for a grim satire. The Prudence opposite

is said to be a portrait of the Pope's mother, Giovanna Gaëtani. She

resembles nothing more than a duenna of the type of Martha in Goethe's

Faust. Here, again, the allegory would point a scathing sarcasm, if we

did not remember the naïveté of the Renaissance.

[62] See above, Chapter II, Italian want of feeling for Gothic.

[63] Having said so much about this pulpit of S. Andrea, I am sorry that

I cannot refer the English reader to any accessible representation of it.

For its sake alone, if for no other purpose, Pistoja is well worth a

visit.

[64] It was long believed that he died of eating poisoned figs.

[65] See above, Footnote 16, for the original conception of this motive

at Orvieto.

[66] See _Il Duomo di Orvieto, descritto ed illustrato per Lodovico

Luzi_, pp. 330-339.

[67] See Luzi, pp. 317-328, and the first extant commission given in 1310

to Maitani, which follows, pp. 328-330.

[68] The whole series has been admirably engraved under the

superintendence of Ludwig Grüner. Special attention may be directed to

the groups of angels attendant on the Creator in His last day's work; to

the "Adoration of the Shepherds," distinguished by tender and idyllic

grace: and to the "Adoration of the Magi," marked no less by majesty. The

dead breaking open the lids of their sarcophagi and rising to judgment

are justly famous for spirited action.

[69] In Gothic sculpture of an early date the Bible narrative is

literally represented. God draws Eve from the open side of sleeping Adam.

On the façade of Orvieto this motive is less altered than refined. The

wound in Adam's side is visible, but Eve is coming from behind his

sleeping body in obedience to the beckoning hand of her Creator. Ghiberti

in the bronze gate of the Florentine Baptistery still further develops

the poetic beauty of the motive. Angels lift Eve in the air above Adam,

in whose side there is now no open wound, and sustain her face to face

with God, who calls her into life. Della Quercia, on the façade of S.

Petronio, confines himself to the creative act, expressed by the raised

hand of the Maker, and the answering attitude of Eve; and this conception

receives final treatment from Michael Angelo in the frescoes of the

Sistine.

[70] _Le Tre Porte del Battistero di San Giovanni di Firenze, incise ed

illustrate_ (Firenze, 1821), contains outlines of all Andrea Pisano's and

Ghiberti's work.

[71] See above, Chapter I, Greek and Christian Ideals.

[72] See above, Chapter I, Greek and Christian Ideals.

[73] What Giotto himself was, as a designer for sculpture, is shown in

the little reliefs upon the basement of his campanile.

[74] What has previously been noted in the chapter upon architecture

deserves repetition here--that the Italian style of building gave more

scope to independent sculpture, owing to its preference for flat walls,

and its rejection of multiplied niches, canopies, and so forth, than the

Northern Gothic. Thus, however subordinated to architecture, sculpture in

Italy still had more scope for self-assertion than in Germany or France.

[75] See Perkins, _Italian Sculptors_, p. 109, for a description of the

Arca di S. Agostino, which he assigns to Matteo and Bonino da Campione.

This shrine, now in the Duomo, was made for the sacristy of S. Pietro in

Cielo d'Oro, where it stood until the year 1832.

[76] Bonino da Campione, the Milanese, who may have had a hand in the

Arca di S. Agostino, carved the tomb of Can Signorio. That of Mastino II.

was executed by another Milanese, Perino.

[77] See Trucchi, _Poesie Italiane inedite_, vol. ii.

[78] See the Illustrated work, _Il Tabernacolo della Madonna d'Or

sammichele_, Firenze, 1851.

[79] The weighty chapter in Alberti's _Treatise on Painting_, lib. iii.

cap. 5, might be used to support this paragraph.

[80] Quercia, born 1374; Ghiberti, 1378; Brunelleschi, 1379; Donatello,

1386.

[81] They are engraved in the work cited above, _Le Tre Porte, seconda

Porta_, Tavole i. ii.

[82] The bas-reliefs of S. Petronio were executed between 1425 and 1435.

Those of the font in the chapel of S. John (not the lower church of S.

John), at Siena, are ascribed to Quercia, and are in his manner; but when

they were finished I do not know. They set forth six subjects from the

story of Adam and Eve, with a compartment devoted to Hercules killing the

Centaur Nessus, and another to Samson or Hercules and the Lion. The

choice of subjects, affording scope for treatment of the nude, is

characteristic; so is the energy of handling, though rude in detail. It

may be worth while to notice here a similar series of reliefs upon the

façade of the Colleoni Chapel at Bergamo, representing scenes from the

story of Adam in conjunction with the labours of Hercules.

[83] Ruskin's _Modern Painters_, vol. ii. chap, vii., Repose.

[84] See Flaxman's _Lectures on Sculpture_, p. 310.

[85] This criticism of the "Gate of Paradise" sounds even to the writer

of it profane, and demands a palinode. Who, indeed, can affirm that he

would wish the floating figure of Eve, or the three angels at Abraham's

tent-door, other than they are?

[86] See the _Commentaries of Ghiberti_, printed in vol. i. of Vasari

(Lemonnier, 1846).

[87] The patera is at South Kensington, the frieze at Florence.

[88] As also the wooden Baptist in the Frari at Venice.

[89] There is another "David," by Donatello, in marble; also in the

Bargello, scarcely less stiff and ugly than the "Baptist."

[90] The cast was published by the Arundel Society. The original belongs

to Lord Elcho.

[91] It has been suggested, with good show of reason, that Mantegna was

largely indebted to these bas-reliefs for his lofty style.

[92] This omits the statues of the Scaligers: but no mediaeval work aimed

at equal animation. The antique bronze horses at Venice and the statue of

Marcus Aurelius must have been in Donatello's mind.

[93] The sculptor of a beautiful tomb erected for the Countess of

Montorio and her infant daughter in the church of S. Bernardino at Aquila

was probably Andrea dell' Aquila, a pupil of Donatello. See Perkins's

_Italian Sculptors_, pp. 46, 47.

[94] _Istoria della Vita e Fatti dell' eccellentissimo Capitano di guerra

Bartolommeo Colleoni_, scritta per Pietro Spino. Republished, 1859.

[95] See Vol. I., _Age of the Despots_, p. 310, note 2.

[96] Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. ii. chap, xvi., may be consulted as to

the several claims of the two brothers.

[97] His bas-reliefs on Giotto's campanile of Grammar, Astronomy,

Geometry, Plato, Aristotle, &c., are anterior to 1445; and even about

this date there is uncertainty, some authorities fixing it at 1435.

[98] _Purg._ x. 37, and xi. 68.

[99] Among the very best works of the later Robbian school may be cited

the frieze upon the façade of the Ospedale del Ceppo at Pistoja,

representing in varied colour, and with graceful vivacity, the Seven Acts

of Mercy. Date about 1525.

[100] He calls himself Agostinus Florentine Lapicida on his façade of the

Oratory of S. Bernardino.

[101] See especially a roundel in the Bargello, and the altar-piece in

the church of Monte Oliveto at Naples. Those who wish to understand

Rossellino should study him in the latter place.

[102] In the church of Samminiato, near Florence.

[103] _Vite di Uomini Illustri_, pp. 152-157.

[104] These tombs in the Badia were erected for Count Ugo, Governor of

Tuscany under Otho II., and for Messer Bernardo Giugni. Mino also made

the tomb for Pope Paul II., parts of which are preserved in the Grotte of

S. Peter's. At Rome he carved a tabernacle for S. Maria in Trastevere,

and at Volterra a ciborium for the Baptistery--one of his most

sympathetic productions. The altars in the Baglioni Chapel of S. Pietro

Cassinense at Perugia, in S. Ambrogio at Florence, and in the cathedral

of Fiesole, and the pulpit in the Duomo at Prato, may be mentioned among

his best works.

[105] Besides Civitali's altar of S. Regulus, and the tomb of Pietro da

Noceto already mentioned, Bernardo Rossellino's monument to Lionardo

Bruni, and Desiderio's monument to Carlo Marsuppini in S. Croce at

Florence, may be cited as eminent examples of Tuscan sepulchres.

[106] The wooden statue of the Magdalen in Santa Trinità at Florence

shows Desiderio's approximation to the style of his master. She is a

careworn and ascetic saint, with the pathetic traces of great beauty in

her emaciated face.

[107] This bust is in the Palazzo Strozzi at Florence.

[108] So Giovanni Santi, Raphael's father, described Desiderio da

Settignano.

[109] The following story is told about Benedetto's youth. He made two

large inlaid chests or _cassoni_, adorned with all the skill of a worker

in tarsia, or wood-mosaic, and carried these with him to King Matthias

Corvinus, of Hungary. Part of his journey was performed by sea. On

arriving and unpacking his chests, he found that the sea-damp had unglued

the fragile wood-mosaic, and all his work was spoiled. This determined

him to practise the more permanent art of sculpture. See Perkins, vol. i.

p. 228.

[110] For further description of the sculpture at Rimini, I may refer to

my _Sketches in Italy and Greece_, pp. 250-252. For the student of

Italian art, who has no opportunity of visiting Rimini, it is greatly to

be regretted that these reliefs have never yet even in photography been

reproduced. The palace of Duke Frederick at Urbino was designed by

Luziano, a Dalmatian architect, and continued by Baccio Pontelli, a

Florentine. The reliefs of dancing Cupids, white on blue ground, with

wings and hair gilt, and the children holding pots of roses and

gilly-flowers, in one of its great rooms, may be selected for special

mention. Ambrogio or Ambrogino da Milano, none of whose handiwork is

found in his native district, and who may therefore be supposed to have

learned and practised his art elsewhere, was the sculptor of these truly

genial reliefs.

[111] See, for example, the remarkable bas-relief of the Doge Lionardo

Loredano engraved by Perkins, _Italian Sculptors_, p. 201.

[112] Another Modenese, Antonio Begarelli, born in 1479, developed this

art of the _plasticatore_, with quite as much pictorial impressiveness,

and in a style of stricter science, than his predecessor Il Modanino. His

masterpieces are the "Deposition from the Cross" in S. Francesco, and the

"Pietà" in S. Pietro, of his native city.

[113] The name of this great master is variously written--Giovanni

Antonio Amadeo, or Omodeo, or degli Amadei, or de' Madeo, or a

Madeo--pointing possibly to the town Madeo as his native place. Through a

long life he worked upon the fabric of the Milanese Duomo, the Certosa of

Pavia, and the Chapel of Colleoni at Bergamo. To him we owe the general

design of the façade of the Certosa and the cupola of the Duomo of Milan.

For the details of his work and an estimate of his capacity, see Perkins,

_Italian Sculptors_, pp. 127-137.

[114] This statue was originally intended for a chapel built and endowed

by Colleoni at Basella, near Bergamo. When he determined to erect his

chapel in S. Maria Maggiore at Bergamo, he entrusted the execution of

this new work to Amadeo, and the monument of Medea was subsequently

placed there.

[115] See above, p. 113. I have spelt the name _Sansovino_, when applied

to Jacopo Tatti, in accordance with time-honoured usage.

[116] To multiply instances is tedious; but notice in this connection the

Hermaphroditic statue of S. Sebastian at Orvieto, near the western door.

It is a fair work of Lo Scalza.

[117] This brief allusion to Cellini must suffice for the moment, as I

intend to treat of him in a separate chapter.