(SOUTH KENSINGTON)
]
Painting was still an art in bonds and difficulties when Donatello
produced his beautiful bas-reliefs of a natural Bambino, and the
exquisitely modelled bust with the face delicately broad across the
charming eyes, and narrowing to the chin—whether called the young St.
John or not, purely the portrait of a tender boy; and his lovely
boy-Mercury. Fra Angelico was demurely reckless with his anatomy when
Jacopo della Quercia, the Sienese, was modelling the perfect hands of
his Madonna and her perfect Child in one of the statuettes by the master
which are amongst the original treasures of South Kensington Museum;
also when Luca della Robbia was using his material with a masterly and
liberal hand in the sketch for his bas-relief for the singing gallery of
the Duomo at Florence, a sketch wilder and more animated than the
finished work. (South Kensington has this incomparable stucco.) The
children of this relief move with impulse and energy in a youthful
dance; in another panel they go clashing cymbals, six cymbals at once
used with a will. The works of this master, the inventor of the
enamelled coloured terra cotta that bears his name, and the eldest of
the three who used it, are of ever fresh variety. His, amongst others,
is the Bambino who gives best the Papal blessing. There is nothing but
what is charming in this action; fantastic as it looks with a baby face
fresh from nature, it does nothing but delight us. Botticelli’s
wonderful picture, his masterpiece, the “Magnificat,” in which the
Child, turning his face upwards, points to the open page, does not
reconcile the action with infancy, but Luca della Robbia makes his
little infant a Pontiff with sweetness and ease. Somewhat like this
wholly delightful Bambino is Rossellino’s, the terra cotta statuette at
South Kensington, in which the smile breaks into an open laugh. The
Madonna laughs also; at least she has a sub-hilarious face as she looks
down at her noisy child, sees the soft gap-toothed mouth, and feels the
little tumult of mirth in the breast under her hand. This is something
altogether different from the benignant smile, a bestowed smile, with
which the painter in the later centuries adorns the Virgin and Child.
Luca della Robbia also has a laughing Child in a bas-relief now in the
Berlin Museum, and he too makes the Mother laugh with him.
[Illustration:
LUCA DELLA ROBBIA. SKETCH FOR A PANEL OF THE SINGING GALLERY IN THE
DUOMO, FLORENCE
(SOUTH KENSINGTON)
]
[Illustration:
_Houghton_