passionate complaint against the iniquity of the land, but his
"burden" lacks those outbursts of lyric poetry which are found in most
of the other minor prophets. Donatello gives him the air of a thinker.
He holds a long scroll to which he points with his right hand while
looking downward, towards the door of the Cathedral. It is a strong
head, as full of character as the Jeremiah. But Habbakuk is less the
man of action, and the deep lines about the mouth and across the
forehead show rather the fruits of contemplation. There may be a note
of scepticism in the face. But this Habbakuk is no ascetic, and there
is much strength in reserve: his comment though acrid would be just.
The veins in the throat stand out like cords. They are much more
noticeable in the photograph than when one sees the statue from the
Piazza. It must be remembered that these figures on the Campanile are
something like fifty-five feet from the ground: they were made for
these lofty positions, and were carved accordingly. They show
Donatello's sense of distance; the Zuccone shows his sense of light
and shade, the Abraham his sense of proportion. Donatello had the
advantage of making these figures for particular places; his sculpture
was eminently adapted to the conditions under which it was to be seen.
In the vast majority of cases modern sculpture is made for
undetermined positions, and is fortunate if it obtains a suitable
_emplacement_. It seldom gets distance, light and proportion in
harmony with the technical character of the carving. Donatello paid
the greatest care to the relation between the location of the statue
and its carving: his work consequently suffers enormously by removal:
to change its position is to take away something given it by the
master himself. The Judith looks mean beneath the Loggia de' Lanzi;
the original of the St. George in the museum is less telling than the
copy which has replaced it at Or San Michele. Photography is also apt
to show too clearly certain exaggerations and violences deliberately
calculated by Donatello to compensate for distance, as on the
Campanile, or for darkness, as on the Cantoria. The reproductions,
therefore, of those works not intended to be seen from close by
must be judged with this reservation. The classical sculptors seem to
have been oblivious of this sense of distance. Cases have been quoted
to show that they did realise it, such as the protruding forehead of
Zeus or the deep-set eyes of the Vatican Medusa. These are accidents,
or at best coincidences, for the sense of distance is not shown by
merely giving prominence to one portion or feature of a face. In Roman
art the band of relief on the Column of Trajan certainly gets slightly
broader as the height increases: but the modification was
half-hearted. It does not help one to see the carving, which at the
summit is almost meaningless, while it only serves to diminish the
apparent height of the column. So, too, in the triumphal arches of the
Roman Emperors little attention was paid to the relative and varying
attitudes of the bas-reliefs. From Greek art the Parthenon Frieze
gives a singular example of this unrealised law. When _in situ_ the
frieze was only visible at a most acute angle and in a most
unfavourable light: beyond the steps it vanished altogether, so one
was obliged to stand among the columns to see it at all, and it was
also necessary to look upwards almost perpendicularly. The frieze is
nearly three feet four inches high and its upper part is carved in
rather deeper relief than the base: but, even so, the extraordinary
delicacy of this unique carving was utterly wasted, since the
technical treatment of the marble was wholly unsuited to its
_emplacement_. The amazing beauty of the sculpture and the unsurpassed
skill of Phidias were never fully revealed until its home had been
changed from Athens to Bloomsbury.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Alinari_
THE ZUCCONE
CAMPANILE, FLORENCE]
[Sidenote: The Zuccone, "Realism" and Nature.]
The Zuccone is one of the eternal mysteries of Italian art. What can
have been Donatello's intention? Why give such prominence to this
graceless type? Baldinucci called it St. Mark.[21] Others have been
misled by the lettering on the plinth below the statue "David Rex":
beneath the Jeremiah is "Salomon Rex."[22] These inscriptions
belonged, of course, to the kings which made way for Donatello's
prophets. The Zuccone must belong to the series of prophets; it is
fruitless to speculate which. Cherichini may have inspired the
portrait. Its ugliness is insuperable. It is not the vulgar ugliness
of a caricature, nor is it the audacious embodiment of some hideous
misshapen creature such as we find in Velasquez, in the Gobbo of
Verona, or in the gargoyles of Notre Dame. There is no deformity about
it, probably very little exaggeration. It is sheer uncompromising
ugliness; rendered by the cavernous mouth, the blear eyes, the flaccid
complexion, the unrelieved cranium--all carried to a logical
conclusion in the sloping shoulders and the simian arms. But the
Zuccone is not "revenged of nature": there is nothing to "induce
contempt." On the other hand, indeed, there is a tinge of sadness and
compassion, objective and subjective, which gives it a charm, even a
fascination. _Tanto è bella_, says Bocchi, _tanto è vera, tanto è
naturale_, that one gazes upon it in astonishment, wondering in truth
why the statue does not speak![23] Bocchi's criticism cannot be
improved. The problem has been obfuscated by the modern jargon of art.
Donatello has been charged with orgies of realism and so forth. There
may be realism, but the term must be used with discretion: nowadays
it generally connotes the ugly treatment of an ugly theme, and is
applied less as a technical description than as a term of abuse.
Donatello was certainly no realist in the sense that an ideal was
excluded, nor could he have been led by realism into servile imitation
or the multiplication of realities. After a certain point the true
ceases to be true, as nobody knew better than Barye, the greatest of
the "realists." The Zuccone can be more fittingly described in
Bocchi's words. It is the creation of a verist, of a naturalist,
founded on a clear and intimate perception of nature. Donatello was
pledged to no system, and his only canon, if such existed, was the
canon of observation matured by technical ability. We have no reason
to suppose that Donatello claimed to be a deep thinker. He did not
spend his time, like Michael Angelo, in devising theories to explain
the realms of art. He was without analytical pedantry, and, like his
character, his work was naïve and direct. Nor was he absorbed by
appreciation of "beauty," abstract or concrete. If he saw a man with a
humped back or a short leg he would have been prepared to make his
portrait, assuming that the entity was not in conflict with the
subject in hand. Hence the Zuccone. Its mesmeric ugliness is the
effect of Donatello's gothic creed, and it well shows how Donatello,
who from his earliest period was opposed to the conventions of the
Pisan school, took the lead among those who founded their art upon the
observation of nature. A later critic, shrewd and now much neglected,
said that Titian "contented himself with pure necessity, which is the
simple imitation of nature."[24] One could not say quite so much of
Donatello, in whom, curiously enough, the love of nature was limited
to its human aspect. He seems to have been impervious to outdoor
nature, to the world of plants and birds and beasts. Ghiberti, his
contemporary, was a profound student of natural life in all its forms,
and the famous bronze doors of the Baptistery are peopled with the
most fanciful products of his observation. "I strove to imitate nature
to the utmost degree," he says in his commentary.[25] Thus Ghiberti
makes a bunch of grapes, and wanting a second bunch as _pendant_, he
takes care to make it of a different species. The variety and richness
of his fruit and flower decoration are extraordinary and, if possible,
even more praiseworthy than the dainty garlands of the Della Robbia.
With Donatello all is different. He took no pleasure in enriching his
sculpture in this way. The Angel of the Annunciation carries no lily;
when in the Tabernacle of St. Peter's he had to decorate a pilaster he
made lilies, but stiff and unreal. His trees in the landscape
backgrounds of the Charge to Peter and the Release of Princess Sabra
by St. George are tentative and ill-drawn. The children of the
Cantoria, the great singing gallery made for the Cathedral, are
dancing upon a ground strewn with flowers and fruit. The idea was
charming, but in executing it Donatello could only make _cut_ flowers
and withered fruit. There is no life in them, no savour, and the
energy of the children seems to have exhausted the humbler form of
vitality beneath their feet. Years afterwards, when Donatello's
assistants were allowed a good deal of latitude, we find an effort to
make more use of this invaluable decoration: the pulpits of San
Lorenzo, for instance, have some trees and climbing weeds showing keen
study of nature. But Donatello himself always preferred the
architectural background, in contrast to Leonardo da Vinci, who, with
all his love of building, seldom if ever used one in the backgrounds
of his pictures: but then Leonardo was the most advanced botanist of
his age.
[Footnote 21: Edition 1768, p. 74.]
[Footnote 22: _E.g._, Milanesi, Catalogo, 1887, p. 6.]
[Footnote 23: Cinelli's edition, 1677, p. 45.]
[Footnote 24: Raffaelle Mengs, Collected Works. London, 1796, I., p.
132.]
[Footnote 25: Printed in Vasari, Lemonnier Ed., 1846, vol. i.]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: The Zuccone and the Sense of Light and Shade.]
Speaking of the employment of light and shade as instruments in art,
Cicero says: "_Multa vident pictores in umbris et in eminentia, quæ
nos non videmus_." One may apply the dictum to the Zuccone where
Donatello has carved the head with a rugged boldness, leaving the play
of light and shade to complete the portrait. Davanzati was explicit on
the matter,[26] showing that the point of view from which the Zuccone
was visible made this coarse treatment imperative, if the spectator
below was to see something forcible and impressive. "The eyes," he
says, "are made as if they were dug out with a shovel: eyes which
would appear lifelike on the ground level would look blind high up on
the Campanile, for distance consumes diligence--_la lontananza si
mangia la diligenzia_." The doctrine could not be better stated, and
it governs the career of Donatello. There is nothing like the Zuccone
in Greek art: nothing so ugly, nothing so wise. Classical sculptors in
statues destined for lofty situations preserved the absolute truth of
form, but their diligence was consumed by distance. What was true in
the studio lost its truth on a lofty pediment or frieze. They
preserved accuracy of form, but they sacrificed accuracy of
appearance; whereas relative truth was in reality far more
important--until, indeed, the time comes when the lights and shades of
the studio are reproduced in some art gallery or museum.
[Footnote 26: In Introduction to his translation of Tacitus.]
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Alinari_
ABRAHAM AND ISAAC
CAMPANILE, FLORENCE]
[Sidenote: Abraham and the Sense of Proportion.]
The statue of Abraham and Isaac on the east side of the Campanile is
interesting as being the first group made by Donatello. The subject
had already been treated by Brunellesco and Ghiberti in relief.
Donatello had to make his figures on a larger scale. Abraham is a
tall, powerful man with a long flowing beard, looking upwards as he
receives the command to sheath the dagger already touching the
shoulder of his son. The naked boy is kneeling on his left leg and is
modelled with a good deal of skill, though, broadly speaking, the
treatment is rather archaic in character. It is a tragic scene, in
which the contrast of the inexorable father and the resigned son is
admirably felt. Donatello had to surmount a technical difficulty, that
of putting two figures into a niche only intended for one. His sense
of proportion enabled him to make a group in harmony with its position
and environment. It _fits_ the niche. Statues are so often unsuited to
their niches; scores of examples could be quoted from Milan Cathedral
alone where the figures are too big or too small, or where the base
slopes downwards and thus fails to give adequate support to the
figure. There is an old tradition which illustrates Donatello's
aptitude for grouping. Nanni di Banco had to put four martyrs into a
niche of Or San Michele, and having made his statues found it
impossible to get them in. Donatello was invoked, and by removing a
superfluous bit of marble here, and knocking off an arm there, the
four figures were successfully grouped together. The statues, it must
be admitted, show no signs of such usage, and Nanni was a competent
person: but the story would not have been invented unless Donatello
had been credited in his own day with the reputation of being a
master of proportion and grouping. Donatello, however, never really
excelled in the free standing group. His idea was a suite or series of
figures against a background, a bas-relief. The essential quality of a
group is that there should be something to unite the figures. We find
this in the Abraham, but the four martyrs by Nanni di Banco are
standing close together as if by chance, and cannot properly be called
a group in anything but juxtaposition of figures. Il Rosso helped to
make Abraham. The commission was given jointly to the two sculptors in
March 1421, and the statue was finished, with unusual expedition, by
November of the same year. The hand of Rosso cannot be easily detected
except in the drapery, which differs a good deal from Donatello's. The
latter must have been chiefly responsible for the grouping and wholly
so for the fine head of Abraham.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Drapery and Hands.]
Rosso's drapery was apt to be treated in rather a small way with a
number of little folds. Donatello, on the other hand, often tended to
the opposite extreme, and in the Campanile figures we see the clothes
hanging about the prophets in such ample lines that the Zuccone and
Jeremiah are overweighted with togas which look like heavy blankets.
Habbakuk and the Baptist are much more skilfully draped, deference
being shown to the anatomy. "To make drapery merely natural," said Sir
Joshua Reynolds, "is a mechanical operation to which neither genius
nor taste are required: whereas it requires the nicest judgment to
dispose the drapery so that the folds have an easy communication, and
gracefully follow each other with such natural negligence as to look
like the effect of chance, and at the same time show the figure under
it to the utmost advantage."[27] The sculptors of the fifteenth
century did not find it so easy to make drapery look purely natural,
and we are often confronted by cases where they failed in this
respect. It arose partly from a belief that drapery was nothing more
than an accessory, partly also from their ignorance of what was so
fully realised by the Greeks, that there can be very little grace in a
draped figure unless there are the elements of beauty below. Another
comment suggested by Donatello's early work in marble is that he was
not quite certain how to model or dispose the hands. They are often
unduly big; Michael Angelo started with the same mistake: witness his
David and the Madonna on the Stairs. It was a mistake soon rectified
in either case. But till late in life Donatello never quite succeeded
in giving nerve or occupation to his hands. St. Mark, St. Peter, and
St. John all have a book in their left hands, but none of them _hold_
the book; it has no weight, the hand shows no grip and has no sense of
possession. Neither did Donatello always know where to put the hands,
giving them the shy and self-conscious positions affected by the
schoolboy. The Bargello David is a case in point. His hands are idle,
they have really nothing to do, and their position is arbitrary in
consequence. It is all a descent from the Gothic, where we find much
that is inharmonious and paradoxical, and a frequent lack of concord
between the component parts. St. George, standing erect in his niche,
holds the shield in front of him, its point resting on the ground.
But, notwithstanding the great progress made by Donatello in
modelling these hands--(so much indeed that one might almost suspect
the bigger hands of contemporary statues to be faithful portraits of
bigger hands)--one feels that the shield does not owe its upright
position to the constraint of the hands. They do not reflect the
outward pressure of the heavy shield, which could almost be removed
without making it necessary to modify their functions or position. It
was reserved for Michael Angelo to achieve the unity of purpose and
knowledge needed in portraying the human hand. He was the first among
Italian sculptors to render the relation of the hand to the wrist, the
wrist to the forearm, and thence to the shoulder and body. In the
fifteenth century nobody fully understood the sequence of muscles
which correlates every particle of the limb, and Donatello could not
avoid the halting and inconclusive outcome of his inexperience.
[Footnote 27: Discourses, 1778, p. 116.]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Minor Works for the Cathedral.]
There remain a few minor works for the Cathedral which require notice.
In October 1421 an unfinished figure by Ciuffagni was handed over to
Donatello and Il Rosso. It is probable that Dr. Semper is correct in
thinking that this may be the statue on the East side of the Cathedral
hitherto ascribed to Niccolo d'Arezzo, though it can hardly be the
missing Joshua. We have here a middle-aged man with a long beard, his
head inclined forward and supported by his upraised hand with its
forefinger extended. Donatello was fond of youth, but not less of
middle age. With all their power these prophets are middle-aged men
who would walk slowly and whose gesture would be fraught with mature
dignity. Donatello did not limit to the very young or the very old the
privilege of seeing visions and dreaming dreams. Two other statues by
Donatello have perished. These are Colossi,[28] ordered probably
between 1420 and 1425, and made of brick covered with stucco or some
other kind of plaster. They stood outside the church, on the buttress
pillars between the apsidal chapels. One of them was on the north
side, as an early description mentions the "_Gigante sopra la
Annuntiata_,"[29] that is above the Annunciation on the Mandorla door.
The perishable material of these statues was selected, no doubt, owing
to the difficulty and expense of securing huge monoliths of marble. In
this case one must regret their loss, as the distance from which they
would be seen would amply justify their heroic dimensions. But the
idea of Colossi, which originated in Egypt and the East, is to
astonish, and to make the impression through the agency of bulk. The
David by Michael Angelo is great in spite of its unwieldiness. Michael
Angelo himself was under no illusions about these Colossi. His letter
criticising the proposal to erect a colossal statue of the Pope on the
Piazza of San Lorenzo is in itself a delightful piece of humour, and
ridiculed the conceit with such pungency that the project was
abandoned. Finally, Donatello made two busts of prophets for the
Mandorla door. The commission is previous to May 1422, when it is
noted that Donatello was to receive six golden florins for his work.
They are profile heads carved in relief upon triangular pieces of
marble, which fill two congested architectural corners. They look like
the result of a whim, and at first sight one would think they were
ordered late in the history of the door to supplement or replace
something unsatisfactory. But this is not the case. Half corbel and
half decoration, they are curious things: one shows a young man, the
other an older bearded man. Both have long hair drawn back by a
fillet, and in each case one hand is placed across the breast. They
have quite a classical look, and are the least interesting as well as
the least noticeable of the numerous sculptures made for the Cathedral
by Donatello. The Domopera evidently appreciated his talent. To this
day, besides these busts and the two small prophets, there survive at
least nine marble figures made for the Duomo, some of them well over
life size. There were also the Colossi, and it will be seen later on
that the Domopera gave him further commissions for bronze doors,
Cantoria, altar and stained glass; he also was employed as an
architectural expert. Years of Donatello's life were spent on the
embellishment of Santa Maria del Fiore, a gigantic task which he
shared with his greatest predecessors and his most able
contemporaries. The task, indeed, was never fully accomplished. The
Campanile is not crowned by the spire destined for it by Giotto: the
façade has perished and the interior is marred by the errors of
subsequent generations. But the Cathedral of Florence must
nevertheless take high rank among the most stately churches of
Christendom.
[Footnote 28: They were standing as late as 1768. Baldinucci, p. 79.]
[Footnote 29: Memoriale, 1510.]
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Alinari_
ST. MARK
OR SAN MICHELE]
[Sidenote: Or San Michele, St. Peter and St. Mark.]