Donatello all the free-standing or portrait-busts of boys, while going
to the opposite extreme in ascribing to him an enormous number of
Madonnas. We know that Donatello was passionately fond of carving
children on his reliefs: we also know that only two versions of the
Madonna can be really authenticated as his work. Why should Donatello
have made no busts of boys when it is not denied that he was
responsible for something like one hundred boys in full-length; and
how does it come about that scores of Madonnas should be attributed to
him when we only have the record of a few? There can be no doubt that
Donatello would not have rested content with children in relief or in
miniature. The very preparation of his numerous works in this category
must have led him to make busts as well, quite apart from his own
inclinations. The stylistic method of argument should not be abused:
if driven to a strict and logical conclusion it becomes misleading. It
ignores the human element in the artist. It pays no attention to his
desire to vary the nature of his work or to make experiments. It
eliminates the likelihood of forms which differ from the customary
type, and it makes no allowance for possibilities or probabilities,
least of all for mistakes. It is purely on stylistic grounds that each
bust connected with Donatello's name has been withdrawn from the list
of his works. A fashion had grown up to ascribe to Donatello all that
delightful group of marble busts now scattered over Europe. Numbers
were obviously the work of competent but later men: Rossellino,
Desiderio, Mino da Fiesole, and so forth. There remain others which
are more doubtful, but which in one detail or another are alleged to
be un-Donatellesque, and have therefore been fearlessly attributed to
other sculptors from whose authenticated work they often dissent.
That, however, was immaterial, the primary object being to disinherit
Donatello without much thought as to his lawful successor in title. A
critical discrimination between these busts was an admitted need;
everything of the kind had been conventionally ascribed to Donatello
just as Luca della Robbia was held responsible for every bit of glazed
terra-cotta. These ascriptions to the most fashionable and lucrative
names had become conventional, and had to be destroyed. Invaluable
service has been rendered by reducing the number given to Donatello
and adding to the number properly ascribed to others. But the process
has gone too far. The difficulties are, of course, great, and
stylistic data offer the only starting-point; but as these data are
readily found by comparison with Donatello's accepted work, it ought
to be possible, on the fair and natural assumption that Donatello may
well have made such busts, to determine the authenticity of a certain
proportion. In any case, it would be less difficult to prove that
Donatello did, than that he did not make statues of this description.
Among the busts of very young boys which cannot be assigned to
Donatello are those belonging to Herr Benda in Vienna, and to M.G.
Dreyfus in Paris. Nothing can exceed their softness and delicacy of
modelling, and they are among the most winning statuettes in the
world. They were frequently copied by Desiderio and his _entourage_.
One of the little heads in the Vanchettoni Chapel at Florence is
likewise animated by a similar exemplar. There is something girlish
about them, a pursuit of prettiness which is no doubt the source of
their singular attraction, and which invests them with an irresistible
charm. The San Giovannino, also in the Vanchettoni, is a more concrete
version of childhood, but is by the same hand as its fellow. These
four busts fail to characterise the child's head; not indeed that
characterisation was needed to make an enchanting work, but that
Donatello's children elsewhere show more of the individual touches of
the master and personal notes of the child. The Duke of Westminster
possesses a life-sized head of a boy,[155] which is palpably by
Donatello, though no document exists to prove it. We have all the
essentials of Donatello's modelling; the handling is uncompromising
and firm; the child is treated more like a portrait. Indeed, many of
these children's busts, even when symbolised by St. John's rough
tunic, were avowed portraits--the Martelli San Giovannino, for
instance, which from Vasari's time has been ascribed, and probably
with justice, to Donatello. This little head enjoys a reputation which
it scarcely deserves. The expression is dull, the hair grows so low
that scarcely any forehead is visible; the cheeks bulge out, and
the mouth is too small. We have, in fact, a lifelike presentment of
some boy, perhaps of the Martelli family, showing him at his least
prepossessing moment, when the bloom of childhood has passed away, and
before the lines have been fined down and merged into the stronger
contours of youth. Desiderio would have improved Nature by modifying
the boy's features, and we should have had a work comparable to those
previously mentioned. But Donatello (and perhaps his patrons)
preferred a less idealised version. The Martelli figure, and a most
important boy's bust belonging to Frau Hainauer in Berlin, are now
usually ascribed to Rossellino. But his St. John in the Bargello,
where all the features are softened down, and his authenticated work
in San Miniato and elsewhere, make the attribution open to question.
The St. John at Faenza is also denied to be by Donatello; one of the
critics who is quite certain on the point believes the bust to be made
of wood! These problems cannot be settled by spending ten _lire_ on
photographs. The bust at Faenza,[156] though a faithful portrait, is
one of the most romantic specimens of childhood depicted by Donatello.
Admirably modelled, and with a surface like ivory, it gives the
intimate characteristics of the model. Nothing has been embellished or
suppressed, if we may judge from the absolute sequence and
correspondence of all the features. The flat head, the projecting
mouth, and the much-curved nose, are sure signs of accurate and
painstaking observation; they combine to give it a personal note which
adds much to its abstract merits. The St. John in the Louvre[157] is
also a portrait, but of an older boy, in whom the first signs of
maturity are faintly indicated: lines on the forehead, a stronger
neck, and a harder accentuation of nose and mouth. But he is still a
boy, though he will soon go forth into the wilderness. By the side of
the Faenza Giovannino he would appear rough; beside the Vienna and
Dreyfus statuettes he would be harsh and unsympathetic. He has no
smiling countenance, no fascinating twinkle of the eye: the type has
not been generalised as in Desiderio's work, and it therefore lacks
those qualities, the very absence of which makes it most
Donatellesque. The fundamental distinction between Donatello and the
later masters can be emphasised by comparing this bust with another
group of terra-cotta heads, which are analogous, although the boy in
them is older. One in the Berlin Gallery[158] has been painted, and no
final judgment can be passed until the more recent accretions of
oil-colour have been removed. But the whole conception is weakly and
vapid. The brown eyes, the nicely rouged cheeks, the mincing look, and
the affectation of the pose make a genteel page-boy of him, and all
suggest a later imitation--about 1470 perhaps--and contemporary with
the somewhat analogous though better rendering in the Louvre.[159] The
version belonging to M. Dreyfus differs in certain details from the
Berlin bust, and it has been fortunate in escaping careless painting;
it has more vigour and virility. One remark may be made about the
Faenza, Grosvenor House, Martelli, Hainauer and Louvre busts: they all
show a peculiarity in the treatment of the hair. It is bunched
together and drawn back from behind the ears, and is gathered on the
nape of the neck, down which it seems to curl. This is precisely the
treatment observed in the Mandorla relief, the Martelli David, the
young Gattamelata, and the Amorino in the Bargello: in a lesser degree
it is observable in the Isaac and the Siena Virtues. The point is not
one upon which stress could properly be laid, but it is a further
point of contact between Donatello's accepted work and some few out of
the numerous boys' busts which he must inevitably have made.
[Footnote 155: In Grosvenor House. Bronze; generally known as "The
Laughing Boy."]
[Footnote 156: Its proportion is impaired by the basal drapery, which
was grafted to the statue at a later date. This bust belonged to Sabba
da Castiglione, who was very proud of it. He was born within twenty
years of Donatello's death.]
[Footnote 157: No. 383. Marble. Goupil Bequest.]
[Footnote 158: Stucco, No. 38A. _Cf._ also one belonging to
Herr Richard von Kaufmann, Berlin.]
[Footnote 159: No. 1274, St. John, Florentine School, a painting.]
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Alinari_
NICCOLÒ DA UZZANO
BARGELLO, FLORENCE]
[Sidenote: Niccolò da Uzzano and Polychromacy.]
The bust of Niccolò da Uzzano has gained its widespread popularity
from its least genuine feature--namely, the paint with which it is
disfigured. The daubs of colour give it a fictitious importance, an
actual realism which invests it with the illusion of living flesh and
blood. This is all the more unfortunate, as the bust is a remarkable
work, and does not gain by being made into a "speaking likeness." Its
merits can best be appreciated in a cast, where the form is reproduced
without the dubious embellishments of later times. Niccolò was a
high-minded patrician, an implacable opponent of the Medici, and a
warm friend of higher education: it is also of interest that he should
have been an executor of the will of John XXIII. He was born in 1359,
and died in 1432. The bust is made of terra-cotta, and shows a man of
sixty-five or so, and would therefore be coeval with the later
Campanile prophets (but nothing beyond old tradition can be accepted
as authority for the nomenclature). The modelling of the head is quite
masterly. Niccolò is looking rather to the left; his keen and
hawklike countenance, and his piercing eyes, deep set and quivering
within pendulous eyelids, give a sense of invincible logic and
penetration. The laconic, matter-of-fact mouth, and the resolute jaw
add strength and courage to the physiognomy: the nose and its
disdainful nostrils are those of the haughty optimate. The head is,
however, less fine than the face: a skull of rather common
proportions, and a sloping though broad forehead are its marked
features. Donatello has given him an ugly ear; Niccolò's ear was,
therefore, ugly, and the throat is swollen. The shoulders are covered
with a thick piece of drapery, leaving the throat and upper part of
the breast bare. Such is the impression conveyed by Niccolò in the
cast. In the Bargello the colouring modifies what the form itself was
meant to suggest. The smallest error of a paint-brush, the slightest
deepening of a pigment, are quite sufficient to make radical
alterations in the sentiment of a statue. When applied to plastic art,
colour is potent enough to change the essential purpose of the
sculptor. The chief reason why the terra-cotta bust of St. John at
Berlin looks flippant and fastidious is, that the painter was
indiscreet in drawing the eyebrows and lips: owing to his
carelessness, they do not coincide with the features indicated by the
modeller, and the entire character of the boy is consequently changed.
The question of polychromacy in Donatello's sculpture is of great
importance, and requires some notice. It is no longer denied that
classical statues were frequently coloured. The Parthenon frieze and
many celebrated monuments of antiquity were picked out with colour.
Others received some kind of polish, _circumlitio_,--like the dark
varnish which is on the face of the Coscia effigy. Again, the use
of ivory, precious stones, and metal was common. The lips and eyeballs
were frequently overlaid by thin slabs of silver.[160] The origin of
polychromacy, doubtless, dates back to the most remote ages. It was
first needed to conceal imperfections, and to supply what the carver
felt his inability to render. It connotes insufficiency in the form.
The sculptor, of all people, ought to be able to see colour in the
uncoloured stone: he ought to realise its warmth, texture and shades.
Nobody has any right to complain that a statue is uncoloured: the
substance and quality of the marble is in itself pleasing, but
relative truth is all that is required in a portrait-bust. If one
wants to know the colour of a man's eye, or the precise tint of his
complexion, the painter's art should be invoked, but only where its
gradations and subtleties can be fully rendered--on the canvas.
Polychromacy is a mixture of two arts: it is one art trying to steal a
march upon another art by producing illusion. That is why the
pantaloon paints his face, and why the audience laughs: the spirit
which tolerates painted statues ends by adorning them with necklaces.
Donatello, whose sense of light and shade was acutely developed, least
required the adventitious aid of colour. Polychromacy was to a certain
extent justified on terra-cotta, to soften the toneless colour of the
clay, and on wood it served a purpose in hiding the cracks of a
brittle substance. Nowadays it is happily no more than a _refugium
peccatorum_. There is, however, no doubt that in Donatello's day it
was widely used, and used by Donatello himself. It began in actual
need, then became a convention, and long survived: _il n'y a rien de
plus respectable qu'un ancien abus_. During the fifteenth century
statues were coloured during the highest proficiency of sculpture:
buildings were painted,[161] and bronze was habitually gilded.
Donatello's Coscia, and his work at Siena and Padua, still show signs
of it. The St. Mark was coloured, and the Cantoria was much more
brilliant with gold than it is now. The St. Luke, which was removed
from Or San Michele,[162] has long been protected from the weather,
and still shows traces of a rich brocade decorated with coloured
lines. The Christ of Piero Tedesco on the façade of the Cathedral had
glass eyes. Roland and Oliver, two wonderful creations on the façade
of the Cathedral at Verona, had blue enamel eyes. The Apostles in the
Church of San Zeno, in the same city, are exceptionally interesting,
being one of the rare cases where the genuine colouring is visible,
although it has been much worn. The early colourists used
tempera;[163] as this perished, oil paint was substituted, and there
are very few painted statues extant on which restoration has never
taken place, and consequently where the original colour of the
sculptor is intact. With repainting, the original artist disappears:
even if the work is cast, the delicate tints of the first colouring
must be impaired, and repainting follows. Thus the Niccolò da Uzzano
is covered with inferior oil colour, and only in a few details can the
primitive tempera be detected. The later addition creates the
fictitious interest, and immensely reduces the real importance of this
masterly production.
[Footnote 160: _Cf._ Naples Museum, No. 5592.]
[Footnote 161: _Cf._ drawings of façades in Vettorio Ghiberti's
Note-book.]
[Footnote 162: Bargello Cortile, No. 3, by Niccolo di Piero.]
[Footnote 163: Borghini, in 1586, gave a curious recipe for colouring
marble according to antique rules. Florentine ed. 1730, p. 123.]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Portrait-busts.]
It is a singular fact admitting of no ready explanation that
portrait-busts, so common in Tuscany, should scarcely have existed in
Venice. Florence was their native home. From the time of Donatello
every sculptor of note was responsible for one or more, while certain
artists made it a regular occupation. Luca della Robbia, however, one
of the most consummate sculptors of his day, made no portrait except
the effigy of Bishop Federighi. There are one or two small heads in
the Bargello, but they scarcely come within the category of studied
portraits, while the heads on the bronze doors of the Duomo, though
modelled from living people, are small and purely decorative in
purpose. Glazed terra-cotta was a material so admirably adapted to
showing the refinements of feature and character, as we can see in
both Luca's and Andrea's work, that this absence is all the more
surprising. At the same time, numerous as portrait-statues were in
Tuscany, they do not compare in numbers with those executed in
classical times. In the fifteenth century the statue was a work of
art, and its actual carving was an integral part of the art: so the
replica in sculpture was rare. But under the Roman Empire statues of
the same man were erected in scores and hundreds in the same city;
their multiplication became a profession in itself, and a large class
of artisans must have grown up, eternally copying and recopying
portrait-busts and giving them the haunting dulness of mechanical
reproductions. The artist himself was more interested in the torso
than the head; some artists came to be regarded as specialists in
their own lines; Calcosthenes for instance, who made athletes, and
Apollodorus, who made philosophers. Donatello made several
portrait-busts, and two or three others, such as the head of St.
Laurence, and the so-called St. Cecilia in London, which are portraits
in all essentials. These two are idealised heads, both made late in
life, judging from a certain sketchiness, in no way detracting from
their sterling qualities, but indicative of Donatello's fluency as an
oldish man. Both are in terra-cotta. The St. Laurence is placed on the
top of one of the great chests in the Sacristy of San Lorenzo, too
high above the eye-level.[164] It has no connection with the
decorative work carried out there by the master, and it is difficult
to see how it could have been meant to fit in with the altar. However,
the authorship of Donatello is beyond question. St. Laurence is almost
a boy, wearing his deacon's vestments. His head is raised up as if he
had just heard something and were about to reply. The eager and
inquiring look is most happily shown. The sentiment of this bust is
quite out of the common; it has an engaging expression which is rare
in the sculpture of all ages, differing from what is called animation
or vivacity. These also may be found in the St. Laurence, where the
exact but indescribable movement of the face as he is about to speak
is rendered with immense skill. The bust, though modelled with a free
hand, is not carelessly executed; everything is in concord, and the
treatment of the clay shows exceptional dexterity, more so, at any
rate, than is the case in the St. Cecilia.[165] The name given to this
bust is traditional, there being no symbol to connect it with her; but
it suggests at least that the work was not meant purely as a portrait.
In technique and conception it is not quite equal to the St.
Laurence, but it is none the less a work of rare merit, and being
Donatello's only clay portrait in this country has a special value to
us. The Saint looks downwards, pensive, quiet and modest, the
embodiment of tranquillity and calm. There is no movement or effort
about her, neither does the work show any effort on the part of the
sculptor. It is equable in a very marked degree; the smooth regular
features are simple and well defined, and the hair, brushed back from
the forehead, has a softness which could scarcely be obtained in
marble. The bust known as Louis III. of Gonzaga is interesting in
another way: it is bronze and has been left in an unfinished state.
Two versions of it exist--one in Berlin, the other in Paris, belonging
to Madame André, the latter being perhaps the less ugly of the two. It
used to be known as Alfonso of Naples, on the assumption that
Donatello must surely have made a bust of that prince. This theory,
however, had to be abandoned, and it is now held to be a portrait of
the Gonzaga as being a closer resemblance to him than to Alfonso, or
Giovanni Tornabuoni. Mantegna's portrait of Gonzaga, though made
later, shows a rather different type, less displeasing than the
bronze. In the bust we have what is probably the portrait of a coarse
and clumsy person; he is petulant in the mouth, weak in the chin,
gross in the thick and heavy jaw. The bronze is extremely rough, and
shows no signs of the nervous and individual touches which we find in
Donatello's terra-cotta. Both the busts are unfinished; in the absence
of chasing and hammering they are covered with bubbles and splotches
of metal. They have, therefore, not passed through the hands of
assistants, except so far as the actual casting of the bronze was
concerned. During the process of casting the refinements of a clay
model would often be impaired, but this shows no sign of having been
made from an original of merit. The man is ugly, it is true; but the
broad expanse of his lifeless cheek and the bulbous forehead would in
real life have been explained and justified by bone and muscle, which
the sculptor would have rendered in his clay study. The ugliness of
the man, however, is unrelated to the qualities of the bust. Nobody
could make the likeness of an ugly man better than Donatello; and
since the faults of this portrait lie more in the modelling than in
the sitter, one is driven to conclude that the bust must be entirely
the work of an assistant, or else a failure of the master.
[Footnote 164: It used to be over one of the doors, preserved _in una
custodia_ which Richa thought ought to have been made of crystal, so
precious was the bust.--"Ch. Fiorentine," 1758, v. 39.]
[Footnote 165: Victoria and Albert Museum, No. 7585, 1861.]