DONATELLO.•
Tun book on Donatello which Lord Balcarres has written is a model of its kind. Throughout the attention is fixed on the sculptor, and the author has never wandered down those byways of history and general speculation which open out so enticingly to the student of the Italian Renaissance. Far too many books which start as studies of a particular artist degenerate into a general chronicle of the culture, civilisation, and politics of the time in which the subject of the book lived. Again, the biographer of an Italian sculptor or painter seems unduly interested in contemporary documents relating to the squabbles between the artist and his employer, the price of the marble block, the weight of the bronze for the statue, the quantity of lime for the fresco, or the question as to whether ultramarine and gold were supplied free by the patron. These questions often occupy more space in books on art than the consideration of the works of art themselves. The reason of this procedure is to be found in the fact that books about artists are constantly written by people with only a general feeling for art,—persons who in their inability to get a real under- standing of the artist content themselves with general archaeological and historical irrelevancies. The biographer of Donatello is less tempted to wander than are most writers, for practically nothing is known of the life of the sculptor. All that we know is that 1386 is the probable
• Donatello. By Lord Damns. London: Duckworth and Co. [6e.]
date of his birth, that he twice visited Rome, and worked for some ten years in Padua, for a shorter period in . Siena, and that the rest of his life was spent in Florence,.
where he died in 1466. That he was an honourable and generous man there seems no doubt, without enemies, and,. according to Vasari, benign e cortese. What more do we want to know? Surely with such a wondrous life-work left in marble and bronze we can be well satisfied.
Lord Balcarres takes the works in order of production and examines each one, uniting subtle and far-reaching criticism to intelligent description. He considers that one of the great. merits of Donatello was that he was hampered by no canon of art. He was to the last degree unconventional. Coming as he did just at the time when sculpture was developing rapidly, this freedom from formulas was of enormous importance. The sculptors were, as a rule, in advance of the painters in the various stages of the development of Italian art. There can be little doubt that the influence which the statues of Donatello had upon painting was very great. His researches into the human form showed the way towards a freedom of treatment impossible before his time. This sculptor's intense feeling for character enabled him to re-create, as it were, the human body in art. It was the later Florentine art that brought the feeling for the structure of the living body to such perfection and culminated in the supreme work of Michelangelo. But we can hardly overrate the influence of Donatello in leading the way. Donatello was Gothic in spirit and unclassicaL Character and poignancy of expres- sion are the prominent features of his work. The perfections of the harmonious balance which belong to the Greeks were unknown to him. Formulas of proportion could with him never replace the living body. At the root of his art lay portraiture. Sometimes it is strongly insisted on, as in the so-called " Zuccone," one of the statues made for the Florentine Cathedral. Lord Balcarres says that this work-
" is one of the eternal mysteries of Italian art. What can have been Donatello's intention? Why give such prominence to this graceless type? ..... . 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 em- bodiment of some 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 touch of sadness and compassion, objective and sub- jective, which gives it a charm, even a fascination. Tante e belle, says Bocchi, tanto e vera, tante e naturals, that one gazes upon it in astonishment, wondering in truth why the statue does not speak ! 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. 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."
It would be difficult to state better the essential quality of Donatello's attitude towards Nature. It must not, of course, be supposed that Donatello was only interested in subjects like the " Zuccone," for, above all things, he was the sculptor of childhood and youth. But he was interested by human beings and not by abstractions. Like the poet of "Ionics," he might have said, with the alteration of a word :—
" I never prayed for Dryads to haunt the woods again, Much dearer were the faces of hungering, thirsting men."
Lord Balcarres makes a very interesting comparison between the sense of place, distance, and of light and shade possessed by Donatello and the Greeks. The former, when making statues for the Campanile, where they were placed some fifty-five feet
from the ground, worked the marble so that the statue should not lose by distance. Of this careful consideration of the lighting and distance of the work when placed the Parthenon frieze shows no sign. The finest of the statues of saints made by Donatello was the St. George. Of it the writer of the book before us truly says, "fearless simplicity is its chief attribute." The Saint is no fantastic knight-errant, neither is he the swaggering condottiere, but, in truth, the "perfect gentle knight" of all ages. This statue has not been chilled by time, for with magnificent technical ability it embodies an ideal of chivalry which has not passed away.
Besides being a maker of statues, Donatello was unrivalled as a carver and modeller of low-relief. This exquisite art, which seems like drawing on stone or bronze, he carried to perfection. In this manner he showed his great powers of composition, for many of these reliefs are crowded with figures. In high-relief is the wonderful singing gallery made for the Duomo, but now in the Bargello. Here, perhaps, is the finest specimen of the sculptor's treatment of child- hood. The wild movement, the unconscious grace, of these romping little angels are beyond all praise. Luca della
Robbia has more of the sweetness of childhood, but not its ecstasy of movement. The deep sympathy with children is to be seen in the bronze Amorino of the Bargello and that incomparable portrait bust called San Giovannino at Faenza. The bronze David of the Bargello is older, and no longer a child. This work, Lord Balcarres points out, is the first undraped statue of the Renaissance. The human figure had been shown in reliefs before, but never in a free standing statue. This is perhaps the technical masterpiece of its author. The way that every part of the figure lives is little short of marvellous. But there is no overbalancing of the whole ; every detail is sub- ordinate to the general effect. The following words fitly describe its perfections :—
" The back is bony and rather angular; the torso is brilliantly wrought, with a purity of outline and a morbidesza which made the artists in Vasari's time believe the figure to have been moulded from life. One might break the statue into half a dozen pieces, and every fragment would retain its vitality and significance."
Donatello in modelling this statue showed how beautiful the human form was, and that it needed no stylistic inventions, —like, for instance, the Greek treatment of the iliac line.
In taking leave of this book we can sincerely hope that its author will pursue his studies of the sculptors of the Renaissance.
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