CHAPTER IX

THE RISE OF NATURALISM—LORENZO GHIBERTI,
DONATELLO, VEROCCHIO, Etc.

(1400-1500 a.d.)

It will be remembered that the rise of Greek sculpture was a matter of fifty or, at the most, seventy years. The Muse of the art did not spring fully grown from the head of Apollo, it is true. But within half a century the Greek craftsman realized the possibilities of his materials; he discovered what subjects could be treated most properly, and fitted himself to express the profoundest thoughts and emotions of his countrymen. The result was Phidias and the Parthenon.

Yet by 1400 a.d. we have by no means reached the zenith of Italian sculpture. In other words, after tracing the growth of the art for a century we find that another hundred years is necessary before an Italian Parthenon is possible. To what was the slower evolution of sculpture in Italy due?

It might be suggested that marble and bronze were not the fittest media to embody the teeming experience of fourteenth-and fifteenth-century Italy. This is probably true. Seeing, however, that the sister art of painting had lagged behind in similar fashion, we must trace the deliberate growth of Italian sculpture to the lesser intensity of the energizing force. The Italians were not stirred to the depths by one heart-searching struggle like that between the Persians and the Hellenes. The contention between city and city was, however, incessant. Within the town walls, too, the strife between class and class was constant. Apart, therefore, from the question of degree, we find in the Italian city-states between 1350 and 1400 a.d. the same restless vortices of intellectual and emotional energy which were the first consequences of Marathon and Salamis.

As in Greece, these vortices were not of one type nor the creation of a single centre. Florence certainly played the part in Italian culture that Athens did in the growth of Hellenism. Of all the cities of Italy, she was most completely in touch with the diverse influences which humanized the arts. But the movement was not a matter of Florentine culture. Just as had been the case in Greece, a hundred centres produced personalities—men and women of every stamp. The theocracy of Rome, the democracy of Florence, the monarchy of Naples, the aristocracy of Venice, and the tyranny of Milan, all did their part. All assisted to mould that grand complexity which we call the Italian Renaissance The leaders of public opinion in all these centres, men and women alike, were continually moving about. Artists were invited now to one court now to another; scholars and poets were welcomed at Siena and Ferrara as they were at Milan and Florence. Hence that all-embracing experience of men and things, which must lie at the foundation of every art which is not only to grow, but to live and bear fruit.

But it is one thing to realize the presence of a number of factors favourable to a great art. It is a more difficult thing to estimate the circumstances under which a large measure of this force and experience was diverted into channels which made a Michael Angelo not only possible but certain. The inquiry we are embarking upon is the counterpart of that which we undertook with reference to the evolution of Hellenic sculpture between 480 and 450 b.c. Apart from the longer period occupied, we shall find that the most significant feature is the resemblance between the circumstances which led up to Phidias and those which led up to Michael Angelo. This is not surprising. Indeed, were not many circumstances attending pre-Angelesque sculpture identical with those in the first half of the fifth century b.c., our entire critical method would be endangered. As a matter of fact, the identity of circumstance is remarkable. What is even more important is that where there is a really striking variation we can correlate it with a corresponding one in the result. In other words, we can recognize and account for the characteristics which distinguish the sculpture of the Italian renaissance from that of Greece 1900 years earlier.

GHIBERTI AND THE GATES OF
THE FLORENTINE BAPTISTERY

Turning to the facts: the new spiritual atmosphere, with its strong artistic potentialities, which followed the preaching of St. Francis, was much more favourable to the painter’s art than to that of the sculptor. We have seen that Giotto was able to give adequate expression to the dominant ideas of his age with much greater freedom than such an artist as Andrea Pisano. This general tendency unfavourable to the growth of a vigorous school of Italian sculpture, continued for a long time. Its effect in turning the budding artist’s dreams towards painting or influencing his work in unsculpturesque fashion cannot be doubted. Perhaps this can be most fully illustrated by the subsequent history of the doors of the Florentine baptistery. It will be remembered that Andrea Pisano had erected the first of the three bronze doors seventy years earlier. The political difficulties in the latter part of the fourteenth century prevented the Florentines completing the work. In 1403, however, as a thank-offering after the great plague of 1400, the Guild of Florentine merchants decided to complete the bronze doors of the baptistery. The commission was offered for public competition and advertized throughout Italy. The account left by Lorenzo Ghiberti, the eventual winner, enables us to realize the effect of the news.

Ghiberti had been born in 1381, so that he was barely out of his teens when the announcement of the Florentine Guild was published. He had been educated as a goldsmith, a craft which always flourishes when wealth is accumulating, civil disorders are frequent and banking systems insecure. It provides a ready means of hoarding a small store against a time of stress. But to an artist of ardent imagination and real ambition like the youth Ghiberti, the narrow limits set by goldsmithery were cramping. Reading between the lines, we can see that he was seriously contemplating abandoning his own art for the more expressive art of painting. He had indeed taken the first step. In a passage from his own manuscript in the Magliabecchian Library, he narrates:

“In my youth, anno Christi 1400, moved both by the corrupted air of Florence and the bad state of the country, I fled with a worthy painter who had been sent for by Signor Malatesta of Pesaro, and he gave us a room to paint, which we did with great diligence. My soul was at this time much turned towards painting, partly from the hope of the works in which Signor Malatesta promised to employ us; and partly because my companion was always showing me the honour and utility which would accrue to me. Nevertheless, at this moment, when my friends wrote to me that the governors of the baptistery were sending for masters whose skill in bronze working they wished to prove, and that from all Italian lands many maestri were coming to place themselves in this strife of talent, I could no longer forbear, and asked leave of Signor Malatesta who let me depart.”

Coming to Florence, Ghiberti found himself opposed to six of the best sculptors of Italy. There was Filippo Brunelleschi, who afterwards became famous as the architect of the dome of the Florentine Cathedral. There was also Jacopo della Quercia, the Sienese sculptor, to whom we shall refer again. Each competitor received “four tables of brass,” and a year was given to prepare a panel representing the “Sacrifice of Isaac.” At the end of the time it was evident that the contest had resolved itself into a duel between Ghiberti and Brunelleschi. Nor was there any doubt as to the winner. The panels of both men can still be seen side by side in the National Museum at Florence. They witness to the truth of Ghiberti’s boast: “The palm of victory was conceded to me by all the judges and by those who competed with me. Universally the glory was given to me without any exception.” The commission was dated November 23, 1403. The Merchants’ Guild agreed to pay all expenses—the sum eventually expended upon the pair of gates being 22,000 ducats. The wages of his assistants, who included Donatello, Gozzoli and Uccello, were defrayed by the Guild. Lorenzo himself received 200 florins a year, for which he agreed to give all his time. He was bound to design the panels and execute “the nudes, draperies, and all the artistic parts with his own hand.” Upon the completion of the first pair of gates, those executed by Andrea Pisano (1331-1334) were taken down and Ghiberti’s gates erected in the place of honour facing the Cathedral. Nor was this all. Twenty-five years had been spent already. Yet he was ordered to furnish another pair—those which Michael Angelo called “[The Gates of Paradise].” They were unveiled in 1452, when they in their turn displaced the earlier gates of Ghiberti.

The “[Gates of Paradise]” represent the zenith that sculpture could attain, following the path indicated by the Pisani, who had been compelled to work largely in relief owing to the necessity laid upon them of being primarily illustrators of the Scriptures. Ghiberti’s last pair of gates, therefore, merit a detailed examination. There are ten panels, five on each door. Upon these are pictured scenes from Old Testament history from the Creation to Solomon. In some of the reliefs Ghiberti put as many as a hundred figures. Yet the panels never appear crowded. Throughout there is a fine appreciation of the story to be depicted. The beauty of the drawing of the nudes and of the soft flow of the drapery is extreme. It is almost impossible to select a panel which will illustrate all the charms of design and beauties of technique with which the “[Gates of Paradise]” abound. If one must choose, the panel upon which Ghiberti depicts the Creation of Adam and Eve, the Temptation and the Expulsion from Eden, seems to suggest itself. From it we can judge Ghiberti’s treatment of the male and female nude. We can see how marvellously the sense of aerial perspective is rendered by the gradual diminution of relief. The figures nearest the eye are in high relief, the more distant forms being raised to a less and less degree, until “the multitude of the heavenly host” melt imperceptibly into the bronze background.

LORENZO GHIBERTI

“THE GATES OF PARADISE”

Baptistery, Florence

Technically—judged from the standpoint of workmanship in bronze—“The Creation Panel” is beyond criticism. Comparing it with a painting by Giotto, or, to take an artist of a later date, by Fra Angelico, we feel, however, that something is lacking. Though the subjects depicted are biblical, Ghiberti’s work lacks the spirituality which an artist working under the influence of Giotto, consciously or unconsciously, infused into his work. Italy in the fifteenth century had realized the fallacies that underlay the narrow creed of the Church and the too rigid philosophy of the Scholastics.

Ghiberti, like many another Italian artist, could not accept the judgment of the extreme ascetics who saw in the beauties of the human form only snares set by the devil to catch the souls of men. Whatever may have been Ghiberti’s personal religious belief, as an artist he knew that such a creed was impossible. He saw that the beauties which the eye could see were his raw material. The mystical artists of the Giottesque school would have cried with Watts, “I paint ideas, not things.” Ghiberti worked upon the principle that an artist holding such a creed only approaches success when he forgets his predilection for ideas in the interest aroused by the beauties of the natural world and particularly by the beauties of the human form.

At the very root of our argument lies the fact that these broader and more human views are traceable to the growing influence of the democracy in the Italian cities. It must never be forgotten that such a work as the “[Gates of Paradise]” was in every sense a public work. Its general design and its detailed progress were continually supervised by the hard-headed burghers of Florence. When, for instance, Ghiberti was instructed on January 2, 1425, by the consuls of the Guild of Merchants to commence the third pair of gates, he was not free to choose his own subjects. Here is an extract from the letter of Leonardo Bruni d’Arezzo, the Chancellor of the Republic, who actually drew up the general scheme. After detailing the subjects he added:

“It is necessary that he who has to design them should be well instructed in every story, so that he may dispose the characters and scenes to the best effect.... I have no doubt that the work as I have designed it will succeed well, but I should like to be near the artist that I may interpret to him the many meanings of the scenes.”

It was no small task which the good Chancellor set Ghiberti. Imagine the feelings of a twentieth-century sculptor suddenly faced with a demand to give expression to the following subjects in ten panels, within the limits set by a single door.

III
Creation of Adam.Adam, Eve, and children.
Creation of Eve.The two sacrifices.
Temptation.Death of Abel.
Expulsion from Eden.Curse of Cain.
IIIVII
Noah leaving Ark.Moses on Sinai.
Noah’s sacrifice.
Noah’s drunkenness.
IVVIII
Abraham and the Angels.Joshua marching round Jericho.
The sacrifice of Isaac.The Fall of Jericho.
VIX
Isaac.David and Goliath.
Esau hunting.Defeat of Philistines.
The blessing of Jacob.
VIX
Sale of Joseph.Queen of Sheba at
Pharaoh’s dream.Solomon’s Court.
Joseph’s brethren in Egypt.

Yet Ghiberti’s ingenuity was sufficient not only to make the designs but to overcome the immense technical difficulties incidental to carrying them out in bronze. Truth to tell, the commission should never have been given to a sculptor. In addition to the difficulties connected with his own art, Ghiberti was faced with the necessity of adding architectural and landscape backgrounds to his reliefs. He strove to solve problems of perspective which even the painters of his day had not mastered. Indeed, for the designer of the Baptistery gates, sculptural relief was rather a branch of the graphic arts than a part of the plastic arts, governed by the rules and subject to the limitations of sculpture. Ghiberti’s life’s work landed his art in a blind alley. For further progress it was necessary that sculpture should be once more informed with its own definite spirit. Ghiberti, or rather his patrons, had failed to realize that sculpture as a descriptive medium has its limitations. It cannot hope to rival painting in the multiplicity of subjects which it can depict with success. It must, therefore, confine itself to subjects which it can express clearly and vigorously.

DONATELLO AND THE CHURCH OF
OR SAN MICHELE

What was denied to Ghiberti was given to his assistant Donatello—the foremost sculptor of the transitional period which preceded Michael Angelo. By his example Donatello re-defined the proper limits and the fittest objects of the art of sculpture. His life’s work was one continued reiteration of the Hellenic lesson that sculpture is the concrete expression of man’s joyful interest in the human form. To the end, his figures never possessed the ideal grace with which Ghiberti endowed a hundred forms in the Baptistery panels. But Donatello had the essential quality of a true sculptor within him. He put aside all desire to rival the painter. He willed to express himself by form and form only. This fact alone invests his work with an importance and interest in the history of pure sculpture which the more graceful productions of Ghiberti cannot claim.

Donato di Betto Bardi, to give Donatello his correct title, was the son of a wool-comber. He had entered Ghiberti’s studio as an assistant in 1405, at the age of nineteen. His experience with Ghiberti gave him the technical skill to carry out an ambition that dated from boyhood. Before Donatello was thirty, the chances of the age gave him a series of unique opportunities of making his dreams realities.

As we have seen, a new class of patrons had arisen in Italy with fresh ambitions and ideals. In Florence, for instance, the mercantile class had gradually ousted the German nobles who had ruled in fief of the Emperor. By 1283 the wealthier guilds had established a form of government delegating all power to members of their own class. Under this Florence became more and more powerful. By 1406 Pisa was captured, and the last stronghold of the feudal party in Tuscany had fallen. During the last years of the fourteenth century Florence had prospered greatly. Trade developed. The manufacture of silk and wool brought a large measure of material prosperity. The pride of the burghers in their city increased correspondingly. The erection of the Baptistery gates must be regarded as only a single instance of a general tendency. All over Italy the case was the same. The appreciation of sculpture was no longer confined to a few score merchants and princes, as had been the case at Pisa. It had spread from the cloister and castle to the market square and the Guildhall.

The result of similar circumstances in the earlier history of sculpture will be remembered. In fifth-century Greece a keen appreciation of sculpture had been developed among a burgher population. Just as the proceeds of the commissions for athletic sculptures provided livelihoods for the budding artists of Greece, so the orders of the Florentine burghers offered at least a competence to a struggling Italian sculptor with a belief in the possibilities of his particular art. What the commission for the Baptistery gates did for Ghiberti, similar commissions did for Jacopo della Quercia, Donatello and the rest.

In dwelling upon the importance of such material considerations as these, we are in no way depreciating the zeal of either the Italian or the Hellenic sculptor, by his old patrons, the Guild of Merchants. It was followed by a long series of similar commissions. The Guild of Moneychangers realizing the credit which attached to its rival, desired Ghiberti to furnish a companion figure, “Saint Matthew,” which was in its place by 1422. Finally, the Guild of Wool Merchants employed Ghiberti to produce a “St. Stephen” for a third niche.

Long before this, other Florentine Guilds had joined in the public-spirited competition. Moreover, other sculptors were discovered. In 1416 Donatello had been commissioned by the Guild of Armourers to model a figure for Or San Michele. The result was the well-known “[Saint George].” It was followed by the statue of “Saint Mark,” of which Michael Angelo said “it would have been impossible to reject the Gospel from so straightforward a witness.” The “Saint Mark” is a typical work of Donatello’s first period (1405 to 1425). The whole conception of the Apostle is based upon a foundation of stern realism. Gothic strength rather than Attic grace is aimed at. Comparing it with such a work as Ghiberti’s “Saint Matthew,” we see at once that an immense step forward has been taken. The opportunity is nothing to Ghiberti. His deep knowledge of perspective is valueless, of course. His ingenuity in the elaboration of detail proves a drawback rather than an advantage. He produces a graceful lay figure. So with the “[Saint George].” Donatello revels in the chance of sculpturing a life-sized figure. He makes the masses and lines of the body tell. The ideal aimed at is the ideal of the Greek sculptor, who felt that his true medium of expression was the human form. Donatello has found the essentials common to all great sculpture—the basis upon which the greatness of Greek art depends. He has rediscovered the a b c of the language of marble and bronze which every sculptor must realize, whatever differences of thought and emotion he seeks to express.

DONATELLO

SAINT GEORGE

From Or San Michele, Florence

THE INFLUENCE OF THE PLATONISTS

This brings us to the great problem of fifteenth-century Italian sculpture—its relationship to the art of Greece or Rome. Donatello is frequently cited as the pioneer of the reviving interest in classical sculpture. Following Vasari, the text-books tell of his visit to Rome with Brunelleschi in 1403. They dwell upon the statement that Donatello spent much time in arranging the collection of ancient sculpture in the Medici gardens. Recent investigation, however, shows conclusively that Donatello’s first visit to Rome was made in 1433. In any case, an honest critic must admit that little evidence of direct Greek and Roman influence can be observed in his works. Comparing the “Saint Mark” with such a Hellenic statue as the “[Phocion]” in the Vatican or the “Sophocles” in the Lateran, what strikes us most strongly is the entire difference in the spirit animating the later work.

And this is equally true of the “[Saint George]” of Or San Michele, or, to use a clearer example, the nude bronze “[David],” now in the Bargello at Florence. Technically, Donatello’s “[David]” can be compared with any nude male figure, let us say the beautiful bronze “Narcissus” found at Pompeii, and now in the Naples Museum. It is sculptured “in the round.” It is complete in itself. It proves that at last the Italian sculptor is on the high road for complete success. But in sentiment it is utterly un-Hellenic. It possesses none of those external resemblances to Greek statuary which we detect in the sculpture of Canova or Thorvaldsen, for instance.

Truth to tell, the effort to trace evidences of a direct traffic between one great art and another is based upon a total misapprehension. No great artist can “lift” any considerable idea from a work produced in an entirely different mental and emotional atmosphere. What really happened was that a wave of enthusiasm for Hellenic art and literature broke over Italy. The sculptors shared in the humanizing effects of the realization of the true greatness of Greek culture. One cannot point to the treatment of a fold of drapery here, or to the pose of a torso there, and refer it to a Greek original. But in the Italian sculpture of the fifteenth century we can trace a breaking away from ideals which had held sway for centuries. Inspired by the revelation of what liberty of thought and action had done for the Greek, the Italian no longer prostrated himself before the idols of Catholic dogma and scholasticism. Before Donatello’s death the appreciation of classic culture was no longer confined to a few wealthy dilettanti, as had been the case at Pisa a century earlier. Admiration for the productions of the Attic philosophers and artists threatened to become a religious force capable of engulfing Christianity.

The consequences were tremendous. Consider, for instance, the immense difference between the educational methods and ideals. Compare those which operated during the later years of Donatello’s life with those of the earlier age, when education was entirely in the hands of the Roman Church. Take a typical Italian schoolmaster, such as Vittorino of Feltre. Picture his typical Renaissance school, “The House of Joy,” on the shores of the Mantuan Lake. The spot was hallowed by the memory that it had been the birthplace of Virgil. Nature had lavished upon it avenues of planes and acacias. But dominating all was the grand aim of Vittorino, “I want to teach my pupils how to think, not to split hairs.”

DONATELLO

DAVID

Bargello, Florence

Born at Feltre, Vittorino went as a youth to Padua, one of the leading humanistic centres at the end of the fourteenth century. After a period as Professor of Rhetoric, the ruling Gonzaga invited Vittorino to Mantua to educate his children. This was in 1425, and Vittorino remained there until his death in 1446. His first step was to abolish the luxury which had environed the young Gonzagas. He made “The House of Joy” a seat of plain living and regular study. Youths from other courts flocked to Mantua. At his own expense, Vittorino maintained a number of poor scholars, who lived near the villa and shared in all the privileges of the school. Music and such elementary sciences as geometry and astronomy were taught, in true Hellenic fashion. The Latin classics were studied without the fantastic pedantries of the ecclesiastical era. The grand truth was accepted that every man was possessed of a free but responsible personality. Each one saw that his task in this world was to mould his individuality, and by the exercise of his own free will to prove how far he was above the brutes. The one end of education was to make the boy or girl, not a specialist, but a perfectly developed man or woman. The expert had no place in Italy in those days. Throughout the Renaissance all education aimed at the production of all-round men and women, physically, emotionally, and intellectually sound.

It needs little imagination to see the effect of this general acceptance of Greek ideals of life and conduct upon sculpture. It rendered possible the production of hundreds of statues which would have been meaningless a century earlier. Beyond this we may not go. Every vital art must be largely indebted to the Greek tradition, and Renaissance sculpture was no exception. But, in the end, a great style cannot be transferred. A second-hand style, like a second-hand coat, is apt to be an ill-fit. Taking a few typical fifteenth-century sculptures we do not say “how Greek they are.” On the contrary, it is at once apparent that the difference underlying Italian and Greek sculpture is far more noticeable than any external resemblance.

When once we realize the cause, it is easy to see that it could not be otherwise. In Italy, the relation of the individual to society differed entirely from that in any Greek state. Whereas the individuality of the Greek was constantly sacrificed to the interests of his state, in Italy everything tended to the free emergence of individual personalities. The Italian was in touch with no overpowering political unity. Nothing hampered the attainment of personal ambition or the satisfaction of personal passions. What he desired was not civic or national success, but the foundation of a new age of art and culture in which every type of individuality would have its place. The Italian longed for individual fame, for individual power. This could not but entail the loss of that grand unity of aim which was the great glory of Athenian art. Instead, it led to the growth of a wonderful diversity of character and an extraordinary variety of interests. Whereas the Greek had been content to portray a few supreme types, the artist of the Italian Renaissance wished to show humanity in every aspect. He was not even content with the limits set by the bounds of grace and beauty. The expression of spiritual tension and mental energy could not be indicated without a departure from that harmony of the planes which the Hellenic sculptor regarded as essential. The Italian boldly adopted other means. He depicted with cruel emphasis the play of muscles and tendons which accompanies physical and mental tension. His mission was to present strongly individualized character. To him every human energy was fit for sculptural treatment.

JACOPO DELLA QUERCIA

TOMB OF ILARIA DEL CARETTO

Lucca Cathedral

Reviewing our argument we find that by the last quarter of the fifteenth century the art of sculpture was in this position. A long series of remunerative public and private commissions had educated bands of sculptors of real talent in several Italian centres but particularly in Florence. Their work was held in such public esteem that they no longer regarded themselves as mere artizans. Moreover, while the sculptor had been making himself more and more capable of expressing the thoughts and emotions of his countrymen, they, for their part, were deepening and widening their experience. Not only had they come to realize the manifold beauties of nature, but they were learning man’s intimate relation with it. At the same time the revelation of what the Greeks had done and what Hellenic culture really meant was leading to an entirely new regard for mankind and a desire to cultivate the whole, as opposed to a mere fragment, of the human capital. In other words, while the sculptor was increasing his power of interpretation, thoughts of the highest value and emotions of real depth were being aroused. Comparing the sculpture of Ghiberti, Donatello, Quercia, della Robbia and the rest, with that of the Pisani a century earlier, it is seen that the essential difference depends upon the general adoption of a new philosophical standpoint. Previously, both the artist and his public viewed man from the heavens and found him a drowning mite in an ocean of divinity. Now both looked man in the face and recognized a brother, set for a time in the world to witness to the abiding beauty of the Eternal Reality. In the light of this conception, what had been negligible became of prime importance. The shameful became entirely satisfying.

The truth of this proposition is seen at once if we look at a few typical fifteenth-century works. Take, as the first instance, the beautiful tomb of “[Ilaria del Carretto],” by Jacopo della Quercia (born 1374). It was erected about 1406. The young wife of Paolo Guinigi lies in simple garb upon the bier—the dog at her feet an emblem of womanly faithfulness. Comparing the work with, let us say, the [Pisan Pulpit] by Niccola Pisano, we are struck by the beautiful simplicity of the design. The over-crowded detail has vanished. Instead we have a scheme of monumental breadth. The difference in spirit is even greater. The nude children, with their wreaths of flowers, which decorate the bier, witness to the transition from the Gothic gloom to the Renaissance joy in the beauties of the natural world.

LUCA DELLA ROBBIA

THE VISITATION

Pistoja

Turning to the works of an entirely different type, we note the same tendency in the delightfully human bas-reliefs of the della Robbias. No review of the art of sculpture would be complete without a reference to Luca della Robbia’s marble Singing Gallery. “The Cantoria” was begun in 1431 and was placed in the Cathedral at Florence in 1438. The taste of the seventeenth century, however, demanded the substitution of large balconies of carved and painted wood, and this singing gallery, together with that of Donatello, was taken down. Luca’s carved panels finally found their way to the Museo di Santa Maria del Fiore. Looking at the panels, we first of all note the immense advance in technical skill which enabled Luca della Robbia to represent the very poetry of rhythmic motion in stone. We note this. But we are moved by the human beauty of the whole conception. It is in a very real sense a religious work. The sculptor has taken as his theme the one hundredth and fiftieth psalm:

“Praise ye the Lord ... Praise him upon the loud cymbals; praise him upon the high-sounding cymbals.”

But the religion of Luca is essentially human.

The figures from the “Singing Gallery” are so well known that we have preferred to illustrate the art of Luca della Robbia by the beautiful “[Visitation]” at Pistoja, particularly as it is a terra-cotta and, therefore, recalls the medium in which the artist made his most constant appeal to his countrymen. The “[Visitation]” is a comparatively early work and shows that from the beginning Luca’s genius had little in common with that of Donatello. He gives us no hint of the restless search for knowledge which was the first consequence of the Italian’s realization of the powers of humanity. Luca stands to Donatello, the apostle of realism, as an Umbrian painter like Perugino stands to Signorelli. But his quiet self-restraint witnesses to a human virtue at least as noble—a trusting belief in the ultimate reign of peace and love.

The last fifteenth-century sculptor to whom reference must be made is Andrea del Verocchio (1435-1488). His “[Doubting Thomas]” still stands in the niche of Or San Michele, where it attracted all Florence 400 years ago. It is a fine example of what a first-rate technique apart from the fire of genius can produce. The lines of the drapery perhaps, incline to angularity; the figures are somewhat rigid, but the group is of real beauty and is conceived by a true sculptor. Whatever his shortcomings, the artist realizes sculpture to be the medium of man’s joy in the beauty of the human form. The fame of Verocchio might well rest upon the “[Doubting Thomas].” The name of the Florentine sculptor is, however, associated with another work—the equestrian statue of the Venetian commander, Bartolomeo Colleoni at Venice. That, at any rate, is a work of the very highest order. It was unfinished at Verocchio’s death, and was completed by the Venetian, Leopardi. No one can fairly judge what measure of the success of the statue is due to Verocchio’s earnest technique and how much to Leopardi’s fervid genius. In any case the [Colleoni monument] fitly closes this review of Italian sculpture during the fifteenth century. No more certain evidence of the capacity of the pre-Angelesque sculptors could be adduced. To this day, the nobility of the pose of horse and rider and the grandly martial spirit pervading the work, mark it as the greatest equestrian statue in the world.

Verocchio was born in 1435. He died when Michael Angelo was still a boy. The period of his life must, therefore, contain the answer to the final problem. Why was the acme of Italian sculpture reached at the end of the fifteenth century? It can be no mere chance that Michael Angelo produced his finest sculptures between 1495 and 1530. Why could it not have been fifty years earlier? Some factor was clearly present at the later date which had not been present when Verocchio was a boy. If it had been there, it had not acquired its subsequent force. Reverting for the last time to the Hellenic analogy we find the clue. Neither the material factors—such as the commissions for public works and memorial monuments—nor such a psychological factor as the broadened sphere of human activity exhaust the circumstances which finally gave Italy its Phidias and its Scopas. The last thing required was a series of dominating personalities able to focus the emotion and intellectual forces generated by the age. Florence, in fact, needed a Pericles.

VEROCCHIO

“THE DOUBTING THOMAS”

Or San Michele, Florence

These final co-ordinating factors were not denied. As in Greece, the personalities were in the first place politicians. The outstanding feature in the history of Italy during the fifteenth century is the number of political, military and commercial figures of real vigour and ability who rose to power. In one state after another they assumed complete control of affairs. We have only to name the Visconti and the Sforzas at Milan, the Gonzagas at Mantua, the Bentivoglio and Este families at Bologna and Ferrara, and the Montefeltro family at Urbino, to bring home their influence upon art. Most potent of all were, of course, the Medici, who centralized the artistic enthusiasms of Florence.

As had been the case in Athens, the domination of the Medici family commenced with the harnessing of the forces of Florentine democracy. The power of the Medici began when Giovanni de Medici succeeded in making the lesser guilds the rulers of Florence at the end of the fourteenth century. Giovanni had made an immense fortune by trade and had established banks all over the peninsula which he readily turned to advantage in furthering his political aims. Cosimo, his son, succeeded to Giovanni’s popularity with the lower classes, and by carefully concealing the mailed fist in the velvet glove reduced Florence to the position of Athens when Cimon and Pericles ruled as the nominal representatives of the people.

The climax was reached when Lorenzo the Magnificent succeeded Cosimo in 1469. He so altered the constitution of Florence that it became a republic only in name. A few years later he seized control of the public purse and hypnotized the political judgment of his subjects. Lorenzo was the Pericles of the Italian Renaissance. The energies and interest of the Florentine burghers were focused around his personality, and he it was that directed their efforts. As had been the case with Pericles, the great glory of Lorenzo was the unfailing tact which never interfered with the perfect freedom of action of the varied natures with which he surrounded himself—the skill with which he persuaded them that their intellectual interests were his own. His Court was frequented by a brilliant band of scholars, and any youth of ability was assured of patronage.

What was even more important, the young painters or sculptors were brought into daily contact with the men and women who were moulding public opinion and shaping history. Artists who had lived for a few years in the Court of “the Magnificent” were far more than craftsmen. They were cultivated men of the world, abreast of all the practical knowledge of their time. It was among men like these that the sculptor was found, able to give vital expression to even the manifold energies of the Italian Renaissance.

VEROCCHIO AND LEOPARDI

THE COLLEONI MONUMENT

Venice