Alinari TOMB OF GIOVANNI,
SON OF GENERAL GATTAMELATA PADUA 		Alinari TOMB OF
GENERAL GATTAMELATA SANT' ANTONIO, PADUA

SHRINE OF ST. JUSTINA

LONDON

Bellano and the Gattamelata Tombs.

One other sculptor, Bellano, is said by Vasari to have been so much affected by Donatello's influence that the work of the two men was often indistinguishable. This places Bellano too high. Scardeone, it is true, says he was mirus cœlatura;[208] but Gauricus is more accurate in calling him ineptus artifex.[209] He was really a lugubrious person, though on rare occasions he made a good thing, such, for instance, as the statuette of St. Jerome, belonging to M. Gustave Dreyfus. But his large bas-relief of St. Anthony and the Mule[210] is stiff and laboured. The tomb of Roycelli, the monarcha sapientie in the Santo, with its wealth of poverty-stricken decoration, shows that Bellano was a man who could work on a large scale, but whose sense of fitness and harmony was weak. So also the Roccabonella fragments, in spite of a rugged, rough-hewn appearance, show an absence of ethical and intellectual qualities; while the fussy and breathless reliefs round the choir of the Santo are farcical in several respects. There was another man influenced by Donatello, who must be nameless pending further investigation: his style cannot be identified with anything on the great altar, but he was a sculptor of immense power. He made the so-called shrine of Santa Giustina in London,[211] and the two Gattamelata monuments in the Santo. These tombs are very simple, consisting of the effigies of the two Condottieri, fully armed, but with bared heads. Below is a broad stone relief of children holding the scroll between them, as on the Coscia tomb in Florence. Above is a lunette containing painting, the whole composition being framed by a severe moulding, and surmounted by the family crest and badge. They are most remarkable. The two recumbent figures lie calm and peaceful: they show the ennobling aspect of death, the belief in a further existence. This sculptor with his sensitive touch makes us realise the migration. To "make the good end" was, indeed, a product of Christianity: antiquity was content if a man parted from life "handsomely." Greek art can, of course, show no sign of the Christian virtues of death. Like the Egyptians, their object was to present the dead as still alive, even where the aid of fiction had to be invoked. To them sleep and death are often indistinguishable; often again one is left in doubt as to which of the figures on a funeral relief represents the departed. With death the human body, having ceased to be the home of life, ceased also to be a welcome theme of art. These two Gattamelatas, father and son, have fought the good fight, and in the carved effigy acquire a statuesque repose which is full of dignity and pathos. The famous warrior of Ravenna, Guido Guidarelli as he is called, though of a later date, is fashioned in the same spirit; showing, moreover, certain peculiarities in the armour which one notices in the tombs at Padua. The d'Alagni monument in S. Domenico at Naples, and a tomb in the Carmine of Pisa, are similar in respect of sentiment. So, too, is the shrine of Santa Giustina in London, of which the details as well as the organic treatment leave no doubt as to its authorship, so closely does it resemble the tomb of Giovanni Gattamelata. It is a work of singular refinement and beauty. We see the recumbent figure of the saint on the façade of a sarcophagus, at either side of which are little angels made by the same hand and at the same date as those on Giovanni's tomb. Santa Giustina is modelled in low-relief; the sculptor seems to draw in the stone, and the drapery is like linen: not a blanket or counterpane, but some thin clinging material which is moulded to the form below. In some ways this precious work is analogous to the more famous bas-relief belonging to the Earl of Wemyss, the St. Cecilia which has been ascribed to Donatello. This wonderful thing is not well known: it has been seldom exhibited, and the photograph by which it is usually judged is taken from a reproduction moulded a generation ago. The original, of rather slaty Lavagna stone, has never been photographed, and the cast, many thousands of which exist, entirely fails to show the intangible and diaphanous qualities of the original. The widespread popularity of the St. Cecilia would (if possible) be enhanced were we more familiar with the genuine work itself. It is certainly one of the most accomplished examples of Italian plastic art; not, indeed, by Donatello himself, for there is a softness and glamour which cannot be associated with his chisel. But it has the unequalled tenderness and grace for which the Gattamelata tomb is so notable, placing its nameless author in the highest ranks of Italian sculpture.

Alinari

GENERAL GATTAMELATA