Certain well understood signs show who he is. The circle about his head is the halo, the symbol of a sacred character. The skin garment fastened at the shoulder reminds us of the strange clothing John wore in the desert. The tall cross is the emblem of the prophet, as a forerunner of the crucified one.
Donatello's art covered a wide range of subjects, but in none was he more at home than in representing children. He has been called "the poet of child-life." There are interesting points of comparison between the example before us and the Musical Angels of the altar at Padua. St. John the Baptist is evidently a real little boy, transferred to the stone just as he was. The piping angels, on the other hand, are child ideals, without counterpart in real life. St. John's large ear, with its irregularly bent rim, and his straight upper lip, are features such as an artist must certainly have copied, not invented. The angel faces, on the other hand, are moulded in the perfect curves which originate in the imagination of the artist. Donatello was, above all things else, a close student of human nature. Sometimes, indeed, he chose very unattractive models, and reproduced them so faithfully that the realism is almost painful. His artistic eye was always open to new impressions. Perhaps, one day as he walked through the streets of Florence, he noticed among the children playing there this little fellow of the long neck and pensive face. "Ecco," said he, to himself, "il Giovannino."[11] The child's face and bearing had a quaint seriousness precisely suited to the character.
It is wonderful how the sculptor's art has made the little boy seem actually alive in the bas-relief. The hair is executed with the skill peculiar to Donatello, and seems to grow from the head. Such studies from real life--genre studies, as they are called--were lessons which prepared the artist for higher works of idealism. The little St. John may have been the original material for some of the angel figures.
[8] The circumstances of John's birth are related in the first chapter of St. Luke, from which the quotations are drawn.
[9] St. Mark, chapter i., verse 7.
[10] See the pictures of St. John the Baptist in the volumes on Titian and Correggio in the Riverside Art Series.
[11] "There is the little John."