DONATELLO. By Lord Balcarres, M.P. London:

Duckworth. New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons. 1903. 6s. net.

THE author shows at the outset an attitude of entire self-reliance and a freedom of method that will engage the reader's interest. He hurries past the customary prolegomena to plunge into the difficult waters of Donatello-criticism. Of the origins of Florentine sculpture, of its greatest master's derivation, he has not much to say. Yet the few lines of rapid suggestion are pertinent. Niccolò d'Arezzo's importance in Donatello's immediate ancestry is fittingly remarked. Orcagna, however, gets an undeserved slight. A disparaging allusion to this great artist conveys the impression that Lord Balcarres is not sufficiently acquainted with his out-door work and rests his judgement too narrowly on the Orsanmichele shrine. He should look at the magnificent angels that once adorned the façade of the cathedral. Of these, eight may be seen in the gardens of Villa Castello at Carreggi, two in the Boboli, while another, and a companion figure of King David, were recently in the possession of a Florentine dealer. These works are imprint with a grandiloquence of the Pisani sweetened with the lyric refinement of the Sienese masters whose influence counts for so much in Orcagna's art. Nor does he do justice to Nanni di Banco whose statues in the niches of Orsanmichele antedate Donatello's and mark the earliest instance in Florence of a return to the Roman model. Again, the Madonna della Cintola, over the north door of the cathedral, suggests in the refined beauty of the heads an anticipation both of Luca della Robbia and Donatello.

The discussion of the separate works shows all along an independence of judgement that will meet the critic's applause so long as it tallies with his orthodoxy. Yet certain views he will have to cry down even as dangerous heresies. The first is the 'discovery' of a new Donatello in the figure of Justice surmounting the tomb of Tommaso Mocenigo in San Giovanni e Paolo at Venice. 'The tomb was made by two indifferent Florentine artists,' we read, but the Justice, a vigorous and original figure . . . so absolutely resembles the Poggio in conception, attitude, and fall of drapery, that the authorship must be referred to Donatello himself. It is certainly no copy.' Why then, we would ask, ought not the figure at the left corner of the sarcophagus, that also bears a close resemblance to one of Donatello's works, viz. to the St. George, to be likewise ascribed to the master? The answer must be that Donatello was not the man ever to repeat himself. He would have found this an infinitely more difficult task than to indulge his genius in a new creation. Moreover, Piero di Niccolò and his collaborator Giovanni di Martino, the authors of this monument, were anything but indifferent artists: witness their magnificent Judgement of Solomon on the

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terminal column of the Ducal Palace, nearest the Porta della Carta; or Piero's earlier works in Florence. These two 'compagni,' as they inscribe themselves on the Judgement of Solomon group, fresh from Florence, and filled with thoughts of Donatello's masterpieces, doubtless thought this acknowledgement a fitting tribute to the master at home and also a compliment to their new patrons in Venice. That Lord Balcarres has not given these two sculptors the attention which they deserve shows again in his oversight of the fact that already in one of the earlier editions of the 'Buckhardt Cicerone' Dr. Bode substitutes their names for that of Giovanni da Pisa as authors of the Fulgoso tomb in the Santo at Padua. A comparison of the photographs of this tomb and the other in Venice must confirm this view beyond all controversy. Nor can we share our author's faith in the St. John over the sacristy door of the Florentine church at Rome. The very pose, with the forward foot projecting over the pedestal, is a sufficient argument against its belonging even to Donatello's time. A much more famous work that has generally been allowed to be a true and typical Donatello, the so-called Niccolò da Uzzano of the Bargello, leads to a learned disquisition on the subject of polychromy in sculpture. We wish that our author had asked himself more insistingly what really are the grounds for giving this somewhat bombastic performance to the master. What other coloured busts, either portraits or ideal heads of the early fifteenth century, do we know? The life-size bust of St. John in Berlin you will say. This, however, he wisely rejects, finding it 'weak and vapid,' and seeing in it an imitation made in the latter half of the fifteenth century. To our thinking it had more safely be dated even some hundred years later. As to another doubtful work in Berlin we are quite agreed-the marble Flagellation-which he finds to be no more than a halting plagiarism of the fine bronze in the Louvre.

Nothing in the book has surprised us so much as the rejection of the gilded bust of San Rossore at Pisa. We need adduce no 'internal evidence' for its rehabilitation, since the entire history of this important work exists in print (un opera del Donatello esistente nella chiesa dei Cavallieri di S. Stefano di Pisa; Giovanni Fontana, Pisa, 1895). Those to whom the original pamphlet may not be readily accessible will find a digest of its contents in the Repertorium f. Kunstwissenschaft, vol. xix, page 491; 1896. The evidence is conclusive. We have here the reliquary made by Donatello for the friars of Ognissanti in Florence. Indeed our author cites this bust in his list of the lost works. The St. John made for Orvieto (another item in this list) has been identified in the statue of the Berlin museum.

A few slips, chiefly of the pen, or inattentions, should be noted. The four statues from the old