f these artists how to study
nature, but it did not satisfy Christian ideals. The subjects demanded
of the Tuscans were entirely foreign to Greek experience. The saints
and martyrs of the Christian era were at the opposite pole from the
gods and heroes of antiquity. Hence the aim of the new sculpture was
the manifestation of the soul, as that of the classic art had been
the glorification of the body.

Jacopo della Quercia was one of the oldest of the sculptors whose work
extended into the fifteenth century, being already twenty-five years
of age when that century began. Standing thus in the period of
transition between the old and the new, his work unites the influence
of mediaeval tradition with a distinctly new element. His bas-reliefs
on the portal of S. Petronio at Bologna are probably his most
characteristic work. The tomb of Ilaria del Carretto is in a class by
itself: "In composition, the gravest and most tranquil of his works,
and in conception, full ofbeauty and feeling."[1]

Donatello is undoubtedly the greatest name in Italian sculpture
previous to Michelangelo. The kinship between these two men was
felicitously expressed in Vasari's quotation from "the most learned
and very reverend" Don Vicenzo Borghini: "Either the spirit of Donato
worked in Buonarroti, or that of Buonarroti first acted in Donato."
Vitality, force, action, suggestiveness, character, such are the words
which spring to the lips in the presence of both masters.

The range of Donatello's art was phenomenal, from works of such
magnitude as the equestrian statue of Gattamelata, to the decorative
panels for the altar of S. Antonio at Padua. At times he was an
uncompromising realist, as in his statue of the bald old man, the
Zuccone, who figured as King David. Again he showed himself capable of
lofty idealism, as in the beautiful and heroic St. George. Which way
his own tastes leaned we may judge from his favorite asseveration,
"By my Zuccone." The point is that it mattered nothing to him whether
his model was beautiful or ugly, whether he wrought out an ideal of
his imagination or studied the character of an actual individual; his
first care was to make the figure live. In consequence his art has
what a critic has called "a robustness and a sanity" which have made
it "a wellspring of inspiration to lesser men."

The only subject practically left out of Donatello's work was woman.
Children afforded him all the material he needed for the more