the large statue. Speaking
generally, one notices that while ample scope is allowed to the
fancies of picturesque architecture in all these reliefs, Donatello
always keeps it within proper bounds. Donatello was not tempted into
the interacting problems of perspective and _intarsia_, which caused
so many Paduan artists to lose grasp of the wider aspects of their
calling. Then we notice how the crowd _qua_ crowd plays its proper
part: out of some two hundred faces in these panels not more than two
or three look out to the spectator--a quality inherited by Mantegna.
The reliefs are essentially local pictures of local significance; not
only the costume, but the types are Paduan, such as we find in the
local school of painting: but we find nothing of the kind in Donatello
before the journey to the north, and the types scarcely reappear on
the altar of San Lorenzo. But, in spite of this, the reliefs have a
catholicity which extends their influence far beyond the limits within
which Donatello confined his work. Finally, the wealth of local
colouring and animation makes these reliefs among the earliest in
which "genre" or "conversation" has prominence. They offer a most
striking contrast to the sedate Florentine crowds painted in the
Brancacci chapel by Masaccio.

[Footnote 197: _Cf._ Battle of Romans and Barbarians, No. 12. Museo
Nazionale, Rome.]

[Footnote 198: Battle, Casa Buonarroti, Florence.]

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Alinari_

SYMBOL OF ST. MATTHEW

SANT' ANTONIO, PADUA]

[Sidenote: The Symbols of the Evangelists.]

There are four other bronze reliefs, the Symbols of the Evangelists.
Donatello has contrived to invest these somewhat awkward themes with
alternate drama and poetry. The emblems of Ezekiel's vision were too
intricate for Western art, and long before the fifteenth century they
had been reduced to the simple forms of the lion, ox, eagle and angel,
with no attribute except wings. All four reliefs are rectangular,
about eighteen inches square. The ox is, of course, the least
inspiring, and here as elsewhere is treated in a dry perfunctory
manner. The oxen on the facade of Laon Cathedral offered some scope to
the sculptor, being life-sized; but in a small relief the subject was
not attractive. The lion is more vigorously treated. As a work of
natural history he is better than the Marzocco, and he has a certain
heraldic extravagance as well. The limbs have tension, the