1882.]

[Footnote 233: _Ibid._ No. 7594, 1861.]

[Footnote 234: One was in the Spitzer Collection, another belongs to
M. Gustave Dreyfus.]

[Footnote 235: No. 294, Davillier bequest; and in the entrance hall to
the Sacristy of the Eremitani at Padua.]

[Footnote 236: Terra-cotta No. 39a.]

[Footnote 237: The others are Victoria and Albert Museum, No. 7624,
1861, marble. Berlin Museum, stucco. Madame Andre, marble, finer than
the London version. Marquise Arconati-Visconti, Paris, marble, and a
rough uncoloured stucco in the Casa Bardini.]

* * * * *

[Illustration: _W.A. Mansell_

MADONNA (BERLIN)

FROM SANTA MARIA MADDALENA DEI PAZZI, FLORENCE]

[Illustration: _Alinari_

SIDE PANEL OF PULPIT

SAN LORENZO, FLORENCE]

[Sidenote: The Pulpits of San Lorenzo.]

Donatello was sixty-seven when he returned from Padua. He seems to
have been unsettled during his later years, undertaking ambitious
schemes which he did not execute, and hesitating whether Florence or
Siena should be the home of his old age. The bronze pulpits of San
Lorenzo[238] are the most important works of this period, and they
were left unfinished at his death. Donatello was an old man, and the
work bears witness to his advancing years. Bandinelli says that the
roughness of the modelling was caused by failing eyesight,[239] and it
is obvious that, notwithstanding the signs of feverish activity,
and an apparent desire to get the work finished, much was left
uncompleted at his death. The pulpits were not even erected until a
later date; some of the panels were subsequently added in wood, and
others do not correctly fit into the structural design. But the genius
of Donatello shines through the finishing-touches of his assistants.
Drama is replaced by tragedy; and in these panels the concluding
incidents of the Passion are pictured with intense earnestness and
pathos. But Donatello would not allow gloom to monopolise his
composition. The paradox of the pulpits consists in the frieze of
_putti_ above the reliefs: _putti_ who dance, play, romp, and run
about. Some of them are busily engaged in moving a heavy statue:
others are pressing grapes into big cauldrons. The boy dragging along
a violoncello as big as himself is delightful. The contrast afforded
by this happy and buoyant throng to the unrelieved tragedy below is
strikingly unconventional; and the spirit of both portions is so well
maintained that there is