rge are tentative and ill-drawn. The children of the
Cantoria, the great singing gallery made for the Cathedral, are
dancing upon a ground strewn with flowers and fruit. The idea was
charming, but in executing it Donatello could only make _cut_ flowers
and withered fruit. There is no life in them, no savour, and the
energy of the children seems to have exhausted the humbler form of
vitality beneath their feet. Years afterwards, when Donatello's
assistants were allowed a good deal of latitude, we find an effort to
make more use of this invaluable decoration: the pulpits of San
Lorenzo, for instance, have some trees and climbing weeds showing keen
study of nature. But Donatello himself always preferred the
architectural background, in contrast to Leonardo da Vinci, who, with
all his love of building, seldom if ever used one in the backgrounds
of his pictures: but then Leonardo was the most advanced botanist of
his age.

[Footnote 21: Edition 1768, p. 74.]

[Footnote 22: _E.g._, Milanesi, Catalogo, 1887, p. 6.]

[Footnote 23: Cinelli's edition, 1677, p. 45.]

[Footnote 24: Raffaelle Mengs, Collected Works. London, 1796, I., p.
132.]

[Footnote 25: Printed in Vasari, Lemonnier Ed., 1846, vol. i.]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The Zuccone and the Sense of Light and Shade.]

Speaking of the employment of light and shade as instruments in art,
Cicero says: "_Multa vident pictores in umbris et in eminentia, quae
nos non videmus_." One may apply the dictum to the Zuccone where
Donatello has carved the head with a rugged boldness, leaving the play
of light and shade to complete the portrait. Davanzati was explicit on
the matter,[26] showing that the point of view from which the Zuccone
was visible made this coarse treatment imperative, if the spectator
below was to see something forcible and impressive. "The eyes," he
says, "are made as if they were dug out with a shovel: eyes which
would appear lifelike on the ground level would look blind high up on
the Campanile, for distance consumes diligence--_la lontananza si
mangia la diligenzia_." The doctrine could not be better stated, and
it governs the career of Donatello. There is nothing like the Zuccone
in Greek art: nothing so ugly, nothing so wise. Classical sculptors in
statues destined for lofty situations preserved the absolute truth of
form, but their diligence was consumed by distance. What was true in
the studio lost its truth on a lofty p