had suffered two or three rather grievous blows.[37]
Verrocchio made a drawing of the St. George,[38] and Mantegna
introduced a similar figure into his picture of St. James being led to
execution.[39] But Donatello's influence cannot be measured by the
effect of St. George. In this particular case his work did not
challenge competition; its perfection was too consummate to be of
service except to the copyist. In some ways it spoke the last word;
closed an episode in the history of art--[Greek: eschatos tou idiou
genous].

[Footnote 34: "Eccelenza della Statua del San Giorgio di Donatello,"
1571.]

[Footnote 35: Bellezze, 1677, p. 67.]

[Footnote 36: "La Sculpture Florentine," vol. ii. p. 91.]

[Footnote 37: Victoria and Albert Museum, 7607, 1861.]

[Footnote 38: Uffizzi, frame 49.]

[Footnote 39: Eremitani, Padua, about 1448-50.]

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Alinari_

ST. GEORGE

BARGELLO]

[Sidenote: Donatello and Gothic Art.]

The relation of St. George and other Italian works of this period,
both in sculpture and painting, to the Gothic art of France cannot be
ignored, although no adequate explanation has yet been given. St.
George, the Baptists of the Campanile and in Rome, and the marble
David are intensely Franco-Gothic, and precisely what one would expect
to find in France. The technical and physical resemblance between the
two schools may, of course, be a coincidence; it may be purely
superficial. But St. Theodore might well take his place outside Or
San Michele, while the St. George (in spite of the difference in date)
would be in complete ethical harmony with the statues on the portals
of Chartres. Even if they cannot be analysed, the phenomena must be
stated. Donatello may have spontaneously returned to the principles
which underlay the creation of the great statuary of France, the
country of all others where a tremendous school had flourished. But
what these fundamental principles were it is impossible to determine.
It is true there had always been agencies at work which must have
familiarised Italy with French thought and ideas. From the time of the
dominant French influence in Sicily down to the Papal exile in
France--which ended actually while Donatello was working on these
statues, one portion or another of the two countries had been
frequently brought into contact. The Cistercians, for instance, had
been among the most persistent propagators of Gothic arc