Renaissance over the latter
was this, that pseudo-paganism and pedantry had not as yet distorted the
judgment or misdirected the aims of artists. Contact with the antique
world served only to stimulate original endeavour, by leading the student
back to the fountain of all excellence in nature, and by exhibiting types
of perfection in technical processes. To ape the sculptors of Antinous, or
to bring to life again the gods who died with Pan, was not yet longed for.
Of the impunity with which a sculptor in that period could submit his
genius to the service and the study of ancient art without sacrificing
individuality, Donatello furnishes a still more illustrious example than
Ghiberti. Early in his youth Donatello journeyed with Brunelleschi to
Rome, in order to acquaint himself with the monuments then extant. How
thoroughly he comprehended the classic spirit is proved by the bronze
patera wrought for his patron Ruberto Martelli, and by the frieze of the
triumphant Bacchus.[87] Yet the great achievements of his genius were
Christian in their sentiment and realistic in their style. The bronze
"Magdalen" of the Florentine Baptistery and the bronze "Baptist" of the
Duomo at Siena[88] are executed with an unrelenting materialism, not alien
indeed to the sincerity of classic art, but divergent from antique
tradition, inasmuch as the ideas of repentant and prophetic asceticism had
no place in Greek mythology.

Donatello, with the uncompromising candour of an artist bent on marking
character, felt that he was bound to seize the very pith and kernel of his
subject. If a Magdalen were demanded of him, he would not condescend to
model a Venus and then place a book and skull upon a rock beside her; nor
did he imagine that the bloom and beauty of a laughing Faun were fitting
attributes for the preacher of repentance. It remained for later artists,
intoxicated with antique loveliness and corroded with worldly scepticism,
to reproduce the outward semblance of Greek deities under the pretence of
setting forth the myths of Christianity. Such compromise had not occurred
to Donatello. The motive of his art was clearly apprehended, his method
was sincere; certain phases of profound emotion had to be represented with
the physical characteristics proper to them. The result, ugly and painful
as it may sometimes be, was really more concordant with the spirit of
Greek method than Lionardo's "John" or Correggio's "Magdalen." That is to
say, it wa