nciples of sincerity, truth to nature, and technical
accuracy they illustrate, were all-important in an age that lent itself
too readily to the caprices of the fancy and the puerilities of florid
taste. To regret that Donatello lacked Ghiberti's exquisite sense of
beauty, is tantamount to wishing that two of the greatest artists of the
world had made one man between them.

Donatello did not, in the strict sense of the term, found a school.[93]
Andrea Verocchio, goldsmith, painter, and worker in bronze, was the most
distinguished of his pupils. To all the arts he practised, Verocchio
applied limited powers, a meagre manner, and a prosaic mind. Yet few men
have exercised at a very critical moment a more decided influence. The
mere fact that he numbered Lionardo da Vinci, Lorenzo di Credi, and Pietro
Perugino among his scholars, proves the esteem of his contemporaries; and
when we have observed that the type of face selected by Lionardo and
transmitted to his followers, appears also in the pictures of Lorenzo di
Credi and is first found in the "David" of Verocchio, we have a right to
affirm that the master of these men was an artist of creative genius as
well as a careful workman. Florence still points with pride to the
"Incredulity of Thomas" on the eastern wall of Orsammichele, to the "Boy
and Dolphin" in the court of the Palazzo Vecchio, and to the "David" of
this sculptor: but the first is spoiled by heaviness and angularity of
drapery; the second, though fanciful and marked by fluttering movement, is
but a caprice; the third outdoes the hardest work of Donatello by its
realism. Verocchio's "David," a lad of some seventeen years, has the lean,
veined arms of a stone-hewer or gold-beater. As a faithful portrait of the
first Florentine prentice who came to hand, this statue might have merit
but for the awkward cuirass and kilt that partly drape the figure.

The name of Verocchio is best known to the world through the equestrian
statue of Bartolommeo Colleoni. When this great Condottiere, the last
surviving general trained by Braccio da Montone, died in 1475, he
bequeathed a large portion of his wealth to Venice, on condition that his
statue on horseback should be erected in the Piazza di S. Marco. Colleoni,
having long held the baton of the Republic, desired that after death his
portrait, in his habit as he lived, should continue to look down on the
scene of his old splendour. By an ingenious quibble the Senators adhered