death, each illustrated by two couples. The mathematical
distribution of these dreadful groups gives an effect of frozen passion;
while the vigorous workmanship displays not only an enthusiasm for
muscular anatomy, but a real sympathy with blood-fury in the artist.

There was, therefore, a certain propriety in the choice of Pollajuolo to
cast the sepulchre of Sixtus IV. in bronze at Rome. The best judges
complain, not without reason, that the allegories surrounding this tomb
are exaggerated and affected in style; yet the dead Pope, stretched in
pomp upon his bier, commands more than merely historical interest; while
the figures, seated as guardians round the old man, terrible in death,
communicate an impression of monumental majesty. Criticised in detail,
each separate figure may be faulty. The composition, as a whole, is
picturesque and grandiose. The same can scarcely be said about the tomb of
Innocent VIII., erected by Antonio and his brother Piero del Pollajuolo.
While it perpetuates the memory of an uninteresting Pontiff, it has but
little, as a work of art, to recommend it. The Pollajuoli were not great
sculptors. In the history of Italian art they deserve a place, because of
the vivid personality impressed upon some portions of their work. Few
draughtsmen carried the study of muscular anatomy so far as Antonio.[96]

Luca della Robbia, whose life embraced the first eighty years of the
fifteenth century, offers in many important respects a contrast to his
contemporaries Ghiberti and Donatello, and still more to their immediate
followers. He made his art as true to life as it is possible to be,
without the rugged realism of Donatello or the somewhat effeminate graces
of Ghiberti. The charm of his work is never impaired by scientific
mannerism--that stumbling-block to critics like De Stendhal in the art of
Florence; nor does it suffer from the picturesqueness of a sentimental
style. How to render the beauty of nature in her most delightful
moments--taking us with him into the holiest of holies, and handling the
sacred vessels with a child's confiding boldness--was a secret known to
Luca della Robbia alone. We may well find food for meditation in the
innocent and cheerful inspiration of this man, whose lifetime coincided
with a period of sordid passions and debased ambition in the Church and
States of Italy.

Luca was apprenticed in his youth to a goldsmith; but of what he wrought
before the age of forty-five, we kn