33, Donatello was chiefly occupied with statuary
work for the campanile and the cathedral, though from this period dates
the bronze figure of the Baptist for the christening font of Orvieto
Cathedral, which was never delivered and is now among the treasures of
the Berlin museum. This, and the "St Louis of Toulouse," which
originally occupied a niche at Or San Michele and is now badly placed at
S. Croce, were the first works in bronze which owed their origin to the
partnership of Donatello with Michelozzo, who undertook the casting of
the models supplied by his senior. The marble statues for the campanile,
which are either proved to be Donatello's by documentary evidence or can
be recognized as his work from their style, are the "Abraham," wrought
by the master in conjunction with Giovanni di Bartolo (il Rosso); the
"St John the Baptist"; the so-called "Zuccone" (Jonah?); "Jeremiah";
"Habakuk" (?); the unknown "prophet" who is supposed to bear the
features of the humanist Poggio Bracciolini; and possibly he may have
had a share in the completion of the "Joshua" commenced by Ciuffagni in
1415. All these statues, and the "St John" at the Bargello, mark a bold
departure from the statuesque balance of the "St Mark" and "St George"
to an almost instantaneous impression of life. The fall of the draperies
is no longer arranged in harmonious lines, but is treated in an
accidental, massive, bold manner. At the same time the heads are no
longer, as it were, impersonal, but almost cruelly realistic character
portraits of actual people, just as the arms and legs and necks are
faithfully copied from life with all their angularities and deviations
from the lines of beauty. During this period Donatello executed some
work for the baptismal font at S. Giovanni in Siena, which Jacopo della
Quercia and his assistants had begun in 1416. Though the Florentine's
share in it is confined to a relief which may have been designed, or
even begun, by Jacopo, and a few statuettes, it is of considerable
importance in Donatello's life-work, as it includes his first attempt at
relief sculpture--except the marble relief on the socle of the "St
George"--his first female figures,--"Faith" and "Hope," and his first
_putti_. The relief, "Herod's Feast," shows already that power of
dramatic narration and the skill of expressing the depth of space by
varying the treatment from plastic roundness to the finest _stiacciato_,
which was to find its mature expression