ni. He left Florence, it is said, in 1446, after an
accusation of theft, returning there to carve the lovely tabernacle of
the Ognissanti. It is said that he had tried unsuccessfully to deal with
that block of marble which stood in the Loggia dei Lanzi, and from which
Michelangelo unfolded the David. Two panels attributed to him remain in
the Bargello, a Crucifixion and a Pieta, which scarcely do him justice.
The last sculptor of the first half of the fifteenth century, his best
work seems to me to be at Rimini, where he worked for Sigismondo
Malatesta in the temple Alberti had built in that fierce old city by the
sea.

It is with the second half of the fifteenth century that the art
contrived for the delight of private persons, for the decoration of
palaces, of chapels, and of tombs, begins. Already Donatello had worked
for Cosimo de' Medici, and had made portrait busts, and, as it might
seem, the work of Luca della Robbia was especially suited for private
altars or oratories, or the cool rooms of a people which had not yet
divided its religion from its life. And then, in Florence at any rate,
all the great churches were finished, or almost finished; it was
necessary for the artist to find other patrons. Among those workers in
metal who had assisted Ghiberti when he cast the reliefs of his first
baptistery gate was the father of a man who had with his brother learned
the craft of the goldsmiths. His name was Antonio Pollajuolo. Born in
1429, he was the pupil of his father and of Paolo Uccello, learning from
the latter the art of painting, which he practised, however, like a
sculptor, his real triumph being, in that art at any rate, one of
movement and force. His best works in sculpture seem to me to be his
tombs of Sixtus IV and Innocent VII in S. Pietro in Rome; but here in
the Bargello you may see the beautiful bust in terra-cotta of a young
condottiere in a rich and splendid armour, and a little bronze group of
Hercules and Antaeus. In the Opera del Duomo his silver relief of the
Birth of St. John Baptist is one of the finest works of that age; but
his art is seen at its highest in that terra-cotta bust here in the
Bargello, perhaps a sketch for a bronze, where he has expressed the
infinite confidence and courage of one of those captains of adventure,
who, with war for their trade, carried havoc up and down Italy.

It is, however, in the work of another goldsmith--or at least the pupil
of one, whose name he took--t