truction
of the group will be found by the door. I cannot pretend to a deep
interest in the figures, but I like to be in the room. The famous
Medicean vase is in the middle of it. Sculpture more ingratiating
is close by, in the two rooms given to Iscrizioni: a collection
of priceless antiques which are not only beautiful but peculiarly
interesting in that they can be compared with the work of Donatello,
Verrocchio, and other of the Renaissance sculptors. For in such a case
comparisons are anything but odious and become fascinating. In the
first room there is, for example, a Mercury, isolated on the left,
in marble, who is a blood relation of Donatello's bronze David in
the Bargello; and certain reliefs of merry children, on the right,
low down, as one approaches the second room, are cousins of the same
sculptor's cantoria romps. Not that Donatello ever reproduced the
antique spirit as Michelangelo nearly did in his Bacchus, and Sansovino
absolutely did in his Bacchus, both at the Bargello: Donatello was
of his time, and the spirit of his time animates his creations, but
he had studied the Greek art in Rome and profited by his lessons,
and his evenly-balanced humane mind had a warm corner for pagan
joyfulness. Among other statues in this first room is a Sacerdotessa,
wearing a marble robe with long folds, whose hands can be seen through
the drapery. Opposite the door are Bacchus and Ampelos, superbly
pagan, while a sleeping Cupid is most lovely. Among the various fine
heads is one of Cicero, of an Unknown--No. 377--and of Homer in bronze
(called by the photographers Aristophanes). But each thing in turn is
almost the best. The trouble is that the Uffizi is so vast, and the
Renaissance seems to be so eminently the only proper study of mankind
when one is here, that to attune oneself to the enjoyment of antique
sculpture needs a special effort which not all are ready to make.

In the centre of the next room is the punctual Hermaphrodite without
which no large Continental gallery is complete. But more worthy of
attention is the torso of a faun on the left, on a revolving pedestal
which (unlike those in the Bargello, as we shall discover) really does
revolve and enables you to admire the perfect back. There is also a
torso in basalt or porphyry which one should study from all points,
and on the walls some wonderful portions of a frieze from the Ara
Pacis, erected in Rome, B.C. 139, with wonderful figures of men,
women, and