ventive
powers were atrophied, while their skill and knowledge left nothing to
be desired. Excluding the Cosmati, Rome was the mother of no period or
movement of art excepting the Rococo. As for Donatello himself, he was
but slightly influenced by classical motives. His sojourn in Rome was
short, his time fully occupied; he was forty-seven years old and had
long passed the most impressionable years of his life. He was a noted
connoisseur, and on more than one occasion his opinion on a question
of classical art was eagerly sought. But, so far as his own art was
concerned, classical influences count for little. His architectural
ideas were only classical through a Renaissance medium. When a patron
gave him a commission to copy antique gems, he did his task faithfully
enough, but without zest and with no ultimate progress in a similar
direction. When making a portrait he would decorate the sitter's
helmet or breastplate with the cameo which actually adorned it. With
one exception, classical art must be sought in his detail, and only
in the detail of work upon which the patron's advice could be suitably
offered and accepted. Donatello may be compared with the great
sculptors of antiquity, but not to the extent of calling him their
descendant. Raffaelle Mengs was entitled to regret that the other
Raffaelle did not live in the days of Phidias.[125] Flaxman was
justified in expressing his opinion that some of Donatello's work
could be placed beside the best productions of ancient Greece without
discredit.[126] These _obiter dicta_ do not trespass on the domain of
artistic genealogy. But it is inaccurate to say, for instance, that
the St. George is animated by Greek nobility,[127] since in this
statue that quality (whether derived from Gothic or Renaissance
ideals) cannot possibly have come from a classical source.
Baldinucci is on dangerous ground in speaking of Donatello as
"_emulando mirabilmente la perfezione degli antichissimi scultori
greci_"[128]--the writer's acquaintance with archaic Greek sculpture
may well have been small! We need not quarrel with Gori for calling
Donatello the Florentine Praxiteles; but he is grossly misleading in
his statement that Donatello took the greatest pains to copy the art
of the ancients.[129] Donatello may be the mediaeval complement of
Phidias, but he is not his artistic offspring.

[Footnote 113: It is a bronze slab, admirably wrought and preserved,
in S. Giovanni Laterano. Were it not