d those of
the Renaissance. Though children were introduced on to classical
sarcophagi and so forth, it is impossible to say that it was for the
sake of their youth. There are genii in plenty; and in the imps which
swarm over the emblematic figure of the Nile in the Vatican the
sculptor shows no love or respect for childhood. There is no child on
the Parthenon frieze, excepting a Cupid, who has really no claim to be
reckoned as such. Donatello could not have made a relief 150 yards
long without introducing children, whether their presence were
justified or not. He would probably have overcrowded the composition
with their young forms. Whether right or wrong, he uses them
arbitrarily, as simple specimens of pure joyous childhood. Antique
sculpture, too, had its arbitrary and conventional adjuncts--the Satyr
and the Bacchic attendants; but how dreary that the vacant spaces in a
relief should have to rely upon what is half-human or offensive--the
avowedly inhuman gargoyles of the thirteenth century are infinitely to
be preferred. Donatello was possessed by the sheer love of childhood:
with him they are boys, _fanciulli ignudi_,[141] very human boys,
which, though winged and stationed on a font, were boys first and
angels afterwards. And he overcame the immense technical difficulties
which childhood presents. The model is restive and the form is
immature, the softness of nature has to be rendered in the hardest
material. The lines are inconsequent, and the limbs do not yet show
the muscles on which plastic art can usually depend. Nothing requires
more deftness than to give elasticity to a form which has no external
sign of vigour. So many sculptors failed to master this initial
difficulty--Verrocchio, for instance. He made the bronze fountain in
the Palazzo Pubblico, and an equally fine statue of similar dimensions
now belonging to M. Gustave Dreyfus. Both have vivacity and movement,
but both have also a fat stubby appearance; the flesh has the
consistency of pudding, and though soft and velvety in surface is
without the inner meaning of the children on the Cantoria. In this
work, where Donatello has carved some three dozen children, we have a
series of instantaneous photographs. Nobody else had enough knowledge
or courage to make rigid bars of children's legs: here they swing on
pivots from the hip-joint. It is the true picture of life, rendered
with superlative skill and _bravura_. But Donatello's children serve a
purpose