nce and
correspondence of all the features. The flat head, the projecting
mouth, and the much-curved nose, are sure signs of accurate and
painstaking observation; they combine to give it a personal note which
adds much to its abstract merits. The St. John in the Louvre[157] is
also a portrait, but of an older boy, in whom the first signs of
maturity are faintly indicated: lines on the forehead, a stronger
neck, and a harder accentuation of nose and mouth. But he is still a
boy, though he will soon go forth into the wilderness. By the side of
the Faenza Giovannino he would appear rough; beside the Vienna and
Dreyfus statuettes he would be harsh and unsympathetic. He has no
smiling countenance, no fascinating twinkle of the eye: the type has
not been generalised as in Desiderio's work, and it therefore lacks
those qualities, the very absence of which makes it most
Donatellesque. The fundamental distinction between Donatello and the
later masters can be emphasised by comparing this bust with another
group of terra-cotta heads, which are analogous, although the boy in
them is older. One in the Berlin Gallery[158] has been painted, and no
final judgment can be passed until the more recent accretions of
oil-colour have been removed. But the whole conception is weakly and
vapid. The brown eyes, the nicely rouged cheeks, the mincing look, and
the affectation of the pose make a genteel page-boy of him, and all
suggest a later imitation--about 1470 perhaps--and contemporary with
the somewhat analogous though better rendering in the Louvre.[159] The
version belonging to M. Dreyfus differs in certain details from the
Berlin bust, and it has been fortunate in escaping careless painting;
it has more vigour and virility. One remark may be made about the
Faenza, Grosvenor House, Martelli, Hainauer and Louvre busts: they all
show a peculiarity in the treatment of the hair. It is bunched
together and drawn back from behind the ears, and is gathered on the
nape of the neck, down which it seems to curl. This is precisely the
treatment observed in the Mandorla relief, the Martelli David, the
young Gattamelata, and the Amorino in the Bargello: in a lesser degree
it is observable in the Isaac and the Siena Virtues. The point is not
one upon which stress could properly be laid, but it is a further
point of contact between Donatello's accepted work and some few out of
the numerous boys' busts which he must inevitably have made.

[Footnote 155: