In Grosvenor House. Bronze; generally known as "The
Laughing Boy."]

[Footnote 156: Its proportion is impaired by the basal drapery, which
was grafted to the statue at a later date. This bust belonged to Sabba
da Castiglione, who was very proud of it. He was born within twenty
years of Donatello's death.]

[Footnote 157: No. 383. Marble. Goupil Bequest.]

[Footnote 158: Stucco, No. 38A. _Cf._ also one belonging to
Herr Richard von Kaufmann, Berlin.]

[Footnote 159: No. 1274, St. John, Florentine School, a painting.]

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Alinari_

NICCOLO DA UZZANO

BARGELLO, FLORENCE]

[Sidenote: Niccolo da Uzzano and Polychromacy.]

The bust of Niccolo da Uzzano has gained its widespread popularity
from its least genuine feature--namely, the paint with which it is
disfigured. The daubs of colour give it a fictitious importance, an
actual realism which invests it with the illusion of living flesh and
blood. This is all the more unfortunate, as the bust is a remarkable
work, and does not gain by being made into a "speaking likeness." Its
merits can best be appreciated in a cast, where the form is reproduced
without the dubious embellishments of later times. Niccolo was a
high-minded patrician, an implacable opponent of the Medici, and a
warm friend of higher education: it is also of interest that he should
have been an executor of the will of John XXIII. He was born in 1359,
and died in 1432. The bust is made of terra-cotta, and shows a man of
sixty-five or so, and would therefore be coeval with the later
Campanile prophets (but nothing beyond old tradition can be accepted
as authority for the nomenclature). The modelling of the head is quite
masterly. Niccolo is looking rather to the left; his keen and
hawklike countenance, and his piercing eyes, deep set and quivering
within pendulous eyelids, give a sense of invincible logic and
penetration. The laconic, matter-of-fact mouth, and the resolute jaw
add strength and courage to the physiognomy: the nose and its
disdainful nostrils are those of the haughty optimate. The head is,
however, less fine than the face: a skull of rather common
proportions, and a sloping though broad forehead are its marked
features. Donatello has given him an ugly ear; Niccolo's ear was,
therefore, ugly, and the throat is swollen. The shoulders are covered
with a thick piece of drapery, leaving the throat and upper part of
the breast bare. Su