for the Cathedral are now accepted as the
work of Donatello. Others may have perished, and it is quite possible
that in one at least of the other statues Donatello may have had a
considerable share. With the exception of St. John the Baptist and St.
John the Evangelist, all these statues are derived from the Old
Testament--Daniel, Jeremiah and Habbakuk, Abraham and the marble David
in the Bargello, together with the two figures popularly called
Poggio and the Zuccone. Among the earliest, and, it must be
acknowledged, the least interesting of these statues is the prophet
standing in a niche in the south aisle close to the great western door
of the Cathedral. It has been long recognised as a Donatello,[6] and
has been called Joshua. But, apart from the fact that he holds the
scroll of a prophet, whereas one would rather expect Joshua to carry a
sword, this statue is so closely related to the little prophets of the
Mandorla door that it is almost certainly coeval with them, and
consequently anterior in date to the period of the Joshua for which
Donatello was paid some years later. We find the same broad flow of
drapery, and the weight of the body is thrown on to one hip in a
pronounced manner, which is certainly ungraceful, though typical of
Donatello's early ideas of balance. It probably represents Daniel. He
has the high forehead, the thick curly hair and the youthful
appearance of the other prophets, while his "countenance appears
fairer and fatter in flesh,"[7] reminding one of Michael Angelo's
treatment of the same theme in the Sistine Chapel.

[Footnote 6: Osservatore Fiorentino, 1797, 3rd ed., iv. 216.]

[Footnote 7: Daniel i. 15.]

Like several of Donatello's statues, this figure is connected with the
name of a Florentine citizen, Giannozzo Manetti, and passes for his
portrait. There is no authority for the tradition, and Vespasiano de'
Bisticci makes no reference to the subject in his life of Manetti. The
statue is, no doubt, a portrait and may well have resembled Manetti,
but in order to have been directly executed as a portrait it could
scarcely have been made before 1426, when Manetti was thirty years
old, by which date the character of Donatello's work had greatly
changed. These traditional names have caused many critical
difficulties, as, when accepted as authentic, the obvious date of the
statue has been arbitrarily altered, so that the statue may harmonise
in point of date of execution with the apparent