provinces: but after a
certain point nervous exhaustion ensued and produced a kind of
hysteria, where the Magdalen's tears must end in convulsive laughter,
and where the tragedy is so demonstrative that the solemn element is
utterly lost.[201] The profound pathos and teaching of the earlier
scenes were exchanged for what was theatrical. But Tragedy always held
a place in Italian, or rather in Christian art: it was out of place in
antiquity. The smiling and perennial youth of the gods, their
happinesses, loves, and adventures, gave relatively small scope for
the personal aspects of tragedy. There was no need for vicarious or
redemptive suffering: what pain existed, and they rarely expressed it
in marble, was human in its origin and punitive in effect: Icarus,
Niobe, Laocoon, Prometheus; and even here the proprieties of good
taste imposed strict limits, beyond which the portrayal of tragedy
could not go without violating unwritten laws. It had to occupy a
secondary place in their art: the dying gladiator was merely a broken
toy tossed aside. Their tragedies were largely limited to Nemesis, the
Moirai, the Erinnydes, and lower forms, such as harpies. But
occasionally one gets a breath of mediaevalism and its haunting
mysteries. The Sleeping Fury at Rome, for instance,[202] where sleep
steals in during a moment of respite from torture, is superb, and,
moreover, stands almost alone in its presentment of a certain
impelling tragedy, which, with the advent of Christianity, became an
integral and dominating feature of its art.

[Footnote 200: Victoria and Albert Museum, No. 7577, 1861. M.G.
Dreyfus has a fine plaquette analogous to these large reliefs.]

[Footnote 201: _Cf._, for instance, Madame Andre's Pieta lunette, or
the stone "Lamentation" in Victoria and Albert Museum, No. 314, 1878,
almost German in its harsh realism. This came from the Palazzo Lazzara
at Padua.]

[Footnote 202: In Ludovisi Buoncompagni Collection, Museo Nazionale,
marble. _Cf._ also the bust of Minatia Polla, so called, which might
be by Verrocchio.]

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Alinari_

SUPER ALTAR BY GIOVANNI DA PISA

EREMITANI CHURCH, PADUA]

[Sidenote: Donatello's Assistants.]

The variety of workmanship at Padua would be an infallible proof that
Donatello had the assistance of a number of disciples, even if we had
no documentary evidence on the point. Bandinelli refers to their
numbers: when needing he