[Footnote 249: "Dialogues," Raczynski ed. Paris, 1846, p. 56.]

[Footnote 250: "Due Trattati," ed. Milanesi, 1857, passim.]

[Footnote 251: "Due Vite di Brunellesco," p. 142.]

[Footnote 252: Semper, 321.]

[Footnote 253: "Lem.," iii. 243, in first edition.]

[Footnote 254: 1677 edition.]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Character and Personality of Donatello.]

Donatello must be judged by his work alone. His intellect is only
reflected in his handicraft. We know little about him, but all we know
bears tribute to his high character. The very name by which he was
called--Donatello--is a diminutive, a term of endearment. His
generosity, his modesty, and a pardonable pride, are recorded in
stories which have been generically applied to others, but which were
specific to himself. He shared his purse with his friends:[255] he
preferred plain clothing to the fine raiment offered by Cosimo de'
Medici;[256] and he indignantly broke the statue for which a Genoese
merchant was unwilling to pay a fair price.[257] He was recognised as
a man of honourable judgment, and he was called upon to act as
assessor several times. The friend of the Medici, of Cyriac of Ancona,
of Niccolo Niccoli, the greatest antiquarian of the day, and of Andrea
della Robbia, one of the pall-bearers at his funeral, must have been a
man of winning personality and considerable learning. But he was
always simple and naive: _benigno e cortese_, according to
Vasari,[258] but as Summonte added with deeper insight, his work was
far from simple.[259] He is one of the rare men of genius against whom
no contemporary attack is recorded. He was content with little;[260]
his life was even-tenored; his work, though not faultless, shows a
steady and unbroken progress towards the noblest achievements of
plastic art.

[Footnote 255: Gauricus, b. 1.]

[Footnote 256: Vespasiano de' Bisticci, Vite.]

[Footnote 257: "Vasari," iii. 253.]

[Footnote 258: _Ibid._ iii. 244.]

[Footnote 259: "_Fo in Fiorenza ad tempo de' nostri padri Donatello
huomo raro, semplicissimo in ogni altra cosa excepto che in la
scultura_."]

[Footnote 260: Matteo degli Orghani, writing in 1434, says: "_Impero
che e huomo ch' ogni picholo pasto e allui assai, e sta contento a
ogni cosa_." Guasti, iv. 475. Donatello died in 1466, probably on
December 15. He was buried in San Lorenzo at the expense of the
Medici. Masaccio painted his portrait in the Carmine, but it is