E]

[Sidenote: St. John the Evangelist and the marble David.]

The third great statue made for the facade by Donatello is now placed
in a dark apsidal chapel, where the light is so bad that the figure is
often invisible. This is the statue of St. John the Evangelist, and is
much earlier than Poggio, having been ordered on December 12, 1408.
Two evangelists were to be placed on either side of the central door.
Nanni di Banco was to make St. Luke, Niccolo d'Arezzo St. Mark, and
it was intended that the fourth figure should be entrusted to the most
successful of the three sculptors; but in the following year the
Domopera changed their plan, giving the commission for St. Matthew to
Bernardo Ciuffagni, a sculptor somewhat older than Donatello.
Ciuffagni was not unpopular as an artist, for he received plenty of
work in various parts of Italy; but he was a man of mediocre talent,
neither archaic nor progressive, making occasional failures and
exercising little influence for good or ill upon those with whom he
came in contact. He has, however, one valued merit, that of being a
man about whom we have a good deal of documentary information.
Donatello worked on the St. John for nearly seven years, and,
according to custom, was under obligation to complete the work within
a specified time. Penalty clauses used to be enforced in those days.
Jacopo della Quercia ran the danger of imprisonment for neglecting the
commands of Siena. Torrigiano having escaped from England was recalled
by the help of Ricasoli, the Florentine resident in London, and was
fortunate to avoid punishment. Donatello finished his statue in time,
and received his final instalment in 1415, the year in which the
figures were set up beside the great Porch. This evangelist, begun
when Donatello was twenty-two and completed before his thirtieth year,
challenges comparison with one worthy rival, the Moses of Michael
Angelo. The Moses was the outcome of many years of intermittent
labour, and was created by the help of all the advances made by
sculpture during a century of progress. Yet in one respect only can
Michael Angelo claim supremacy. Hitherto Donatello had made nothing
but standing figures. The St. John sits; he is almost inert, and does
not seem to await the divine message. But how superb it is, this
majestic calm and solemnity; how Donatello triumphs over the lack of
giving tension to what is quiescent! The Penseroso also sits and
meditates, but every muscle