upon a realistic basis.  Here in the Bargello, in originals and in casts, he may be adequately appreciated; but to Padua his admirers must certainly go, for the bronze equestrian statue of Gattamelata is there.  Donatello was painted by his friend Masaccio at the Carmine, but the fresco has perished.  He is to be seen in the Uffizi portico, although that is probably a fancy representation; and again on a tablet in the wall opposite the apse of the Duomo.  The only contemporary portrait (and this is very doubtful) is in a picture in the Louvre given to Uccello—­a serious, thoughtful, bearded face with steady, observant eyes:  one of five heads, the others being Giotto, Manetti, Brunelleschi, and Uccello himself.

Donatello, who never married, but lived for much of his life with his mother and sister, died at a great age, cared for both by Cosimo de’ Medici and his son and successor Piero.  He was buried with Cosimo in S. Lorenzo.  Vasari tells us that he was free, affectionate, and courteous, but of a high spirit and capable of sudden anger, as when he destroyed with a blow a head he had made for a mean patron who objected to its very reasonable price.  “He thought,” says Vasari, “nothing of money, keeping it in a basket suspended from the ceiling, so that all his workmen and friends took what they wanted without saying anything.”  He was as careless of dress as great artists have ever been, and of a handsome robe which Cosimo gave him he complained that it spoiled his work.  When he was dying his relations affected great concern in the hope of inheriting a farm at Prato, but he told them that he had left it to the peasant who had always toiled there, and he would not alter his will.

The Donatello collection in the Bargello has been made representative by the addition of casts.  The originals number ten:  there is also a cast of the equestrian statue of Gattemalata at Padua, which is, I suppose, next to Verrocchio’s Bartolommeo Colleoni at Venice, the finest equestrian statue that exists; heads from various collections, including M. Dreyfus’ in Paris, although Dr. Bode now gives that charming example to Donatello’s pupil Desiderio; and various other masterpieces elsewhere.  But it is the originals that chiefly interest us, and first of these in bronze is the David, of which I have already spoken, and first of these in marble the S. George.  This George is just such a resolute, clean, warlike idealist as one dreams him.  He would kill a dragon, it is true; but he would eat and sleep after it and tell the story modestly and not without humour.  By a happy chance the marble upon which Donatello worked had light veins running through it just where the head is, with the result that the face seems to possess a radiance of its own.  This statue was made for Or San Michele, where it used to stand until 1891, when the present bronze replica that takes its place was made.  The spirited marble frieze underneath it at Or San Michele is the original and has been there for centuries.  It was this S. George whom Ruskin took as the head and inspiration of his Saint George’s Guild.