The David is interesting not only in itself but as being the first isolated statue of modern times.  It was made for Cosimo de’ Medici, to stand in the courtyard of the Medici palace (now the Riccardi), and until that time, since antiquity, no one had made a statue to stand on a pedestal and be observable from all points.  Hitherto modern sculptors had either made reliefs or statues for niches.  It was also the first nude statue of modern times; and once again one has the satisfaction of recognizing that the first was the best.  At any rate, no later sculptor has made anything more charming than this figure, or more masterly within its limits.

After the S. George and the bronze David, the two most memorable things are the adorable bronze Amorino in its quaint little trousers—­or perhaps not Amorino at all, since it is trampling on a snake, which such little sprites did not do—­and the coloured terra-cotta bust called Niccolo da Uzzano, so like life as to be after a while disconcerting.  The sensitiveness of the mouth can never have been excelled.  The other originals include the gaunt John the Baptist with its curious little moustache, so far removed from the Amorino and so admirable a proof of the sculptor’s vigilant thoughtfulness in all he did; the relief of the infant John, one of the most animated of the heads (the Baptist at all periods of his life being a favourite with this sculptor); three bronze heads, of which those of the Young Gentleman and the Roman Emperor remain most clearly in my mind.  But the authorship of the Roman Emperor is very doubtful.  And lastly the glorious Marzocco—­the lion from the front of the Palazzo Vecchio, firmly holding the Florentine escutcheon against the world.  Florence has other Donatellos—­the Judith in the Loggia de’ Lanzi, the figures on Giotto’s campanile, the Annunciation in S. Croce, and above all the cantoria in the Museum of the Cathedral; but this room holds most of his strong sweet genius.  Here (for there are seldom more than two or three persons in it) you can be on terms with him.

After the Donatellos we should see the other Renaissance sculpture.  But first the Carrand collection of ivories, pictures, jewels, carvings, vestments, plaquettes, and objets d’art, bequeathed to Florence in 1888.  Everything here is good and worth examination.  Among the outstanding things is a plaquette, No. 393, a Satyr and a Bacchante, attributed to Donatello, under the title “Allegory of Spring,” which is the work of a master and a very riot of mythological imagery.  The neighbouring plaquettes, many of them of the school of Donatello, are all beautiful.