and the well-known engraving of naked men fighting a series of savage duels in a wood, might be chosen as emphatic illustrations of his favourite motives.  The fiercest emotions of the Renaissance find expression in the clenched teeth, strained muscles, knotted brows, and tense nerves, depicted by Pollajuolo with eccentric energy.  We seem to be assisting at some of those combats a steccato chiuso wherein Sixtus IV. delighted, or to have before our eyes a fray between Crocensi and Vallensi in the streets of Rome.[95] The same remarks apply to the terra-cotta relief by Pollajuolo in the South Kensington Museum.  This piece displays the struggles of twelve naked men, divided into six pairs of combatants.  Two of the couples hold short chains with the left hand, and seek to stab each other with the right.  In the case of another two couples the fight is over, and the victor is insulting his fallen foe.  In each of the remaining pairs one gladiator is on the point of yielding to his adversary.  There are thus three several moments of duel to the death, each illustrated by two couples.  The mathematical distribution of these dreadful groups gives an effect of frozen passion; while the vigorous workmanship displays not only an enthusiasm for muscular anatomy, but a real sympathy with blood-fury in the artist.

There was, therefore, a certain propriety in the choice of Pollajuolo to cast the sepulchre of Sixtus IV. in bronze at Rome.  The best judges complain, not without reason, that the allegories surrounding this tomb are exaggerated and affected in style; yet the dead Pope, stretched in pomp upon his bier, commands more than merely historical interest; while the figures, seated as guardians round the old man, terrible in death, communicate an impression of monumental majesty.  Criticised in detail, each separate figure may be faulty.  The composition, as a whole, is picturesque and grandiose.  The same can scarcely be said about the tomb of Innocent VIII., erected by Antonio and his brother Piero del Pollajuolo.  While it perpetuates the memory of an uninteresting Pontiff, it has but little, as a work of art, to recommend it.  The Pollajuoli were not great sculptors.  In the history of Italian art they deserve a place, because of the vivid personality impressed upon some portions of their work.  Few draughtsmen carried the study of muscular anatomy so far as Antonio.[96]

Luca della Robbia, whose life embraced the first eighty years of the fifteenth century, offers in many important respects a contrast to his contemporaries Ghiberti and Donatello, and still more to their immediate followers.  He made his art as true to life as it is possible to be, without the rugged realism of Donatello or the somewhat effeminate graces of Ghiberti.  The charm of his work is never impaired by scientific mannerism—­that stumbling-block to critics like De Stendhal in the art of Florence; nor does it suffer from the picturesqueness of a sentimental style.  How to render the beauty of nature in her most delightful moments—­taking us with him into the holiest of holies, and handling the sacred vessels with a child’s confiding boldness—­was a secret known to Luca della Robbia alone.  We may well find food for meditation in the innocent and cheerful inspiration of this man, whose lifetime coincided with a period of sordid passions and debased ambition in the Church and States of Italy.