In his work at Or San Michele, in the St. Peter, in the St. Mark, so like the St. John the Divine and in the St. George, here in the Bargello, we see his progress, and there in that last figure we find just that decision and simplicity which seem to have been his own, with a certain frankness and beauty of youth which are new in his work.

[Illustration:  ST. JOHN THE DIVINE

By Donatello.  Duomo, Florence

Alinari]

There are some ten works by the master in the Bargello, together with numerous casts of his statues and reliefs in other parts of Italy, so that he may be studied here better than anywhere else.  Looking thus on his work more or less as a whole, it is a new influence we seem to divine for the first time in the marble David, a little faintly, perhaps, but obvious enough in the St. George, a Gothic influence that appears very happily for once, in work that almost alone in Italy seems to need just that, well, as an excuse for beauty.  That marble statue of David was made at about the same time as the St. John the Divine, for the Duomo too, where it was to stand within the church in a chapel there in the apse.  A little awkward in his half-shy pose, the young David stands over the head of Goliath, uncertain whether to go or stay.  It is a failure which passes into the success, the more than success of the St. George, which is perhaps his masterpiece.  Made for the Guild of Armourers, from the first day on which it was set up it has been beloved.  Michelangelo loved it well, and Vasari is enthusiastic about it, while Bocchi, writing in 1571,[116] devotes a whole book to it.  In its present bad light—­for the light should fall not across, but from in front and from above, as it did once when it stood in its niche at Or San Michele—­it is not seen to advantage, but even so, the life that seems to move in the cold stone may be discerned.  With a proud and terrible impetuosity St. George seems about to confront some renowned and famous enemy, that old dragon whom once he slew.  Full of confidence and beauty he gazes unafraid, as though on that which he is about to encounter before he moves forward to meet it.  Well may Michelangelo have whispered “March!” as he passed by, it is the very order he awaits, the whisper of his own heart.  It is in this romantic and beautiful figure that, as it seems to me, that new Gothic influence may be most clearly discerned.  M. Reymond, in his learned and pleasant book on Florentine sculpture, has pointed out the likeness which this St. George of Donatello bears to the St. Theodore of Chartres Cathedral, and though it is impossible to deny that likeness, it seems at first almost as impossible to explain it.  It is true that many Italians were employed in France in the building of the churches; it is equally true that Michelozzo, the friend and assistant of Donato, was the son of a Burgundian; but it seems as unlikely that an Italian artist, inspired