the apse and choir, is composed of three symmetrical chapels with vaulted and coffered roofs.  There is plenty of classical detail, but still more of the Renaissance; there is no occasion to assume the design to have been copied from the Tempio di Pace or the Caracalla baths.  St. Anthony occupies the centre, and the kneeling mule is on the right, his master close at hand.  The church is crowded with people, who, on the whole, show more curiosity than reverence.  Several garrulous boys by the door are amused; an old beggar hobbles in; a mother tries to keep a child quiet.  Others take any post they can secure, and a good many are crouching on the ground in all sorts of postures, making a variety which amounts to unevenness.  In all these panels the head of St. Anthony is of a finer type than that shown in the other version on the altar.  The features are clear cut, and there is an air of earnest distinction which is not observed on the large statue.  Speaking generally, one notices that while ample scope is allowed to the fancies of picturesque architecture in all these reliefs, Donatello always keeps it within proper bounds.  Donatello was not tempted into the interacting problems of perspective and intarsia, which caused so many Paduan artists to lose grasp of the wider aspects of their calling.  Then we notice how the crowd qua crowd plays its proper part:  out of some two hundred faces in these panels not more than two or three look out to the spectator—­a quality inherited by Mantegna.  The reliefs are essentially local pictures of local significance; not only the costume, but the types are Paduan, such as we find in the local school of painting:  but we find nothing of the kind in Donatello before the journey to the north, and the types scarcely reappear on the altar of San Lorenzo.  But, in spite of this, the reliefs have a catholicity which extends their influence far beyond the limits within which Donatello confined his work.  Finally, the wealth of local colouring and animation makes these reliefs among the earliest in which “genre” or “conversation” has prominence.  They offer a most striking contrast to the sedate Florentine crowds painted in the Brancacci chapel by Masaccio.

[Footnote 197:  Cf. Battle of Romans and Barbarians, No. 12.  Museo Nazionale, Rome.]

[Footnote 198:  Battle, Casa Buonarroti, Florence.]

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Alinari

SYMBOL OF ST. MATTHEW

SANT’ ANTONIO, PADUA]

[Sidenote:  The Symbols of the Evangelists.]