[Footnote 212:  29, vi. 1453.  Donatello is still described as abitante in Padova.]

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[Illustration:  Alinari

COLLEONE

VENICE]

[Sidenote:  Smaller Reliefs and Plaquettes.]

The Gattamelata reliefs seem to be sixteenth-century work.  They show a detail of which Donatello and his scholars were fond, namely, the Medusa’s head.  It reappears on the Martelli Patera[213] and on the sword-hilt in the Royal Armoury at Turin.  The former has been ascribed to Donatello, but the attribution is untenable.  It is a bronze medallion of a Satyr and Bacchante, executed with much skill, but not recalling the spirit or handling of Donatello.  It is an admirable example of the bronze-work which became popular in Northern Italy, to which Donatello gave the initial impetus, and which soon became ultra-classical in style.  The sword-hilt is more interesting, and it is signed “Opus Donatelli Flo.”  Some of the detail has a richness which might suggest rather a later date; but the general outline, especially the small crouching putti, was, no doubt, designed by the master.  The history of this curious and unusual specimen is unknown, and it is outside Donatello’s sphere of activity.  Michael Angelo, it may be remembered, also had the caprice of making a sword for the Aldobrandini family.  The manufacture of plaquettes, small bronze plates which were widely used for decorating caskets, inkstands, candlesticks, &c., became a specialised art; and some of these dainty reliefs are possibly made from Donatello’s own designs.  There are, however, a few larger bronzes of greater importance in which his personality was able to assert itself more freely than in the reduced plaquettes.  But the work of scholars and imitators has been frequently mistaken for Donatello’s own productions.  Thus the Ambras (Vienna) relief of the Entombment, with its exaggerated ideas of classical profile, must be the work of a scholar.  The Sportello at Venice[214] also shows later Renaissance decoration in its rich arabesques, though two hands seem to have been employed—­the four central putti and the two angels being more Donatellesque than the remainder.  The relief of the Flagellation in Paris[215] is more important, as we have a rugged and severe treatment both in the subject and its execution:  but the summary treatment of such details as the hair makes one doubtful if Donatello can have been wholly responsible.  A somewhat analogous Flagellation in Berlin[216] is the work of a clever but halting plagiarist.  He has inserted a Donatellesque background of arches showing the lines of stonework, and a pleasant detached girl who reminds us of the figure on the Siena and St. George reliefs.  But the imitator’s weak hand is betrayed by the anatomy of the three principal figures.  The positions are those of force and energy, but there is no tension or muscular