[Footnote 229:  Terra-cotta.]

[Footnote 230:  Victoria and Albert Museum, No. 8376, 1863.]

[Footnote 231:  No. 53 E. Bergamo, Morelli Collection, No. 53.]

[Illustration:  Alinari

MADONNA AND CHILD

LOUVRE (NO. 389), PARIS]

The little oval Madonna in London[232] is a work of much interest.  It is coloured stucco, and Dr. Bode, who has dated it as early as 1420-30, believes it to be the first example of the Santa conversazione in Italian plastic art.  A variant belonging to Dr. Weisbach in Berlin is of equal importance, and both are probably original works and not casts.  The Berlin relief is not so thickly painted as the London medallion, and shows signs of the actual modelling.  There are contradictions in these valuable works.  The music-making angels are like a figure on the Salome relief at Siena:  but they are also related to Luca della Robbia’s reliefs on the Campanile, and to a terra-cotta Madonna in London[233] (which reminds one of the Pellegrini Chapel); Matteo Civitale uses a similar type on the tomb of St. Regulus at Lucca; while the crowned saint of the London version was copied at a later date on a well-known plaquette forming the lid of a box of which several examples exist.[234] The figure of the Madonna and Child also suggests another hand; and with the exception of the stone relief in the Louvre, and another derived from it at Padua,[235] it is the only case in which the Virgin is not shown in profile.  These latter works are bold and vigorous, and must be ultimately referred to Donatello, the head of the Madonna being rendered by fluent and precise strokes of the chisel.  A bronze relief in the Louvre (No. 390), which came from Fontainebleau, has Donatellesque motives; but the spiral coils of hair, and still more the fact that the Virgin’s breasts are hammered into the likeness of putti’s faces—­wholly alien to Donatello’s serious ideas—­sufficiently prove it to belong to the later Italian school which flourished at the French Court.  The Courajod Madonna (Louvre, 389) is modestly called a schoolpiece; but it is a work of first-class importance, for which Donatello is to be credited.  This is a very large relief in painted terra, the Madonna being in profile to the left, with a wan and saddened expression.  The arm is stiff and wooden, while the undercutting of the profile, like that of the Siena tondo, is so pronounced that, when standing close to the wall on which the relief is fixed, one can see the Virgin’s second eye—­unduly prominent and much too near to the nose.  This is a needless and distracting mannerism, though, of course, the blemish is only noticeable from one point of view, being quite invisible as one sees the relief from the front, or in a photograph.  The Berlin Museum has another large Madonna comparable for its scale and rich colouring to the Courajod relief.  This came from the convent of Santa Maria Maddalena