young.  But the sculptor’s intellect must be reinforced by keen eyes and a steady hand:  of all artists, Nature finds him most vulnerable.  Donatello’s last work shows the fatigue of hand and eye, though the intellect never lost its ardent and strenuous activity.  There was no petulance or meanness in his old age, no decadence; he merely grew old, and his personality was great until the end.

[Footnote 238:  Properly speaking, they are ambones.  They stand in the west end of the nave of the church close to the junction of the transepts.]

[Footnote 239:  7, xii. 1547. “_...  Donato non fece mai la piu brutta opera_,” &c.  Letter printed in Bottari, i. 70.]

[Footnote 240:  It is probable that these famous horses were mere wrecks in the fifteenth century.  At any rate, Lafreri’s engraving of 1546 shows one of them without breast or forelegs, the remainder of the horse being nothing but a large pillar of brick.  Herr von Kaufmann has an admirable statuette of Donatello’s latter period modelled from the horses on the San Lorenzo frieze. Cf. also Mantegna in the Madonna di San Zeno, Verona.]

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[Illustration:  Alinari

END PANEL OF PULPIT

SAN LORENZO, FLORENCE]

[Sidenote:  Donatello’s Influence on Sculpture.]

The influence of Donatello on his three greatest contemporaries was small.  Jacopo della Quercia always retained his own massive style.  Luca della Robbia and Ghiberti—­the Euphuist of Italian sculpture—­were scarcely affected by the sterner principles of Donatello.  All four men were, in fact, exponents of distinct and independent ideas, and handed on their traditions to separate groups of successors.  Nanni di Banco and Il Rosso were, however, impressed by Donatello’s monumental work, while other sculptors, such as Simone Fiorentino, Vecchietta, Michelozzo, Andrea del Aquila and Buggiano (besides much anonymous talent) were largely influenced by him.  It is owing to the fact that Donatello was the most influential man of his day that so many “schoolpieces” exist.[241] The influence on his successors is less easily determined, except so far as concerns the men who worked for him at Padua, together with Riccio, the most skilful bronze caster of his day, who indirectly owed a good deal to Donatello.  But Urbano da Cortona and his colleagues produced little original work after their return from Padua:  their training seems to have merged their individuality into the dominant style of Donatello; and much of their subsequent work is now ascribed to Donatello or his bottega.  Verrocchio, whom Gauricus calls Donatello’s rival, owes little or nothing to the elder man, and the versatile sculptors who outlived Donatello, such as Rossellino, Benedetto da Maiano, Mino da Fiesole and Desiderio, show relatively small traces of his influence.  But Donatello’s sculpture acted as a restraining