“E Donatello messe la scultura
       Nel dritto suo sentier ch’ era smarrita
     Cosi l’architettura
       Storpiata, e guasta alle man’ de’ Tedeschi....”

and so forth.[251] Another early poem, the Rappresentazione of King Nebuchadnezzar, shows the great popularity of Donatello in the humbler walks of life.[252] Vasari’s rhetoric led him to say that Donatello was sent by Nature, indignant at seeing herself caricatured.[253] Bocchi claims that, having equalled the ancients and surpassed the sculptors of his own day, Donatello’s name will live in the perpetual memory of mankind.[254]

[Footnote 245:  “Ricordi,” 1554, p. 51.]

[Footnote 246:  “De Sculptura,” 1504, gathering f.  “Donatellus ... aere ligno, marmore laudatissimus, plura hujus unius manu extant opera, quam semel ab eo ad nos caeterorum omnium.”]

[Footnote 247:  “Italia Illustrata,” Bale, 1531, p. 305. “Decorat etiam urbem Florentiam ingenio veterum laudibus respondente, Donatello Heracleotae Zeusi aequiparandus, ut vivos, juxta Virgilii verba, ducat de marmore vultus.”]

[Footnote 248:  “De Viris illustribus,” Florence ed. 1745, p. 51. “Donatellus ... excellet non aere tantum, sed etiam marmore notissimus, ut vivos vultus ducere, et ad antiquorum gloriam proxime accedere videatur.”]

[Footnote 249:  “Dialogues,” Raczynski ed.  Paris, 1846, p. 56.]

[Footnote 250:  “Due Trattati,” ed.  Milanesi, 1857, passim.]

[Footnote 251:  “Due Vite di Brunellesco,” p. 142.]

[Footnote 252:  Semper, 321.]

[Footnote 253:  “Lem.,” iii. 243, in first edition.]

[Footnote 254:  1677 edition.]

* * * * *

[Sidenote:  Character and Personality of Donatello.]

Donatello must be judged by his work alone.  His intellect is only reflected in his handicraft.  We know little about him, but all we know bears tribute to his high character.  The very name by which he was called—­Donatello—­is a diminutive, a term of endearment.  His generosity, his modesty, and a pardonable pride, are recorded in stories which have been generically applied to others, but which were specific to himself.  He shared his purse with his friends:[255] he preferred plain clothing to the fine raiment offered by Cosimo de’ Medici;[256] and he indignantly broke the statue for which a Genoese merchant was unwilling to pay a fair price.[257] He was recognised as a man of honourable judgment, and he was called upon to act as assessor several times.  The friend of the Medici, of Cyriac of Ancona, of Niccolo Niccoli, the greatest antiquarian of the day, and of Andrea della Robbia, one of the pall-bearers at his funeral, must have been a man of winning personality and considerable learning.  But he was always simple and naive:  benigno e cortese, according to Vasari,[258] but as Summonte added with deeper insight, his work was far from simple.[259] He is one of the rare men of genius against whom no contemporary attack is recorded.  He was content with little;[260] his life was even-tenored; his work, though not faultless, shows a steady and unbroken progress towards the noblest achievements of plastic art.