by the defensive plates of steel.  He stands upright, his legs rather apart, and the shield in front of him, otherwise he is quite unarmed; the St. George in the niche is alert and watchful:  in the bas-relief he manfully slays the dragon.  The head is bare and the throat uncovered; the face is full of confidence and the pride of generous strength, but with no vanity or self-consciousness.  Fearless simplicity is his chief attribute, though in itself simplicity is no title to greatness:  with Donatello, Sophocles and Dante would be excluded from any category of greatness based on simplicity alone.  St. George has that earnest and outspoken simplicity with which the mediaeval world invested its heroes; he springs from the chivalry of the early days of Christian martyrdom, the greatest period of Christian faith.  Greek art had no crusader or knight-errant, and had to be content with Harmodius and Aristogeiton.  Even the Perseus legend, which in so many ways reminds one of St. George, was far less appreciated as an incident by classical art than by the Renaissance; and even then not until patron and artist were growing tired of St. George.  M. Reymond has pointed out the relation of Donatello’s statue to its superb analogue, St. Theodore of Chartres Cathedral. “C’est le souvenir de tout un monde qui disparait."[36] Physically it may be so.  The age of chivalry may be passed in so far that the prancing steed and captive Princess belong to remote times which may never recur.  But St. George and St. Theodore were not merely born of legend and fairy tale; their spirit may survive in conditions which, although less romantic and picturesque, may still preserve intact the essential qualities of the soldier-saint of primitive times.  The influence of the St. George upon contemporary art seems to have been small.  The Mocenigo tomb, which has already been mentioned, has a figure on the sarcophagus obviously copied from the St. George; and elsewhere in this extremely curious example of plagiarism we find other figures suggested by Donatello’s statues.  The little figure in the Palazzo Pubblico at Pistoja is again an early bit of piracy.  In the courtyard of the Palazzo Quaratesi in Florence, built by Brunellesco between 1425 and 1430, an early version of the head of St. George was placed in one of the circular panels above the pillars.  It is without intrinsic importance, being probably a cast, but it shows how early the statue was appreciated.  A more important cast is that of the bas-relief now in London, which has a special interest from having been taken before the original had suffered two or three rather grievous blows.[37] Verrocchio made a drawing of the St. George,[38] and Mantegna introduced a similar figure into his picture of St. James being led to execution.[39] But Donatello’s influence cannot be measured by the effect of St. George.  In this particular case his work did not challenge competition; its perfection was too consummate to be of service except to the copyist.  In some ways it spoke the last word; closed an episode in the history of art—­[Greek:  eschatos tou idiou genous].