[Footnote 34:  “Eccelenza della Statua del San Giorgio di Donatello,” 1571.]

[Footnote 35:  Bellezze, 1677, p. 67.]

[Footnote 36:  “La Sculpture Florentine,” vol. ii. p. 91.]

[Footnote 37:  Victoria and Albert Museum, 7607, 1861.]

[Footnote 38:  Uffizzi, frame 49.]

[Footnote 39:  Eremitani, Padua, about 1448-50.]

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Alinari

ST. GEORGE

BARGELLO]

[Sidenote:  Donatello and Gothic Art.]

The relation of St. George and other Italian works of this period, both in sculpture and painting, to the Gothic art of France cannot be ignored, although no adequate explanation has yet been given.  St. George, the Baptists of the Campanile and in Rome, and the marble David are intensely Franco-Gothic, and precisely what one would expect to find in France.  The technical and physical resemblance between the two schools may, of course, be a coincidence; it may be purely superficial.  But St. Theodore might well take his place outside Or San Michele, while the St. George (in spite of the difference in date) would be in complete ethical harmony with the statues on the portals of Chartres.  Even if they cannot be analysed, the phenomena must be stated.  Donatello may have spontaneously returned to the principles which underlay the creation of the great statuary of France, the country of all others where a tremendous school had flourished.  But what these fundamental principles were it is impossible to determine.  It is true there had always been agencies at work which must have familiarised Italy with French thought and ideas.  From the time of the dominant French influence in Sicily down to the Papal exile in France—­which ended actually while Donatello was working on these statues, one portion or another of the two countries had been frequently brought into contact.  The Cistercians, for instance, had been among the most persistent propagators of Gothic architecture in Italy, though nearly all their churches (of which the ground-plans are sometimes identical with those of French buildings) are situated in remote country districts of Italy, and being inaccessible are little known or studied nowadays.  France, however, was herself full of Italian teachers and churchmen, who may have brought back Northern ideas of art, for they certainly left small traces of their influence on the French until later on; their presence, at any rate, records intercourse between the two countries.  A concrete example of the relation between the two national arts is afforded by the fact that Michelozzo was the son of a Burgundian who settled in Florence.  Michelozzo was some years younger than Donatello, and it is therefore quite out of the question to assume that the St. George could have been due to his influence:  he was too young to give Donatello more than technical assistance.