and Strength.  The reliefs are scenes from the life of the Baptist.  From the centre of the font rises the tall Renaissance tabernacle with five niches, in which Jacopo placed marble statues of David and the four major prophets, one of which suggested the San Petronio of Michael Angelo.  A statue of the Baptist surmounts the entire font.  In spite of the number of people who co-operated with Jacopo, the whole composition is harmonious.  Donatello made the gilded statuettes of Faith and Hope.  The former, looking downwards, has something of Sienese severity.  Hope is with upturned countenance, joining her hands in prayer; charming alike in her gesture and pose.  Two instalments for these figures are recorded in 1428.  The authorities had been lax in paying for the work, and we have a letter[88] asking the Domopera for payment, Donatello and Michelozzo being rather surprised—­“assai maravigliati”—­that the florins had not arrived.  The last of these bronze Virtues, by Goro di Neroccio, was not placed on the font till 1431.  Donatello also had the commission for the sportello, the bronze door of the tabernacle.  But the authorities were dissatisfied with the work and returned it to the sculptor, though indemnifying him for the loss.[89] This was in 1434, the children for the upper cornice having been made from 1428 onwards.  The relief, which was ordered in 1421, was finished some time in 1427.  It is Donatello’s first relief in bronze, and his earliest definitive effort to use a complicated architectural background.  The incident is the head of St. John being presented on the charger by the kneeling executioner.  Herod starts back dismayed at the sight, suddenly realising the purport of his action.  Two children playing beside him hurriedly get up; one sees that in a moment they, too, will be terror-stricken.  Salome watches the scene; it is very simple and very dramatic.  The bas-relief of St. George releasing Princess Sabra, the Cleodolinda of Spencer’s Faerie Queen, is treated as an epic, the works having a connecting bond in the figures of the girls, who closely resemble each other.  Much as one admires the elan of St. George slaying the dragon, this bronze relief of Siena is the finer of the two; it is more perfect in its way, and Donatello shows more apt appreciation of the spaces at his disposal.  The Siena plaque, like the marble relief of the dance of Salome at Lille, to which it is analogous, has a series of arches vanishing into perspective.  They are not fortuitous buildings, but are used by the sculptor to subdivide and multiply the incidents.  They give depth to the scene, adding a sense of the beyond.  The Lille relief has a wonderful background, full of hidden things, reminding one of the mysterious etchings of Piranesi.

[Footnote 88:  9. v. 1427.  Milanesi, ii. 134.]

[Footnote 89:  Lusini, 28.]

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[Illustration:  Alinari