by these huge plain pillars was not easy.  But the tomb, which is decorated with prudent reserve, holds its own.  The effigy is bronze:  all the rest is marble.  It was probably coloured, and a drawing in Ghiberti’s note-book gives a background of cherry red, with the figures gilded.[92] Coscia lies in his mitre and episcopal robes, his head turned outwards towards the spectator.  The features are admirably modelled with the firmness and consistency of living flesh:  indeed it is the portrait of a sleeping man, troubled, perhaps, in his dream.  The tomb was made some years after Coscia’s death, and Donatello has not treated him as a dead man.  The effigy is a contrast to that of Cardinal Brancacci, where we have the unmistakable lineaments and fallen features of a corpse.  The dusky hue of Coscia’s face should be noticed; the bronze appears to have been rubbed with some kind of dark composition, similar in tone to that employed by Torrigiano.  Below the recumbent Pope is the sarcophagus; two delightful winged boys hold the cartel on which the epitaph is boldly engraved.  The three marble figures in niches at the base, Faith, Hope and Charity, belong to a different category.  Albertini says that the bronze is by Donatello, and “li ornamenti marmorei di suoi discipuli.”  Half a century later, Vasari says that Donatello made two of them, and that Michelozzo made the Faith, which is the least successful of the three.  Modern criticism tends to revert to Albertini, assigning all to Michelozzo, with the presumption that Hope, which is derived from the Siena statuette, was executed from Donatello’s design.  Certainly the basal figures are without the brio of Donatello’s chisel; likewise the Madonna above the effigy, which is vacillating, and may have been the earliest work of Pagno di Lapo, a man about whom we have slender authenticated knowledge, but whom we know to have been well employed in and around Florence.  In any case, we cannot reconcile this Madonna with Michelozzo’s sculpture.  As will be seen later on, Michelozzo had many faults, but he was seldom insipid.  The Madonna and Saints on the facade of Sant’ Agostino at Montepulciano show that Michelozzo was a vigorous man.  This latter work is certainly by him, the local tradition connecting it with one Pasquino da Montepulciano being unfounded.  The Coscia tomb is among the earliest of that composite type which soon pervaded Italy.  At least one other monument was directly copied from it, that of Raffaello Fulgosio at Padua.  This was made by Giovanni da Pisa, and the sculptor’s conflict between respect for the old model, and his desires after the new ideas, is apparent in the whole composition.

[Footnote 90:  See “Arch.  Storico dell’ Arte,” 1893, p. 209.]

[Footnote 91:  “De Sculptura,” 1504, folio e. 1.  On the other hand, the sculptor Verrocchio cast a bell for the Vallombrosans in 1474, and artillery for the Venetian Republic.]

[Footnote 92:  Op. cit. p. 70.  In this drawing two putti are also shown holding a shield, above the monument; this has now disappeared.]