new line was struck out; but elsewhere the Romanesque had slowly emerged from the classical, and in many cases there was no strict line of demarcation between the two.  But Donatello was very young when he went to Rome, and the fashion of the day had not then turned in favour of classical study.  The sculptors working in Rome, colourless men as they were, drew their inspiration from Gothic and pre-Renaissance ideals.  In Florence the ruling motives were even more Gothic in tendency.  It is in this school that Donatello found his earliest training, and though he modified and transcended all that his teachers could impart, his sculpture always retained a character to which the essential elements of classical art contributed little or nothing.

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[Sidenote:  The Predecessors of Donatello.]

Florence was busily engaged in decorating her great buildings.  The fourteenth century had witnessed the structural completion of the Cathedral, excepting its dome, of the Campanile, and of the Church of Or San Michele.  During the later years of the century their adornment was begun.  A host of sculptors was employed, the number and scale of statues required being great.  There was a danger that the sculpture might have become a mere handmaid of the architecture to which it was subordinated.  But this was not the case; the sculptors preserved a freedom in adapting their figures to the existing architectural lines, and it is precisely in the statuary applied to completed buildings that we can trace the most interesting transitions from Gothic to Renaissance.  It is needless to discuss closely the work which was erected before Donatello’s return from Rome:  much of it has unhappily perished, and what remains is for the purposes of this book merely illustrative of the early inspiration of Donatello.  Piero Tedesco made a number of statues for the Cathedral, Mea and Giottino worked for the Campanile.  Lorenzo di Bicci, sculptor, architect, and painter, was one of those whose influence extended to Donatello; Niccolo d’Arezzo was perhaps the most original of this group, making a genuine effort to shake off the conventional system.  But, on the whole, the last quarter of the fourteenth century showed but little progress.  Indeed, from the time of the later Pisani there seems to have been a period of stagnation, a pause during which the anticipated progress bore little fruit.  Orcagna never succeeded in developing the ideas of his master.  The shrine in Or San Michele, marvellous in its way, admirable alike for diligence and sincerity, stands alone, and was not imbued with the life which could make it an influence upon contemporary art.

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[Sidenote:  First Work for the Cathedral.]