though scarcely to the extent of Donatello, who drew in the marble.  The Assyrians also used this low-relief; we find the system fully understood in what are perhaps the most spirited hunting scenes in the world.[100] In these we also notice the square and rectangular undercutting similar to that in many of Donatello’s reliefs.  Another specimen of this very low-relief is found in Mr. Quincy Shaw’s marble panel of the Virgin and Child seated among clouds and surrounded by putti.  This has been attributed to Donatello on good authority,[101] though it must be remarked that the cherubs’ faces show poverty of invention which might suggest the hand of a weaker man.  Moreover, the cherubs have halos, which is a later development, and quite contrary to Donatello’s early practice.  But the relief is an interesting composition, and if by Donatello, may be regarded as the parent of a group which attained popularity.  M. Gustave Dreyfus has a smaller marble variant of great charm, made by Desiderio.  A stucco panel treated in much the same manner is preserved at Berlin.  The Earl of Wemyss has an early version in repousse silver of high technical merit.  From this point of view nothing is more instructive than a Madonna and Child at Milan.[102] It is probably the work of Pierino da Vinci, and is a thin oval slab of marble carved on either side.  One side is unfinished, and is most valuable as showing the facility with which the sharp graving tools were employed to incise the marble.  The composition bears a resemblance to the reliefs just mentioned, and the pose of the two heads is Donatellesque, but the Child is elongated and ill-drawn.  Again, from a technical point of view, a medallion portrait of the late Lord Lytton shows that artists of our own day have used stiacciato with perfect confidence and success.[103] Donatello was not always quite consistent in its employment.  In the Entombment at Padua it is combined with high-relief.  He, no doubt, acted deliberately; that is to say, he did not sketch a hand in stiacciato, because he had forgotten to provide for it in deeper relief.  But the result is that the quality of the different planes is lost, and there are discrepancies in the relative values of distance.  The final outcome of stiacciato is the art of the medallist.  It is said that Donatello made a medal, but nobody has determined which it is.  Michelozzo certainly made one of Bentivoglio, about 1445.[104] This admirable art, which reached its perfection during Donatello’s lifetime, owes something of its progress to the pioneer of stiacciato.

[Footnote 98:  “Vita di Michael Angelo,” Rome, 1553, p. 49.]

[Footnote 99:  Victoria and Albert Museum, Charge to Peter.  See p. 95.]

[Footnote 100:  British Museum, Assyrian Saloon, Nos. 63-6.]

[Footnote 101:  Bode, “Florentiner Bildhauer,” p. 119.]

[Footnote 102:  In the Museo Archeologico in the Castello, unnumbered.]