worn, we have the sense of absolute calm and repose—­in striking contrast to the wearied look of Brancacci.  The Bishop died on March 1, 1426; a few days previously he wrote his will, while he lay dying—­“sanus mente licet corpore languens”—­and left careful instructions as to his burial in an honourable part of the Cathedral and how the exact cost of his funeral was to be met.[110] In a way the figure resembles St. Louis, and Donatello probably had the help of Michelozzo in the casting.  The work itself is extremely good, and the bronze has the rich colour which one finds most frequently in the smaller provincial towns where time is allowed to create its own patina.  Donatello was a bold innovator, and the Tomb of Coscia, though not the parent of the Renaissance theory of funeral monuments, had marked influence upon its evolution.  From the simple outdoor tombs placed upon pillars, such as one principally finds north of the Apennines, there issued a grander idea which culminated in the monuments of the Scaligers at Verona.  But Donatello reverted to the earlier type of indoor tomb, and from his day the tendency to treat them as an integral feature of mural and structural decoration steadily increased.  A host of sculptors filled the Tuscan churches with those memorials which constitute one of their chief attractions.  These men imbued death with its most gentle aspect, concealing the tragedy and sombre meaning of their work with gay arabesques and the most living and lovable creations of their fancy.  The putti, the bright heraldry, the play of colour, and the opulence of decoration, often distract one’s eye from the effigy of the dead:  and he, too, is often smiling.  He may represent the past:  the rest of the tomb is born of the present, and seldom—­exception being made for a group of tombs to which reference will be made later on[111]—­seldom is there much regard for the future.  The dead at least are not asked to bury their dead.  They lie in state, surrounded by all that is most young and blithe in life:  it is a death which shows no indifference to the life which is left behind.  With them death is in the midst of life, not life in the midst of death.  Donatello was too severe for the later Renaissance, and the brilliant sculptors who succeeded him lost influence in their turn.  With the development of sculpture, which during Michael Angelo’s lifetime acquired a technical skill to which Donatello never aspired, the tomb became a vehicle for ostentation and display; and there was a reaction towards the harsher symbols of death.  Instead of the quiet mourner who really mourns, we have the strident and professional weeper—­a parody of sorrow.  Tier upon tier these prodigious monuments rise, covering great spaces of wall, decorated with skulls and skeletons, with Time carrying his scythe, with negro caryatides, and with apathetic or showy models masquerading as the cardinal virtues.  The effigy itself is often perched up so high as to be invisible, or sitting