its freedom longer than the literary arts, and when the latter recovered their national character sculpture relapsed in their place into classicism.  From early times sculptors had, of course, learned what they could from classical exemplars.  Niccola Pisano copied at least four classical motives.  There was no plagiarism; it was a warm tribute on his part, and at that time a notable achievement to have copied at all.  But the imitation of antiquity was carried to absurd lengths.  Ghiberti, who was a literary man, says that Andrea Pisano lived in the 410th Olympiad.[122] But Ghiberti remained a Renaissance sculptor, and his classical affectation is less noticeable in his statues than in his prose.  Filippo Strozzi went so far as to emancipate his favourite slave, a “grande nero,” in his will.[123] But Gothic art died hard.  The earlier creeds of art lingered on in the byways, and the Renaissance was flourishing long before Gothic ideas had completely perished—­that is to say, Renaissance in its widest meaning, that of reincarnated love of art and letters:  if interpreted narrowly the word loses its deep significance, for the Renaissance engendered forms which had never existed before.  But it must be remembered that in sculpture classical ideas preceded classical forms.  Averlino, or Filarete, as a classical whim led him to be called, began the bronze doors of St. Peter’s just before Donatello’s visit.  They are replete with classical ideas, ignoble and fantastic, but the art is still Renaissance.  Comparatively little classical art was then visible, and its infallibility was not accepted until many years later, when Rome was being ransacked for her hidden store of antiquities.  Statues were exhumed from every heap of ruins, generally in fragments:  not a dozen free-standing marble statues have come down to us in their pristine condition.  The quarrymen were beset by students and collectors anxious to obtain inscriptions.  Traders in forgeries supplied what the diggers could not produce.  Classical art became a fetish.[124] The noble qualities of antiquity were blighted by the imitators, whose inventive powers were atrophied, while their skill and knowledge left nothing to be desired.  Excluding the Cosmati, Rome was the mother of no period or movement of art excepting the Rococo.  As for Donatello himself, he was but slightly influenced by classical motives.  His sojourn in Rome was short, his time fully occupied; he was forty-seven years old and had long passed the most impressionable years of his life.  He was a noted connoisseur, and on more than one occasion his opinion on a question of classical art was eagerly sought.  But, so far as his own art was concerned, classical influences count for little.  His architectural ideas were only classical through a Renaissance medium.  When a patron gave him a commission to copy antique gems, he did his task faithfully enough, but without zest and with no ultimate progress in a similar direction.