situ for some time, but were afterwards taken away also.  The two galleries have now been re-erected at either end of the chief room of the Opera del Duomo.  But the size of the galleries is considerable, and they occupy so much of the end walls to which they are fixed, that it is impossible to see the sides or outer panels of either cantoria.  In the case of Luca’s gallery, the side panels have been replaced by facsimiles, and the originals can be minutely examined, being only four or five feet from the ground, and very suggestive they are.  As the side panels of Donatello’s gallery are equally invisible in their present position they might also be brought down to the eye level.  Comparison with Luca’s work would then be still more simplified.  But though in a trying light, and too low down, the sculpture shows that it was Donatello who gave the more careful attention to the conditions under which the work would be seen.  The delicacy and grace of Luca’s choir make Donatello’s boys look coarse and rough-hewn.  But in the dim Cathedral, where Donatello’s children would appear bold and vivacious, the others would look insipid and weak.  Moreover, the lower tier of Luca’s panels beneath the projection and enclosed by the broad brackets, would have been in such a subdued light that some of the heads in low-relief would have been scarcely emphasised at all.  In reconstructing Donatello’s gallery an error has been made by which a long band of mosaic runs along the whole length of the relief, above the children’s heads.  M. Reymond has pointed out that the ground level should have been raised in order to prevent what Donatello would undoubtedly have avoided, namely, a blank and meaningless stretch of mosaic.[142] M. Reymond’s brilliant suggestion about a similar point in regard to the other cantoria, a criticism which has been verified in a remarkable manner, entitles his suggestion to great weight.  The angles of the cantoria where the side panels join the main relief lack finish:  something like the pilasters which cover the angles of the Judith base are required.  As for the design, the gallery made by Luca della Robbia has an advantage over Donatello’s in that the figures are not placed behind a row of columns.  There is something tantalising in the fact that the most boisterous and roguish of all the troop is concealed by a pillar of spangled white and gold.  These pillars were perhaps needed to break the long line of the relief:  but they have no such significance, as, for instance, the row of pillars on the Saltarello tomb,[143] behind which the Bishop’s effigy lies—­a barrier between the living and the dead, across which the attendant angels can drop the curtain.  Donatello’s gallery is, perhaps, over-decorated.  There is less gilding now than formerly, and the complex ornament does not materially interfere with the broad features of the design:  but a little more reserve would not have been amiss.

[Footnote 142:  Reymond, I., p. 107.]