[Footnote 143:  By Nino Pisano, in Sta.  Caterina, Pisa.]

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[Illustration:  Alinari

THE PRATO PULPIT]

[Sidenote:  The Prato Pulpit.]

The second work in which Donatello took his inspiration exclusively from childhood is at Prato.  It is an external pulpit, fixed at the southern angle of the Cathedral facade, and employed to display the most famous relic possessed by the town, namely, the girdle of the Virgin.  The first contract was made as early as 1428 with Donatello and Michelozzo, industriosi maestri, to whom careful measurements were given.[144] The sculptors promised to finish the work by September 1, 1429.  Five years later, there was still no pulpit, and having vainly invoked the aid of Cosimo, they finally sent to Rome, where Donatello had by then gone, and a revised contract was made with the industrious sculptors, though Michelozzo is not mentioned by name.[145] The work was finished in about four years, and within three weeks of signing the new contract one of the reliefs was completed; it may, of course, have been already begun.  Its success was immediate.  “All say with one accord that never has such a work of art been seen before;” and the writer of the entertaining letter from which this eulogy is quoted goes on to say that Donatello is of good disposition; that such men are not found every day, and that he had better be encouraged by a little money.[146] The Prato pulpit has seven marble reliefs on mosaic grounds, separated by twin pilasters:  there are thirty-two children in all.[147] It is a most attractive work, cleverly placed against the decorous little Cathedral and not surrounded by sculpture of the first order with which to make invidious comparisons.  But beside the cantoria it is almost insignificant.  The Prato children dance too, but without the perennial spring; they have plenty of movement, but seem apt to stumble.  They do not scamper along with the feverish enthusiasm of the other children:  they must get very tired.  Moreover, several of the panels are confused.  They are, of course, crowded, for Donatello liked crowds, especially for his children; but his crowds were well marshalled and the individual figures which composed them were not allowed to suffer by their surroundings anatomically.  The Prato children belong to a chubby and robust type.  They have a tendency to short necks and unduly big heads which sink on to the torso.  Michelozzo never grasped the spirit of childhood; those at Montepulciano were not a success, and he was largely responsible for the Prato Pulpit; it has been suggested that Simone Ferrucci also assisted.  Certainly it would be Michelozzo’s idea to divide the frieze into compartments, which interrupt the continuity of the relief and necessitate fourteen terminal points instead of four on the cantoria.  We can also detect Michelozzo’s hand in the rather stiff and professional details of the architecture.