[Footnote 147:  A pair of terra-cotta variants of these panels are preserved in the Wallace Collection at Hertford House.]

[Footnote 148:  Psalm cl.]

[Footnote 149:  Psalm cxlix.]

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Alinari

BRONZE AMORINO

BARGELLO]

[Sidenote:  Other Children by Donatello.]

There are six putti above the Annunciation in Santa Croce.  They are made of terra-cotta, while the rest of the work is in stone, and designed in such a way that the children are superfluous.  They are, however, undoubtedly by Donatello, and may have been added as an afterthought.  Two stand on either side of the curved tympanum, clinging to each other as they look downwards, and afraid of falling over the steep precipice.  Their attitude is shy and timid, as Leonardo said was advisable when making little children standing still.[150] Though unnecessary, their presence on the relief is justified by Donatello’s skill and humour.  In the great reliefs at Padua, Siena and Lille he introduces them without any specific object, though he contrives that they shall show fear or surprise in response to the incident portrayed.  It is puzzling to know what the bronze boy in the Bargello should be called.  Perseus, Mercury, Cupid, Allegory and Amorino have been suggested:  he combines attributes of them all together with the budding tail of a faun, and the gambali, the buskin-trouser of the Tuscan peasant[151]—­“vestito in un certo modo bizzarro” as Vasari says.  Cinelli thought it classical, and it resembles an undoubted antique in the Louvre.  Donatello has clearly taken classical motives; the winged feet and the serpents twining between them are not Renaissance in form or idea.  But the statue itself is closely akin to the Cantoria children, but being in bronze shows a higher polish, and, moreover, is treated in a less summary fashion.  It is a brilliant piece of bronze:  colour, cast and chiselling are alike admirable, and there is a vibration in the movement as the saucy little fellow looks up laughing, having presumably just shot off an arrow; or possibly he has been twanging a wire drawn tightly between the fingers.  It throws much light on the bronze boys at Padua made ten or fifteen years later.  This Florentine boy shows how completely Donatello, perhaps with the assistance of a caster, could render his meaning in bronze.  In two or three cases at Padua the work is clumsy and slipshod, showing how he allowed his assistants to take liberties which he would never have countenanced in work finished by his own hands.  The Bargello has another Amorino of bronze, a nude winged boy standing on a cockleshell, and just about to fly away; quite a pleasing statuette, and executed with skill except as regards the extremities of the fingers, where the bronze has failed.  It resembles Donatello’s