[Footnote 151:  This open form of trouser, of which one sees a variant on the Martelli David, was also classical.  The Athis or Phrygian shepherd usually wears something of the kind.]

[Footnote 152:  Very similar classical types are in the British Museum, No. 1147; and the Eros springing forward in the Forman Collection (dispersed in 1899) is almost identical.]

[Footnote 153:  From the Piot Collection.  Figured in “Gaz. des Beaux Arts,” 1890, iii. 410.]

[Footnote 154:  Victoria and Albert Museum, No. 475, 1864.  A winged boy carrying a dolphin.]

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Alinari

SAN GIOVANNINO

FAENZA MUSEUM]

[Sidenote:  Boys’ Busts.]

It is inexplicable that modern criticism should withdraw from Donatello all the free-standing or portrait-busts of boys, while going to the opposite extreme in ascribing to him an enormous number of Madonnas.  We know that Donatello was passionately fond of carving children on his reliefs:  we also know that only two versions of the Madonna can be really authenticated as his work.  Why should Donatello have made no busts of boys when it is not denied that he was responsible for something like one hundred boys in full-length; and how does it come about that scores of Madonnas should be attributed to him when we only have the record of a few?  There can be no doubt that Donatello would not have rested content with children in relief or in miniature.  The very preparation of his numerous works in this category must have led him to make busts as well, quite apart from his own inclinations.  The stylistic method of argument should not be abused:  if driven to a strict and logical conclusion it becomes misleading.  It ignores the human element in the artist.  It pays no attention to his desire to vary the nature of his work or to make experiments.  It eliminates the likelihood of forms which differ from the customary type, and it makes no allowance for possibilities or probabilities, least of all for mistakes.  It is purely on stylistic grounds that each bust connected with Donatello’s name has been withdrawn from the list of his works.  A fashion had grown up to ascribe to Donatello all that delightful group of marble busts now scattered over Europe.  Numbers were obviously the work of competent but later men:  Rossellino, Desiderio, Mino da Fiesole, and so forth.  There remain others which are more doubtful, but which in one detail or another are alleged to be un-Donatellesque, and have therefore been fearlessly attributed to other sculptors from whose authenticated work they often dissent.  That, however, was immaterial, the primary object being to disinherit Donatello without much thought as to his lawful successor in title.  A critical discrimination between these busts was an admitted need; everything of the kind had been conventionally ascribed to Donatello