a group of statues full of grave symbolical protests against the statecraft of his time; and, except for the accidental loss of Judith’s pedestal, Donatello’s art never suffered from the curse of politics.  Michael Angelo was always surrounded by the pitfalls of intrigue and politics:  some of his work was sacrificed in consequence.  The colossal statue of Pope Julio was hurled from its place on the facade of San Petronio, Maestro Arduino the engineer, having covered the ground where it was to fall with straw and fascines, in order that no damage should be done—­to the pavement!  And the broken statue was sent away to Ferrara, where it was converted into a big cannon, which they felicitously christened Juliana![177]

[Footnote 177:  Gotti, “Vita,” i. 66.]

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Alinari

ST. MARY MAGDALEN

BAPTISTERY, FLORENCE]

[Sidenote:  The Magdalen and similar Statues.]

We have now to consider a group of rugged statues differing in date but animated by the same motive, the Magdalen in Florence and three statues of St. John the Baptist in Siena, Venice, and Berlin.  Of these, the Magdalen in the Baptistery at Florence is the most typical and the most uncompromising.  She stands upright, a mass of tattered rags, haggard, emaciated, almost toothless.  Her matted hair falls down in thick knots; all feminine softness has gone from the limbs, and nothing but the drawn muscles remain.  It is a thin wasted form, piteous in expression, painful in all its ascetic excess.  The Magdalen has, of course, been the subject of hostile criticism.  It gives a shock, it inspires horror:  it is an outrage on every well-clothed and prosperous sinner.[178] In point of fact, Donatello’s summary method of carving the wood has given a harshness and asperity to features which in themselves are not displeasing.  In a dimmed light, or looking with unfocused eyes on the reproduction, it is clear that the structural lines of the face were once well favoured.  But from the beginning the Magdalen was a work which made a profound impression, and its popularity is measured by the number of statues of a like nature.  Charles VIII. wanted to buy it in 1498, but the Florentines thought it priceless and hid it away.  Two years later they had the bronze diadem added by Jacopo Sogliani.[179] Finally, at a period when this type of sculpture with all its appeal to the traditions of the Thebaid, was least likely to have been acceptable in art or exemplar, the statue was placed in a niche above an altar erected on purpose for its reception, where an inscription testifies to the regard in which it was then held.[180] This Magdalen is didactic in purpose.  Donatello seems to have given less attention to the modelling, subtle as it is, than to the concentration of the one absorbing lesson which was to be conveyed to the spectator.  His object was to show repentance,