abject unqualified remorse; purified by suffering, refined by bodily hardship, and sustained by the “sun of discipline and virtue.”  There is no luxury in this Magdalen, but she may have contributed to the reaction when Pompeo Battoni and the like transformed her into an opulent personage, dressed in purple, who reclines in some luscious glade while simpering over a bible.  By then art had ceased to know how penitence could be decently portrayed, and the penitent was not long a genuine subject of art.  The Greeks, of course, had no penitent or ascetic in their theocracy:  even the cynic scarcely found a place in their art.  In Italy the Thebaids of Lorenzetti are among the earliest versions; the sculpture of the following century brought it still more home to the public, and then the true mediaeval sentiment upon which this and similar works were founded vanished and has never reappeared.  The date of the Magdalen has provoked a good deal of controversy:  whether it was made immediately before or after the visit to Padua cannot be determined.  But the statue has so many features in common with the Siena Baptist of 1457 that one can most safely ascribe it to some date after Donatello’s return to Florence.  It is certainly more easy to justify the Magdalen from the pulpits of San Lorenzo than from anything made before his journey to Northern Italy.  One misapprehension may be removed.  It is argued that the Magdalen cannot be posterior to Padua on the ground that by 1440 Donatello had ceased to work in any material but soft and ductile clay, which was converted into bronze by his assistants.  The argument is that of one who probably thinks that the Entombment at Padua is made of terra-cotta, and who forgets that Donatello executed a number of works in stone for the Marchese Gonzaga about 1450.[181]

[Footnote 178:  Rumour was very severe. “Elle m’a pour toujours degoute de la penitence,” sighed Des Brosses.  This inimitable person was the critic who, after visiting the Arena chapel at Padua, observed that nowadays one would scarcely employ Giotto to paint a tennis-court.]

[Footnote 179:  Richa, III., xxxiii.]

[Footnote 180:  The inscription is:  “Votis publicis S. Mariae Magdalenae simulacrum ejus insigne Donati opus pristino loco elegantiario repositum anno 1735.”]

[Footnote 181:  See p. 199.  Moreover, in 1458 Donatello accepted a commission at Siena for a marble San Bernardino.  And the Anonimo Morelliano mentions four other marble reliefs at Padua.]

[Illustration:  Alinari

ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST

FRARI CHURCH, VENICE]