[Footnote 188:  Victoria and Albert Museum, No. 157, 1894.]

[Footnote 189:  Ibid. No. 7605, 1861, terra-cotta.  Louvre, No. 465, ditto.]

[Footnote 190:  Cf. Herr von Beckerath’s in Berlin, and the Verrocchio-school Magdalen in the Berlin Gallery, No. 94.]

* * * * *

[Sidenote:  The Altar at Padua.]

Donatello was fifty-seven when he left Florence in 1443 to spend ten eventful years at Padua.  There he carried out his masterpieces of bronze for the Cathedral and the equestrian statue of Gattamelata on the Piazza opposite Donatello’s little house, which to this day is occupied, appropriately enough, by a carver—­Bortolo Slaviero, tagliapietra.  It is now established that Donatello was invited to Padua for the Church and that the Gattamelata was not commissioned until later.[191] At this time Padua was a centre of humanistic learning and intellectual activity.  There was a hive of antiquarians and collectors, and, according to its lights, a thriving school of painters.[192] The Florentine Palla Strozzi was living there in retirement, and he may have been partly responsible for the invitation to Donatello.  But the indigenous art of Padua was dependent on Venice, and needed some fertilising element.  Squarcione with his 140 pupils founded his art upon traditional and conventional data:  had it not been for Donatello and the radical changes which resulted from his sojourn at Padua, a fossilised school would have become firmly rooted, and would probably have influenced the whole of the Veneto.  Mantegna was still young when Donatello arrived, and though there is no reason to suppose that he received work from Donatello as Squarcione did, it is clear that, without this influx of Southern ideas, he would have had some difficulty in shaking off the conventionalisms of his home.  But though Donatello’s immediate influence on Paduan art was decisive (and its ramifications soon extended to Venice), he was himself influenced by his fresh surroundings, and his native bent towards complexity was increased.  He assimilated many of the local likes and dislikes.  If Gattamelata had been erected in some Florentine square there would have been less ornament; if Colleone had been commissioned for Siena there would have been less braggadocio.  Leonardo never recovered his Tuscan frame of mind after his sojourn in Milan.  Donatello himself realised these novelties to the full, and their results upon his art.  While he was making the intricate bas-reliefs, the selective genius of Luca della Robbia was composing the Florence Lunettes,[193] monumental in their simplicity.  And though Vasari records the enthusiasm with which Donatello’s productions were greeted in the North, the sculptor recognised the dangers of unqualified praise, and said he must return home to Florence to receive criticism and censure, the stimulus to better work and greater glory.  But the maggiore gloria was not to be attained.