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Updated: May 15, 2025
And still there was a resemblance; for now, when first the idea was suggested of living for the welfare of his fellow-creatures, the original beauty, which sorrow had partly effaced, came back elevated and spiritualized. In the black depths the Faun had found a soul, and was struggling with it towards the light of heaven. The illumination, it is true, soon faded out of Donatello's face.
Kneeling before Donatello's magnificent picture of the Virgin over one of the side altars, her outline dimly illuminated by the light of many candles, was a slim, dark-haired young woman in deep mourning. Her head was bowed in an attitude of great devotion, but a few moments later, when she raised her face, I stood rooted to the spot. The countenance was that of the dead girl Gabrielle Engledue!
These have a double interest as being not only Donatello's work but his latest work. How fine and free and spirited Bertoldo could be, alone, we shall see at the Bargello.
In either case you are welcome." And they walked onward together. Miriam's sadder mood, it might be, had at first an effect on Donatello's spirits. It checked the joyous ebullition into which they would otherwise have effervesced when he found himself in her society, not, as heretofore, in the old gloom of Rome, but under that bright soft sky and in those Arcadian woods.
Sometimes he would etch in thin vermilion lines upon a ground of white the languid bridegroom and his bride, with Eros hovering round them an Eros like one of Donatello's angels, a little laughing thing with gilded or with azure wings. Again, on the rim of the wide flat cup he would draw the stag browsing, or the lion at rest, as his fancy willed it.
Whether it be Credi's naïve womanhood, or Titian's abounding, glorious women and calm and forceful men, or Delia Robbia's joyous children and Donatello's sprites, the same great meaning is expressed, the same appreciation of the goodness and beauty of all life. This beauty is for me, here, to-day.
If he had seen what Hilda saw, he would probably have left Rome as quickly as possible, never to return; and Donatello's fate might have been different. The effect on the sensitive and inexperienced Hilda was like a horrible nightmare. She cannot believe her senses, and yet she has to believe them. It seems to her as if the fiery pit has yawned between her and the rest of the human race.
It seems the moral of his story, that human beings of Donatello's character, compounded especially for happiness, have no longer any business on earth, or elsewhere. Life has grown so sadly serious, that such men must change their nature, or else perish, like the antediluvian creatures that required, as the condition of their existence, a more summer-like atmosphere than ours."
It is fitting that Desiderio should be here, for he was Donatello's favourite pupil. The S. Lorenzo ciborium is wholly charming, although there is a "Deposition" upon it; the little Boy is adorable; but one sees it with the greatest difficulty owing to the crowded state of the altar and the dim light. There is nice colour in the predella.
When the individual or the family retired from song and mirth, they here sought those realities which men do not invite their festive associates to share. And here, on the occasion above referred to, the sculptor had discovered accidentally, so far as he was concerned, though with a purpose on her part that there was a guest under Donatello's roof, whose presence the Count did not suspect.
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