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I do not say there is anything here more notable than the Annunciation attributed to Andrea at the Spedale degli Innocenti, while of course, for most people, his putti on the façade of that building are the della Robbia symbol; nor is there anything finer than Luca's work at Impruneta; but as a collection of sweetness and gentle domestic beauty these Bargello reliefs are unequalled, both in character and in volume.
What they feed upon is uncertain, but sure it is that they are well nourished. A putti needs nothing, not even approbation. In the dome of the Cathedral at Parma, there is a regular flight of them to help on the Ascension. They mix in everywhere, riding on clouds, clinging to robes, perching on the shoulders of Apostles everywhere thick in the flight and helping on that glorious anabasis.
There was a long decorative frieze in clay, putti with goats, dancing fauns, mænads, Silenus on his donkey, a procession of bacchantic figures celebrating the vintage and reproducing all the bacchic joyousness, the drunkenness, of men and women vintagers, as they cut and trod the grapes and drank the wine.
How rough is the modelling in the ambone reliefs, as though really, as Bandinelli has said, the sight of the old sculptor was failing; and yet, in spite of age and the intervention of his pupils, how his genius asserts itself in a certain rhythm and design in these tragic panels, where, under a frieze of dancing putti, loves or angels I know not, of bulls and horses, he has carved the Agony in the Garden, Christ before Pilate, and again before Caiaphas, the Crucifixion, the Deposition, in the southern ambone; while in the northern we find the Descent into Hades, where John Baptist welcomes our Lord, who draws forth Adam, and, as Dante records, Abel too, and Noah, Moses, Abraham, and David, Isaac and Jacob and his sons, not without Rachel, E altri molti, e fecegli beati, the Resurrection and the Ascension, the Maries at the Tomb, the Pentecost.
Then laying two fingers across his mouth as a sign for silence, he pointed inside the mud-walled enclosure. "Him hasta putti datto?" asked Hal, in a low voice. "Datto" was the only word the Moro could make out, but he understood that, and again pointed inside. "Banga tim no satti du," remarked Hal softly to his chum. Then Sergeant Hal bent low, making an elaborate bow before the gateway.
He will show you, perhaps, as an honest dealer-collector showed me, a set of five fine pieces which he could not identify at all. "The weave," said he, "is Mortlake, the design in part German, these are Italian putti yet when all is told, I put down the work as an Eighteenth Century copy of decadent Renaissance. But I am far from sure."
Thus putti, the hub of a wheel in Gipsy, means the felly of a wheel in Hindustani. Kaizy, to rub a horse down, or scrape him, in the original tongue signifies "to tie up a horse's head by passing the bridle to his tail," to prevent his kicking while being rubbed or 'scraped.
Above it is a kind of stylobate with pilasters supporting the columns of the next stage, the spaces between them decorated with reliefs of torch-bearing putti, who are represented as issuing from partly open double doors, some of which are very pretty.
Away, away they go movement movement everywhere right up into the blue dome of Heaven! As you look up at that most magnificent picture, a tinge of sorrow comes over you the putti are all going away, and what if they should never come back! A little girl I know once went with her Mamma to visit the Cathedral at Parma.
Early seicento Venice had expended all its extravagant art in the making of it. The body of the bed was like a great square sarcophagus. Clustering roses were carved in high relief on its wooden panels, and luscious putti wallowed among the roses. On the black ground-work of the panels the carved reliefs were gilded and burnished.
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