Donatello . 40 portraiture is balanced by an ideal of beauty derived from the antique, anideal which he did not altogether deny even at the time of the Campanilestatues. To what extent he was under the spell of antique physiognomies,is proved by the fact, that he chose them with partiality for the single heads. Fig. 35. Terracotta-BUST (called Niccolo da Uzzano). Florence. Museo Nazionale (Bargello) (To page 44.) which had to serve purely decorative purposes. Thus, in 1422, he fittedinto the Northern porch of the Duomo, in a rather unfortunate positionbetween corner pilaster and pediment, the
Donatello . 40 portraiture is balanced by an ideal of beauty derived from the antique, anideal which he did not altogether deny even at the time of the Campanilestatues. To what extent he was under the spell of antique physiognomies,is proved by the fact, that he chose them with partiality for the single heads. Fig. 35. Terracotta-BUST (called Niccolo da Uzzano). Florence. Museo Nazionale (Bargello) (To page 44.) which had to serve purely decorative purposes. Thus, in 1422, he fittedinto the Northern porch of the Duomo, in a rather unfortunate positionbetween corner pilaster and pediment, the frameless busts of a bearded manand of a youth, whose sharp profiles appear like re-animated Roman headsby the Pisani. But in his character figures of this period the influence 41 of the antique wanes gradually. Their heads altogether lose their typicalcharacter. On the Campanile it only appears in the melancholy St. John,The head of the St. Louis of Or San Michele has also a somewhat generalized,youthful softness and regularity, which becomes almost expressionless. Butin this case it is probably due to special intention. The lack of mentaltension in these features is so striking, that, in Vasaris days, it gave riseto the anecdote, that Donatello wanted to indicate, that a man who like
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectdonatello13861466
