or singing galleries, made for the cathedral, one by Donatello and
one by Luca della Robbia. A cantoria by Donatello we shall soon see in
its place in S. Lorenzo; but that, beautiful as it is, cannot compare
with this one, with its procession of merry, dancing children, its
massiveness and grace, its joyous ebullitions of gold mosaic and blue
enamel. Both the cantorie--Donatello's, begun in 1433 and finished
in 1439, and Luca's, begun in 1431 and finished in 1438--fulfilled
their melodious functions in the Duomo until 1688, when they were
ruthlessly cleared away to make room for large wooden balconies to
be used in connexion with the nuptials of Ferdinand de' Medici and
the Princess Violante of Bavaria. In the year 1688 taste was at a low
ebb, and no one thought the deposed cantorie even worth preservation,
so that they were broken up and occasionally levied upon for cornices
and so forth. The fragments were collected and taken to the Bargello
in the middle of the last century, and in 1883 Signer del Moro, the
then architect of the Duomo (whose bust is in the courtyard of this
museum), reconstructed them to the best of his ability in their present
situation. It has to be remembered not only that, with the exception
of the figures, the galleries are not as their artists made them,
lacking many beautiful accessories, but that, as Vasari tells us,
Donatello deliberately designed his for a dim light. None the less,
they remain two of the most delightful works of the Renaissance and
two of the rarest treasures of Florence.

The dancing boys behind the small pillars with their gold chequering,
the brackets, and the urn of the cornice over the second pair
of pillars from the right, are all that remain of Donatello's own
handiwork. All else is new and conjectural. It is supposed that bronze
heads of lions filled the two circular spaces between the brackets
in the middle. But although the loss of the work as a whole is to be