small as they are, and placed high above the gables, are not very
noticeable, but they contain the germ of much which was to follow. The
term "prophet" can only be applied to them by courtesy, for they are
curly-haired boys with free and open countenances; one of them happens
to hold a scroll and the other wears a chaplet of bay leaves. There is
a certain charm about them, a freshness and vitality which reappears
later on when Donatello was making the dancing children for the Prato
pulpit and the singing gallery for the Cathedral. The two prophets,
particularly the one to the right, are clothed with a skill and
facility all the more remarkable from the fact that some of the
statues made soon afterwards, show a stiff and rigid treatment of
drapery. Closely allied to these figures is a small marble statue,
about three feet high, belonging to Madame Edouard André in Paris. It
is a full-length figure of a standing youth, modelled with precision,
and intended to be placed in a niche or against a background. Like the
prophets just described, it has a high forehead, while the drapery
falls in strong harmonious lines, a corner being looped up over the
left arm. It is undoubtedly by Donatello, being the earliest example
of his work in any collection, public or private, and on that account
of importance, apart from its intrinsic merits.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The Cathedral Façade.]

Donatello soon received commissions for statues of a more imposing
scale to be placed on the ill-fated façade of the Cathedral. All
beautiful within, the churches of Florence are singularly poor in
those rich façades which give such scope to the sculptor and
architect, conferring, as at Pisa, distinction on a whole town. The