neither archaic nor progressive, making occasional failures and
exercising little influence for good or ill upon those with whom he
came in contact. He has, however, one valued merit, that of being a
man about whom we have a good deal of documentary information.
Donatello worked on the St. John for nearly seven years, and,
according to custom, was under obligation to complete the work within
a specified time. Penalty clauses used to be enforced in those days.
Jacopo della Quercia ran the danger of imprisonment for neglecting the
commands of Siena. Torrigiano having escaped from England was recalled
by the help of Ricasoli, the Florentine resident in London, and was
fortunate to avoid punishment. Donatello finished his statue in time,
and received his final instalment in 1415, the year in which the
figures were set up beside the great Porch. This evangelist, begun
when Donatello was twenty-two and completed before his thirtieth year,
challenges comparison with one worthy rival, the Moses of Michael
Angelo. The Moses was the outcome of many years of intermittent
labour, and was created by the help of all the advances made by
sculpture during a century of progress. Yet in one respect only can
Michael Angelo claim supremacy. Hitherto Donatello had made nothing
but standing figures. The St. John sits; he is almost inert, and does
not seem to await the divine message. But how superb it is, this
majestic calm and solemnity; how Donatello triumphs over the lack of
giving tension to what is quiescent! The Penseroso also sits and
meditates, but every muscle of the reposing limbs is alert. So, too,
in the Moses, with all its exaggeration and melodrama, with its aspect
of frigid sensationalism, which led Thackeray to say he would not like
to be left alone in the room with it, we find every motionless limb
imbued with vitality and the essentials of movement. The Moses
undoubtedly springs from the St. John, transcending it as Beethoven
surpassed Haydn. In spite of nearly unpardonable faults verging on