changed from Athens to Bloomsbury.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Alinari_

THE ZUCCONE

CAMPANILE, FLORENCE]


[Sidenote: The Zuccone, "Realism" and Nature.]

The Zuccone is one of the eternal mysteries of Italian art. What can
have been Donatello's intention? Why give such prominence to this
graceless type? Baldinucci called it St. Mark.[21] Others have been
misled by the lettering on the plinth below the statue "David Rex":
beneath the Jeremiah is "Salomon Rex."[22] These inscriptions
belonged, of course, to the kings which made way for Donatello's
prophets. The Zuccone must belong to the series of prophets; it is
fruitless to speculate which. Cherichini may have inspired the
portrait. Its ugliness is insuperable. It is not the vulgar ugliness
of a caricature, nor is it the audacious embodiment of some hideous
misshapen creature such as we find in Velasquez, in the Gobbo of
Verona, or in the gargoyles of Notre Dame. There is no deformity about
it, probably very little exaggeration. It is sheer uncompromising
ugliness; rendered by the cavernous mouth, the blear eyes, the flaccid
complexion, the unrelieved cranium--all carried to a logical
conclusion in the sloping shoulders and the simian arms. But the
Zuccone is not "revenged of nature": there is nothing to "induce