on which Andrea del Verrocchio also worked,[1] with many busts and figures in the palace of Lorenzo della Stufa, which are full of spirit and animation. Then, leaving Florence, he repaired to Rome, where he laboured to the utmost of his power to imitate the works of the antiques; and, while studying them, he produced, at the same time, a tabernacle of the Sacrament, in stone, which is now in San Pietro.[2] When returning to Florence, and passing through Siena, Donatello undertook to execute a bronze door for the baptistery of San Giovanni, in that city; and having made the model in wood, he had nearly finished the wax moulds, and successfully made the various preparations for casting, when there arrived in Siena a Florentine goldsmith, Bernardetto di Mona Papera, an intimate friend of Donatello, who, returning homeward from Rome, so talked and contrived that, whether for his own affairs, or for some other cause, he succeeded in taking Donato with him to Florence. The work thus remained unfinished, or rather, it was never begun; and there is preserved in that city, by the hand of Donatello, a San Giovanni Battista only; this is in bronze, it is in the apartments belonging to the superintendents of the Duomo, and wants the right arm, from the elbow downwards. Donato himself is said to have left it in this state, because he had not received the full amount of the payment due for it.[3]
Having thus returned to Florence, Donato undertook to decorate the sacristy of San Lorenzo, in stucco, for Cosimo de’ Medici. In the angles of the ceiling that is to say, he executed four medallions, the ornaments of which were partly painted in perspective, partly stories from the Evangelists in basso-rilievo. In the same place Donato made two doors of bronze in basso-rilievo of most exquisite workmanship: on these doors he represented the apostles, martyrs,
- ↑ This work is still to be seen in one of the small rooms beside the Tribune.
- ↑ Bottari remarks that this work was removed to make way for that of Bernino, in gilded bronze, which was copied from the temple erected by Bramante in the cloister of San Pietro in Montorio.
- ↑ Della Valle declares this to be incorrect. “The San Giovanni,” he says, “is entirely complete, but is more like a wild hunter than the Baptist.” See also Rumohr, Ital. Forsch. ii, 361. The later Florentine commentators enumerate several works of this master as likewise existing in Siena. See on this subject also Rumohr, as above cited, pp. 208,239, 359, etc.
