the criticism directed against Myron the sculptor—­Animi sensus non expressisse videtur.[14] The occasional error, such as that just noticed, or when he gives Goliath the head of a mild old gentleman,[15] merely throws into greater prominence the usual harmony between his conception and its embodiment.  The task of making prophets was far from simple.  Their various personalities, little known in our time, were conjectural in his day:  neither would the conventional scroll of the prophet do more than give a generic indication of the kind of person represented.  Donatello, however, made a series of figures from which the [Greek:  ethos] of the prophets emanates with unequalled force.

[Footnote 14:  Pliny, xxxiv. 19, 3.]

[Footnote 15:  Bargello David.]

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Alinari

JEREMIAH

CAMPANILE, FLORENCE]

[Sidenote:  Jeremiah and the Canon of Art.]

The Jeremiah, for instance, which is in the niche adjacent to the still more astonishing Zuccone (looking westwards towards the Baptistery), is a portrait study of consummate power.  It is the very man who wrote the sin of Judah with a pen of iron, the man who was warned not to be dismayed at the faces of those upon whose folly he poured the vials of anger and scorn; he is emphatically one of those who would scourge the vices of his age.  And yet this Jeremiah has his human aspect.  The strong jaw and tightly closed lips show a decision which might turn to obstinacy; but the brow overhangs eyes which are full of sympathy, bearing an expression of sorrow and gentleness such as one expects from the man who wept for the miserable estate of Jerusalem—­Quomodo sedet sola civitas!

Tradition says that this prophet is a portrait of Francesco Soderini, the opponent of the Medici; while the Zuccone is supposed to be the portrait of Barduccio Cherichini, another anti-Medicean partisan.  Probabilities apart, much could be urged against the attributions, which are really on a par with the similar nomenclatures of Manetti and Poggio.  The important thing is that they are undoubted portraits, their identity being of secondary interest; the fact that a portrait was made at all is of far greater moment to the history of art.  Later on, Savonarola (whose only contribution to art was an unconscious inspiration of the charming woodcuts with which his sermons and homilies were illustrated) protested warmly against the prevailing habit of giving Magdalen and the Baptist the features of living and well-known townsfolk.[16] The practice had, no doubt, led to scandal.  But with Donatello it marks an early stage in emancipation from the bondage of conventionalism.  Not, indeed, that Donatello was the absolute innovator in this direction, though it is to his efforts that the change became irresistible.  Thus in these portrait-prophets we find the proof