But Donatello fails to express the exquisite modulation by which Luca della Robbia almost gives actual sound to his Cantoria:  where one sees the swelling throat, the inflated lungs, the effort of the higher notes, and the voice falling to reach those which are deep.  Luca’s children, it is true, are bigger and older; but in this respect he was unsurpassed, even by painters whose medium should have placed them beyond rivalry in such a respect.  The choir of Piero della Francesca’s Nativity is so well contrived that one can distinguish the alto from the tenor; but Luca was able to do even more.  He gives cadence, rhythm and expression where others did no more than represent the voice.  Donatello’s dancing children are more important than his musicians.  He was able to give free vein to his fancy.  We have flights of uncontrollable children, romping and rioting, dashing to and fro, playing and laughing as they pass about garlands among them.  And their self-reliance is worth noticing; they are absorbed in their dance—­children dance rather heavily—­and only a few of them look outwards.  There is no self-consciousness, no appeal to the spectator:  they are immensely busy, and enjoy life to the full.  Then we have a more demure type of childhood:  they are shield-bearers on the Gattamelata monument, or occupy an analogous position on the lower part of the Cantoria.  Others hold the cartel or epitaph as on the Coscia tomb.  And again Donatello introduces children as pure decoration.  The triangular base of the Judith, for instance, and the bronze capital which supports the Prato pulpit, have childhood for their sole motive.  He smuggles children on to the croziers of St. Louis and Bishop Pecci:  they are the supporters of Gattamelata’s saddle:  they decorate the vestments of San Daniele.  They share the tragedy of the Pieta, and we have them in his reliefs.  The entire frieze of the pulpits of San Lorenzo is simply one long row of children—­some two hundred in all.

[Footnote 141:  Contract with Domopera of Siena.  Payment for wax, for making the bronze figures for the Baptistery. 16, iv. 1428.  Lusini, 38.]

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[Illustration:  Alinari

CANTORIA (DETAIL)

FLORENCE]

[Sidenote:  The Cantoria.]

The Cantoria, or organ-loft, of the Florentine Cathedral was ordered soon after Donatello’s return from Rome, and was erected about 1441.  It was placed over one of the Sacristy doors, corresponding in position with Luca della Robbia’s cantoria on the opposite side of the choir.  The ill-fortune which dispersed the Paduan altar and Donatello’s work for the facade likewise caused the removal of this gallery.  Late in the seventeenth century a royal marriage was solemnised, for which an orchestra of unusual numbers was required, and the two cantorie were removed as inadequate.  The large brackets remained in