putti who play and dance on the corners of the tabernacle of Quercia’s font at Siena; but the base of this figure differs from that of the other four.  A fifth of the Sienese putti was recently bought in London for the Berlin Gallery, an invaluable acquisition to that growing collection.[152] This group, however, is less important than the wonderful pair of bronze putti belonging to Madame Andre.[153] These are much larger:  they carry candle-sockets and are lightly draped with a few ribands and garlands:  judging from the way they are huddled up, it is possible that they formed part of a larger work.  They appear to be a good deal later than the Cantoria, though they do not show any technical superiority to the large Bargello Amorino; but they have not quite got that freshness which cannot be dissociated from work made between 1433 and 1440.  Madame Andre has another superb Donatello—­a marble boy:  his attitude is unbecoming, but the modelling of this admirable statue—­the urchin is nearly life-sized—­is almost unequalled.  There is a similar figure in the Louvre made by some imitator.  It need hardly be said that Donatello’s children, especially the free-standing bronze statuettes, were widely copied.  According to Vasari, Donatello designed the wooden putti carrying garlands in the new Sacristy of the Duomo.  There are fourteen of these boys, and they overstep the cornice like Michelozzo’s angels in the Capella Portinari at Milan.  Donatello may have given the sketch for one or two, but there is a lack of intelligence about them, besides a certain monotony.  Moreover, it is improbable that Donatello would have designed garlands so bulky that they threaten to push the little boys who carry them off the cornice.  In spite of its faults, this frieze is charming.  The naivete of the quattrocento often invests its errors with attraction.  It would be wearisome to catalogue the scores of bronze children which show undoubted imitation of Donatello.  They exist in every great collection, one of exceptional merit being in London.[154] A large school sprang into existence, chiefly in Padua and Venice, whence it spread all over Northern Italy, and produced any number of bronze works which recall one or other feature of Donatello’s children.  But they never approached Donatello.  Their work was a sort of minuteria—­table ornaments, plaquettes, inkstands, and the ordinary decoration of a sitting-room.  Monumental childhood almost ceased to exist in Italian plastic art, and, after Michael Angelo, degenerated into stout and prosperous children lolling in clouds and diving among the draperies which adorned the later altars and tombs.  Their didactic value was soon lost to Italian sculpture, and with it went their inherent grace and significance.  Donatello was among the first as he was among the last seriously to apply to sculpture the words ex ore infantium perfecisti laudem.

[Footnote 150:  “Trattato della Pintura,” Richter, i. 291.]