The motive of his art was clearly apprehended, his method was sincere; certain phases of profound emotion had to be represented with the physical characteristics proper to them.

The result, ugly and painful as it may sometimes be, was really more concordant with the spirit of Greek method than Lionardo's "John" or Correggio's "Magdalen." That is to say, it was straightforward and truthful; whereas the strange caprices of the later Renaissance too often betrayed a double mind, disloyal alike to paganism and to Christianity, in their effort to combine divergent forces.
It may still be argued that such conceptions as sorrow for sin and mortification of the flesh, unflinchingly portrayed by haggard gauntness in the saints of Donatello, are unfit for sculpturesque expression.
A more felicitous embodiment of modern feeling was achieved by Donatello in "S.

George" and "David." The former is a marble statue placed upon the north wall of Orsammichele; the latter is a bronze, cast for Cosimo de' Medici, and now exhibited in the Bargello.[89] Without striving to idealise his models, the sculptor has expressed in both the Christian conception of heroism, fearless in the face of danger, and sustained by faith.

The naked beauty of the boy David and the mailed manhood of S.
George are raised to a spiritual region by the type of feature and the pose of body selected to interpret their animating impulse.

These are no mere portraits of wrestlers, such, as peopled the groves of Altis at Olympia, no ideals of physical strength translated into brass and marble, like the "Hercules" of Naples or the Vatican.