Few draughtsmen carried the study of muscular anatomy so far as Antonio.[96] Luca della Robbia, whose life embraced the first eighty years of the fifteenth century, offers in many important respects a contrast to his contemporaries Ghiberti and Donatello, and still more to their immediate followers.

He made his art as true to life as it is possible to be, without the rugged realism of Donatello or the somewhat effeminate graces of Ghiberti.

The charm of his work is never impaired by scientific mannerism--that stumbling-block to critics like De Stendhal in the art of Florence; nor does it suffer from the picturesqueness of a sentimental style.

How to render the beauty of nature in her most delightful moments--taking us with him into the holiest of holies, and handling the sacred vessels with a child's confiding boldness--was a secret known to Luca della Robbia alone.

We may well find food for meditation in the innocent and cheerful inspiration of this man, whose lifetime coincided with a period of sordid passions and debased ambition in the Church and States of Italy.
Luca was apprenticed in his youth to a goldsmith; but of what he wrought before the age of forty-five, we know but little.[97] At that time his faculty had attained full maturity, and he produced the groups of dancing children and choristers intended for the organ gallery of the Duomo.
Wholly free from affectation, and depending for effect upon no merely decorative detail, these bas-reliefs deserve the praise bestowed by Dante on the sculpture seen in Purgatory:[98]-- Dinanzi a noi pareva si verace, Quivi intagliato in un atto soave, Che non sembrava immagine che tace.
Movement has never been suggested in stone with less exaggeration, nor have marble lips been made to utter sweeter and more varied music.