Work, therefore, which, if translated into marble, might have left our sympathy unstirred, affects us with keen pleasure in the mould of plastic clay.
What prodigality of thought and invention has been lavished on the terra-cotta models of unknown Italian artists! What forms and faces, beautiful as shapes of dreams, and, like dreams, so airy that we think they will take flight and vanish, lean to greet us from cloisters and palace fronts in Lombardy! To catalogue their multitude would be impossible.

It is enough to select one instance out of many; this shall be taken from the chapel of S.Peter Martyr in S.Eustorgio at Milan.

High up around the cupola runs a frieze of angels, singing together and dancing with joined hands, while bells composed of fruits and flowers hang down between them.

Each angel is an individual shape of joy; the soul in each moves to its own deep melody, but the music made of all is one.

Their raiment flutters, the bells chime; the chorus of their gladness falls like voices through a star-lit heaven, half-heard in dreams and everlastingly remembered.
Four sculptors, the younger contemporaries of Luca della Robbia, and marked by certain common qualities, demand attention next.