FLORENCE:
A PORTRAIT
By Michael Levey

On Donatello's (?)
Bust of Niccolò da Uzzano

"The polychromed piece of sculpture is remarkable enough in itself, but it is not--as might be assumed--the forerunner of a series of such heads. No bust exists of Niccolò's leading contemporaries in the city, such as Rinaldo degli Albizzi and Giovanni de' Medici. Cosimo de' Medici, `Pater Patriae', never commissioned a bust of himself, not even from his favoured sculptor Donatello, who would have been best suited of all artists to create lifelike heads of a kind similar to that of Niccolò da Uzzano. The two men were in contact, for Niccolò was one of the executors of the deposed Pope John XXIII, who died in Florence and whose tomb in the Baptistery was commissioned from donatello_ Traditionally the bust of Niccolò is also by him, but the matter remains doubtful. The mask-like physiognomy--for all its frank, uncanny realism--is perhaps a little too close to life and insufficiently recast as art. Nevertheless, the important fact historically is that it exists. It unforgettably confronts the spectator across a gap of more than five centuries not solely as the representative face of Florence in its final, unfettered republican years but also as the city's conscience.

"The longer it is studied, the more apparent becomes the fact that this bust is more than a piece of skilful realism. From one aspect Niccolò da Uzzano's appearance is convincingly truthful and unidealised, with the very textures of his close-cropped hair and creased skin--with a wart near his mouth--reinforcing the immediacy and naturalness. Yet from another angle, as the heavy, porphyry-style drapery indicates, Niccolò da Uzzano is seen within a more timeless framework, or at least as removed from his own time, to recall ancient Rome and ancient Roman sculpture. Associations of heroism and patriotism accumulate around a likeness in no sense overtly heroic or handsome. Ultimately, he exists in a bifocal perspective: this is how he looked and that is what he stood for.

"Both views are true..."