双语+MP3|美国学生艺术史46 最优秀和第二优秀的骑马雕像

 
安德烈亚·德拉·罗比亚用陶土为佛罗伦萨一所儿童医院的外墙雕刻了一组高浮雕，刻画的是襁褓中的婴孩。每个婴孩都单独刻在一个圆形背景上。现在我们看到的都是婴孩雕像的石膏模型。这些石膏模型都是白色的，所以就无法展示安德烈亚·德拉·罗比亚原作上的丰富色彩。意大利语用“襁褓婴孩”指“婴孩”。 
46 NEXT BEST AND BEST最优秀和第二优秀的骑马雕像
 
HAVE you ever seen a statue of a famous man sitting in an automobile? No? I haven’t, either. And yet in the days when men used horses to carry them from place to place, many statues of great men were made showing them on horseback. 
The reason there are no statues of men in automobiles is that a large man-made article like an automobile is not a suitable subject for sculpture. Very few man-made articles are. A sculptor tries to copy nature. His subjects are things that grow—men, animals, plants, flowers. A good mechanic with a hammer and chisel could carve an automobile in marble, but it takes an artist to model a horse. 
You remember the horses and their riders made by Phidias on the Parthenon frieze? They are reliefs. It is much easier to make a horse in relief than in the round, because in the relief the horse is part of the background and does not have to support all its weight on its legs. A statue of a man on horseback is called an equestrian statue. The Romans made better equestrian statues than the Greeks because they knew more about supporting weights. But after the time of the ancient Romans no good equestrian statue was made for a thousand years. 
The man who made the first good equestrian statue after all those years was Donatello. It was bigger than life-size and was made of bronze. It took Donatello ten years to make it and set it up in Padua, Italy. It is such a fine statue that many people call it the second best equestrian statue in the world. You can call it that too if you like but what you should really call it is a hard name to pronounce and even harder to spell. The man on the horse was Gattamelata, and so Donatello’s statue is called the Gattamelata. Can you say it? The Gattamelata. Here is a picture of it: 
Notice how heavy and strong the horse is. Gattamelata was a soldier and soldiers’ horses in the time of the Renaissance were true warhorses—strong so they could carry the weight of a man in armor, and heavy so they could charge with great force like the heavy half-backs on a football team. I have never seen a real horse with his foot on a ball, and Donatello hadn’t either, but he had to lint the ball there to make the heavy statue steady. See what a well-balanced easy seat in the saddle the rider has. 
 
No.46-1　THE GATTAMELATA（《加塔梅拉塔骑马像》）DONATELLO（唐纳泰罗　制） 
If the Gattamelata is the second best equestrian statue in the world, what is the best one? Think of all the sculptors who might have made the finest man on horseback. Think of all the hundreds or even thousands of years since sculpture began, and you will be astonished to learn that the best and the next-to-best equestrian statues were both made during the Renaissance; they were both made by goldsmiths; they were both made by men who lived in Florence; they were both statues of soldiers on war-horses, and they were both set up in cities in Italy not very far from Florenee. 
The best statue was made by a sculptor known as Verrocchio (Ver-rok’kee-o). Verrocchio was not his real name. It was the name of the man who taught him to be a goldsmith. Strangely enough. Verrocchio in Italian means “true-eye.” Certainly he lived up to his name. The statue is of a soldier who was commander-in-chief of the armies of Venice. His name was Colleoni (Kol-lay-o’nee). Donatello’s Gattamelata, Verrocchio’s Colleoni. 
Colleoni was a fine general. He commanded his soldiers well and fought well. He was very strong. He could race with his armor on against the fastest runners in the whole army. He liked to study, he encouraged artists and students at his camp, he was very courteous. He never ate too much or slept too much, and he was noted for his strict honesty. 
When Colleoni died, it was found he had left all his fortune to the Republic of Venice on condition that Venice set up a statue of him in the Square of St. Mark. To put a statue there was against the law of Venice, so the Venetians thought they wouldn’t get his fortune, after all. Then they had a bright idea. They remembered a building called the School of St. Mark which had a little square in front of it. 
“Why can’t that be called the Square of St. Mark too?” they said. So they had Verrocchio make the statue and put it there, and in this way they got the money left by Colleoni. 
Verrocchio balanced the statue so well that no ball had to be put under the uplifted forefoot of his horse. As the statue was on a high pedestal, the sculptor exaggerated Colleoni’s features so they would look right when seen from the ground. 
Here is a picture of one of the most glorious pieces of sculpture in the world and the best equestrian statue— Verrocchio’s Colleoni. 
 
No.46-2　COLLEONI（《科莱奥尼骑马像》） 
VERROCCHIO（委罗基奥　制）