JACOPO DELLA J QUERCIA w a s the sculptural equivalent of the painters of the quattrocento Sienncse school. He came of the same Gothic tradition with its easy rhythms. its elegances, its measured tread, but his
temperament ill suited him to its soft charm and its decorative deliberation.
Passionate a n d d i r e c I, impetuous and quick in movement as well as in temper, he was destined to anticipate traits, born out of his delight in liveliness, which only the later Renaissance scelptors perfected. All through his life he undertook more work than he could at the time complete, and spent himself going from one commission to another and never giving himself up to completing any. The Siena font, a blend of the Gothic and the Renaissance, is one of his best-known works, and his greatest is the incompleted portal of St. Petronio at Bologna. The major part of 10 years was given to this, but had he not been obliged to run hack so often to Siena to complete other work there, and then to seek for marble The Creation of Eve: a detail from a stone has-relief by Jacopo dells Quercia From the portal of St. Petronio, Bologna
(1438)
or lo quarrel with his employers, he might have brought the Bologna project to a successful end. The work which he did there, however, has a simplicity which was particularly rare in that period. In the creation of Eve, the uncomprehending gesture of the woman's hand reflecting, as best it can, that of her Creator, has a naive grace which in its clumsiness is pathetically affecting.
Iris Conlay