Donatello was a great friend of Brunelleschi, and Vasari tells this anecdote about them. Donatello modelled a Crucifix for Santa Croce, and thinking he had done something unusually good, asked Brunelleschi what he thought of it. Brunelleschi, with his unswerving artistic rectitude, answered that Donatello had put a peasant on the cross, and not Jesus Christ. Donatello, piqued more than he had anticipated, said: "If it were as easy to model as it is to criticise, my Christ would seem to you a Christ and not a peasant; but let's see you take a piece of wood and go and make one." Brunelleschi did so secretly, and when he had at last finished his Crucifix, asked Donatello to come home and dine with him. They walked to Brunelleschi's house together, stopping at the market to buy eggs, cheese, and other things for the dinner. Then Brunelleschi said, "Donatello, you take these things and go to my house, and I will come after in a minute or two." So Donatello caught them up in his apron, went to Brunelleschi's, opened the door, and saw the Crucifix. He was so dumbfounded that he dropped the dinner on the floor, and when Brunelleschi, coming in, said, "Why, Donatello, what shall we have for dinner?" Donatello answered, "For my part I have had my share to-day. If you want yours, pick it up. No more of that. It is my lot to model peasants, and yours to model Christs." Donatello was also a great friend of Cosimo's, modelled many things for him, and inspired Cosimo with a taste for collecting antiques. He loved Cosimo so much that he did whatever he wanted, except when it interfered with his personal idiosyncrasies. One day Cosimo gave Donatello, who used to go about in his workman's blouse, a cloak and a fine suit of clothes, the costume of a gentleman. Donatello wore them for a day or two, and then said he could not wear them, they were too fashionable. He was buried, at his own request, near Cosimo, in the church of San Lorenzo, which Brunelleschi had designed, and he had adorned with his sculpture. Donatello worked in Venice, Mantua, Modena, Ferrara, and Prato, spent several years in Siena, and nine in Padua, and introduced the Renaissance into the sculpture of Northern Italy. He was a man of strong character and poetic spirit, striving in his statues to be true to nature and to the beautiful, to mingle pagan and Christian notions, tradition, and freedom. He and his pupils affected the whole plastic art of Italy.