The character of these variations is best seen in the case of Riccio, the most prolific of the bronze workers of the Renaissance. He designed and executed under forty small bronze figures and groups, besides some large bronze works of high importance. Of his small pieces there are in existence about a hundred duplicates made by his pupils and immediate contemporaries, who also adapted into household ornaments, various details from his larger works, bringing up the number of Riccios made from his models during his lifetime, other than by himself, to about a hundred and fifty. These are all bronzes of a high order. Then about an equal number of both kinds of models were reproduced during the twenty years following his death, all fairly good, but often slightly varied from the originals; and finally there are Riccios copied by Venetian craftsmen in the third quarter of the sixteenth century, sometimes considerably varied, and occasionally with purely Venetian ornaments added. These last mark the first distinct decadence in the small bronze art of the period. Next to Riccio among the earlier sculptors, in the number of bronzes designed, was his great contemporary, Antico, who accomplished some thirty or so. He differed from Riccio in that while the latter adhered to the Grecian practice in the design of details and ornaments, but varied the modelling somewhat to bring it more in conformity with the contemporary ideas of elegance, Antico kept strictly to the Grecian modelling, but commonly varied the ancient designs. There are few duplicates of Antico's work, made either during his lifetime or after. As with Riccio, his imitators overcame the difficulty of the chiselling by leaving it out, relying upon the wax to give close enough resemblance to the originals. Of the other small bronze sculptors prior to the maturity of Michelangelo, few executed more than half a score of figures. The best known are the immediate successors of Donatello in the Paduan school, as Bertoldo and Bellano, and the giants of the Florentine school, as Filarete and A. Pollaiuolo. Bronzes by these artists are very rare, and so are the duplicates of them made by pupils, though Bertoldo, who reminds one strangely of Lysippus, had occasional imitators for the next two centuries. These bronzes include many models which have not been equalled by the greatest of later sculptors, and they will never be matched until there arises a new school of sculptors resolved to imbibe the truths which the Renaissance artists gleaned from the ancient Greeks. NOTE 43. PAGE 110