Of course, for any proper estimation of the Italian sculpture of this period, the work of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo must bulk very large. They have been treated in separate chapters, and there is room here only to say that, while unfortunately we have almost none of Leonardo's sculpture, we have from his own great artistically critical generation traditions of magnificent accomplishment. As for Michelangelo, his own generation admired him only too much, and the almost inevitable imitation of his genius brought on decadence in plastic art much sooner than it would otherwise have come. His faults were imitated without any of the genius in power of expression that condones them in the great originals. If Michelangelo's sculpture had been the only contribution of this period to plastic art, that would have been sufficient to place it high among the periods of greatest productivity in this department of art. As it is, there were men who preceded Michelangelo whose genius is unquestioned and whose achievements have been recognized by the world ever since. The roll of sculptors of the century worthily closes with the name of John of Bologna, who was born at Douai in Flanders, but passed all his life in Italy, and it is hard to know whether to group him with the Italian or extra-Italian sculptors. Most of his great work was done after the end of our century, but as he was probably more than twenty-five years of age when the century closed, and received all his training and inspiration from the men of our time, he deserves a place here. John, who owes his name of Bologna to the fact that one of his greatest works, the bronze "Neptune," was prepared for the fountain of Bologna, was often called by his contemporaries _Il Fiammingo_, in reference to the place of his birth. Probably no sculptor of his time has been more popular all down the centuries than he, and there are very few with any claim to education and culture who do not know his wonderful figure of "Mercury," with winged feet borne aloft upon the breezes blowing out of the mouth of Aeolus, the god of the winds. There has probably never been a more masterly expression of light, easy, graceful movements in statuary than this. It is for his power to express movement {95} within the limitations of plastic art that John is famous. His "Rape of the Sabines" in the Bargello in Florence is declared "to have come nearer to expressing swift-flashing motion and airy lightness than has ever been accomplished before or since." He lacked the faults of exaggeration of the later Renaissance and had many of its best qualities. [Illustration: BENEDETTO ROVEZZANO, CHIMNEY PIECE]