Donatello

• Born: ca. 1386
• Birthplace: Florence, Italy
• Died: December 1466
• Best Known As: Early Renaissance sculptor of the bronze David

Name at birth: Donato di Niccolô di Betto Bardi:

A towering figure in the history of western art, Donatello was an Italian sculptor of the Early Renaissance whose work is seen as a bridge from classic to modern art. He trained in Florence with Lorenzo Ghiberti and began working on his own in 1408. A student of antiquity and master craftsman, Donatello is considered one of the founders of modern sculpture because of he created realistic human expressions and stressed action and character. He is famous for his use of perspectives, including physical distortions for dramatic effect, and was a master craftsman with a flair for invention. He is known to have visited Rome (1403 and 1433), and for a time he had a workshop in Padua (1443-53), but he spent most of his life in Florence. His works there include St. George, John the Evangelist and Magdalen. He is considered the first sculptor since antiquity to create free-standing statues (separate from an architectural framework), and his life-size bronze equestrian portrait of Gattamelata (the popular name of commander Erasmo da Narni) is said to be the first since ancient Rome. His other famous works are the monument to the antipope John XXIII and his bronze statue of David.

(click to enlarge)
Equestrian statue of Gattamelata, bronze sculpture by Donatello, 1447 – 53; in the Piazza del … (credit: Anderson — Alinari/Art Resource, New York)

(born c. 1386, Florence — died Dec. 13, 1466, Florence) Italian sculptor active in Florence. He learned stone carving from the sculptors of the Florence Cathedral (c. 1400), and in 1404 joined the workshop of Lorenzo Ghiberti. He drew his inspiration from Classical and medieval sources. With his marble statues of St. Mark (1411 – 13) and St. George (c. 1415) for the church of Or San Michele in Florence, he revolutionized the concept of sculpture; not since antiquity had the human body been rendered with such naturalism and emotional impact. He invented his own style of bas-relief with his marble panel St. George Killing the Dragon (c. 1417). His bronze sculpture David, conceived independently of any architectural setting, was the first large-scale, freestanding nude statue of the Renaissance. In Florence he worked for the Medici family (1433 – 43), producing sculptural decoration for the sacristy of San Lorenzo, the Medici family church, and in Padua (1450s) for the church of Sant'Antonio. He was the greatest European sculptor of the 15th century, influencing painters as well as sculptors, and was a founder of the Renaissance style.

For more information on Donatello, visit Britannica.com.

(b Florence, 1386 or 1387; d Florence, 13 Dec 1466). Italian sculptor. He was the most imaginative and versatile Florentine sculptor of the early Renaissance, famous for his rendering of human character and for his dramatic narratives. He achieved these ends by studying ancient Roman sculpture and amalgamating its ideas with an acute and sympathetic observation of everyday life. Together with Alberti, Brunelleschi, Masaccio and Uccello, Donatello created the Italian Renaissance style, which he introduced to Rome, Siena and Padua at various stages of his career. He was long-lived and prolific: between 1401 and 1461 there are 400 documentary references to him, some for nearly every year. However, there is no contemporary biography, and the earliest account, in Vasari's Vite (1550), is confused.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

The Italian sculptor Donatello (1386-1466) was the greatest Florentine sculptor before Michelangelo and certainly the most influential individual artist of the 15th century in Italy. Nearly every later sculptor and numerous Florentine and Paduan painters were indebted to him.

Though Donatello was a descendant of a branch of the important Bardi family, he was brought up in a more plebeian tradition than his older contemporary Lorenzo Ghiberti. Gifted with humanistic insight and a quality of will that were highly prized in the early Renaissance, Donatello revealed the inner life of his heroic subjects, memorable images which have conditioned our very conception of 15th-century Florence. Sharing neither Ghiberti's feeling for line nor Filippo Brunelleschi's interest in proportion, Donatello worked creatively with bronze, stone, and wood, impatient with surface refinements and anxious to explore the optical qualities he observed in the world about him. His later art, saturated with the spirit of Roman antiquity, is frequently disturbing in its immediacy as it attains a level of dramatic force hitherto unknown in Italian sculpture.

Donato di Niccolò Bardi, called Donatello, was born in 1386 in Florence. Little precise biographical information has come down to us, although many anecdotes are recorded by Giorgio Vasari in his Lives. Donatello was apprenticed to Ghiberti, and in 1403, at the age of 17, Donatello was working for the master on the bronze reliefs of the First Doors of the Baptistery. By 1407 he had left Ghiberti for the workshops of the Cathedral.

Early Works

One of Donatello's earliest known works is the lifesized marble David (1408; reworked 1416; now in the Bargello, Florence). Intended to adorn a buttress of the Cathedral, in 1414 it was set up in the Palazzo Vecchio as a symbol of the Florentine republic, which was then engaged in a struggle with the king of Naples. Dramatic in posture and full of youthful energy, the David possesses something of the graceful late Gothic feeling of a figure by Ghiberti, though Donatello now admits us to a world of psychological tensions.

Rapidly maturing, Donatello produced a strong, original, dynamic style in two works: the large marble figure St. Markin a niche on the exterior of Orsanmichele, completed between 1411 and 1413, and the seated St. John the Evangelist for the facade of the Cathedral (now in the Museo dell'Opera), finished in 1415. These powerful, over-life-sized figures established the sculptor's reputation. The St. Mark broke with tradition in its classical stance, realistically modeled drapery, and concentrated face with such optical subtleties as a detailed analysis of the eye. It became a stunning symbolic portrait of a noble Florentine hero in the embattled republic of Donatello's day.

Donatello's new style was confirmed in the famous St. George, carved in marble about 1416-1417 for the exterior of Orsanmichele (later replaced by a bronze copy; the original is in the Bargello). Resolute in stance, the Christian saint has the face not of an ideal hero but of a real one. Even more significant is the little marble relief St. George and the Dragon, that decorates the base of the niche. The marble was ordered in 1417, and the relief was completed shortly afterward. This is an important date, for the relief is the earliest example in art of the new science of perspective used to create a measurable space for the figures. Up to this time artists had conceived of a flat background in front of which, or in which, the figures were placed; now the low, pictorial forms seem to emerge from atmosphere and light. Donatello was probably influenced by the contemporary theoretical studies in perspective of the architect Brunelleschi.

Between 1415 and 1435 Donatello and his pupils completed eight life-sized marble prophets for niches in the Campanile of the Cathedral (now in the Museo dell'Opera). The most impressive of the group are the so-called Zuccone ("big squash" or "baldy"), perhaps representing Habakkuk, and the Jeremiah, in both of which there is great psychological tension and a convincing, deliberate ugliness.

Middle Period

Donatello received many commissions, which he often executed in collaboration with other artists. An unusual work is the Marzocco, the emblematic lion of the Florentines, carved in sandstone and imbued with a grand contrapuntal vigor; it was ordered in 1418 for the papal apartments in S. Maria Novella (now in the Museo Nazionale). Donatello's optical principles and his vigorous style in relief sculpture reached a climax in the gilded bronze Feast of Herod, completed in 1427 for the font in the Baptistery, Siena; Ghiberti, Jacopo della Quercia, and other sculptors also executed reliefs for the baptismal font. In Donatello's very low relief composition he approximated, but deliberately avoided the accurate construction of, one-point architectural perspective.

About 1425 Donatello entered into partnership with Michelozzo, sculptor and architect, with whom he made a trip to Rome after 1429. (Vasari states that Donatello went to Rome with Brunelleschi. This would have been much earlier, perhaps in 1409; but there is no document to confirm such a trip.) With Michelozzo he produced a series of works, including the tomb of Pope John XXIII in the Baptistery, Florence, and the tomb of Cardinal Brancacci in S. Angelo a Nilo, Naples, both of which were in progress in 1427. The first of these established a type of wall tomb that was decisive for many later Florentine examples.

Probably just after the trip to Rome, Donatello created the well-known gilded limestone Annunciation tabernacle in Sta Croce, Florence, enclosing a lyrical pair of Gabriel and the Virgin Mary. He was also commissioned to carve for the Cathedral a Singing Gallery to match the one already begun by Luca della Robbia (both now in the Museo dell'Opera). Using marble and mosaic, Donatello presented a classically inspired frieze of wildly dancing putti. It was begun in 1433, completed 6 years later, and installed in 1450.

Later Works

Much of Donatello's later work manifests his understanding of classical art, for example, the bronze David in the Bargello, a preadolescent boy clothed only in boots and a pointed hat. This enigmatic figure is in all probability the earliest existing freestanding nude since antiquity.

From 1443 to 1453 Donatello was in Padua, where he created the colossal bronze equestrian monument to the Venetian condottiere called Gattamelata in the Piazza del Santo. It was the first important sculptural repetition of the 2d-century equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome. Donatello portrayed Gattamelata as the ideal man of the Renaissance. Another major commission in Padua was the high altar of S. Antonio, decorated with four large narrative reliefs representing the life of St. Anthony, smaller reliefs, and seven life-sized statues in bronze, including a seated Madonna and Child and a bronze Crucifixion. Donatello had earlier made remarkable experiments with illusionistic space in his large stucco medallions for the Old Sacristy of S. Lorenzo in Florence; now his major bronze Paduan reliefs present an explosive conception of space with sketchy figures and a very excited continuous surface. The influence of these scenes on painters in northern Italy was to prove enormous and long lasting.

Back in Florence, the aged Donatello carved a haunting, emaciated Mary Magdalen from poplar wood for the Baptistery (1454-1455). Romantically distorted in extreme ugliness, the figure of the penitent saint in the wilderness originally had sun-tanned skin and gilding on her monstrous hair. In 1456 Donatello made an equally disturbing group in bronze of Judith cutting off the head of Holofernes. Now in the Piazza della Signoria, Florence, it was originally commissioned, apparently as a fountain, for the courtyard of the Medici Palace.

At his death on Dec. 13, 1466, Donatello left two unfinished bronze pulpits in S. Lorenzo, Florence. On one are relief panels, showing the torture and murder of Christ by means of distorted forms and wildly emotional actions. Finished by his pupil Bertoldo di Giovanni, the pulpit scenes reveal the great master's insight into human suffering and his pioneering exploration of the dark realms of man's experience.

Further Reading

The best scholarly study of Donatello in English is H. W. Janson, The Sculpture of Donatello (2 vols., 1957; 1 vol., 1963). Recommended for the reproduction of wonderful photographic details of selected sculptures are Ludwig Goldscheider, Donatello (1941), and the small but compendious book by Luigi Grassi, All the Sculpture of Donatello (1958; trans., 2 vols., 1964), which includes many works of debatable authenticity.

This article is about the artist. For other references to Donatello, see Donatello (disambiguation).

Donatello
Donatello's statue outside of the Uffizi Galleria.
Birth name	Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi
Born	c. 1386 Florence, Italy
Died	13 December 1466 (aged 80) Florence, Italy
Nationality	Italian
Field	Sculpture
Training	Lorenzo Ghiberti
Movement	Early Renaissance
Works	St. George, David, Equestrian Monument of Gattamelata

Donatello (Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi; c. 1386 – December 13, 1466) was a famous early Renaissance Italian artist and sculptor from Florence. He is, in part, known for his work in basso rilievo, a form of shallow relief sculpture that, in Donatello's case, incorporated significant 15th-century developments in perspectival illusionism.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Work in Florence 3 Major commissions in Florence 4 In Padua 5 Last years in Florence 6 Main works 7 Notes 8 References 9 External links

Early life

Statue of St. John the Baptist in the Duomo di Siena

Donatello was the son of Niccolo di Betto Bardi, who was a member of the Florentine Wool Combers Guild, and was born in Florence, most likely in 1386. Donatello was educated in the house of the Martelli family. ^[1]He apparently received his early artistic training in a goldsmith's workshop, and then worked briefly in the studio of Lorenzo Ghiberti.

While undertaking study and excavations with Filippo Brunelleschi in Rome (1404–1407), work that gained the two men the reputation of treasure seekers, Donatello made a living by working at goldsmiths' shops. Their Roman sojourn was decisive for the entire development of Italian art in the 15th century, for it was during this period that Brunelleschi undertook his measurements of the Pantheon dome and of other Roman buildings. Brunelleschi's buildings and Donatello's sculptures are both considered supreme expressions of the spirit of this era in architecture and sculpture, and they exercised a potent influence upon the painters of the age.

Work in Florence

In Florence, Donatello assisted Lorenzo Ghiberti with the statues of prophets for the north door of the Florence Baptistery, for which he received payment in November 1406 and early 1408. In 1409–1411 he executed the colossal seated figure of Saint John the Evangelist, which until 1588 occupied a niche of the old cathedral facade, and is now placed in a dark chapel of the Duomo. This work marks a decisive step forward from late Gothic Mannerism in the search for naturalism and the rendering of human feelings. The face, the shoulders and the bust are still idealized, while the hands and the fold of cloth over the legs are more realistic.

Tomb of Antipope John XXIII in Florence's Baptistery

In 1411–1413 Donatello worked on a statue of St. Mark for the church of Orsanmichele. In 1417 he completed the St. George for the Confraternity of the Cuirass-makers. The elegant St. George and the Dragon relief on the statue's base, executed in schiacciato (also known as bas-relief or basso rilievo) is one of the first examples of central-point perspective in sculpture.

From 1423 is the St. Louis of Toulouse, now in the Museum of the Basilica di Santa Croce. Donatello had also sculpted a tabernacle for this work, but it was sold in 1460 to house the Incredulity of St. Thomas by Verrocchio.

Between 1415 and 1426, Donatello created five statues for the campanile of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, also known as the Duomo. These works are the Beardless Prophet; Bearded Prophet (both from 1415); the Sacrifice of Isaac (1421); Habbakuk (1423–1425); and Jeremiah (1423–1426); which follow the classical models for orators and are characterized by strong portrait details. From the late teens is the Pazzi Madonna relief in Berlin. In 1425, he executed the notable Crucifix for Santa Croce; this work portrays Christ in a moment of the agony, eyes and mouth partially opened, the body contracted in an ungraceful posture.

Between 1425–1427, Donatello collaborated with Michelozzo on the funerary monument of the Antipope John XXIII for the Battistero in Florence. Surely by Donatello is the recumbent bronze figure of the deceased, under a shell. In 1427, he completed in Pisa a marble panel for the funerary monument of Cardinal Rainaldo Brancacci at the church of Sant'Angelo a Nilo in Naples. In the same period, he executed the relief of the Feast of Herod and the statues of Faith and Hope for the Baptstery of San Giovanni in Siena. The relief is mostly in stiacciato, while the foreground figures are done in bas-relief.

Major commissions in Florence

David at Bargello Museum, Florence

Around 1430, Cosimo de' Medici, the foremost art patron of his era, commissioned from Donatello the bronze David (now in the Bargello) for the court of his Palazzo Medici. This is now Donatello's most famous work. At the time of its creation, it was the first known free-standing nude statue produced since ancient times. Conceived fully in the round, independent of any architectural surroundings, and largely representing an allegory of the civic virtues triumphing over brutality and irrationality, it was the first major work of Renaissance sculpture. Also from this period is the disquietingly small Love-Atys, housed in the Bargello.

Statue of St. George in Orsanmichele, Florence

When Cosimo was exiled from Florence, Donatello went to Rome, remaining until 1433. The two works that testify to his presence in this city, the Tomb of Giovanni Crivelli at Santa Maria in Aracoeli, and the Ciborium at St. Peter's Basilica, bear a strong stamp of classical influence.

Donatello's return to Florence almost coincided with Cosimo's. In May of 1434, he signed a contract for the marble pulpit on the facade of Prato cathedral, the last project executed in collaboration with Michelozzo. This work, a passionate, pagan, rhythmically-conceived bacchanalian dance of half-nude putti, was the forerunner of the great Cantoria, or singing tribune, at the Duomo in Florence on which Donatello worked intermittently from 1433 to 1440 and was inspired by ancient sarcophagi and Byzantine ivory chests. In 1435, he executed the Annunciation for the Cavalcanti altar in Santa Croce, inspired by 14th century iconography, and in 1437–1443, he worked in the Old Sacristy of the San Lorenzo in Florence, on two doors and lunettes portraying saints, as well as eight stucco tondoes. From 1438 is the wooden statue of St. John the Evangelist for Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice. Around 1440, he executed a bust of a Young Man with a Cameo now in the Bargello, the first example of a lay bust portrait since the classical era.

Donatello did not marry, choosing instead to live with other artists and his many young workshop assistants. According to some historians, Donatello made no secret of his homosexuality, and his behaviour was tolerated by his friends;^[2] certainly Cosimo is known to have played a part in patching up at least one lover's quarrel between Donatello and one of his young assistants. Frequently his violent outbursts would result from passionate entanglements — when one of his assistants ran away, Donatello is said to have chased him as far as Ferrara with the intention of killing him.^[3] However, little detail is known with certainty about his private life. No accusation against him has been found in the Florentine archives, which albeit during his lifetime are very incomplete.^[4] Donatello's bronze life-sized David that he produced for Cosimo was one of the most overtly homosexual works of its era, its sensuous nudity emphasised by the young David's calf-length ornamented leather boots and curly tresses.^[5]

In Padua

Donatello's equestrian statue of Gattamelata at Padua

In 1443, Donatello was called to Padua by the heirs of the famous condottiero Erasmo da Narni, who had died that year. Completed in 1450 and placed in the square facing the Basilica of St. Anthony, his equestrian statue of Erasmo (better known as the Gattamelata, or "Honey-Cat") was the first example of such a monument since ancient times. (Other equestrian statues, from the 14th century, had not been executed in bronze and had been placed over tombs rather than erected independently, in a public place.) This work became the prototype for other equestrian monuments executed in Italy and Europe in the following centuries.

For the Basilica of St. Anthony, Donatello created, most famously, the bronze Crucifix of 1444–7 and additional statues for the choir, including a Madonna with Child and six saints, constituting a Holy Conversation, which is no longer visible since the renovation by Camillo Boito in 1895. The Madonna with Child portrays the Child being displayed to the faithful, on a throne flanked by two sphinxes, allegorical figures of knowledge. On the throne's back is a relief of Adam and Eve. During this period — 1446–50 — Donatello also executed four extremely important reliefs with scenes from the life of St. Anthony for the high altar.

Last years in Florence

Donatello returned to Florence in 1453. From 1455 to 1460, dates the Judith and Holofernes, begun for the Duomo di Siena but later acquired by the Medici. Until 1461, Donatello remained in Siena, where he created a St. John the Baptist, also for the Duomo, and models for its gates, now lost.

For his last commission in Florence, Donatello produced reliefs for the bronze pulpits in the church of San Lorenzo, with help from students Bartolomeo Bellano and Bertoldo di Giovanni. Donatello provided the general design and personally executed the Martyrdom of St. Lawrence and the Deposition from the Cross; he worked on the reliefs of Christ before Pilate and Christ before Caiphus, with Bellano. This work is characterized by an intense, free, indeed sketchy and suggestively unfinished – in Italian a non-finito – technique that heightens the dramatic effect of the scenes and emphasizes their spiritual intensity. Donatello died in Florence in 1466 and was buried in the Basilica of San Lorenzo, next to Cosimo de' Medici the Elder.

Main works

Habacuc

.

• St. Mark (1411–1413) Orsanmichele, Florence
• St. George Tabernacle (c. 1415–1417) — Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence
• Prophet Habacuc (1423–1425) — Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Florence
• The Feast of Herod (c. 1425) — Baptismal font, Duomo di Siena
• David (c. 1425–1430) — Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence
• Equestrian Monument of Gattamelata (1445–1450) — Piazza del Santo, Padua
• Mary Magdalene (c. 1455) — Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Florence (photograph)
• Judith and Holofernes (1455–1460) — Palazzo Vecchio, Florence
• Virgin and Child with Four Angels or Chellini Madonna (1456), Victoria and Albert Museum

Notes

1. ^ [1] Giorgio Vasari: art and history By Patricia Lee Rubin, Retrieved October 20, 2009
2. ^ Paul Strathern, The Medici:Godfather of the Renaissance, London, 2003
3. ^ Janson, The Sculptue of Donatello, Princeton, 1963
4. ^ Louis Crompton, Homosexuality and Civilisation, Harvard Press, 2003
5. ^ Paul Strathern, The Medici:Godfather of the Renaissance, London, 2003

References

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

• Donatello article in the 1911 Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Adrian W. B. Randolph, Engaging symbols: gender, politics, and public art in fifteenth-century Florence. Yale University Press, 2002.
• Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, Firenze 1568, edizione a cura di R. Bettarini e P. Barocchi, Firenze 1971.
• Rolf C. Wirtz, Donatello, Könemann, Colonia 1998. ISBN 3-8290-4546-8
• Charles Avery, Donatello. Catalogo completo delle opere, Firenze 1991
• Bonnie A. Bennett e David G. Wilkins, Donatello, Oxford 1984
• Michael Greenhalg, Donatello and his sources, Londra 1982
• Volker Herzner, Die Judith del Medici, in Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 43, 1980, pp. 139–180
• Horst W. Janson, The sculpture of Donatello, Princetown 1957
• Hans Kauffmann, Donatello, Berlino 1935
• Peter E. Leach, Images of political Triumph. Donatello's iconography of Heroes, Princetown 1984
• Pierluigi De Vecchi ed Elda Cerchiari, I tempi dell'arte, volume 2, Bompiani, Milano 1999. ISBN 88-451-7212-0
• Donatello e il suo tempo, atti dell'VIII convegno internazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, Firenze e Padova, 1966, Firenze 1968

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Donatello

• Donatello: Photo Gallery
• Donatello, by David Lindsay, 27th Earl of Crawford, from Project Gutenberg
• The Chellini Madonna Sculpture. Victoria and Albert Museum

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