This post offers an overview of the life and works of the great fifteenth-century Florentine sculptor Donatello. It covers only a selection of Donatello's works. Most of what follows below consists of notes on a film written by the art historian Charles Avery: Donatello: The First Modern Sculptor (1986). I've added a few links, mainly to specialised articles on JSTOR. Avery's excellent book Florentine Renaissance Sculpture is a wonderful guide to Donatello, Ghiberti, Lucca della Robbia et al. It is listed as out of print, but there always seem to be copies in the V&A bookshop, if you happen to be in that direction.
Introduction
- Donatello was a hugely versatile artist, who mastered a variety of techniques
- His theme was ‘human life itself’
- His expressive art inspired later sculptors including Michelangelo, Raphael, and Rodin
- Donatello’s art gives form to the Renaissance interest in human character and the individual
- It also realises the expressive value of ancient forms, preserved in Greek and Roman statues. [On Donatello and the antique, see Osvald Sirén, The Importance of the Antique to Donatello, American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1914), pp. 438-461]
Early Life
Sources: Anecdotes in Vasari’s life; legal documents in archives. No
first-hand sources, such as diaries or letters.
Background: rough, working-class. Father a wool-carder,
involved in Ciompi revolt, exiled for murder.
No record of Donatello marrying: did he devote himself as a
celibate to art (as some humanists did)? Or was he more interested in boys? In
either case, his art can be understood as a pursuit of the Platonic ideal of
self-governance, in which spiritual harmony is attained by harnessing the
forces of Reason and Passion.
As a teenager, Donatello was apprenticed to a guild. Guilds shared
responsibility for maintaining religious buildings: for example, the Wool
Merchants looked after the Cathedral and Campanile, while the Cloth Finishers
were responsible for the Baptistery.
This prompted fierce competition between the guilds.
1401 Baptistery
Doors competition. Donatello is said to have submitted a design. He was then one of
Ghiberti’s assistants for 3 years, during which he absorbed G’s largely gothic
vision, adapted to classical proportions.
Can D’s hand be traced in the vigorous modelling of Adam and
Eve and other figures in some hexagonal panels?
1406 D now working
on Cathedral commissions. He had a hand in these marble prophets on the Porta della Mandorla, with Nanni di Banco:
1409 St. John the Evangelist (below left) for
Cathedral façade. This commanding figure shows great advance in technique
and vision. (Images from Web Gallery of Art (wga)):
One issue in this work is the viewing angle: sculptures designed to be placed high up on buildings had to be seen from ground level at an acute angle, and the proportions of the body were consequently altered. [See: Roger Tarr, Brunelleschi and Donatello: Placement and Meaning in Sculpture, Artibus et Historiae, Vol. 16, No. 32 (1995), pp.
101-140]
1409 David in marble (above right) commissioned for the Palazzo de Priori (town hall). Originally it was painted. Its “swaying elegance and sinuous gothic line” echoes Ghiberti. David, with his “graceful, nonchalant pose”, is not in a conventional heroic stance. The influence of ancient art is visible in Goliath’s head, which looks like that of an ancient Roman god.
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c.1413 St Louis of Toulouse, commissioned by
Guelph party. This is a gilded cast bronze. It had to be refired after casting.
The drapery was built up in separate sections, and is used for expressive
effect.
c. 1416 St George, commissioned by the Guild of Armourers for Orsanmichele. The “calm purpose” and “concentrated simplicity” express youthful devotion, idealism and courage. This piece shows the revelation of ancient sculpture – the sense of life in the stone. The sculpted body becomes the figure in action, convincing and dramatic. It is a style of sculpture which mirrors life itself. See also St Mark (c.1411) also for the Orsanmichele. [See discussion of St Mark on SmartHistory.]
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Underneath St George we find the St George relief (1416-17). This is the first dated Renaissance example of figures being placed in a realistic setting of landscape and architecture. It anticipates the use of perspective by Brunelleschi and Masaccio. The technique of shallow carving was also an innovation. (The St George stature and relief are now in the Bargello Museum, Florence).
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The later 1420s saw Donatello working on the statues for the Campanile, the great belltower next tot he Cathedral. For this he made lifesize statues of Old Testament
prophets. These works show a revolutionary realism. Habbakuk (1427-36) took an obsessive eight years to carve, and Vasari records an anecdote of Donatello telling
it to speak.
c.1427 Relief of The Assumption of the Virgin. This work continues the innovation we have already seen int he St George relief, where a sense of space is created through light carving, so-called shallow relief. Usually a sculptor cuts down through the marble. But
Donatello reduced his implements to three tools, using the corner of a flat
chisel to draw in the marble, with a point chisel to create background. There
is a free, flexible level of depth. This is the technique known as schiacciato (which literally means 'squashed').
1427-29 Donatello made several works for the nearby town of Siena. This is his gilded
bronze relief, Feast of Herod, for the
Siena font. Notice how the perspective is used to evoke the drama, drawing us
to the head of Herod. Donatello conveys the brutality of the act, and the shock
of outrage of the onlookers. Salome is a sinister figure. She looks rather like
a classical bacchante. This relief
also compartmentalises different scenes. Possibly this was inspired by Trajan’s
column. Donatello was studying and collecting ancient sculpture at this time.
Avery compares this work favourably with another treatment by Donatello of the
same subject: the marble Herod’s Feast
(c.1439), once in the collection of Lorenzo the Magnificent (now in the Musée
des Beaux Arts, Lille). Here the space overwhelms the figures, making the
actors “subservient to their setting”.
1427-29 Donatello also made for the Siena font, two bronze figures of the virtues Faith
and Hope. These present "sculptural
rhythms in drapery". The lyrical style contrasts with the dramatic treatment of the Herod panel:
1434 saw Cosimo de Medici's return from exile to Florence. Cosimo
offered Donatello lodgings, a workshop and sumptuous clothing (in which the artist had very little interest, it would seem).
The roundels were made straight from the scaffolding. The
plaster was applied in layers and immediately worked. Donatello drives across
the composition with diagonal lines, and crops figures to suggest a depth
beyond the frame. Relief is a very difficult technique. Figures must look as if
they are in the round, in perspective, not flattened. Donatello’s backgrounds
are lightly modelled, but still convey an effect of deep space. This relief shows St John on Patmos:
1439 Cantoria In 1431, Luca della Robbia had been commissioned to produce
a Cantoria (singers’ gallery) for the Florence Duomo. Possibly his design was
influenced by the outdoor pulpit at Prato which Donatello and Michelozzo had
made, in fits and starts, between 1428 and 1438. Donatello’s Cantoria (pictured)
depicts a wild, bacchic dance, in a continuous scene behind the columns, with a
studded mosaic background. There is a comparison of the two cantorie on this art travel site.
1443 Donatello has
to abandon his studio, as Cosimo is acquiring and demolishing properties to
make way for his palazzo. Donatello
goes to Padua , at this time an important place
of learning, and governed by Venice
Padua
1445-53 Gattamelata, ‘spotted cat’. This was modelled on the
bronze horses of St Mark’s, Venice
1449 Crucifix. Notice the strikingly
realistic anatomy. With this work, Donatello brings the Renaissance to northern
Italy.
1446 Commissioned
to create sculptures for the high altar, the Altare del Santo: 6 saints, a central Virgin and Child. Donatello
supervised all 29 pieces in four years. 16 were entirely by him. Note the
frantic grief of the three Maries in the Entombment.
1450 The
sculptures were installed. The original high altar was later demolished. It is
not known for certain whether the present, reconstructed order of the statues is accurate. The Virgin and Child sculpture uses a device from Byzantine
art, in which Christ is represented as if in the womb of the Virgin. 1448, Madonna and Child between St Francis and St Anthony, bronze:
The
Heart of the Miser (1446-1450). In a number of bronze reliefs, Donatello depicts scenes from
the life of St Anthony. The spaces in these are very varied, and the detailed
and dramatic action, with skillful stage management of groups, suggests the
influence of mystery plays. Notice the fantastic architecture in the Miracle of the Miser’s Heart. In the film, Henry
Moore praises Donatello’s “inventive literary mind”. These reliefs would have started as preparatory drawings
(only one survives), followed by a sketch modelling in wax and a cast in
terracotta. There are a few surviving examples of these in Padua
After his work in Padua ,
Donatello returned to Florence
Two other works located in the Palace were the earlier bronze David (c.1430), and Judith and Holofernes (1455-60). [For a detailed study of their political significance, see Sarah Blake McHam, Donatello's Bronze "David" and "Judith" as Metaphors of Medici Rule in Florence, The Art Bulletin, Vol. 83, No. 1
(Mar., 2001), pp. 32-47]
We should remember that David
is a poetic allegory: Goliath represents the death of what is base at the hands
of what is beautiful. This work is the first freestanding nude since antiquity
(apart from Donatello’s own Crucifix in Padua
The Chellini Madonna
(before 1456) is a bronze roundel of the Virgin and Child mentioned as a gift
by Donatello’s doctor (Giovanni Chellini Samminiati). This is hollowed on the
reverse side, for casting molten glass. (Image from V&A, and see their extensive page, linked above).
c.1457 St Mary Magdalen This shocking image has a “stark, terrible
reality”. Donatello carved into a tree trunk, then added pliable materials to
model the surface. Note blue eyes, golden hair, and a bone structure recalling
former beauty. But it is not a despairing image: the soul has become ennobled,
triumphing over the flesh.
[See: Martha Levine Dunkelman, Donatello's Mary Magdalen: A Model of Courage and Survival, Woman's Art Journal, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Autumn, 2005 -
Winter, 2006), pp. 10-13]
1457 St John the Baptist, Siena Cathedral.
The right forearm was added later. This continues the realist style of Judith and Mary.
The Lamentation for the Dead Christ (c.1456), for the Siena
1460s Bronze pulpits for San Lorenzo. It is thought
that these works could be designs for the reliefs for the abortive Siena
Cathedral doors scheme. They show that even in old age Donatello was
unorthodox, passionate and personal. Notice the relentless diagonal in the
Martyrdom of San Lorenzo (below), the feeling for deep space. However, the buttresses
at the corner of one relief are clumsy (the work of an assistant?). The
composition of the panels may not be as originally intended. [See: Irving Lavin, The Sources of Donatello's Pulpits in San Lorenzo: Revival and Freedom of Choice in the Early Renaissance, The Art Bulletin, Vol. 41, No. 1 (Mar., 1959), pp. 19-38]
1466 Donatello
dies, and is honoured with burial at San Lorenzo, near the tomb of Cosimo, who had died in 1464.
For more online tours of Donatello, see:
- A J Tudury's excellent Flickr page
- Britannica Online entry
- Charles Avery's biography in Grove Art [subscriber site]
- Review article (of V&A new galleries, 2009) by Jonathan Jones
