Donatello
The great innovator of Renaissance sculpture.
Donatello made the first free-standing nude statue since antiquity, a bronze David. His figures are alive, sometimes raw and emotionally exposed.
Donatello’s real name was Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi, and he was born in Florence around 1386. As a young man he worked in Lorenzo Ghiberti’s workshop on the first bronze doors of the Baptistery. He was a close friend of Filippo Brunelleschi, and according to early sources the two travelled to Rome to study ancient ruins and sculpture.
His breakthrough came with statues for the cathedral and for the church of Orsanmichele in Florence in the 1410s. St Mark stands in contrapposto, with his weight on one leg, like the statues of antiquity. St George, now in the Bargello, has a watchful, tense expression. Beneath it he carved a relief so shallow that it is almost a drawing in marble, yet it still conveys depth. The technique is called rilievo stiacciato and was his own invention.
His best-known work is the bronze David, now in the Bargello. It is the first free-standing nude male figure on a large scale since antiquity. The dating is uncertain, with proposals ranging from the 1430s to the 1450s. David is a young boy in a shepherd’s hat, and the figure is both sensual and enigmatic. Between 1443 and 1453 Donatello worked in Padua. There he cast the equestrian statue of Gattamelata, one of the first large bronze equestrian statues since Roman times.
Donatello was curious and constantly inventive. He worked in marble, bronze, wood and terracotta. His figures can be elegant, but also raw and harrowing. The late wooden Mary Magdalene, in the cathedral museum in Florence, shows an emaciated penitent with matted hair. His most important patron was Cosimo de’ Medici. Donatello never married and, according to contemporary accounts, was indifferent to money.
He died in 1466 and was buried in San Lorenzo near Cosimo. He is regarded as the most important innovator of Renaissance sculpture, and Michelangelo built on his expressive and powerful figures.