Between approximately Donatello found employment as a member of Lorenzo Ghiberti's workshop. Ghiberti was well known for his International Gothic style of bronze sculpture and excelled at creating gracefully subtle lines in his work. Donatello's first statue depicting David is one of his earliest known works and in many respects pays homage to Ghiberti's style. Other early works include his marble St. John the Evangelist for the Duomo's facade and a crucifix made from wood for nearby Santa Croce's church.
As Donatello refined his skill as a sculptor he also gained a reputation as being somewhat emotionally volatile. It was reported anecdotally that he had a temper and an abrasive sense of humor. Very little is known about his personal life but stories recorded from his friend Vasari seem to indicate he was agnostic.
This may account for his unique take on the religious iconography he was commonly commissioned to create. Around Donatello's full range as an artist began to emerge in two marble statues completed in the same year.
His statues of St. Mark and St. George show immense confidence and personality in everything from their attire to their facial expression. Both statues were carved from marble and also informed a series of statues of prophets that would later surround the bell tower of the Duomo. All of these depictions of the prophets are strikingly unique from medieval and ancient portraits of the prophets, with Zuccone being considered the finest and most masterful of the collection.
Donatello created his own form of relief in sculpted marble panels called "schiacciato. The principal subjects of the panel appeared to pop off the sculpted work. He used this technique to great success in many works such as St. During the same period of time in which he was developing his work within marble panels, Donatello had also become accomplished at casting figures in bronze.
Around he completed his first major bronze work entitled St. Louise of Toulouse. Though the initial response was underwhelming, the work is now considered a great artistic achievement. Part of the reason for the poor reception initially may have been the difference in it's two locations and the surrounding materials. Originally installed as a part of a niche at Orsanmichele, in the statue was moved to Santa Croce.
There the surrounding plaster background did not harmonize with the work to the same effect that the marble in the Orsanmichele niche appeared to. It is speculated St. Louise of Toulouse may have been one of the first collaborations Donatello designed with Michelozzo.
Michelozzo was a Florentine sculptor and architect who had also studied under Ghiberti. The twisting, heroic bronze group Judith Slaying Holofernes Palazzo Vecchio, Florence was originally in their palace, and they were also the patrons of the dramatic bronze reliefs that narrate the Passion of Christ on the pulpits in San Lorenzo unfinished at his death.
Donatello influenced Italian sculptors, notably Michelangelo, well into the sixteenth century. His work outside Italy is exceedingly rare; there is only one relief by him in the United States, a fine marble Madonna in rilievo schiacciato in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The Metropolitan Museum has only works that benefited from his style, the best being a fountain figure of a winged infant from the mid-fifteenth century In it can be seen the sinuous forms of the figura serpentinata that originated with Donatello.
The model has even been attributed to Donatello himself. Draper, James David. In his influential account of Renaissance Florence, Lives of the Artists , Giorgio Vasari specifically highlights the friendship between Brunelleschi and Donatello. Although some historians now doubt the attribution of dates, Vasari tells the story of Donatello carving a wooden crucifix for the Santa Croce church now dated to c. The lifelike and moving work depicted Christ as a real rather than idealized figure, with an emotionality and expression in direct opposition to the customary flat iconography of the time.
This was revolutionary and would become a key characteristic of Early Renaissance artists. This led Brunelleschi to say that Donatello had carved a peasant. In an attempt to do better, he carved his own wooden crucifix now dated to c. How are we to dine when you have dropped all the things? If you want anything, take it.
To you it is given to do Christs, and to me peasants. The first clear historical reference to Donatello is found in , when he received a payment for a work of sculpture. Between and , Donatello also assisted Ghiberti with statues for the north door of the Florence Baptistery. He was then commissioned to execute the large-scale figure of Saint John the Evangelist , which he worked on between and , a work which significantly marked the transition in art from the late Gothic to the Early Renaissance.
After the success of this work, Donatello began to receive more significant commissions, including two important sculptures for the guild church of Orsanmichele, which had been a noted part of his childhood.
He became known as the first sculptor during this period to utilize the new concepts and techniques derived from the Early Renaissance period's incorporation of mathematics, science, and architecture into art including one point perspective, anatomical accuracy, and even created a signature form of bas-relief for his carvings to emphasize depth and three-dimensionality. He also collaborated with other artists, including Michelozzo with whom he worked on a funerary monument, once again in Florence's Baptistery.
Around , Donatello found himself under the patronage of Cosimo de' Medici, the head of the most powerful family in Florence which was known to be a great patron of the arts. Cosimo commissioned the artist to produce a bronze sculpture of David a symbolic figure for the city of Florence , which resulted in the first free-standing nude statue made since antiquity.
Some critics have speculated, because of the perceived homoerotic elements in Donatello's David , that Donatello himself may have been gay. Very little is known about Donatello's personal life, but he never married or had children. Anecdotes attributed to Angelo Poliziano in , sometime after Donatello's death, infer that Donatello had eroticized relationships with his apprentices, claiming that he employed only beautiful young men and "stained" them so that no one else would want them.
In , Cosimo de'Medici was imprisoned and then exiled from Florence by a faction of rival families. In the absence of his patron, Donatello travelled to Rome and reinforced the classical influence on his work.
He returned to his home city the following year, along with Cosimo, and began work on projects for Florence's Duomo and the cathedral in nearby Prato.
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