Italian sculptor. Donato di Niccolo di Betto Bardi. Donatello exerted a durable influence on the Italian sculpture: it knew to become emancipated the statuary of the laws of architectural decoration and, by resurrecting the sculpture in round bump, it contributed to make the preferred kind of the Rebirth of it.
For Alberti, the five renovating ones of the Italian art are Masaccio, Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Luca della Robbia and finally Donatello: this one indeed explored the sculpture in multiple forms (statue, relief, monument, gate vault, furnace bridge, equestrian statue), worked the most various matters (marble, bronzes, stucco, terra cotta, wood) and excelled in the various processes (low and high relief, sculpture in the round), with an exceptional aptitude to find solutions completely original according to material employed, to introduce new principles of representation. For Donatello, the technique is never an end in itself, but a means of achieving the artistic goals.
In Florence, the first worksOne generally locates the birth date of Donato di Niccolo Betto Bardi, called Donatello, around 1386, in Florence. The first documents concerning its artistic activity mention its presence in the workshop of Ghiberti (between 1404 and 1407), after having received, as most its compatriots sculptors, a training of goldsmith, perhaps in the workshop of the Brunelleschi architect, accompanied by whom Donatello remains a time in Rome, after that one had failed the contest for the second door of the baptistry of Florence (1401), contest which inaugurates a quarter century of an admirable activity, deployed around the cathedral Santa Maria del Fiore: Ghiberti, the winner, directs a powerful building site there, where many artists, bronziers or decorators will follow one another.
During this period, and until its association with the Michelozzo architect, the activity of Donatello is mainly related to the work intended for the cathedral and Orsammichele. Since 1406, it carries out for its own account two marble statues, two prophets, for the door of Mandorle of the cathedral. The first David (1408-1416), for draped strongly broken on the hip, is also intended for the cathedral, just as the colossal terra cotta statue of Josué (1409-1412), definitively lost, in which Bernardo Ciuffagni takes part, one of the collaborators of Donatello. As for the Jean Saint the Evangelist (1411-1415), of an admirable majesty, it precedes the Brace of Michel-Angel.
In parallel, for Orsammichele, the sculptor composes a series of patron saint, placed outside, in niches, on behalf of corporations florentines. The statues of Marc Saint (around 1411-1415) and of Georges Saint (around 1415-1417) represent a decisive step in the direction of a completely autonomous sculpture. On the base of the second, Donatello carves its first low-relief, Saint Georges combatant the dragon, which presents what Vasari calls the relievo schiacciato (“flattened relief”), which, thanks to a process by almost insensitive gradations, seems rather drawn on the marble that carved. The scene in addition seems cut out in a kind of visual screen, effect to which contributes the empirical use of the prospect, at a date where Brunelleschi did not carry out its famous experiments yet. With the Saint Louis of Toulouse (around 1422-1425), where it starts to use bronze, Donatello brings the final solution to the niche, then always of Gothic architecture: the niche opens from now on, in a small frontage between two Corinthian pilasters, an apsidiole with shell flanked of two ionic posts.
Another group of monumental statues understands a series of five prophets, carried out around 1420-1436, for the niches of the bell-tower of the cathedral. Nanni di Bartolo, known as “it Rosso”, collaborates in Abraham and Isaac (1421); the most important statue of the group, that of the Prophet Habacuc, also called Zuccone (“the Bald person”), of an intense expressivity, seems to be the result of a deep asceticism and an absolute spirituality.
Florence, His and Rome
From 1423, the artist starts to receive many external orders, in particular bronze works. For the baptismal font of the baptistry of His, it designs three cherubs (it will represent these putti often thereafter), two figures of virtues, the Faith and the Hope (1427-1429), and especially gilded bronze a low-relief, the Feast of Hérode. By representing the scene as section of reality figurative delimited arbitrarily by framework - on a bottom of architecture where all the varieties of relief are expressed -, it accentuates the role of the spectator by giving the impression to him which it finds in same space as the figures.
Donatello does not give up therefore the marble and, in order to be able to honor with the orders which flow unceasingly, it joins in 1425 to the ornemanist, to sculptor and to Michelozzo architect; of their close cooperation, which will last until 1433, are resulting some tombs and the monumental pulpit external of the cathedral from Prato; for the parapet, pressed on a bronze capital due to Michelozzo, Donatello carves a low-relief, the Dance of the putti. In these common works, the traditional designs of Michelozzo come to moderate the innovations of its partner, who delegates a big part of the execution to him, like to other collaborators.
Between 1430 and 1433, Donatello is in Rome, where it rediscovers the Antique art; in Saint-Pierre, it carries out ciborium of the sacristy of Bénéficiers, like two tombs. On its return to Florence, it receives for the cathedral the ordering of Cantoria (1433-1439); this platform intended for the singers seems very different from that of Luca della Robbia, with the severe classicism: Donatello the which gambols flowering ash of a merry band of putti. At the same time, it gains a contest for the execution of a paperboard of stained glass, representing the Crowning of the Virgin (1434-1437), for one of the circular windows of the drum of the cupola. In Santa Croce, the gate vault of the Annunciation, whose decoration, of traditional inspiration, presupposes the Roman stay, also goes back to this time.
In 1437, it receives the most prestigious ordering of the cathedral: casings of the doors of the sacristy. Luca della Robbia will carry out later the northern gate on a model of Donatello, who, having given up the project, goes back temporarily to the work in 1459 - without to complete it.
Venice and Padoue
It is that the sculptor must also answer external orders, such, in Venice, the pathetic statue of Saint Jean-Baptiste (1438), that it realizes for the vault of Florentins of the church Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari.
In Padoue, where it is of 1443 to 1453, Donatello composes, on the equestrian type of the Roman Marcus Aurelius, the first monumental philosopher's stone of the time, the monument of Gattamelata, which is, with Colleone carried out in Venice by Verrocchio, the most beautiful statue equestrian of the Rebirth. It is still with Padoue that Donatello completes in 1450 the furnace bridge of the basilica of Saint-Anthony, which places a great assembly of reliefs and statues within an architectural framework, in the manner of one crowned conversazion.
Return in Tuscany
From return to Florence in 1454, Donatello does not receive apparently any more official orders. It carries out the statue out of polychrome wooden of Holy Marie-madeleine, one of her most expressive works. The bronze panels - Descent with the limbs, the Resurrection and the Rise, probably intended for the origin with the tomb of Cosme de Médicis - give to Donatello the impulse necessary to set up during its ten last years the two large ones ambons of the St. Lawrence; in the cycle of Passion the way appears clearly in which Donatello makes use of the formal elements to accentuate pathetic her scenes.
At the end of 1457, Donatello goes to His “to pass the end of her days there”. It will carry out there a Jean-Baptiste Saint of bronze (1456-1457), which, like the Madeleine, is a work characteristic of its last style, charged with expressivity. At the beginning of the summer 1459, Donatello is again in Florence, to carry out the southern gate of the cathedral there. But work passes obviously in the second plan when it receives from Pierre de Médicis the ordering of a group out of bronze, Judith and Holopherne. After this masterpiece, Donatello devotes himself exclusively to ambons of the St. Lawrence; its health declines and it leaves a greater freedom to his collaborators, in particular Bellano de Padoue and Bertoldo, which indicates the disparities stylistics between the various reliefs. He dies on on December 10th, 1466.
The influence of Donatello
Unlike most artistic personalities of Quattrocento, Donatello carried on her activity in several important centers: Prato, Pisa, His, Rome and especially Padoue, so that its immediate influence extends from the center north of the Italian peninsula. But, although it has many assistants and collaborators - since 1416 it directs a very productive workshop -, one cannot truly speak about a school donatellienne: if, of the Andrea Mantegna painter to the Verrocchio sculptor, several artists refer to his work, even develop some certain elements, others remain hesitant vis-a-vis the revolutionary extremism of its formal solutions, which, with the deep subjectivity of its art, do of him one of the first actors of the Rebirth.