Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi, better known as Donatello, was an Italian sculptor of the Renaissance period. Born in Florence, he studied classical sculpture and used his knowledge to develop an Early Renaissance style of sculpture. He spent time in other cities, where he worked on commissions and taught others; his periods in Rome, Padua, and Siena introduced to other parts of Italy the techniques he had developed in the course of a long and productive career. His David was the first freestanding nude male sculpture since antiquity; like much of his work it was commissioned by the Medici family.
Filippo di ser Brunellesco di Lippo Lapi, commonly known as Filippo Brunelleschi and also nicknamed Pippo by Leon Battista Alberti, was an Italian architect, designer, goldsmith and sculptor. He is considered to be a founding father of Renaissance architecture. He is recognized as the first modern engineer, planner, and sole construction supervisor. In 1421, Brunelleschi became the first person to receive a patent in the Western world. He is most famous for designing the dome of the Florence Cathedral, and for the mathematical technique of linear perspective in art which governed pictorial depictions of space until the late 19th century and influenced the rise of modern science. His accomplishments also include other architectural works, sculpture, mathematics, engineering, and ship design. Most surviving works can be found in Florence.
Luca della Robbia was an Italian Renaissance sculptor from Florence. Della Robbia is noted for his colorful, tin-glazed terracotta statuary, a technique that he invented and passed on to his nephew Andrea della Robbia and great-nephews Giovanni della Robbia and Girolamo della Robbia. Although a leading sculptor in stone, after developing his technique in the early 1440s he worked primarily in terracotta. His large workshop produced both less expensive works cast from molds in multiple versions, and more expensive one-off individually modeled pieces.
Antonio del Pollaiuolo, also known as Antonio di Jacopo Pollaiuolo or Antonio Pollaiuolo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, engraver, and goldsmith, who made important works in all these media, as well as designing works in others, for example vestments, metal embroidery being a medium he worked in at the start of his career.
Piero del Pollaiuolo, whose birth name was Piero Benci, was an Italian Renaissance painter from Florence. His older brother, by about ten years, was the artist Antonio del Pollaiuolo and the two frequently worked together. Their work shows both classical influences and an interest in human anatomy; according to Vasari, the brothers carried out dissections to improve their knowledge of the subject.
Desiderio da Settignano, real name Desiderio de Bartolomeo di Francesco detto Ferro was an Italian Renaissance sculptor active in north Italy.
David is the title of two statues of the biblical hero by the Italian Early Renaissance sculptor Donatello. They consist of an early work in marble of a clothed figure (1408–09), and a far more famous bronze figure that is nude except for helmet and boots, and dates to the 1440s or later. Both are now in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence. The first was Donatello's most important commission up to that point, and had a religious context, placed on Florence Cathedral. The bronze remains his most famous work, and was made for a secular context, commissioned by the Medici family.
Giovan Francesco Rustici, or Giovanni Francesco Rustici, (1475–1554) was an Italian Renaissance painter and sculptor. He was born into a noble family of Florence, with an independent income. Rustici profited from study of the Medici sculpture in the garden at San Marco, and according to Giorgio Vasari, Lorenzo de' Medici placed him in the studio of Verrocchio, and that after Verrocchio's departure for Venice, he placed himself with Leonardo da Vinci, who had also trained in Verocchio's workshop. He shared lodgings with Leonardo while he was working on the bronze figures for the Florence Baptistry, for which he was ill paid and resolved, according to Vasari, not to work again on a public commission. Moreover, an echo of Leonardo's inspiration is unmistakable in the much-discussed and much-reviled wax bust of "Flora" in Berlin, ascribed to a circle of Leonardo and most probably to Rustici. At this time, Pomponius Gauricus, in De sculptura (1504), named him one of the principal sculptors of Tuscany, the peer of Benedetto da Maiano, Andrea Sansovino and Michelangelo. It may have been made in France, perhaps in the circle of Rustici, who entered Francis I's service in 1528.
Bertoldo di Giovanni was an Italian Renaissance sculptor and medallist.
The decade of the 1420s in art involved some significant events.
Stefano Bardini (1836–1922) was an Italian connoisseur and art dealer in Florence who specialized in Italian paintings, Renaissance sculpture, cassoni and other Renaissance and Cinquecento furnishings and architectural fragments that came on the market during the urban regeneration of Florence in the 1860s and 70s.
The Penitent Magdalene is a wooden sculpture of Mary Magdalene by the Italian Renaissance sculptor Donatello, now usually dated to around 1440. The sculpture was probably commissioned for the Baptistery of Florence. The piece was received with astonishment for its unprecedented realism. It is now in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo in Florence. The wood used by Donatello is that of white poplar.
Stiacciato (Tuscan) or schiacciato is a technique where a sculptor creates a very shallow relief sculpture with carving only millimetres deep. The rilievo stiacciato is primarily associated with Donatello (1386–1466).
Saint Louis of Toulouse is a gilded bronze sculpture of Louis of Toulouse by Donatello with a marble niche all'antica on the facade of Orsanmichele, executed in 1423–1425. It is now in the refectory of the Museo di Santa Croce in Florence.
The Huldschinsky Madonna is a terracotta sculpture from the beginning of the 15. century, most probably from around 1410–1415. It is attributed to Donatello, an attribution based on the structure of the drapery, which is no longer simply a means of expression and decoration as in Gothic art but is instead more naturalistic and observed from life, following a strict dialogue with the anatomical forms beneath it and obeying the rules of gravity. The work's attention to detail such as the fringes on the clothing also recalls the artist's other works such as the marble David. The sculpture was formerly painted. It has been in the Bode Museum in Berlin since being donated by Oscar Huldschinsky in 1892 in Florence, who himself never owned it.
Madonna and Child with Four Cherubs is a c.1440 terracotta sculpture by Donatello, now in the Bode-Museum in Berlin, which bought it in 1888. Still partly medieval in its iconography, Mary and Jesus' heads touch in a manner also seen in the artist's Pazzi Madonna. The work was badly damaged in the 1945 fire, with breaks in several places and losing its traces of polychromy.
David Finn was an American public relations executive, photographer, and historian of sculpture. He is known in public relations as a co-founder of the Ruder Finn firm. In addition to his career in public relations, Finn was a lifelong historian and photographer of sculpture.
Amore-Attis is a bronze sculpture by Donatello of c. 1440-1443. It is 104 cm high and has traces of its original gilding, and is now in the Museo del Bargello in Florence.
Nanni di Bartolo, also known as "il Rosso", was a Florentine sculptor of the Early Renaissance, a slightly younger contemporary of Donatello. His dates of birth and death are not known, but he is recorded as an active master from 1419 to 1451.
The following catalog of works by the Florentine sculptor Donatello is based on the monographs by H. W. Janson (1957), Ronald Lightbown (1980), and John Pope-Hennessy (1996), as well as the catalogs of the 2022/2023 exhibitions in Florence, Berlin and London. In the case of unsigned or documented works, the attributions and dates are, as is usual, based predominantly on stylistic criteria and analogies to secured works. Many of the works attributed to Donatello were created in collaboration with other artists and with specialists in specific techniques.
Relief in frame as displayed
Close-up of heads
Detail in lateral view
