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Donatello

Cantoria (Choir Gallery)
Detail, Donatello,
1439, Marble, 348 x 570 cm
Museo dell'Opera del Duomo,
Florence, Italy

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Italian Renaissance artist, sculptor Donatello (Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi), was born ca. 1386 and died in 1466. Donatello is a dimunitive form of his proper name Donato. Around 1405, he joined the workshop of Italian Renaissance artist and famous sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti, winner of the 1402 competition for the baptistery doors in Florence. Donatello's early works were Gothic in style, but by 1415, his style had reached maturity, changing to one of naturalism that had not been seen in sculpture since classical antiquity.

Donatello is reputed to have been a lover of antique art, although he was not known to be an intellectual. As a skilled artisan in both marble and bronze, he demanded a certain amount of artistic freedom. Some of Donatello's works feature classical Roman lettering, some of the earliest surviving examples of an interest in this revival. Donatello made full use of Brunelleschi's new invention of scientific linear perspective.

Brenda Harness, Art Historian

Donatello's David
Donatello's David, a bronze sculpture executed ca. 1425-1430, is the first large-scale, free-standing nude statue of the Renaissance.
Donatello Sculpture of Gattamelata
This Donatello sculpture of Gattamelata was very controversial at the time of its creation as it was an equestrian monument glorifying a man who was just a man, not a ruler

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