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113. Donatello (Donato di Niccolo Bardi), David, c. 1440–1443. Bronze, h: 158 cm. Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence (Italy).
Donatello’s David stands, victorious, over the head of the dead giant. He holds the large sword of the giant and wears a hat and boots. The statue caused a small scandal when it was first displayed because of the nudity of the figure. While nudity was not unknown in sculpture, it seems gratuitous here, not required by the subject, as it would be in a portrayal of Adam, for example. David’s nudity is also accentuated by his hat and boots, which seem incongruous in the absence of other clothing. The statue is also notable in being cast of bronze, showing the advance in that technology. While the contrapposto stance is derived from classical models, the figure is more feminine looking than male sculptures from the Greek or Roman worlds.
DONATELLO (Donato di Niccolo Bardi)
(Florence, c. 1386–1466)
Donatello, an Italian sculptor, was born in Florence, and received his initial training in a goldsmith’s workshop; he worked for a short time in Ghiberti’s studio. Too young to enter the competition for the baptistery gates in 1402, the young Donatello accompanied Brunelleschi when, in disappointment, he left Florence and went to Rome to study the remains of classical art. During this period Brunelleschi undertook his measurements of the Pantheon dome, which enabled him to construct the noble cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, while Donatello acquired his knowledge of classic forms and ornamentation. The two masters, each in his own sphere, were to become the leading spirits in the art movement of the fifteenth century.
Back in Florence around 1405, he was entrusted with the important commissions for the marble David and for the colossal seated figure of St John the Evangelist. We find him next employed at Orsanmichele. Between 1412 and 1415, Donatello completed the St Peter, the St George and the St Mark.
Between the completion of the niches for Orsanmichele and his second journey to Rome in 1433, Donatello was chiefly occupied with statuary work for the campanile and the cathedral. Among the marble statues for the campanile are the St John the Baptist, Habakkuk, the so-called “Il Zuccone” (Jonah?) and Jeremiah.
During this period Donatello executed some work for the baptismal font at San Giovanni in Siena, which Jacopo della Quercia and his assistants had begun in 1416. The relief, Feast of Herod, already illustrates the power of dramatic narration and the skill of expressing depth of space by varying the treatment from plastic roundness to the finest stiacciato.
In May 1434, Donatello was back in Florence and immediately signed a contract for the marble pulpit on the facade of the Prato cathedral, a veritable bacchanalian dance of half-nude putti, the forerunner of the “singing tribune” for the Florence cathedral, on which he worked intermittently from 1433 to 1440.
But Donatello’s greatest achievement of his “classic period” is the bronze David, the first nude statue of the Renaissance, well-proportioned, superbly balanced, suggestive of Greek art in the simplification of form, and yet realistic, without any striving after ideal proportions.
In 1443 Donatello was invited to Padua to undertake the decoration of the high altar of San Antonio. In that year the famous Condottiere Erasmo de’ Narni, known as Gattamelata, had died, and it was decided to honour his memory with an equestrian statue. This commission, and the reliefs and figures for the high altar, kept Donatello in Padua for ten years. The Gattamelata was finished and unveiled in 1453, a powerful and majestic work.
Donatello spent the remaining years of his life in Florence.
114. Anonymous Piedmontese, Fountain of Youth (detail), c. 1430. Italy.
115. Anonymous, Illuminated Manuscript. Middle Ages.
116. Anonymous, Illuminated Manuscript. Middle Ages.
117. Limbourg Brothers (Jean, Paul and Herman), Temptations of a Young Christian (miniature from The Très Belles Heures of Jean of France, Duke of Berry), 1408–1409. Ink, tempera, and gold leaf on vellum, 23.8 × 17 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Arts, Cloisters Collection, New York (United States).
118. Anonymous, The Temptations of Wordly Delights (miniature from the Œuvres de Christine de Pisan), First quarter of the 15th century. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris (France).
119. Anonymous (German School), The Love Charm, 15th century. Oil on panel, 24 × 18 cm. Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig (Germany).
120. Pisanello, Lust, c. 1430. Graphische Sammlung, Albertina, Vienna (Austria).
121. Limbourg Brothers (Jean, Paul and Herman), The Original Sin (miniature from The Très Belles Heures of Jean of France, Duke of Berry), c. 1417. Musée Condé, Chantilly (France).
122. Valerius Maximus, miniature from the manuscript Faits et Dit, middle of the 15th century. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin (Germany).
123. Rogier Van der Weyden, St Luke Drawing the Virgin, c. 1440. Oil on canvas, 138.6 × 111.5 cm. Alte Pinakothek, Munich (Germany).
St Luke the Apostle, who is the accredited author of one of the four accepted versions of the New Testament Gospel, is also by tradition the first painter of the Virgin’s portrait. Rogier Van der Weyden kept up this tradition in his own picture of St Luke Drawing the Virgin. This meticulously detailed work, typical of the Flemish tradition, shows Mary seated under a canopy as she attempts to nurse her infant, and Luke in front of her, drawing her face. A panoramic view can be seen between the columns in the background. Nursing-Madonna images had been part of the Marian tradition and lore since the Middle Ages. “Mary’s milk” had, indeed, been a source of veneration in the form of a miracle-working substance regarded as one among many holy relics during medieval times, and reverence for it lasted well into Renaissance times. The origins of such a tradition and symbolism go back several thousands of years into Antiquity, when Creator Goddesses like Isis were celebrated as symbolic milk-givers in their roles as compassionate and nurturing Universal Mothers. The milky ribbon of stars called the Milky Way was believed to symbolise the Goddess, and Marian lore inherited that popular tradition.
124. Robert Campin, known as the Master of Flémalle, Virgin and Child before a Firescreen, c. 1440. Tempera on oak, 63.4 × 48.5 cm. The National Gallery, London (United Kingdom).
Robert Campin of Tournai is also called the ‘Master of Flémalle’, because three paintings now in the Städelsches Kunstinstitut were wrongly supposed to have come from Flémalle. Together with Van Eyck, he may be considered the founder of the Netherlandish painting of the Early Renaissance. The Virgin seems somehow clumsy, almost plebeian. The halo is replaced by the fire screen, which testifies of the homely detail and down-to-earth realism of the artist.
Rogier VAN DER WEYDEN
(Tournai, 1399 – Brussels, 1464)
He lived in Brussels where he was the city’s official painter (from 1436), but his influence was felt throughout Europe. One sponsor was Philip the Good, an avid collector. Van der Weyden is the only Fleming who truly carried on Van Eyck’s great conception of art. He added to it a pathos of which there is