Donatello only needs one name – he was a Renaissance superstar after all, synonymous with the combination of technical virtuosity, creative brilliance and innovative ambition that characterised that period. His influence was fundamental and far-reaching. Yet it has been 40 years since there has been an exhibition dedicated to him in Britain.
Sculpting the Renaissance at the V&A is a scholarly but accessible corrective, which includes 50 works never before seen in the UK, which come together with more familiar examples from the V&A’s own collection.
Donatello’s Ascension with Christ Giving the Keys to St Peter (c.1428-30) is one of the marvels of the V&A: its whispered contours and volumes so slight that they might more believably have blown in on a breeze than materialised through the sweat and toil of chisel and mallet. More remarkable still is that this almost supernatural feat of skill and artistry was repeated again and again, not only by Donatello himself, but by a small number of followers and pupils.
It was a skill so difficult to master that most examples of rilievo schiacciato (or “squashed relief” as it rather clumsily translates) have been assumed to be by Donatello. This was the case with the Sarcophagus of Santa Giustina (c.1476), by a follower of Donatello, who so movingly used this ultra-low relief carving to evoke both the presence and absence of the person inside. The inferior end panels are worth looking at too: made by an entirely different hand, they make a sobering gauge against examples of Donatello’s own efforts, such as the extraordinary Madonna of the Clouds (c.1425-35), a very special loan from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
The secrets of Donatello’s particular mastery of rilievo schiacciato are unlikely to ever be satisfactorily explained in any way that doesn’t resort to the mystical, but this exhibition does an excellent job of elucidating the way that a Renaissance sculptor worked. It clarifies how Donatello’s early training as a goldsmith may have helped him to work with exceptional finesse and fluency, and to differentiate so uncannily between materials and textures.
The show begins by setting the scene of Donatello’s early years in Florence, where he was born circa 1386. In anticipation of the enormous volumes of visitors that the show will certainly attract, there is plenty of space between works, and an open, free-flowing structure that creates vistas through and across the exhibition, and so through Donatello’s career.
The design is a practical one, but just as important is the way that it underlines the back and forth of ideas, and the cross-fertilisation of contemporary life with the ancient world that characterised Florence in the early Renaissance. In an idealised view painted at the close of the 1400s, the burgeoning magnificence of the Florentine Republic under the Medici is expressed in its building works both sacred and civic, and it was in this setting that Donatello made his career.
Donatello’s San Lorenzo Baptistery doors were included in the first iteration of this show in Italy last year, but thankfully they have been spared the trauma of a journey to London. Without them, or any surviving examples of Donatello’s goldsmithing, the conceptual leap between his skills as a metal worker and as a modeller of clay or marble is more challenging than it might be. But the comparison of a bronze and enamel reliquary with a series of terracotta reliefs depicting scenes from the Book of Genesis is well chosen – their comparable sizes, and similar use of draped figures and of foliage as a decorative motif, make clear the connections between these forms.
The reliquary, which combines a classicising form with its distinctly medieval function as a receptacle for sacred remains, was made by Lorenzo Ghiberti, Florence’s leading bronze sculptor for whom Donatello worked for a time, while the terracotta comes from the same circle. Friendship oiled the exchange of ideas, and this is rather beautifully suggested by the inclusion of two paintings by Donatello’s friend Masaccio, famed for his early use of linear perspective, and whose treatment of folds and draped fabrics imply his interest in the way that sculptors handled these elements. Similarly, a sculpted and painted tabernacle, following a design by Donatello, reminds us that the relationship was not just a conceptual one, since sculpted wood, terracotta and even stone were often painted. Inspiration was as likely to come from a carved gemstone as a piece of maiolica, and in Masaccio’s exquisite Adoration of the Magi (1426), the horses’ bridles sparkle with jewel-like embellishments.
The major building projects of the day brought artists of all sorts together, as well as the legions of ancillary craftsmen involved in labour-intensive and complex processes such as bronze casting. In Florence, the works connected to the new Cathedral were a major focus, and here Donatello worked with many other craftsmen, who were no doubt often rivals as much as collaborators. Later on he formed a long term, formal partnership with another sculptor, Michelozzo di Bartolomeo, working together on projects in Florence and Pisa.
Donatello’s outstanding achievement from his time at the Cathedral works is his marble David (c.1408-9). He was barely 20 when he made it, clearly undaunted by the dramatic leap in scale from goldsmithing to monumental stone carving. Already, we can see him exploiting the natural variations in the marble’s colour to enhance areas of drapery and flesh, and while the rather mannered posture draws on the traditions of medieval sculpture – the combination of idealised and naturalistic treatments of the face in particular – are recognisably Renaissance.
The intense (and very male) nature of Donatello’s artistic community is so powerfully evoked that it is tempting to wonder if he and his peers were paying more attention to each other than to the world around them. Donatello’s remarkable treatments of the human face, first intimated in that glorious David, show clearly that this was not the case, and examples such as the rather sinister but undeniably impressive reliquary bust of San Rossore show him marrying the rather modern notion of the portrait to a traditional vessel.
Donatello’s depictions of the Virgin and Child are surely the most arresting examples of his attention to the human face, amplified in his nuanced observation of a mother’s interactions with her child. The Pazzi Madonna (c.1420-5) is perhaps the most celebrated example, somehow combining the force of an almost hieratic treatment with a deeply moving sensitivity, distilled in the mutual absorption of both mother and baby, who press their foreheads together. Their spiritual otherness is balanced by the frame, set behind them to push them closer to us.
Not surprisingly, many of Donatello’s designs, and particularly those of the Virgin and Child, were copied, often following designs that he made specifically for that purpose, and some space is given over to demonstrating how extensive this practice was.
A particularly eye-catching display focuses on works in bronze, ranging from monumental, religious works such as the crucifix from the high altar of the Basilica of St Anthony, Padua to the chubby winged toddlers called spiritelli. Of these, the astonishingly camp semi-trousered Attis-Amorino (c.1435-40) is a particular enigma, and seems to have been inspired by classical antiquity and made to furnish the home of the Cosimo de’ Medici’s allies, the Bardolini.
Donatello’s religious works remain his most moving, not least because they test the limits of his creative language. The modelling of The Lamentation over the Dead Christ (c.1455-60) is ragged with grief, while retaining a clarity of composition that provides the balance, and stillness, required of a devotional piece.
After this, the cast of Donatello’s bronze David commissioned for the Medici Palace courtyard, and today an overly familiar symbol for the Renaissance itself, comes as something of an anticlimax – its realisation of classical ideals to express specifically Christian, Florentine values less eloquent now, perhaps.
But placed at the end, it reminds us of Donatello’s marble David, made at the very beginning of his career. It would be nice to think that the great man himself was able to reflect with some satisfaction on the extraordinary arc of his life.
Donatello: Sculpting the Renaissance is at the V&A, London until 11 June