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00:00:16Moulton glass dropped into a mould and flattened out as it cools to make a perfect impression.
00:00:26The place, the Royal College of Art, and a moment of tension and excitement.
00:00:31As far as we know, no one has tried this experiment before.
00:00:41It's to cast a circular glass plaque, a roundel, but no ordinary roundel.
00:00:47The mould for this one was made early in the Italian Renaissance.
00:00:58It's a Madonna and Child by a sculptor born 600 years ago.
00:01:03This unique process is just one of the many techniques he exploited, for he was among the
00:01:07most versatile, the most imaginative artists of his century, perhaps of any century.
00:01:38Donatello is one of those sculptors who in every age seems new, because his theme was
00:01:44human life itself.
00:01:46He was to influence Michelangelo, Raphael studied his compositions, centuries later he inspired
00:01:53Rodin.
00:01:54Unmatched in his expressive range, he remains radical, singular and intensely personal.
00:02:13The dome of Florence Cathedral, symbol of a city which in the early 1400s was the centre
00:02:19of that extraordinary breakthrough of ideas, the Renaissance.
00:02:24Donatello had played a small part in the building of this dome, and with its architect Brunelleschi,
00:02:30he went on to become one of the creators of that movement which leads out of the Middle Ages towards
00:02:35the modern world.
00:02:41Donatello's sculptures could be seen wherever you went in Florence.
00:02:44They bore witness to the Renaissance spirit, to a new interest in realism and the character
00:02:50of the individual, to the rediscovered beauty and harmony of classical forms derived from ancient
00:02:56Greece and Rome.
00:02:58They were seen in churches, they were seen on public buildings.
00:03:02The lily and heraldic lion of Florence used to stand outside the town hall itself, while inside
00:03:08stood the Marble David, though both are now retired to a museum.
00:03:14Until quite recently, the Judith and Holofernes could be seen in the main square, the Piazza
00:03:19della Signoria.
00:03:21These major sculptures have been known and admired for five centuries as part of the very
00:03:25fabric of Florence.
00:03:29But others still play a humbler role in the city's life.
00:03:33The art historian Charles Avery went searching for them, because their significance is often
00:03:38overlooked when many of Donatello's originals have been taken indoors and replaced by copies.
00:03:45Well off the tourist beat in the Via Pietra Piana, there's a Madonna and child in a shrine
00:03:51high up on a street corner.
00:03:53The guidebook says it's a Donatello, but who knows, nobody's examined it for years.
00:03:58With the help of the sculptor Peter Rockwell, Avery wanted to check for himself.
00:04:06This window looks like it's about to fall off.
00:04:10It's looking pretty good actually, yes.
00:04:12There's a great deal of modelling all over the surface.
00:04:16I think the tool marks even on the drapery here, around the child's knees, even in the detail
00:04:22of the wooden throne that's been carved in wood.
00:04:26You can see the marks of the chisel as though it had really been carved.
00:04:29It's really looking tremendously exciting.
00:04:35Beautiful down here.
00:04:36Yeah.
00:04:37There's been a lot of damage up here, obviously.
00:04:38You see this crack running even through the child's head.
00:04:42I don't touch it, I think it might fall off.
00:04:46I'm pretty sure it's terracotta.
00:04:47I'm just going to cut out this little thing and see if we can scratch it at all.
00:04:58It's certainly coming away with proper red dust, you know.
00:05:02I think the white look one had is the repairs.
00:05:06After 500 years, the whole range of Donatello's work is now being re-explored and reassessed.
00:05:13For example, is this portrait of Niccolò da Ozzano a genuine Donatello?
00:05:18For years it's been doubted, though the bust has always been famous.
00:05:22Now layers of overpainting are being removed and its stunning quality revealed.
00:05:34Quality is still not positive proof, but it does narrow the margin of doubt.
00:05:40Here, in Florence, an ambitious programme of cleaning and restoration
00:05:44is throwing new light on Donatello's procedures.
00:05:47And it may even be that forensic evidence could supply the proof that's needed here.
00:05:52For the bust was modelled in clay, and in that clay are the fingerprints of whoever made it.
00:06:01The great sculptor they called Little Donatello was known, it seems, as something of a character in Florence.
00:06:08A fresco by Masaccio, for instance, is said to show him in the role of a street beggar,
00:06:13for he was, as one friend described him, the kind of man for whom any little handout is adequate.
00:06:18He's well pleased to be given anything at all.
00:06:24By contrast, the terseness of his tongue was equally well known.
00:06:28For the church of Santa Croce, he'd carved a crucifix in wood,
00:06:31of which his friend Brunelleschi remarked that he'd crucified a peasant.
00:06:36Retorted Donatello, go and get some wood, and you try carving one.
00:06:41Colorful anecdotes abound in the one biography we have of him by Vasari,
00:06:45but there's nothing first-hand, no letters, no personal writings.
00:06:50But in the records of the Cathedral Board of Works,
00:06:53in the archives of Florence and other cities he lived and worked in,
00:06:56references are astonishingly numerous, nearly 400 of them.
00:07:00The very first comes, rather disconcertingly, from the legal records of Pistoia near Florence,
00:07:06and concerns Donato at the age of 16.
00:07:10Pistoia, 26th of January, 1401.
00:07:13Donato, son of Niccolo di Beto Bardi of Florence,
00:07:16is bound over to keep the peace,
00:07:17in that he hit over the head with a stick Anichino,
00:07:20son of Peter the German, and drew blood.
00:07:25Donatello came of a rough, tough, working-class background,
00:07:28and if by temperament he was passionate, not to say explosive,
00:07:32that probably came from Niccolo, his father.
00:07:35Niccolo was involved as a young man in the workers' revolt,
00:07:38known as the Chompy Rebellion,
00:07:40and at one stage he was even exiled from Florence for murder.
00:07:43He'd only recently returned there when Donatello was born.
00:07:47By trade, he was a carder of wool.
00:07:53His son may have been educated in that monastic tradition
00:07:57of dedicating his life to art by renouncing marriage.
00:08:00It was not uncommon among scholars at that time,
00:08:03and there's no record that he did ever marry.
00:08:06On the other hand, the evidence suggests he was over-fond of his studio boys.
00:08:12No great stigma attached to that in the intellectual circles he moved in.
00:08:16Man strove for harmony in his life
00:08:18by learning how to harness those twin horses of the soul, passion, and reason.
00:08:24That was, after all, the ideal of self-governance that Plato himself had taught.
00:08:37Donatello would have learnt his craft as a teenage apprentice,
00:08:40but to practise any craft as a professional you had to belong to a guild,
00:08:45a kind of trade union.
00:08:48As a matter of civic duty, the guilds divided between them
00:08:51responsibility for maintaining and improving the city's main religious buildings.
00:08:56For instance, the Wool Merchants Guild looked after Florence Cathedral
00:09:00and its Campanile,
00:09:02but their rivals, the cloth finishers, paid for the upkeep of the baptistry next door.
00:09:08Between such close neighbours, comparisons were much in the public eye,
00:09:12and the guilds were fiercely competitive.
00:09:17The baptistry itself was ripe for embellishment,
00:09:21and it was here that Donatello, at the age of 18,
00:09:24was engaged to work on what was to become the most prestigious project in the city,
00:09:28the making of a great pair of bronze doors.
00:09:33It's said he even submitted a design himself,
00:09:35but the commission was won in the first open competition of its kind ever held
00:09:39by Lorenzo Ghiberti.
00:09:41The year was 1402,
00:09:43and it made Ghiberti the city's leading sculptor for years to come.
00:09:52Ghiberti was a goldsmith who became the greatest modeler and bronze founderman of the day,
00:09:57and for three years Donatello was one of his assistants.
00:10:01More than that, he absorbed in Ghiberti's workshop a technique, a style, and a vision.
00:10:06A vision still largely Gothic, but adapting now to new, more classical proportions.
00:10:16But the bronze doors may not be all he worked on.
00:10:20Recently, scholars have begun to search for the young Donatello's hand
00:10:23among the surviving terracottas of the period.
00:10:26They think they may have found what they were looking for in these hexagonal panels.
00:10:31The figures of Adam and Eve are more naive than Ghiberti's,
00:10:34but they're more dramatically imagined and more vigorously modelled.
00:10:42When we next hear of Donato, he's working independently on commissions for the cathedral itself.
00:10:4823rd of November, 1406, Donato, son of Niccolo Carver,
00:10:53is to make profits in marble to go above the door of the church of Santa Maria,
00:10:57and for his labour he is to receive ten gold florins.
00:11:04Looking distinctly tentative and Ghiberti-influenced,
00:11:08these figures hardly prepare us for the artist's growing ambition and self-confidence.
00:11:12Three years later, still in his early twenties,
00:11:16and Donatello's moved centre stage,
00:11:18carving one of four colossal statues to flank the great west doors of the cathedral.
00:11:23St John the Evangelist in marble, seven feet high, six years in the making.
00:11:32But he no longer looks down as he was meant to from the cathedral facade.
00:11:37All four evangelists were later removed and taken indoors.
00:11:41The St John shows us Donatello discovering already a power that foreshadows Michelangelo himself.
00:11:49He was now much in demand.
00:11:52In 1416, the civic authorities asked for a David and Goliath in marble for the town hall.
00:11:59We know from the bills that it was elaborately painted and gilded with an ornate background,
00:12:04like this earlier Gothic relief.
00:12:09Today, the David has lost its bright colours.
00:12:12They would have made it look far less bland
00:12:15and related it better to the ornamental style fashionable at that time.
00:12:23And in the swaying elegance and sinuous Gothic line,
00:12:27he's really glancing again at Ghiberti,
00:12:30formerly his master, now his only real rival.
00:12:41But what exactly does he mean by it, this graceful, nonchalant pose?
00:12:46Is it what his patrons expected?
00:12:49For it's hardly a conventional reading of David the freedom fighter,
00:12:53heroic symbol of a city's defiance of its foes.
00:12:57Willfully unorthodox or profoundly original?
00:13:02Donatello is both at the same time.
00:13:04Curiously and without warning, he changes key in his head of Goliath.
00:13:08It's like that of a classical god from ancient Rome.
00:13:16In total contrast to the David is the famous St. George, begun in 1415.
00:13:23This resolute Christian knight was an apt commission from the Guild of Armourers
00:13:28for Orsanmichele the Guild Hall.
00:13:30Originally projecting like a shop sign above the passer-by,
00:13:34he held a real metal sword, though that's long since disappeared.
00:13:40No ambiguous elegance this time, but a calm purpose.
00:13:47The concentrated simplicity of this sculpture, its alert humanity,
00:13:52have struck generations of admirers as the perfect expression
00:13:56of youthful idealism, devotion and courage.
00:14:00As Vasari put it, there is a marvellous suggestion of life
00:14:04bursting out of the stone, and in the head a proud and terrible ardour.
00:14:11This sense of life in the stone was the real revelation
00:14:14of classical sculpture to the early Renaissance.
00:14:17We know from Manetti's biography of Brunelleschi
00:14:20that as young men he and Donatello spent months together in Rome
00:14:24excavating and studying classical remains.
00:14:27What they saw was the figure in action depicted with a freedom
00:14:31and naturalness that was as convincing as it was dramatic.
00:14:39They admired the rare works in bronze that had survived from ancient times,
00:14:44astounding masterpieces of modelling and casting.
00:14:48For over a thousand years, art had never looked like life.
00:14:52But here was sculpture from a pre-Christian world that mirrored life itself.
00:14:57The shock, the excitement of that rediscovery was what had set the Renaissance alight.
00:15:02Man could be portrayed in all the truth and splendour of his humanity,
00:15:06in all the realism of his living presence.
00:15:10And that was the challenge Donatello rose to in his next major commission.
00:15:17High up on the Campanile, the bell tower of Florence Cathedral,
00:15:21were to be set life-size statues of Old Testament prophets,
00:15:25their gestures distinct and their faces legible from over 50 feet below.
00:15:30The ones there now are modern copies.
00:15:32But you can see the originals at close quarters in the Cathedral Museum.
00:15:37They are quite alarmingly powerful.
00:15:42Five hundred years ago, realism taken this far was revolutionary.
00:15:47No one had ever seen such vigorous modelling, such forceful characterisation.
00:15:52In fact, people at the time were convinced they were actual portraits of Florentine notabilities.
00:16:04The last prophet, Habakkuk, took eight years to carve.
00:16:08He became Donatello's obsession.
00:16:11As he wrestled endlessly to make the stone express all he felt,
00:16:16Vasari tells us how he would growl at it.
00:16:19Speak.
00:16:20Speak, or may you shit blood.
00:16:30But when, finally, the struggle was over, his attitude changed.
00:16:34He became quite attached to his creation,
00:16:37and took to swearing,
00:16:38By the faith that I place in my old Baldy.
00:16:47Realism of character was revolutionary.
00:16:50But if we turn again to the St. George,
00:16:53we find below the statue itself yet another innovation.
00:16:57A relief in perspective,
00:16:59portraying the saint as master of his environment.
00:17:03Carved in 1417,
00:17:05it's the first dated example of that Renaissance concern
00:17:08to place figures in a realistic setting of architecture and landscape.
00:17:14Brunelleschi and Masaccio were to take the perspective idea further,
00:17:17but this panel anticipates them both.
00:17:29The shallow carving here was itself an innovation,
00:17:32which we see Donatello developing in his collaboration on this tomb for Naples in 1427.
00:17:39For such commissions, he had set up in partnership, very successfully,
00:17:43with the architect sculptor Michelozzo,
00:17:45and the radically new classical spirit in which they designed projects like this
00:17:50set a pattern for all Renaissance sculptors.
00:17:57Michelozzo was responsible for the funeral effigy of Cardinal Brancacci,
00:18:01and indeed for much of the other carving,
00:18:04but the real focus of attention is Donatello's own carving,
00:18:08a delicate low relief of the assumption of the Virgin.
00:18:12She is being transported to paradise in an aureole of suffused light
00:18:17by tears of angels moving through the clouds.
00:18:25The technique which produced such subtly pictorial effects
00:18:29was entirely Donatello's invention,
00:18:32without precedent in either classical or medieval practice.
00:18:39In earlier relief carving, the sculptor and his assistants would use the chisel and the drill
00:18:44to cut down through the marble.
00:18:53The foreground figures would then stand out from the background,
00:18:57half or more in the round, like statuettes set against a flat slab.
00:19:03The differences between this earlier kind of workshop practice
00:19:07and Donatello's very personal, individual approach
00:19:10have long been an interest of the sculptor Peter Rockwell.
00:19:14Now, the 14th century relief, the techniques,
00:19:16it's basically a craftsman's work,
00:19:19rather than what we would think of in modern terms as an artist's work.
00:19:23Now, Donatello, in contrast, reduces the tools down to two or three tools,
00:19:29the point tool, flat chisel, and quite possibly the round chisel.
00:19:34And what he does is he takes the flat chisel,
00:19:38and he can just carve, you see, with the corner in there,
00:19:42you could literally draw something.
00:19:46You could just draw a line like that, going around,
00:19:52and take the other side of the chisel, and work one's way across the carving.
00:20:02Then taking the point chisel, and where I see something
00:20:08that I want to get rid of a little bit of background,
00:20:10just delicately carving.
00:20:15I think it's important to be very clear about this,
00:20:18because it's not a form of drawing and then transferring it to marble,
00:20:22which would be the modern technique.
00:20:24It's drawing directly into the marble,
00:20:26so that if you don't like the movement of a finger, you can move it.
00:20:30You have such low relief, and such a kind of a free-moving technique,
00:20:35that the carver gets himself into the habit of just letting the level of depth find itself.
00:20:43The level is free and relates directly to the drawing that you're doing with the chisel in the marble.
00:21:00The Donatello reliefs, where you can see them in a relatively original state,
00:21:05you see that he did all of his finishing with chisels,
00:21:08and the 14th century relief is normally finished with abrasive stones of one form or another.
00:21:14And so he isn't looking for smoothness, he's looking for effect.
00:21:22Nowhere is that search for effect more beautifully realised than in this panel.
00:21:30It shows the disciples gathered round to bear witness as Christ ascends into heaven
00:21:35and leans down to bestow on St. Peter the leadership of the church.
00:21:43This really is drawing with the chisel.
00:21:46The depth of carving is no more than five millimetres,
00:21:49yet it's enough to catch every nuance of light and form.
00:22:00Hands, gestures, expressions, each one sketches a distinct personality, an individual emotion.
00:22:16And behind them all, a miraculously spacious, light-filled landscape.
00:22:27When the time came round for tax returns, Donatello, money-shy as always, got his partner Michalozzo to make out
00:22:34his declaration.
00:22:3611th of July 1427.
00:22:39This is the property and obligations of Donatello, son of Niccolo di Beto Carver.
00:22:45Without any property except for a few household goods for personal and family use.
00:22:50I rent a house from Guglielmo Adimari, and there I have the following.
00:22:55Myself, Donato, aged 41.
00:22:57Mona Orsa, my mother, 80.
00:23:00Mona Tita, my sister, a widow without dowry, 45.
00:23:04Giuliano, son of Mona Tita, crippled 18.
00:23:10I practice my art in partnership with Michalozzo di Bartolomeo,
00:23:14with no capital except 30 florins worth of various tools and equipment for professional use.
00:23:20And from this partnership, I earn my living.
00:23:26This was one of the actual workshops.
00:23:30Michalozzo was already experienced in metal casting,
00:23:33and with his help, Donatello made his first major work not merely in bronze,
00:23:37but in gilded bronze, an extravagantly costly medium.
00:23:41It was a statue commissioned by the pro-French party in Florence, the Guelphs,
00:23:46choosing a French saint, St Louis of Toulouse, literally to outshine their rivals.
00:23:53To fuse gold leaf to its surface, the bronze had to be re-fired after casting,
00:23:59which meant building up the figure from sections of bronze drapery
00:24:03small enough to go into a high-temperature kiln.
00:24:06From now on, Donatello began to use drapery itself for expressive effect.
00:24:15An entry from the baptistry archives of Siena Cathedral.
00:24:20Siena, 27th of April, 1429.
00:24:23The daughter of Tommaso, son of Paolo di Venuccio, goldsmith,
00:24:27was held at the font by Donatello.
00:24:30For that very font, he provided baby angels in bronze
00:24:34in the same month he had stood by it as a godfather,
00:24:37together with a figure of hope,
00:24:39and another representing faith.
00:24:44Like the statue of St Louis, the bronze here too is gilded,
00:24:48and the sculptural rhythms are concentrated in the drapery.
00:24:54The font had been designed by the Sienese sculptor Jacopo della Quercia,
00:24:59with contributions from several others.
00:25:02Donatello's main one was a dramatic relief again in gilded bronze,
00:25:06and the subject was the feast of Herod.
00:25:14Every trick of perspective draws their eye to Herod himself,
00:25:18shrinking back in horror,
00:25:20as John the Baptist's head is presented to him on a charger.
00:25:30When it comes to horrors like Goya, like Picasso,
00:25:34Donatello spares neither brutality nor the shock of outrage.
00:25:39And he heightens the effect by uncoiling with sinister grace
00:25:43the figure of Salome dancing in triumph at her enemy's death
00:25:47like a classical baccante.
00:25:54He was spending more and more time studying classical sculptures,
00:25:58and by this time was even collecting them.
00:26:01And reliefs on Trajan's column in Rome
00:26:03probably gave him the idea of cutting off action
00:26:06into compartments like a strip cartoon.
00:26:10The Baptist's head is brought up from the dungeons,
00:26:14nearer past the musicians playing for Salome,
00:26:17and so into Herod's presence and ours.
00:26:21Earlier artists would have shown the whole palace,
00:26:25the convention being that you took away the front wall
00:26:27to show the action inside.
00:26:30Donatello, more experimental, more modern,
00:26:32cuts straight to the interior.
00:26:36Using the same subject, Herod's feast,
00:26:38but carved this time in marble,
00:26:40he experimented with space again,
00:26:43emphasising the perspective to stage the action
00:26:46in a kind of open courtyard.
00:26:48And, for once, he rather overdid it,
00:26:51for the space looks more dramatic than the story it frames.
00:27:01Never again did he allow his actors to appear
00:27:04quite so subservient to their setting.
00:27:28In 1434, Florence at last settled down to a period of relative political stability,
00:27:34after a particularly violent series of power struggles between the city's great families.
00:27:39The head of one of them, a wealthy banker,
00:27:42came back from exile and established himself at the helm of Florentine politics.
00:27:47The great age of the Medici had begun.
00:27:52Cosimo de Medici was to prove the patron and friend who understood Donatello better than anyone,
00:27:58even though, as Vasari tells us, their ways of life were so utterly different.
00:28:04Since Donatello did not dress as Cosimo would have liked him to,
00:28:07Cosimo gave him a red cloak with a hood and a gown.
00:28:10One feast day, he sent them to the sculptor in the hope that he would wear them.
00:28:16Donatello did once or twice, and then put them aside,
00:28:19as they struck him as being too dandified.
00:28:24Cosimo was acquiring property in the city, where ultimately he would build a palace.
00:28:28And in the old inn of Santa Catarina, he was now able to offer the sculptor lodgings and a workshop.
00:28:35He charged a peppercorn rent for them, a mere five florins a year.
00:28:40But Donatello was always behind with payments.
00:28:43He was notoriously averse to giving his mind to such matters.
00:28:47He was most liberal, gracious and courteous,
00:28:50and even more careful for his friends' interests than for his own.
00:28:54Nor did he give a thought for money,
00:28:56but kept it in a basket, hung by a cord from the ceiling,
00:28:59so that all his workmen and friends could take what they needed without bothering him.
00:29:05A new studio, hard by the Medici Church of San Lorenzo,
00:29:09was probably linked to work for Cosimo.
00:29:13The tomb of Cosimo's father, Giovanni di Bici,
00:29:16was set in the very centre of the old sacristy,
00:29:19an architectural masterpiece by Brunelleschi, completed in 1428.
00:29:28Donatello was called on to embellish the roundels in the vault.
00:29:32Four of them he filled with scenes from the life of St John the Evangelist.
00:29:37Now a master in the art of perspective,
00:29:40he effortlessly projects a great vaulted space, like that of an ancient Roman bathhouse,
00:29:45as a setting for the saints' raising of Drusiana from the dead.
00:29:53For his ascension into heaven, an ingenious skyscraper effect,
00:29:57as if in the stalls a spectator peers over the edge of the stage
00:30:01and leads our gaze upwards through converging lines of architecture
00:30:05to where the saint takes his leave of this mortal world.
00:30:13Using another four roundels, like windows,
00:30:17Donatello takes us into the privacy of their studies
00:30:20as the writers of the Gospels meditate upon their work.
00:30:23St Luke, identified by his symbol, the winged ox.
00:30:28And once again, St John,
00:30:30the moving and imaginative portraits of a pensive, melancholy sage.
00:30:38But for years, the full beauty of Donatello's scheme of decoration
00:30:41has been obliterated by damp, grime and overpainting.
00:30:48The gridiron on which was martyred San Lorenzo,
00:30:51the saint to whom the church is dedicated.
00:30:53Some philistine painted the whole figure to look like bronze.
00:31:02But now all the reliefs are being cleaned and restored to the brilliance
00:31:06of their original full colour and delicate gilding.
00:31:27The story goes that those long-standing friends, Brunelleschi and Donatello,
00:31:32fell out over the insertion of highly coloured narratives
00:31:35into such an austere architectural framework.
00:31:37Brunelleschi had designed ribs of grey sandstone to outline pure white walls
00:31:43and understandably resented what was presumably Cosimo's request
00:31:47to brighten up the effect with decorative details.
00:32:11For the first time in centuries, we are beginning to see what Donatello really intended.
00:32:30These large roundels over six feet across had to be modelled from a scaffolding straight onto the wall.
00:32:36The wet plaster, already coloured, was applied in layers starting from the background
00:32:41with separate strips laid on top to give an added three-dimensional effect.
00:32:50Details of architecture are cut into the quick-drying plaster with rulers and sharp knives.
00:32:58Seen in close-up, it's a virtuoso performance.
00:33:01The speed with which Donatello works across the design and smudges in a cloud is almost palpable.
00:33:12Nails were hammered in, not quite flush with the surface,
00:33:15so that the figures and details could be built up round them.
00:33:19Here and there, you can see where Donatello's scratched in the background design before the plaster dries.
00:33:34Once again, he drives across the composition with diagonal lines of perspective,
00:33:39and then with an extraordinarily modern sense of immediacy,
00:33:43crops the action at the edges like a snapshot to thrust the whole scene into depth beyond the frame.
00:33:51Modelling in relief, as the sculptor Elizabeth Frink has found,
00:33:55poses particular problems of vision and technique.
00:33:59One of the reasons I find this is interesting, doing a relief, is working in clay, which I don't normally
00:34:03do.
00:34:04It's very much easier, in fact, doing a relief, I find, in clay, because of its flexibility and you can
00:34:09push it around.
00:34:11And I see more and more the difficulties in making a relief.
00:34:14It's fantastically difficult to do, mainly because you're trying to get something in the round and in perspective.
00:34:21And one of the difficulties I'm finding at the moment is to stop my figures looking as though they've been
00:34:28flattened against the wall,
00:34:29rather than growing into the landscape as they should be, as though they were actually in the round.
00:34:34And I think this is one of the major problems of doing a relief, but I am finding it very,
00:34:38very difficult, I must say.
00:34:42I'm trying to suggest a landscape here, which is one that I know very well.
00:34:47It's up above us on the hill, where there's a large cross on top of an Iron Age fort.
00:34:54And I think that in Donatello's relief, a lot of the backgrounds are beautifully and very lightly modelled and sketched
00:34:59in,
00:35:00which gives them a tremendous distance.
00:35:02But initially, here, I'm having a problem of making this man far enough away from the hill,
00:35:09and not flattened against the landscape.
00:35:13So I will probably, in the end, have to set this right back even further,
00:35:19and probably take the man down also.
00:35:24It's too much and it's in too high relief.
00:35:32I think in a lot of his reliefs, one of the things I find the most beautiful are the delicate
00:35:38way which things in the background are just a strip of,
00:35:42a delicate strip of clay, so fine, whereas I'm just struggling now, trying to suggest a cross.
00:35:50But he just looks as though his hand just moved across the landscape.
00:35:55And so he just placed it there, and never had to work on it, and I'm sure he didn't.
00:36:02I find him a much more interesting artist than Michelangelo,
00:36:06because he has this immense sensitivity combined with terrific strength.
00:36:13.
00:36:58As Brunelleschi's great dome for Florence Cathedral began to near completion, commissions
00:37:03were being placed to adorn the interior.
00:37:06One of them was for two choir galleries in marble to be set above the doors of the twin
00:37:11sacristies.
00:37:13The first was ordered in 1431 from Luca della Robbia, an obscure young sculptor from the
00:37:19cathedral workshop, whose first step to fame was this masterly frieze of choristers.
00:37:25With trumpets, tabers, lutes, psaltery and cymbals, they sing the verses of Psalm 150 unscribed
00:37:31above and below them, Laudate Dominum, praise ye the Lord.
00:37:58Just three years previously, this outdoor pulpit for the cathedral at Prato had been commissioned
00:38:04from Michelozzo and Donatello.
00:38:05And it may be that the young Luca della Robbia had been aware of this design, for this too
00:38:11has a gallery of rejoicing cherubs divided into panels.
00:38:17Donatello had dragged his feet infuriatingly over this commission.
00:38:20He'd even abandoned it for three whole years while he and Michelozzo went off to Rome.
00:38:25And his patrons had had to get Cosimo de' Medici to intervene personally to persuade him
00:38:29to finish it.
00:38:30And even then, he left most of the actual carving to assistance.
00:38:37Oddly evasive about this commission, he couldn't wait to begin his next.
00:38:41He'd received a new summons from Florence.
00:38:59It would be Donatello's answer to Luca della Robbia's choir gallery in the cathedral.
00:39:04But being better paid for it, he went for a more sumptuous and uninhibited effect, determined
00:39:10to outshine Luca panel for panel.
00:39:13He developed his outdoor pulpit design into a frieze of cavorting putty over 16 feet long
00:39:19and running continuously behind pairs of freestanding colonettes.
00:39:23Let joy be unconfined and, for good measure, a background studded with mosaic to glint in
00:39:29the dim light of the cathedral.
00:39:31The calm and clarity of Luca are banished as Donatello's putty take up a wild Bacchic dance.
00:39:37GUESS
00:39:39And then
00:40:09Donatello's children often behave as if they've forgotten they're meant to be in church,
00:40:14and these ones are certainly brothers to a single, rather mysterious figure in bronze called the Attis Amorino.
00:40:30In his laughing face, there's something that beckons mischievously from a world not Christian,
00:40:36but pagan. He dances on a snake.
00:40:41He has poppy heads at his belt, but no one knows for certain who or what he symbolizes.
00:41:15Donatello's children
00:41:18is one of his classical compositions. It's his life-size sculpture of the Annunciation, carved in grey Tuscan sandstone for
00:41:25the Cavalcanti chapel in Santa Croce.
00:41:30He presents the scene in its architectural frame as on a stage, projecting the figures from their background in three
00:41:37-quarters relief within a space which in fact is quite shallow.
00:41:43But the sense of volume and movement catches this moment of drama as tellingly as a tableau vivant.
00:41:51The Virgin rises, startled and shy, but not unduly alarmed, as she draws back slightly to gaze down at the
00:42:00angel kneeling before her.
00:42:04Gestures, movements, as always with Donatello, touchingly human, but for once the faces themselves are idealised, classical,
00:42:13like those of the Three Graces, a famous work of antiquity that he must have known in Siena.
00:42:19Christian theme, pagan source, once again subtly merge in his imagination.
00:42:32In 1443, Donatello had to abandon his studio in Florence.
00:42:37Cosimo began demolishing that part of the city to build his massive new palace,
00:42:42and as the temperamental sculptor was then 57, it could have been with a sense of justified grievance
00:42:48that he took off in that very same year northwards to Padua.
00:43:00Padua had recently come under the rule of Venice and was a seat of learning.
00:43:04It was, in fact, the university which leased Donatello this house,
00:43:08looking across to what was to be the focus of his activities for the next ten years,
00:43:13the great Basilica of St. Anthony.
00:43:16Buried in this church only two months before, had been a famous mercenary,
00:43:20captain general of the armies of Venice, Erasmo di Nani, nicknamed Gattamalata, the spotted cat.
00:43:28Donatello's ambition to make this sculpture may have brought him to Padua,
00:43:32but it wasn't the first he completed there,
00:43:35for in the great church itself his services were also being demanded.
00:43:46St. Anthony is the patron saint of pilgrims,
00:43:49and his Basilica here was for them a major shrine,
00:43:53known throughout the Catholic world simply as Il Santo.
00:43:57For the refurbishing of its interior, Donatello embarked on a life-size crucifix in bronze.
00:44:02As he and his men worked away in the heat of summer,
00:44:06the materials were carefully recorded.
00:44:10Owing against Donatello's account,
00:44:121444, 24th of January,
00:44:154 lira, 12 soldi, for 46 pounds of iron for an armature.
00:44:2119th of June,
00:44:2221 lira for white wax for modelling the surface.
00:44:261st of July,
00:44:2815 lira for wine.
00:44:37Donatello's modelling of the human body
00:44:39was to be criticised later on in the Renaissance
00:44:41as too lifelike,
00:44:43not classical enough.
00:44:45But to him,
00:44:46the marvel about classical sculpture
00:44:48had not been its idealism,
00:44:50but its revelation of anatomical truth.
00:44:53Truth need be no less noble
00:44:55for appearing almost unbearably real.
00:44:59But the effect must still have been a shock
00:45:01to people who'd always imagined the dead Christ
00:45:04as emaciated, angular, anguished, gothic.
00:45:08With one work,
00:45:09Donatello had brought the Renaissance
00:45:11to northern Italy.
00:45:18The Santo had recently been enriched
00:45:21by an enormous bequest
00:45:22from a wealthy wool merchant
00:45:24for an entirely new altarpiece.
00:45:26The church authorities had been impressed
00:45:28by the great bronze crucifix,
00:45:30so they now commissioned Donatello
00:45:32to produce for a new high altar
00:45:34a whole complex of sculpture.
00:45:37Standing above it, almost life-size,
00:45:39six freestanding figures of saints,
00:45:41leading up to a central group
00:45:43of the Virgin and Child.
00:45:52Below them,
00:45:53a whole series of bronze reliefs,
00:45:55including symbols of the four evangelists.
00:45:59Supervising every detail
00:46:00of design, modelling, casting, and polishing,
00:46:03Donatello emerges as one of the great entrepreneurs
00:46:06of the history of art.
00:46:07He ran a workshop
00:46:08with more than 20 assistants
00:46:10to produce 29 pieces of sculpture
00:46:12in four years,
00:46:13of which 16 are wholly from his own hand.
00:46:18One of these, on the back of the altar,
00:46:20is an entombment carved in stone.
00:46:23Into a claustrophobically tight space
00:46:25are packed eight figures
00:46:27around the body of Christ.
00:46:29The men lay it to rest
00:46:30with looks of stoic resignation.
00:46:33Behind them,
00:46:34the three Marys tear their hair
00:46:36and howl in anguish,
00:46:38like mynades in a bacchic rout
00:46:40on a Roman sarcophagus.
00:46:49By the 13th of June, 1448,
00:46:52after two years' work,
00:46:53most of the bronze reliefs
00:46:55and all seven of the freestanding statues
00:46:57had been cast,
00:46:58and a trial altar was prepared in wood
00:47:00to display them for St Anthony's Day.
00:47:05Another two years,
00:47:06while the actual altar was built
00:47:08from the best and costliest materials,
00:47:11alabaster,
00:47:11white and red marble from Firona,
00:47:13greyish nant stone,
00:47:15Donatello travelling
00:47:16to the quarries himself
00:47:17to choose them.
00:47:21And in June 1450,
00:47:23the sculptures were finally installed,
00:47:25again probably in time
00:47:26for St Anthony's Day.
00:47:30But alas,
00:47:31Donatello's original high altar
00:47:33was demolished
00:47:33at the end of the 16th century,
00:47:35and no one made a record
00:47:36of its design.
00:47:38What we see today
00:47:39is a reconstruction of 1895,
00:47:41which is far from accurate.
00:47:43We know the great crucifix,
00:47:45for instance,
00:47:46hung elsewhere in the church.
00:47:50But the Virgin,
00:47:52crowned as Queen of Heaven,
00:47:53is rightly at the centre,
00:47:55holding her baby in front of her
00:47:57in what seems for Donatello
00:47:58a curiously formal pose.
00:48:01It's a device borrowed
00:48:03from Byzantine art,
00:48:04signifying that the child
00:48:06is shown symbolically
00:48:07in the Virgin's womb,
00:48:08but made visible
00:48:10as if by x-rays.
00:48:15The painter Mantegna
00:48:17was working in Padua
00:48:18at much this same time,
00:48:20and one altarpiece by him
00:48:22reflects how Donatello
00:48:23originally planned his.
00:48:26At the centre,
00:48:27the Virgin and Child
00:48:28enthroned,
00:48:29surrounded by saints,
00:48:30but all beneath
00:48:31a temple portico
00:48:32supported on columns.
00:48:35The saints are grouped
00:48:37as if in conversation,
00:48:38placed at angles
00:48:39to one another,
00:48:40but leading in
00:48:41towards the centre.
00:48:43Donatello's saints
00:48:43were probably grouped
00:48:44in the same way.
00:48:46What's no longer certain
00:48:47is if they'd been placed
00:48:49in the right order.
00:48:54St. Francis, for instance,
00:48:56faces away from,
00:48:57not towards,
00:48:58the Virgin.
00:49:00He's not highly finished
00:49:02in detail,
00:49:03these figures had to register
00:49:04from a distance,
00:49:05but boldly
00:49:06and impressionistically
00:49:07modelled.
00:49:08And the troubled,
00:49:10compassionate face
00:49:11is as real as a portrait.
00:49:13It might even have been
00:49:15based on Cimabue's
00:49:16actual portrait
00:49:17in Assisi.
00:49:18Just as this early memory
00:49:20of St. Anthony
00:49:21in the basilica itself
00:49:22might have been a model
00:49:23for Donatello's
00:49:24interpretation of him.
00:49:29Below these figures,
00:49:31on the front and sides
00:49:32of the altar,
00:49:32are bronze reliefs
00:49:34with stories
00:49:34from St. Anthony's life,
00:49:36designed to be seen
00:49:37much closer to
00:49:38the sumptuous architecture
00:49:39picked out
00:49:40with gilding and silvering,
00:49:42the scenes themselves
00:49:43alive with detailed action.
00:49:48Within a set of
00:49:50amazingly varied spaces,
00:49:51each barely more
00:49:52than three feet across,
00:49:54Donatello manoeuvres
00:49:55the crowds
00:49:55like a director
00:49:56in a theatre.
00:50:00It could be
00:50:01that popular theatre
00:50:02was in fact
00:50:03his inspiration.
00:50:05Mystery plays
00:50:06must have been performed
00:50:07in much this same atmosphere
00:50:08of excited audience participation,
00:50:11as they acted out stories
00:50:12of strange marvels
00:50:14and wondrous happenings,
00:50:15like that of the mule
00:50:17which knelt in homage
00:50:18to the host
00:50:18when St. Anthony
00:50:19was celebrating Mass.
00:50:28In another magnificent setting,
00:50:31another popular folktale,
00:50:32The Miracle of the Miser's Heart.
00:50:35But a folktale ennobled
00:50:37and raised to a grander level
00:50:39of spiritual experience
00:50:40as Donatello gives rein
00:50:42to his imagination
00:50:42in vista upon vista
00:50:44of architectural fantasy.
00:50:54The sheer stage management
00:50:56is masterly,
00:50:57and one wonders
00:50:57how he worked out
00:50:59such complex
00:50:59and crowded designs.
00:51:04only one drawing
00:51:05certainly by him
00:51:06survives,
00:51:07but he must have made
00:51:09hundreds of studies
00:51:09like this
00:51:10throughout his life
00:51:11of fragmentary groups
00:51:12of figures.
00:51:14From these,
00:51:15he'd have moved on
00:51:16to sketch modelling
00:51:17in wax,
00:51:18and sometimes
00:51:18he'd have cast that sketch
00:51:20in terracotta,
00:51:21as here.
00:51:22Traces of wax
00:51:23have actually been found
00:51:24on its surface.
00:51:25But wax is impermanent.
00:51:28A cast would preserve
00:51:29the rough idea
00:51:30for showing perhaps
00:51:31to a prospective patron.
00:51:38These two panels
00:51:39for a flagellation
00:51:40and a crucifixion
00:51:41must have been made
00:51:43around the same time
00:51:44as the bronze reliefs
00:51:45for Padua.
00:51:48They're as near
00:51:49as we'll ever get
00:51:50to one of Donatello's
00:51:52original wax sketches.
00:52:03Of the four St. Anthony
00:52:05reliefs in Padua,
00:52:06the most astonishing
00:52:07must be the healing
00:52:08of the irascible son.
00:52:10A boy had kicked his mother
00:52:12in a fit of rage
00:52:13and then in penance
00:52:14cut off the offending foot.
00:52:16But St. Anthony
00:52:17miraculously restores it.
00:52:20The story perhaps
00:52:21stirred in Donatello
00:52:22a certain fellow feeling.
00:52:23On one occasion
00:52:25he had himself
00:52:25smashed a bronze head
00:52:27to pieces
00:52:27when a patron
00:52:28failed to come up
00:52:29with the agreed price.
00:52:31But he hadn't had
00:52:32a St. Anthony
00:52:32to put things to rights
00:52:34again quite so easily.
00:52:37He sets the scene
00:52:39under a blaze of light
00:52:40in an amazing
00:52:41outdoor stadium.
00:52:43Just such a place
00:52:44as mystery plays
00:52:45were staged in.
00:52:46And he has spectators
00:52:48strategically placed
00:52:49along the rails
00:52:49for a virtuoso
00:52:51display of perspective.
00:52:55Rough surfaces
00:52:56break up
00:52:57and scatter the light
00:52:58for in these reliefs
00:53:00with their touches
00:53:00of silver and gold
00:53:02Donatello varies
00:53:03the luminosity
00:53:04within each scene
00:53:05like a painter
00:53:06as much as a sculptor.
00:53:17One sculptor
00:53:18who has studied
00:53:19these extraordinary panels
00:53:20with a particular
00:53:21interest in their technique
00:53:23of as it were
00:53:24modelling with light
00:53:25is Henry Moore.
00:53:26I was trying
00:53:28to understand
00:53:29what it was
00:53:31in Donatello
00:53:34that I like so much
00:53:36and that I'd learnt
00:53:37and the change
00:53:39from an earlier
00:53:41assessment
00:53:41or appreciation.
00:53:44and I realised
00:53:46that the reliefs
00:53:48particularly
00:53:48the late reliefs
00:53:49which as a young sculptor
00:53:51I'd had
00:53:52a prejudice
00:53:53against reliefs
00:53:54wanting to do
00:53:55only three-dimensional
00:53:56sculpture
00:53:56I saw
00:53:57that he was using
00:54:00whether he modelled
00:54:01them first
00:54:02when they were put
00:54:02into bronze
00:54:03whether he modelled
00:54:04in wax
00:54:04or what
00:54:05I don't know
00:54:05the technique
00:54:06for sure
00:54:06but that when
00:54:08he wanted
00:54:08to get a dark
00:54:12he pushed
00:54:13the clay in
00:54:15if it was clay
00:54:16soft or so
00:54:17or that when
00:54:19he wanted
00:54:19to have
00:54:20the light
00:54:21strike something
00:54:22he brought it out
00:54:23so there was
00:54:25this piece of paper
00:54:26by one side
00:54:27and I began
00:54:28to draw one of the heads
00:54:29to try to understand
00:54:30myself
00:54:31how different
00:54:32the late
00:54:34reliefs are
00:54:35from the early ones
00:54:36because I realised
00:54:38that in the late
00:54:39or middle reliefs
00:54:40even
00:54:40that soon after
00:54:41his early reliefs
00:54:44that he began
00:54:45to use
00:54:47the clay
00:54:48he was using
00:54:49in fact
00:54:50this clay
00:54:51like a
00:54:52I might use
00:54:53charcoal
00:54:53on paper
00:54:55having a white paper
00:54:56where I put
00:54:57the charcoal
00:54:58it's where I'm
00:54:59turning a thing
00:55:00away from the light
00:55:01where I leave
00:55:02the charcoal off
00:55:03and have the white
00:55:03of the paper
00:55:04it's turning a thing
00:55:05towards the light
00:55:06and this in fact
00:55:07is how you
00:55:08draw
00:55:09by light and shade
00:55:10and he was
00:55:12modelling
00:55:13by light and shade
00:55:14and getting a pictorial effect
00:55:16as a painter would do
00:55:17but a painter
00:55:18who had an
00:55:19enormous
00:55:20understanding
00:55:21of draftsmanship
00:55:23of three dimensions
00:55:26and it made me realise
00:55:27how he exaggerated
00:55:29how this eye
00:55:30goes further back
00:55:31than it would do
00:55:33in real life
00:55:34how the thinness
00:55:35of the chin
00:55:36comes forward
00:55:37how this side
00:55:38here
00:55:39is almost cut
00:55:40like an axe
00:55:41to get all that
00:55:43catching the light
00:55:44and all this
00:55:44turned away from it
00:55:45with the nose
00:55:46just catching the light
00:55:47it's really drawing
00:55:49it's really drawing
00:55:50in a
00:55:51it's not
00:55:52doing a geometric
00:55:54copying
00:55:55of distances
00:55:56as it would be
00:55:58in nature
00:56:04you can see
00:56:04Donatello
00:56:05had a great
00:56:06inventive literary mind
00:56:08too
00:56:08like
00:56:09like Shakespeare
00:56:12it's unbelievable
00:56:13what
00:56:13what invention
00:56:14he shows
00:56:16in these reliefs
00:56:17he could make a novel
00:56:18out of any one
00:56:19of these
00:56:19merely
00:56:26this must have been
00:56:27one of the busiest
00:56:28periods
00:56:29of Donatello's life
00:56:30while supervising
00:56:31all the work
00:56:32on the altar
00:56:33he and his team
00:56:34of assistants
00:56:34were also involved
00:56:35with the equestrian
00:56:36bronze statue
00:56:37of Gatamalata
00:56:38his first problem
00:56:40was a technical one
00:56:41the horse itself
00:56:43it's modelled
00:56:44on the famous
00:56:45bronze horses
00:56:46of St Mark's
00:56:46in Venice
00:56:47but they all stand
00:56:48with one forefoot
00:56:49off the ground
00:56:51Donatello's rests
00:56:52its foot
00:56:53on a modern cannonball
00:56:54to stabilise the group
00:56:56the great problem
00:56:58with statues of horses
00:56:59is the relative
00:56:59thinness of their legs
00:57:01which have to support
00:57:01so much weight
00:57:13holding a commander's
00:57:14baton
00:57:14the rider
00:57:15wears a fanciful
00:57:16version of Roman
00:57:17uniform
00:57:17slightly at odds
00:57:19but the modern weapon
00:57:20at his side
00:57:20a long sword
00:57:22Roman also
00:57:23is the detailing
00:57:24on the armour
00:57:25and saddle
00:57:25though they're not
00:57:27classically correct
00:57:28in a military context
00:57:30the whole statue
00:57:31in fact
00:57:31is more
00:57:32an evocative tribute
00:57:33to a great reputation
00:57:34than in any sense
00:57:35a portrait
00:57:36even the head
00:57:37is imaginary
00:57:39Gatamalata
00:57:39in the days
00:57:40of his glory
00:57:41not the old soldier
00:57:42who recently died
00:57:44at the age of 70
00:57:49the monument
00:57:50was in fact
00:57:51a private memorial
00:57:52paid for by the commander's family
00:57:54and it stood
00:57:55in what was then
00:57:56a cemetery
00:57:57just opposite
00:57:57the sculptor's house
00:58:00a depressing sight
00:58:02so many memorials
00:58:04to the dead
00:58:04when like Donatello
00:58:06you're 70 yourself
00:58:07in poor health
00:58:08and tired
00:58:09of the endless disputes
00:58:10overpayment
00:58:11both for the Gatamalata
00:58:13and for the bronzes
00:58:14in the basilica
00:58:15as he said himself
00:58:17in order not to die
00:58:18among the frogs
00:58:19of Padua
00:58:20he'd be pleased
00:58:21to move on
00:58:24by November
00:58:251454
00:58:26he was back
00:58:27in his native Florence
00:58:28renting a house
00:58:29and workshop
00:58:29near the cathedral
00:58:32where his old studio
00:58:33had stood
00:58:34ten years before
00:58:35there was now
00:58:36the great palace
00:58:37just being completed
00:58:38by Michelotto
00:58:38his former partner
00:58:40for Cosimo de Medici
00:58:41a palace that was
00:58:43to house
00:58:43two of his most
00:58:44challenging sculptures
00:58:48its courtyard
00:58:49conveyed the message
00:58:50of that specifically
00:58:51humanist culture
00:58:53sponsored by Medici rule
00:58:54and round it
00:58:56were versions
00:58:56greatly enlarged
00:58:58of eight famous
00:58:59antique cameos
00:59:00some from the Medici's
00:59:01own collections
00:59:04carved by Donatello's
00:59:06workshop
00:59:06these roundels
00:59:08suggest that
00:59:08the intellectual
00:59:09programme
00:59:10of the whole courtyard
00:59:11can best be understood
00:59:12in the light
00:59:12of neo-Platonist ideas
00:59:14this for example
00:59:16is the triumph
00:59:17of Eros
00:59:17the triumph
00:59:18of love
00:59:22in the centre
00:59:23of that courtyard
00:59:24where another statue
00:59:26now stands
00:59:26there then stood
00:59:27Donatello's
00:59:28most celebrated
00:59:29but enigmatic sculpture
00:59:30the bronze David
00:59:33nowadays it's high
00:59:35and dry
00:59:35in the Bargello museum
00:59:37and out of context
00:59:38its real meaning
00:59:39is all the more
00:59:40difficult to grasp
00:59:41the near nudity
00:59:43the sensuous interpretation
00:59:45of the lithe male body
00:59:47the mood
00:59:48of dreamy contemplation
00:59:50they've always seemed
00:59:52a very far cry
00:59:53from the Bible's image
00:59:54of David the giant killer
00:59:57except of course
00:59:58that this is not
00:59:58not a Bible illustration
01:00:00but a poetic allegory
01:00:21the figure derives
01:00:23from Greco-Roman statues
01:00:24of nude athletes
01:00:26and it is indeed
01:00:27the first life-size nude statue
01:00:29of the Renaissance
01:00:30if one excludes
01:00:31Donatello's own crucifix
01:00:33in Padua
01:00:33it's an avant-garde work
01:00:36resulting from
01:00:37aesthetic
01:00:37and intellectual ideals
01:00:39shared between
01:00:40artist and patron
01:00:41basically a private commission
01:00:43for a private palace
01:00:44and the dead Goliath
01:00:46laid low
01:00:47by the slingshot
01:00:48in David's hand
01:00:49becomes then
01:00:50the death
01:00:50of what is base
01:00:51at the hands
01:00:53of what is beautiful
01:00:59the Renaissance
01:01:00was too familiar
01:01:01with the writings
01:01:02of Plato
01:01:02to find anything puzzling
01:01:04about reading
01:01:05an image of male love
01:01:06as an allegory
01:01:07of heavenly love itself
01:01:08love
01:01:09beauty
01:01:10virtue
01:01:11they were all
01:01:12symbols of a moral ideal
01:01:15on Goliath's helmet
01:01:16there's a relief
01:01:17as in the courtyard
01:01:18of the triumph of Eros
01:01:20and a description of Eros
01:01:22in Plato's symposium
01:01:23provides all the ideas
01:01:25which are not present
01:01:26in the Bible
01:01:28Eros is young
01:01:29of a truth
01:01:30he is the tenderest
01:01:32as well as the youngest
01:01:33of flexible form
01:01:35in his grace
01:01:36the beauty of his complexion
01:01:38is revealed
01:01:39by his habitation
01:01:40among the flowers
01:01:41in the place
01:01:43of the flowers
01:01:43and scents
01:01:44there he dwells
01:01:51Donatello's David
01:01:52is not specifically
01:01:53mentioned in any document
01:01:55but his accounts
01:01:56for 1456
01:01:57do include
01:01:58a large amount
01:01:59of materials
01:01:59for bronze statuary
01:02:01enough
01:02:01it would seem
01:02:02to have made the David
01:02:03as well as
01:02:04a second major bronze
01:02:06for the centre
01:02:06of a fountain
01:02:07in the palace garden
01:02:08this was the awesome
01:02:10but magnificent
01:02:11Judith and Holofernes
01:02:14nowadays it's housed
01:02:15in the Palazzo Vecchio
01:02:17out of context
01:02:18like the David
01:02:23this second triumph
01:02:25of virtue over vice
01:02:27is both a pair
01:02:28to the David
01:02:29and a deliberate contrast
01:02:30for this is the beauty
01:02:32of virtue
01:02:33in a heroic woman
01:02:35who seduced
01:02:35the enemy of Israel
01:02:36in order to get him
01:02:38drunk and kill him
01:02:47originally an inscription
01:02:48below it ended
01:02:49behold the neck
01:02:51of pride
01:02:51severed
01:02:52by the hand
01:02:53of humility
01:02:59Judith
01:02:59Judith towers
01:03:00over her victim
01:03:01as if to sacrifice
01:03:01an animal
01:03:03not perhaps
01:03:04everyone's idea
01:03:05of humility
01:03:06as she stands
01:03:07astride his shoulder
01:03:08and treads down
01:03:09his limp right hand
01:03:10with one sandaled foot
01:03:17the oriental luxury
01:03:19of Holofernes' tent
01:03:20is suggested
01:03:21by the cushion
01:03:22beneath him
01:03:23which doubles
01:03:23as a wineskin
01:03:24to recall his drunkenness
01:03:27its four tasseled corners
01:03:28would originally
01:03:29have spouted water
01:03:30into the basin below
01:03:32even on the pedestal
01:03:34the evils of drink
01:03:35are underlined
01:03:36as none too sober
01:03:37putty indulge themselves
01:03:39round the wine barrel
01:03:46the way two such
01:03:48large figures
01:03:49are set on
01:03:50a triangular base
01:03:51is typical
01:03:51of Donatello's
01:03:52inventiveness
01:03:53with grouping
01:03:54totally distinct
01:03:55they flow together
01:03:56in one monumental group
01:03:58which still maintains
01:03:59the dominance
01:04:00of one over the other
01:04:08it's an exceptionally
01:04:10powerful work
01:04:11and Judith's victory
01:04:12is not for the faint-hearted
01:04:14even so the force
01:04:15of the image
01:04:16is fully intended
01:04:17to be read
01:04:17as the force
01:04:18of its model idea
01:04:19the constant
01:04:20familiar imperative
01:04:21the good
01:04:22must triumph
01:04:23over wrong
01:04:27throughout this period
01:04:28when Donatello
01:04:29was committed
01:04:30to so many
01:04:31major sculptures
01:04:31his health
01:04:32was poor
01:04:33it was his doctor
01:04:35who mentioned
01:04:35this roundel
01:04:36in his diary
01:04:38I record
01:04:39that on the 27th of August
01:04:411456
01:04:42while I was treating
01:04:43Donatello
01:04:44the singular
01:04:45and principal master
01:04:46in making figures
01:04:47of bronze
01:04:48and wood
01:04:48and terracotta
01:04:49he of his kindness
01:04:51and in consideration
01:04:52of the medical treatment
01:04:54which I had given
01:04:54and was giving him
01:04:56for his illness
01:04:56gave me a roundel
01:04:58the size of a trencher
01:05:00in which was sculpted
01:05:01the Virgin Mary
01:05:02with the child
01:05:03at her neck
01:05:03and two angels
01:05:04on each side
01:05:05all of bronze
01:05:11and on the reverse
01:05:12it was hollowed out
01:05:13so that molten glass
01:05:15could be cast onto it
01:05:16and it would make
01:05:17the same figures
01:05:18as those on the other side
01:05:22the doctor
01:05:23was Giovanni Chiellini
01:05:25rich and successful
01:05:26he had his portrait
01:05:27carved in the latest fashion
01:05:29that same year
01:05:30by Antonio Rossellino
01:05:31as a marble bust
01:05:33looking like a Roman patrician
01:05:35the doctor says
01:05:37he was given the roundel
01:05:38not that it was made
01:05:39specially for him
01:05:40casting replicas in glass
01:05:42is no job for a doctor
01:05:43but to a sculptor
01:05:45it was an appealing idea
01:05:46because it represented
01:05:47an extra source of income
01:05:48of a rather ingenious kind
01:05:55actually casting replicas
01:05:56of the Donnas
01:05:57was a common commercial activity
01:05:59among the sculptors
01:06:00workshops in Florence
01:06:01though normally
01:06:02they were cast in plaster
01:06:03or clay
01:06:04rather than glass
01:06:06such images
01:06:07are rarely associated
01:06:08with Donatello
01:06:09because so few examples
01:06:11are actually documented
01:06:12to him
01:06:14but this large Madonna
01:06:16and child
01:06:17in gilded terracotta
01:06:18proves what a tender
01:06:20interpreter he could be
01:06:21of this most popular
01:06:22of subjects
01:06:26it shows the same
01:06:28characteristics
01:06:28as the Collini roundel
01:06:30writ large
01:06:31the same exquisitely
01:06:33featured virgin
01:06:34with the same long
01:06:35delicate fingers
01:06:36the Christ child too
01:06:38a very real
01:06:40newly born baby
01:06:41and evidently studied
01:06:42from life
01:06:43even to the anatomically
01:06:45correct elongation
01:06:46to the back of the skull
01:06:56tightly wrapped
01:06:57in swaddling clothes
01:06:58he's propped up
01:06:59this time
01:07:00on a simple wooden chair
01:07:01like a doll
01:07:02before the gently reverential
01:07:04gaze of the young mother
01:07:06versions of this theme
01:07:08by Donatello
01:07:08were sometimes copied
01:07:10on tiny plaquettes
01:07:11of bronze
01:07:11for devotional use
01:07:13in the home
01:07:14or else in cheaper materials
01:07:16like painted
01:07:17and gilded plaster
01:07:19there are cast copies
01:07:20like this one
01:07:21from a street shrine
01:07:22in Verona
01:07:23was it a copy then
01:07:25that Charles Avery
01:07:26saw in Florence
01:07:28then look how
01:07:29it's excavated in here
01:07:30I can get my finger
01:07:31right in behind
01:07:32and in here
01:07:34so that couldn't
01:07:35have been cast
01:07:36it couldn't be a press casting
01:07:39actually down here
01:07:43there's a gap
01:07:44between the Madonna's nose
01:07:45and the baby's face
01:07:46well then it must be modeled
01:07:48they're not even
01:07:49really modeled together
01:07:50at all
01:07:51yeah
01:07:53then over here
01:07:54in the footer head
01:07:55one is
01:07:56seeing all the marks
01:07:57of the tool
01:07:57on these wings
01:07:58the hair has been
01:07:59picked out
01:08:00with different
01:08:01little drill marks
01:08:03of the eyes here
01:08:05what do you think
01:08:06of the feet of the baby
01:08:07all striated
01:08:08and carefully worked
01:08:11the little feet
01:08:12have those
01:08:13indented toenails
01:08:15just like the one
01:08:16in the V&A
01:08:17where the feet
01:08:17stick out
01:08:18at the end
01:08:18of the swaddling
01:08:19do you think
01:08:21it is the real thing
01:08:22yeah I think it is
01:08:24absolutely
01:08:27while he was up
01:08:28on his ladder
01:08:28Charles Avery
01:08:29took these
01:08:30colour slides
01:08:31and later showed them
01:08:32to a group of specialists
01:08:33at a conference
01:08:34in Detroit
01:08:35everyone
01:08:36including the
01:08:37Florentine experts
01:08:38agreed with some
01:08:39excitement
01:08:39that the Madonna
01:08:40of the Via Pietra Piana
01:08:41must be an original Donatello
01:08:53what's so often
01:08:54astonishing about Donatello
01:08:56is the sheer range
01:08:57of his human sympathy
01:08:59it's at its most moving
01:09:01here in his portrait
01:09:02of one who had known Christ
01:09:04had watched him die
01:09:05and spent the rest
01:09:06of her life
01:09:07in the desert
01:09:07this is St. Mary Magdalene
01:09:15the image shocks
01:09:17with its stark
01:09:18and terrible reality
01:09:19it's not merely
01:09:20the ageing sculptor's
01:09:22threnody on old age
01:09:23itself
01:09:24it's his witness
01:09:25to what life
01:09:25had taught him
01:09:26this he had seen
01:09:28this he knew
01:09:29and must tell of
01:09:36she has starved herself
01:09:38to the bone
01:09:39her nakedness
01:09:40is covered only
01:09:41by her own long hair
01:09:42with which she had once
01:09:43wiped the feet of Christ
01:09:46Donatello has built up
01:09:48this marvellous texture
01:09:49first by carving
01:09:50into a tree trunk
01:09:51then by adding
01:09:53pliable materials
01:09:54to model detail
01:09:55over the surface
01:09:56colour and gilding
01:09:58give the final touches
01:09:59of life itself
01:10:02cleaned and restored
01:10:04after the disastrous floods
01:10:05in Florence of 1966
01:10:06the refinement of its detail
01:10:09can at last
01:10:09be properly appreciated
01:10:11we can see now
01:10:12that Donatello
01:10:13stressed the blue eyes
01:10:15the stunning golden hair
01:10:16the fine bone structure
01:10:18of a creature
01:10:18who had once
01:10:19been glamorous
01:10:26but the message
01:10:27is not despairing
01:10:29the saint
01:10:30is subjected
01:10:31to deliberate
01:10:31hardship and starvation
01:10:33that body
01:10:34which was originally
01:10:35an object of desire
01:10:36and through tribulation
01:10:38her soul
01:10:39has been strengthened
01:10:40and ennobled
01:10:42Donatello
01:10:43is one of the great
01:10:44tragic artists
01:10:45yet his theme
01:10:46is again
01:10:46one of victory
01:10:47the triumph
01:10:49of the human spirit
01:10:59over the flesh
01:11:00nevertheless
01:11:01such a statue
01:11:02must have been
01:11:02like an affront
01:11:03to Florentine's sensibilities
01:11:05for in 1452
01:11:07at the baptistry
01:11:08Donatello's rival
01:11:10Ghiberti
01:11:10had unveiled
01:11:11his doors of paradise
01:11:12they'd set new standards
01:11:14of harmonious
01:11:15and measured composition
01:11:16less raw
01:11:18and emotional
01:11:18than Donatello's
01:11:23he was finding it
01:11:25harder now
01:11:25to get work
01:11:26in Florence
01:11:27restless and depressed
01:11:28he looked for patronage
01:11:30elsewhere
01:11:30from the council records
01:11:32of Siena
01:11:33an entry for 1457
01:11:36Donatello
01:11:36has let it be known
01:11:37that he wishes
01:11:38to live
01:11:38and to die here
01:11:39and to take on
01:11:40some outstanding masterpiece
01:11:42for the honour
01:11:43of the city
01:11:44the council
01:11:45should consider
01:11:45the most practical way
01:11:46this may be achieved
01:11:49what he got
01:11:50from Siena
01:11:51was the commission
01:11:51for a life-sized
01:11:52John the Baptist
01:11:53in the cathedral
01:11:55having to design it
01:11:56for a tall recess
01:11:58may have dictated
01:11:59the closed vertical form
01:12:01rather like the tree trunk
01:12:02of the Mary Magdalene
01:12:03although this time
01:12:04he was again
01:12:05using bronze
01:12:07but he no longer
01:12:08saw his tragic saints
01:12:10with the free
01:12:11and open gestures
01:12:12bronze would have
01:12:13allowed him
01:12:16he delivered the statue
01:12:18in three separate sections
01:12:19the legs
01:12:20the torso
01:12:21and the head
01:12:24but he was learning
01:12:25to bargain
01:12:26until the proper payment
01:12:28came through
01:12:28he withheld
01:12:29the right forearm
01:12:30and it was only
01:12:32botched on
01:12:33much later
01:12:33by someone else
01:12:34and not even
01:12:35at the right angle
01:12:44nevertheless
01:12:44he continued
01:12:45working in Siena
01:12:47where he seems
01:12:48to have made
01:12:48elaborate preparations
01:12:49for a monumental pair
01:12:51of bronze cathedral doors
01:12:52these would doubtless
01:12:54have embodied
01:12:55an impassioned critique
01:12:56of Ghiberti's
01:12:57Gates of Paradise
01:12:59it's sometimes thought
01:13:00there may be
01:13:01a connection
01:13:01between that scheme
01:13:02and this bronze panel
01:13:04of the lamentation
01:13:05over the dead Christ
01:13:17but one does wonder
01:13:18if the Sienese
01:13:19would really have
01:13:20appreciated
01:13:20such a hard-hitting
01:13:22narrative style
01:13:23as this
01:13:32there are faults
01:13:33too in the casting
01:13:34of this panel
01:13:34which encouraged
01:13:35someone to cut away
01:13:36parts of the background
01:13:38after the perfection
01:13:39of the foundryment
01:13:40at Padua
01:13:40one can imagine
01:13:41the old man's
01:13:42frustration
01:13:43at such inexperienced
01:13:44craftsmanship
01:13:46whatever the reason
01:13:47and in spite of
01:13:48much money spent
01:13:49on it
01:13:49the scheme
01:13:50for the bronze doors
01:13:51lapsed
01:13:52and Donatello
01:13:53left
01:13:55the Sienese
01:13:56were merciless
01:13:57they wanted him
01:13:58to refund the cost
01:13:59of the bed and feather
01:14:00bolster
01:14:01which had figured
01:14:01so prominently
01:14:02in his favorable
01:14:03contract
01:14:04let alone all the money
01:14:05they'd advanced him
01:14:06for materials
01:14:07totalling a hundred
01:14:08times his annual rent
01:14:11to provide for the
01:14:12sculptor
01:14:12in his old age
01:14:13Vasari tells us
01:14:15that the Medici
01:14:15gave him a farm
01:14:17near their country
01:14:17palace at Caffagiolo
01:14:20at this
01:14:20Donatello
01:14:21was overjoyed
01:14:22thinking that he was
01:14:23thus more than secure
01:14:25from the danger
01:14:25of dying of hunger
01:14:27but he had not
01:14:28held it a year
01:14:29before he gave it back
01:14:30declaring that he
01:14:31refused to lose
01:14:32his peace of mind
01:14:33by having to think
01:14:34of household cares
01:14:35and listened
01:14:36to the complaints
01:14:37of the peasant
01:14:38either because the wind
01:14:39had unroofed
01:14:40his duff cut
01:14:41or because his cattle
01:14:42had been seized
01:14:43by the commune
01:14:44for taxes
01:14:44or even because
01:14:45a storm had robbed
01:14:47him of his wine
01:14:47and fruit
01:14:49he was so bored
01:14:51and disgusted
01:14:51with all this
01:14:52that he would
01:14:53rather die of hunger
01:14:54than have to think
01:14:55of so many things
01:14:58for this gift
01:14:59as in so much else
01:15:00the sculptor
01:15:01was indebted
01:15:01to Cosimo
01:15:03he was a great friend
01:15:04to Donatello
01:15:05and to all the painters
01:15:06and sculptors
01:15:07and since in his time
01:15:09the art of sculpture
01:15:10suffered some lack
01:15:11of employment
01:15:12Cosimo
01:15:13to prevent this
01:15:14happening to Donatello
01:15:15commissioned him
01:15:16to make certain pulpits
01:15:17of bronze
01:15:18for San Lorenzo
01:15:18and gave orders
01:15:20to his bank
01:15:20to allow him
01:15:21a thick sum of money
01:15:22every week
01:15:23enough for him
01:15:24and his four apprentices
01:15:26and in this way
01:15:27he kept them
01:15:30sadly this good friend
01:15:32and patron
01:15:32died in 1464
01:15:34and two years later
01:15:35his scheme
01:15:36for pulpits
01:15:37in San Lorenzo
01:15:38was abandoned
01:15:39or so it seemed
01:15:40they were erected
01:15:41but not till
01:15:42fifty years later
01:15:44Donatello's reliefs
01:15:45for them
01:15:45had merely been put
01:15:46into storage
01:15:49is there perhaps
01:15:50a connection
01:15:51between this last
01:15:52great commission
01:15:53for the Medici
01:15:54and the disappearance
01:15:55of all Donatello's work
01:15:57for the doors
01:15:57of Siena Cathedral
01:16:01narrative reliefs
01:16:02like this
01:16:03of the crucifixion
01:16:04other scenes
01:16:05leading up
01:16:06to the passion
01:16:06of Christ
01:16:07they seem close
01:16:08in style
01:16:09to what one might
01:16:09expect Donatello
01:16:10to have prepared
01:16:11for that previous
01:16:12abortive commission
01:16:13he had after all
01:16:15worked for three years
01:16:16on reliefs
01:16:17for Siena
01:16:18is it possible
01:16:19he saw a chance
01:16:20to make use of them
01:16:21after all
01:16:22for Cosimo
01:16:23for a patron
01:16:24who would really
01:16:25appreciate them
01:16:39the modelling
01:16:40is sometimes
01:16:41finally finished
01:16:42sometimes left
01:16:43suggestively rough
01:16:44here and there
01:16:45you can still spot
01:16:46traces of the chisel
01:16:48but there's no fumbling
01:16:50of a tired hand
01:16:51here
01:16:51it's the speed
01:16:52and conciseness
01:16:53of a lifetime's
01:16:54experience
01:16:55Donatello
01:16:56had spent 60 years
01:16:57mastering it
01:16:58this tumultuous art
01:16:59of making figures
01:17:00and faces
01:17:01come to life
01:17:02instinct with character
01:17:03and emotion
01:17:14his imagination
01:17:15even in old age
01:17:17remains amazingly
01:17:18unorthodox
01:17:19impatient
01:17:20passionate
01:17:20intensely personal
01:17:22startlingly modern
01:17:36on the back
01:17:37of the second pulpit
01:17:38is the horrific scene
01:17:39of the martyrdom
01:17:40of San Lorenzo
01:17:41the church's patron
01:17:42roasted to death
01:17:43on a gridiron
01:17:44a scene vivid
01:17:45with Donatello's
01:17:46own special brand
01:17:48of violence
01:17:52across the whole composition
01:17:53plunges the relentless
01:17:55diagonal of the fork
01:17:56holding the saint down
01:17:58on the hot iron
01:17:59by his neck
01:18:04this panel
01:18:05actually carries a date
01:18:06June the 15th
01:18:081465
01:18:14on the front of this same pulpit
01:18:16three episodes
01:18:17that follow Christ's death
01:18:19and entombment
01:18:19are divided from each other
01:18:21by projecting buttresses
01:18:26Christ visiting the lost souls
01:18:28in purgatory
01:18:31rising like a ghost
01:18:33in his shroud
01:18:34at the resurrection
01:18:34above the sleeping soldiers
01:18:42and in his final appearance
01:18:44to the disciples
01:18:45at his ascension
01:18:46bidding them farewell
01:18:47as he gives them his blessing
01:18:51and in a curious mixture
01:18:53of idioms
01:18:53the scenes are framed
01:18:55by playing putti
01:18:56wild men
01:18:57and untamed horses
01:18:58recalling classical images
01:19:00seen in Rome
01:19:01in Donatello's
01:19:02far-off youth
01:19:05that the panels
01:19:06may not have been
01:19:06put together
01:19:07exactly as the sculptor
01:19:08planned them
01:19:09can be guessed at
01:19:10by the clumsy fitting
01:19:11of the buttresses
01:19:12at the corners
01:19:18but one effect
01:19:20is reserved
01:19:21for the visit
01:19:21to the tomb
01:19:22on Easter morning
01:19:24Donatello's feeling
01:19:25for deep interior space
01:19:26we seem to be following
01:19:29the three Marys
01:19:30into the very depths
01:19:31of the sepulchre
01:19:39when Donatello
01:19:40reached the age of 80
01:19:42he became so palsied
01:19:44that he could no longer
01:19:45work at all
01:19:46he grew worse
01:19:47from day to day
01:19:48and gradually
01:19:49wasted away
01:19:50until he died
01:19:51on the 13th of December
01:19:531466
01:19:56he was buried
01:19:57in the church
01:19:57of San Lorenzo
01:19:58near Cosimo's own tomb
01:20:00as he himself
01:20:01had directed
01:20:02so that just as he had
01:20:04always been near
01:20:04to Cosimo in spirit
01:20:05while alive
01:20:06so his body
01:20:07might be near him
01:20:08in death
01:20:15Donatello's death
01:20:16plunged into mourning
01:20:17the citizens
01:20:18and artists of Florence
01:20:19and all who knew him
01:20:22honoring him more
01:20:23after his death
01:20:23than they had
01:20:24while he lived
01:20:25all the painters
01:20:26the whole city
01:20:30almost
01:20:30took part
01:20:31in his funeral
01:20:34the grave of Donatello
01:20:36is still visited
01:20:37to this day
01:20:38every December
01:20:39by the artists
01:20:40of Florence
01:20:41was also
01:20:41voir
01:20:46in recent
01:20:50that's
01:20:51about
01:20:54the
01:20:56of the
01:20:56entire
01:20:57arkadaşlar
01:20:59Let us pray, let us pray, let us pray.
01:21:29Let us pray, let us pray.
01:21:59Let us pray, let us pray, let us pray.
01:22:28Let us pray, let us pray, let us pray.
01:23:01Let us pray, let us pray.
01:23:07Let us pray, let us pray.
01:23:38Let us pray.
01:24:10Let us pray.
01:24:37Let us pray, let us pray.
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