When was donatello born

Michelozzo was a Florentine sculptor and architect who had also studied under Ghiberti. In the next few years they shared a limited partnership where Donatello constructed a sculptural centre for the bronze effigy of John XXII. He also contributed the relief work for the Assumption of the Virgin on the Brancacci tomb in Naples and the balustrade relief work surrounding the exterior pulpit of the Prato Cathedral.

While Donatello's solo work seems inspired by a wide variety of ancient art, his collaborations with Michelozzo are much more similar to works by Filippo Brunelleschi. As Donatello continued his solo career he expanded upon his own singular style of blending classical and medieval sources and in doing so stated through his work his preference to depart from old standards Brunelleschi had established.

This created a rift between Brunelleschi and Donatello that persisted until their deaths. Donatello's independent work during his period of collaboration with Michelozzo is considered some of his finest. Feast of Herod showed a command of linear perspective in Donatello's own relief technique. A series of small nude angels influenced by Etruscan art helped pave the way for Donatello's bronze David with the Head of Goliath.

This spectacular work was cast sectionally in bronze and is an interpretation of a symbolic figure representing pride and the role of divine protection against evil forces. This bronze David may have been a commissioned work from the Medici family and originally was placed in the center of the Medici palace in Florence.

In the s Donatello was invited to Padua to work on a series of bronze works. He first completed the Crucifix for the Padua santo. Arguably the most enticing of the commissions in Padua was the equestrian statue known popularly of as Gattamelata. This work depicts the Venetian Erasmo da Narmi atop his steed in battle regalia.

Its popularity spread immediately after its completion when other nobles desired the same type of depiction. While Donatello did take on a few more important commissions for the Church of San Antonio in Padua, he also seems to have gone through a personal crisis or illness in the small Venetian town.

Work was stalled on various projects and though a series of majestic reliefs and the sculpture of Marble Madonna were completed, a Florentine physician recorded a statement that he had treated Donatello for an illness.

When Donatello returned to Florence his work had changed, reflecting perhaps his own realization of his mortality. Figures like his statue of Mary Magdalene revealed withered skin and an aging sensibility that seemed to reveal Donatello's perception of himself. He spent his last years working on two bronze pulpits for the church of San Lorenzo. Though they displayed enormous spiritual complexity and mastery of his craft, Donatello did not complete these pieces before his death in A great deal of Donatello's work is still on display in Florence in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo and in cathedrals and public spaces throughout Italy.

Unlike many other celebrated artists of his day, Donatello did not spend his entire youth as a studio apprentice to a master. Instead, he studied briefly with a stone mason and a goldsmith. He then worked with Lorenzo Ghiberti on the bronze entry to Florence's Baptistery, which was later dubbed the Gates of Paradise by Michelangelo. At the tender age of 17, Donatello was out on his own, making a name for himself in Renaissance Florence. The artist progressed during his life from humble beginnings as the son of a wool carder to a final resting place beside his lifelong supporter, Cosimo di Giovanni de' Medici, who was a wealthy banker, an art patron and the founder of the powerful Medici dynasty of Italy, de facto rulers of Florence during the artist's lifetime.

Around Donatello entered into partnership with Michelozzo, a sculptor and architect, with whom he made a trip to Rome after Vasari states that Donatello went to Rome with architect Filippo Brunelleschi [—]. This would have been much earlier, perhaps in ; but there is no document to confirm such a trip. The first of these established a type of wall tomb burial chamber that would influence many later Florentine examples. Probably just after the trip to Rome, Donatello created the well-known gilded limestone Annunciation tabernacle place of worship in Sta Croce, Florence, enclosing the pair of Gabriel and the Virgin Mary.

He was also commissioned to carve a Singing Gallery for the Cathedral to match the one already begun by Luca della Robbia both now in the Museo dell'Opera. Using marble and mosaic, Donatello presented a classically inspired frieze a decorative band of wildly dancing putti. It was begun in , completed six years later, and installed in Much of Donatello's later work demonstrates his understanding of classical art.

For example, the bronze David in the Bargello is a young boy clothed only in boots and a pointed hat. This enigmatic figure is in all probability the earliest existing freestanding nude since antiquity ancient times. From to Donatello was in Padua, Italy, where in the Piazza del Santo he created the colossal bronze equestrian with horse monument to the Venetian condottiere called Gattamelata.

It was the first important sculptural repetition of the second-century equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome. Donatello portrayed Gattamelata as the ideal man of the Renaissance, a period marked by artistic awakening between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. Another major commission in Padua was the high altar of Saint Antonio, and was decorated with four large narrative reliefs representing the life of Saint Anthony, smaller reliefs, and seven life-sized statues in bronze, including a seated Madonna and Child and a bronze Crucifixion a representation of Christ on the cross.

Donatello had earlier made remarkable experiments with illusions of space in his large stucco medallions for the Old Sacristy of Saint Lorenzo in Florence; now his major bronze Paduan reliefs present an explosive idea of space with sketchy figures and a very excited and busy surface.

The influence of these scenes on painters in northern Italy was to prove enormous and long lasting. Back in Florence, the aged Donatello carved a haunting, unhealthy Mary Magdalen from poplar wood for the Baptistery — Romantically distorted in extreme ugliness, the figure of the saint in the wilderness originally had sun-tanned skin and gilding a thin coat of gold on her monstrous hair.

In Donatello made an equally disturbing group in bronze of Judith cutting off the head of Holofernes. Now in the Piazza della Signoria, Florence, it was originally commissioned, apparently as a fountain, for the courtyard of the Medici Palace.

On Donatello's death on December 13, , two unfinished bronze pulpits platforms for preaching were left in Saint Lorenzo, Florence. On one are relief panels, showing the torture and murder of Christ by means of distorted forms and wildly emotional actions.

Finished by his pupil Bertoldo di Giovanni, the pulpit scenes reveal the great master's insight into human suffering and his exploration of the dark realms of man's experience. Bennett, Bonnie A. The sculpture created some controversy, as most equestrian statues were reserved for rulers or kings, not mere warriors. This work became the prototype for other equestrian monuments created in Italy and Europe in the following centuries. By , Donatello had returned to Florence and completed Magdalene Penitent , a statue of a gaunt-looking Mary Magdalene.

Commissioned by the convent at Santa Maria di Cestello, the work was probably intended to provide comfort and inspiration to the repentant prostitutes at the convent. Donatello continued his work taking on commissions from wealthy patrons of the arts. His lifelong friendship with the Medici family earned him a retirement allowance to live on the rest of his life. An unfinished work was faithfully completed by his student Bertoldo di Giovanni.

We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives. One of the most important early Renaissance sculptors, Ghiberti is best known as the creator of the bronze doors of the Baptistery of Florence.

Filippo Brunelleschi was one of the leading architects and engineers of the Italian Renaissance and is best known for his work on the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore the Duomo in Florence.

Sandro Botticelli was an Italian painter of the early Renaissance-era. Dante was a Medieval Italian poet and philosopher whose poetic trilogy, 'The Divine Comedy,' made an indelible impression on both literature and theology. A leading figure of Italian High Renaissance classicism, Raphael is best known for his "Madonnas," including the Sistine Madonna, and for his large figure compositions in the Palace of the Vatican in Rome.

Caravaggio, or Michelangelo Merisi, was an Italian painter who is considered one of the fathers of modern painting. Italian sculptor Donatello is one of the most influential artists of the 15th century in Italy, known for his marble sculpture David, among other popular works. Olivia Rodrigo —.