Donatello

Text on the latest research. While his central focus is on the work of Donatello, he also illuminates the beginnings of Renaissance sculpture in Florence, its further development in Tuscany and the rest of Italy, the new artistic goals and their theoretical formulation, and the relationships between patron and artist, convention and artistic freedom. The invaluable documentary section includes all the work of Donatello, as well as that of Ghiberti. Other important.

The Italian sculptor known as Donatello helped to forge a new kind of art—one that came to define the Renaissance. His work was progressive, challenging, and even controversial. Using a variety of novel sculptural techniques and innovative interpretations, Donatello uniquely depicted themes involving human sexuality, violence, spirituality, and beauty. But to really understand Donatello, one needs to understand his changing world, marked by the transition from Medieval to Renaissance style and to an art that was more personal and representative of the modern self. Donatello was not just a man of his times, he helped shape the spirit of the times he lived in and profoundly influenced those that came after. In this beautifully illustrated book—the first thorough biography of Donatello in twenty-five years—A. Victor Coonin describes the full extent of Donatello’s revolutionary contributions, revealing how his work heralded the emergence of modern art.

There is considerable evidence for Donatello's use of optical corrections that scholars have largely ignored. It may come in some degree from an unwillingness to accept the idea that such visual effects, developed only in the 16th century & not common until the Baroque, were even possible in the early Renaissance. This study, by its arguments & its photographic evidence, may reopen the discussion of optical corrections in the work of Donatello &, perhaps, in that of some of his contemporaries & followers as well. Contents: Introduction; Donatello's Sculpture in the Round; The Reliefs; Bibliography of Frequently Cited Sources; & 64 black & white photos of Donatello's sculptures.

Focuses on the appropriation of visual elements of the classical, medieval, and Renaissance past in Mussolini's Italy.

Excerpt from Donatello Soon after his return to Florence we find him busily engaged in the exe cution of works commissioned by the authorities of the Church of Or San Michele and by the Cathedral Board of Works. Statues of heroic size of 'st. Peter' and 'st. Mark' were executed by him for niches on the outside of Or San Michele, where later his famous 'st. George' was also to find a place. For the cathedral he carved a statue of 'joshua, ' and a great seated figure of 'st. John the Evangelist.' For the bell-tower of Florence - Giotto's Campanile - he executed statues of 'jeremiah, ' 'habakkuk, ' 'abraham and Isaac, ' and the one erroneously called 'king David, ' but better known as 'il Zuccone' (the bald-head-literally, the which he is said to have regarded as one of his most satisfactory achievements. The model chosen for this statue was an old man, ungainly in form and of singularly unprepossessing features, but so faithfully did Donatello portray him that the statue seemed to its creator well-nigh alive. Speak then! Plague take thee, why wilt thou not speak? He would frequently exclaim while at work upon it; and, By the faith that I place in my 'zuccone' became his customary expression when wishing to give special force to a statement. In these statues for the Campanile Donatello first showed his striking originality and vital force. Working from living models, he departed from the conventional ecclesiastical types, and imbued the figures of his prophets with life, making them intensely realistic, even repellent, in their fidelity to nature. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Published in conjunction with an exhibition held at the Bode-Museum, Berlin, Aug. 25-Nov. 20, 2011, and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Dec. 21, 2011-Mar. 18, 2012.

Reproduction of the original: Donatello by Earl of David Lindsay Crawford

"Accompanies the exhibition Donatello, Michelangelo, Cellini: Sculptors Drawings From Renaissance Italy curated by Oliver Tostmann and Michael W. Cole at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, 23 October 2014-23 January 2015"--from title page verso.