129. Anonymous, Illuminated Manuscript.
Gothic. Private collection.
130. Anonymous, Illuminated Manuscript.
Gothic. Private collection.
131. Limbourg Brothers (Jean, Paul and Herman), Temptations of a Young Christian (miniature from The Très Belles Heures of the Duke of Berry), 1408–1409.
Early Renaissance. Ink, tempera, and gold leaf on vellum, 23.8 × 17 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Arts, Cloisters Collection, New York.
132. Anonymous, Illuminated Manuscript.
Gothic. Private collection.
133. Anonymous, The Temptations of Wordly Delights (miniature from the Œuvres de Christine de Pisan), first quarter of the 15th century.
Early Renaissance. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris.
134. Anonymous, Illuminated Manuscript.
Gothic. Private collection.
135. Limbourg Brothers (Jean, Paul and Herman), Original Sin (miniature from The Très Belles Heures of the Duke of Berry), c. 1417.
Early Renaissance. Musée Condé, Chantilly.
136. Anonymous, Illuminated Manuscript.
Gothic. Private collection.
137. Anonymous, miniature from the manuscript Memorable Deeds and Sayings by Valerius Maximus, middle of the 15th century.
Gothic. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin.
138. Anonymous, History of Merlin: Merlin’s conception, c. 1450–1455.
Early Renaissance. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris.
139. Anonymous, The Love Charm, 15th century.
Gothic (German School). Oil on panel, 24 × 18 cm. Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig.
140. Donatello (Donato di Niccolo Bardi), David, c. 1440–1443.
Early Renaissance. Bronze, height: 158 cm. Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence.
Donatello’s David stands, victorious, over the head of the dead giant. He holds the large sword of the giant and wears a hat and boots. The statue caused a small scandal when it was first displayed because of the nudity of the figure. While nudity was not unknown in sculpture, it seems gratuitous here, not required by the subject, as it would be in a portrayal of Adam, for example. David’s nudity is also accentuated by his hat and boots, which seem incongruous in the absence of other clothing. The statue is also notable in being cast of bronze, showing the advance in that technology. While the contrapposto stance is derived from classical models, the figure is more feminine looking than male sculptures from the Greek or Roman worlds.
Donatello, an Italian sculptor, was born in Florence, and received his initial training in a goldsmith’s workshop; he worked for a short time in Ghiberti’s studio. Too young to enter the competition for the baptistery gates in 1402, the young Donatello accompanied Brunelleschi when, in disappointment, he left Florence and went to Rome to study the remains of classical art. During this period Brunelleschi undertook his measurements of the Pantheon dome, which enabled him to construct the noble cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, while Donatello acquired his knowledge of classic forms and ornamentation. The two masters, each in his own sphere, were to become the leading spirits in the art movement of the 15th century.
Back in Florence around 1405, he was entrusted with the important commissions for the marble David and for the colossal seated figure of St John the Evangelist. We find him next employed at Orsanmichele. Between 1412 and 1415, Donatello completed the St Peter, the St George and the St Mark.
Between the completion of the niches for Orsanmichele and his second journey to Rome in 1433, Donatello was chiefly occupied with statuary work for the campanile and the cathedral. Among the marble statues for the campanile are the St John the Baptist, Habakkuk, the so-called “Il Zuccone” and Jeremiah.
During this period Donatello executed some work for the baptismal font at San Giovanni in Sienna, which Jacopo della Quercia and his assistants had begun in 1416. The relief, Feast of Herod, already illustrates the power of dramatic narration and the skill of expressing depth of space by varying the treatment from plastic roundness to the finest stiacciato.
In May 1434, Donatello was back in Florence and immediately signed a contract for the marble pulpit on the facade of the Prato cathedral, a veritable bacchanalian dance of half-nude putti, the forerunner of the “singing tribune” for the Florence cathedral, on which he worked intermittently from 1433 to 1440.
But Donatello’s greatest achievement of his “classic period” is the bronze David (fig. 140), the first nude statue of the Renaissance, well-proportioned, superbly balanced, suggestive of Greek art in the simplification of form, and yet realistic, without any striving after ideal proportions.
In 1443 Donatello was invited to Padua to undertake the decoration of the high altar of San Antonio. In that year the famous Condottiere Erasmo de’ Narni, known as Gattamelata, had died, and it was decided to honour his memory with an equestrian statue. This commission, and the reliefs and figures for the high altar, kept Donatello in Padua for ten years. The Gattamelata was finished and unveiled in 1453, a powerful and majestic work.
Donatello spent the remaining years of his life in Florence.
The Renaissance
141. Hugo Van der Goes, Diptych: The Fall of Man and the Lamentation, c. 1470–1475.
Northern Renaissance. Tempera on wood, 32.3 × 21.9 cm. Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna.
Contemporary of Piero della Francesca, Van der Goes is resolute to depict reality while using refined colours. His painting is more and more illusionist here and betrays the artist’s like for details and depiction of light.
Several momentous events mark 1453 as an historical dividing line: the French finally expelled the English to end the Hundred Years War; Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks, extinguishing the last vestiges of the old Roman Empire and establishing Rome as the capital of Christendom; and in art, the Renaissance was in full bloom after synthesising the innovations of the previous two centuries, symbolically concluding the old order derived from Late Antiquity.
As the name suggests, the Renaissance was a re-birth – in this case a re-birth of Classical ideals. Ideologically, Renaissance humanism attempted to reconcile ancient learning with Christian traditions, thus renewing interest in the writings of Ancient authors. The Islamic world had preserved much ancient knowledge, particularly of the Greeks, and these texts were now translated into Latin. Built on the ruins of Antiquity, Italy was the centre of Renaissance thought. Along with renewed interest in the Antique came an evolution in attitudes towards the body, as Augustinian condemnation of the body yielded before the beauty of ancient nudes. The eroticism of classical myth also