Donatello

Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi (1386 – 13 December 1466), better known as Donatello (,dQn@'tElou donaˈtɛllo), was an Italian sculptor of the Renaissance period. Born in Florence, he studied classical sculpture and used his knowledge to develop an Early Renaissance style of sculpture. He spent time in other cities, where he worked on commissions and taught others; his periods in Rome, Padua, and Siena introduced to other parts of Italy the techniques he had developed in the course of a long and productive career. His David was the first freestanding nude male sculpture since antiquity; like much of his work it was commissioned by the Medici family. He worked with stone, bronze, wood, clay, stucco, and wax, and used glass in inventive ways. He had several assistants, with four perhaps being a typical number. Although his best-known works are mostly statues executed in the round (tondo)), he developed a new, very shallow, type of bas-relief for small works, and a good deal of his output was architectural reliefs for pulpits, altars and tombs, as well as Madonna and Childs for homes. Broad, overlapping, phases can be seen in his style, beginning with the development of expressiveness and classical monumentality in statues, then developing energy and charm, mostly in smaller works. Later he reacts against the "sweet style" he had helped to develop, with a number of stark, even brutal pieces. The sensuous eroticism of his most famous work, the bronze David, is very rarely seen in other pieces. All accounts describe Donatello as amiable and well-liked, but rather poor at the business side of his career. Like Michelangelo in the next century, he tended to accept more commissions than he could handle, and many works were either completed some years late, handed to other sculptors to finish, or never produced. Again like Michelangelo, he enjoyed steady support and patronage from the Medici family. All sources agree that he carved stone and modelled clay or wax for bronzes very quickly and confidently, and art historians feel able to distinguish his hand from that of others, even within the same work.