Donatello: Renaissance Genius (MULTISUB)

A 2022 Documentary by Margarete Kreuzer. Audio in French with subtitles in: English, Italian, Spanish and German (click on CC for subtitles).

Portrait of the Italian sculptor Donatello (1386-1466), a precursor of the High Renaissance who considerably influenced sculptural art with his innovative way of conceiving space.

Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi (c. 1386 – 13 December 1466), known mononymously as Donatello 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. Although his best-known works are mostly statues executed in the round, 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.

Donatello's output was so varied and individual that his influence can be seen in all Florentine sculpture in the 15th century, and well beyond Florence. But he shared important elements of his style, in particular his revival of classical forms and styles, with the other outstanding sculptors of his generation, Ghiberti, Jacopo della Quercia, Luca della Robbia and others.

Most of Donatello's major works for churches remain in situ, or moved inside to the church museum. The Bargello in Florence has the main museum collection, including his most famous portable pieces. Hardly any large pieces are outside Italy, but there are many Madonnas and other smaller pieces, often with uncertain attributions. The Victoria and Albert Museum has important shallow reliefs, and the Louvre and Berlin State Museums have other pieces; generally, the American museums arrived too late on the scene to make many major acquisitions, though they have many pieces with workshop attributions.

In keeping with the archetype of an artist's life, it is said that Donatello spent his last days alone, abandoned by artistic fortune and worn out by old age and illness. Vasari reports that Donatello was unable to work in the last years of his life and remained confined to his bed. At his death, he had 34 florins of rent left to pay, which has prompted speculation about his true state of poverty. However, the issue seems more likely to be related to his total disinterest in financial matters, to which he devoted himself throughout his life only to the bare minimum. Many anecdotes bear witness to this attitude, such as the one about how, during the time of his thriving workshop, he would hang a basket full of money from which his assistants could freely draw as they needed. The fees he received for his works suggest that he must have earned a substantial income during his lifetime, and it also seems that Cosimo de' Medici granted him a weekly annuity at the end of his life.

He died in Florence in 1466. He was buried in the basement of the Basilica of San Lorenzo, near Cosimo the Elder, in the singular and prestigious location beneath the altar. Among the pallbearers was Andrea della Robbia.