47 Facts About Donatello

Donatello 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.

Donatello's David was the first freestanding nude male sculpture since antiquity; like much of his work it was commissioned by the Medici family.

Donatello worked with stone, bronze, wood, clay, stucco, and wax, and used glass in inventive ways.

Donatello had several assistants, with four perhaps being a typical number.

Donatello was the son of Niccolo di Betto Bardi, who was a "wool-stretcher" and member of the Florentine Arte della Lana, the wool workers guild, which probably provided a good income.

However, Donatello's father did have a connection with the powerful Buonaccorso Pitti, whose diary records a fight in Pisa in 1380 in which Niccolo intervened, giving Pitti's opponent a fatal blow.

Vasari's claim that Donatello was raised and educated in the house of the prominent Martelli family is probably baseless, and given for literary, even political reasons.

Donatello was probably there with his father, who had an official job in Pistoia at the time, while Buonaccorso Pitti was the Captain, or governor.

Seven sculptors were invited to submit trial panels, for which they were paid; Vasari's Life of Brunelleschi wrongly claims that Donatello was one of them, but they were all more experienced figures.

Any part played by the adolescent Donatello, presumably assisting Brunelleschi with his trial piece, is unknown.

Brunelleschi subsequently became a highly important architect, while Donatello began his career in sculpture.

Donatello was commissioned to rework it in 1416, the cathedral surrendering it to the republic, who placed in the seat of government, the Palazzo Vecchio.

Donatello was responsible for six of the eight campanile figures, in two cases working with the younger Nanni di Bartolo.

Nevertheless, according to a story in Vasari, Donatello had trouble with his first statue for Orsanmichele, a marble St Mark for the linen-weavers guild.

Donatello got them to put it in its niche and cover it up while he worked to improve it.

Michelozzo had great experience with bronze, and no doubt helped with the technical aspects, and Donatello took to the medium very quickly.

Donatello became famous for his reliefs, especially his development of a very "low" or shallow relief style, called stiacciato, where all parts of the relief are low.

Around 1425 Donatello entered into a formal partnership with Michelozzo, who is mainly remembered as an architect, but was a sculptor, especially of smaller-scale works in metal.

Donatello had trained with the mint making dies for coins, where he still had a salaried position.

Michelozzo wanted to extract himself from an arrangement with Ghiberti, and Donatello had too much work, and was poor at organizing a workshop, at which Michelozzo seems to have excelled.

Donatello made the recumbent bronze figure of the deceased, and Michelozzo, with assistants, the several figures in stone.

The commission began in 1428, but Donatello did not begin work on his allotted areas for years, despite relentless chasing by the Prato authorities, and finally Cosimo de' Medici.

Donatello wears leggings that emphasize rather than hide his private parts.

Donatello usually did not sign his work, except for some commissions destined for outside Florence.

In 2020 the painted wooden crucifix of the church of Sant'Angelo in Legnaia, a suburb of Florence, was attributed by the diocese to Donatello, and dated to the 1460s.

Donatello's additions were two pairs of bronze doors with relief panels, and elaborate architectural surrounds for them, and two sets of large relief roundels below the main dome.

We do not know how Donatello felt about his finished scheme, but he never used painted stucco again; nor did anyone much else, as within a few years the Della Robbia workshop had perfected painted and glazed terracotta in large pieces, as in the Pazzi Chapel, which was clearly the better technique.

In 1443, Donatello was called to Padua by the heirs of the famous condottiere Erasmo da Narni, who had died that year.

Donatello had died at the end of 1441, and the monument was in place by 1451, before being destroyed by the French in 1796.

Donatello's work is strongly classicising, with Roman motifs on the armour and saddle, and the horse perhaps derived from the ancient Horses of Saint Mark in Venice.

Donatello was based in Padua for ten years, though he returned to Florence soon after the Gattamelata was finally in place in 1453.

Donatello had a studio near the Santo, and several assistants.

Donatello did not stay in the city the whole time, and he is documented in Florence at some points, and in 1450 is recorded visiting Mantua and Modena for commissions that never came off; in 1451 he was paid by the Bishop of Ferrara for a work he never finished.

In 1895 it was moved to hang over the high altar, for which Donatello had made a bronze enthroned Virgin and Child and six flanking saints, constituting a Holy Conversation, and a total of twenty-one bronze reliefs and one in marble, an Entombment.

Donatello is flanked by two saints, Anthony of Padua and Francis of Assisi.

Between 1457 and 1461 Donatello was active in and for Siena, though he was now aging, and perhaps mostly contributed designs and modelli rather than carving much himself, at least in stone.

Donatello's bronze Judith and Holofernes is an important late work, which ended in a Medici courtyard in Florence, while his bronze John the Baptist was delivered minus a forearm and is in Siena Cathedral.

Donatello used real cloth to give texture in some of the modelling, and perhaps Holofernes' legs were moulded from a live model.

Donatello was evidently unable to work for a period, of uncertain extent, before his death; Vasari records this, but without any timing.

Donatello was commissioned to design stained glass for Florence Cathedral around 1434, a conventional task, but one usually given to a painter rather than a sculptor.

Donatello used glass in tesserae form in the backgrounds of reliefs, including the Prato pulpit and cantoria reliefs, which was an old style, but his background of a network of roundels with glass-covered wax and gold inlays for the terracotta Piot Madonna is original.

Donatello gave it to his doctor and friend Giovanni Chellini in 1456, though it was probably not new at that point.

Donatello is shown wearing an ancient Roman toga, with "uncompromising realism", but an expression that "exudes sagacious strength and nobility".

However the attribution to Donatello, the dating and foremost the quality of the bust itself are disputed.

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.

Donatello died in 1464 at just 34, cutting off a very promising career.

Donatello is portrayed by Ben Starr in the 2016 television series Medici: Masters of Florence.