Who was Donatello in the Renaissance
The god of bronze-making.
Donatello was actually the Greek god of art and beauty. He’s also the god of bronze-making.
- Full Name: Donato di Niccolo di Betto Bardi.
- Date of Birth: circa 1386
- Date of Death: 12 Dec 1466
- Focus: Sculpture
- Subjects: Figure
- Hometown: Florence, Italy
Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi (c. 1386–13 December 1466), better known as Donatello was a Florentine sculptor of the Renaissance period.
Donatello was a Renaissance-era sculptor and painter.
Born in Florence, he studied classical sculpture and used this to develop a complete Renaissance style in sculpture.
He worked with stone, bronze, wood, clay, stucco, and wax, and had several assistants, with four perhaps being a typical number.
His best-known works mostly were statues in the round, but he developed a new, very shallow, type of bas-relief for small works, and a good deal of his output was larger architectural reliefs.
Donatello. Madonna, and Child in rilievo staccato or shallow relief.
He created a set of bronze statues depicting the twelve gods of Olympus.
They were so cool that in 1562, Pope Pius IV moved these statues to the Vatican from their original location in Athens to protect them from defacement.
The statue of Zeus got lost along the way, but the remaining 11 statues still exist today and are nicknamed “The gods of Laocoon.”
He was born in Florence, Italy, and spent the majority of his life working there, but he also worked in Rome for a few years during his youth.
Donatello’s artistic style changed over time, but he was generally known for his realistic artworks of people and objects.
His sculptures were often made using bronze or marble. His paintings tended to be more colorful than those of other Renaissance artists, who often used muted colors because they were trying to emulate the Ancient Greeks. Donatello’s work is still widely admired today for these qualities and for its realism.
One of Donatello’s most famous sculptures is a statue called David.
David at the Bargello, in Florence.
It depicts David, a character from the Bible who won a battle against a giant named Goliath.
Donatello. David, about 1440s, bronze. Closeup of the sculpture bottom.
Height: 158 cm, Florence, Museo Nazionale del Bargelo
The statue shows David standing with Goliath’s severed head at his feet, which represents his victory over this giant obstacle in his life!
He is widely considered one of the most prominent artists of the Italian Renaissance.
Donatello influenced Italian sculptors, notably Michelangelo, well into the sixteenth century. It's very rare to find his work outside Italy.
We artists are mythmakers, and we participate with everybody else in the social constructionof reality. Helen Mayer Harrison.
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