Donatello
Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi, or Donatello, was one of the great Italian master artists from the early Renaissance. He is mostly known for his sculptures, a field in which he innovated technique and style inspired from Classical sculpture. As many of artists of this time, he was patronized by the rich and influential Medici family.
Donatello lived between 1386 and 1466. He was born in Florence. He may have started his first art training at the workshop of the soon to be famous artist, Filippo Brunelleschi. The two men traveled to Rome, where Donatello extensively studied the classical sculptures from the ancient Roman period. Not much is known of his personal life, except that he never married. Donatello returned to Florence. He worked with Lorenzo Ghiberti creating sculptures that, although were still idealized, displayed more life-like clothing and mannerisms. Cosimo de’Medici was one of Donatello’s major benefactors. He commissioned the bronze David statue, which is arguably Donatello’s most famous work.
Donatello worked in a variety of mediums, including stone, clay, bronze, and stucco among others. His sculptures spanned from typical 3-dimensional statues to his beautiful shallow bas-reliefs. Donatello used a flattened relief with a strict adherence to perspective that greatly advanced the current art techniques. Donatello’s perspective illusion was such a marker in art history, that he is remembered as one of the greatest sculptors of the early Renaissance. He helped advance art from the heavily stylized and stiff Gothic Mannerism to the more fluid and life-like Renaissance style.
Donatello was a great influence on future Italian sculptors, the most notable being Michelangelo. Most of his work remains in Italy, so if you get a chance to see it, do so! In 1466, Donatello died at approximately 80 years old and was buried in the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence, Italy.
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