With 130 works Florence celebrates Donatello, ‘master of the masters’ of the Renaissance

“Donatello, the Renaissance”, the exhibition-event curated by Francesco Caglioti, professor of Medieval Art History at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, opens to the public on Saturday 19 March in Florence. Open until July 31, the great exhibition is conceived as a single path that involves two locations, Palazzo Strozzi and the Bargello Museum, to reconstruct the career of Donatello (1386-1466), “master of masters” and Florentine artist symbol of Renaissance (1386-1466), in comparison with the masterpieces of contemporary artists such as Brunelleschi and Masaccio, Mantegna and Giovanni Bellini, but also later such as Raphael and Michelangelo. “Donatello, the Renaissance” hosts about 130 works including sculptures, paintings and drawings with unique loans, some of which have never been granted before, coming from almost sixty of the most important museums and institutions in the world such as the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Gallery in London, the Musée du Louvre in Paris, the Staatliche Museen in Berlin, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the Uffizi Galleries, the Basilica of St. Anthony in Padua and the Florentine basilicas of San Lorenzo, Santa Croce and Santa Maria Novella. The exhibition offers a journey through Donatello’s life and fortune divided into fourteen sections. It starts from the beginning and from the dialogue with Brunelleschi, proposing the comparison between the two famous wooden crucifixes from the Basilica of Santa Croce and that of Santa Maria Novella. We then proceed through the places for which Donatello worked (Siena, Prato and Padua, as well as Florence), finding many followers, entering into dialogue with other famous, much younger artists such as Mantegna and Bellini, and experimenting with the most diverse materials his formidable plastic and sculptural inventions. The exhibition concludes with a special section dedicated to Donatello’s influence on subsequent artists, including Raphael, Michelangelo and Bronzino, thus testifying the capital importance of his work for the events of Italian art. At Palazzo Strozzi the exhibition unfolds in a chronological-thematic path that reconstructs the artistic biography of Donatello through one hundred masterpieces such as the David in marble and the Amore-Attis del Bargello, the Spiritelli del Pergamum of the Prato Cathedral, the Crucifix, the Miracle of the mule and the Imagus Pietatis of the main altar of the Basilica of Sant’Antonio in Padua, as well as numerous works from famous foreign museums such as the Louvre in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum in New York or the National Gallery in London. Furthermore, for the first time in history, the Feast of Herod, Faith and Hope from the baptismal font of Siena are exhibited outside their original context, as well as the extraordinary bronze doors of the Old Sacristy of San Lorenzo in Florence, which are some of the numerous works subject to major restorations carried out in connection with the exhibition. At the Bargello National Museum the itinerary includes iconic works by Donatello from the marble San Giorgio, with the extraordinary crushed relief of the San Giorgio releasing the princess, to the bronze David in comparison with Filippo Scolari known as Pippo Spano and with the Farinata degli Uberti , detached frescoes by Andrea del Castagno, from the Uffizi Galleries, then the David Martelli by Desiderio da Settignano, exceptionally on loan from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, to continue with the Madonna of the Clouds of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Madonna Dudley from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Madonna della Scala by Michelangelo from the Casa Buonarroti Foundation in Florence. The section that contains this last relief illustrates through a series of close unpublished comparisons the fundamental influence that Donatello had on the work of Buonarroti and on the Modern Manner. “Donatello, the Renaissance” is promoted and organized by the Palazzo Strozzi Foundation and the Bargello Museums in Florence, in collaboration with the Staatliche Museen in Berlin and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (which will hold their respective exhibitions on the artist from 2 September 2022 to 8 January 2023 at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin and in spring 2023 at the London museum). The four institutions worked together to build the largest and most comprehensive exhibition project ever made on the artist. The Florence, Berlin and London offices will create three distinct but complementary exhibitions, which will bring together never before exhibited works, thus offering visitors a unique insight into Donatello’s genius and the central role that the master played in the history of art. The exhibition expands throughout the city of Florence and in the Tuscany region thanks also to the collaboration with the most important cultural institutions in the area, among which the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, the Opera di Santa Croce, the Opera Medicea stand out. Laurenziana and the Opera della Metropolitana di Siena, which preserve the artist’s fundamental immovable masterpieces. In fact, the Palazzo Strozzi Foundation proposes the special “Donatello in Toscana” initiative, a project that aims to enhance the regional artistic heritage, from Florence to Siena, from Prato to Arezzo, from Pontorme to Torrita di Siena: an itinerary that, through a map physical and digital theme, leads to the discovery of over 50 works by Donatello and represents the opportunity, during the period of the exhibition, for a further immersion in Donatello’s universe. The volume “Donatello in Toscana”, out in May and published as the catalog by Marsilio Arte, will also be edited by Francesco Caglioti. “Dedicating such a large monographic exhibition to Donatello is a unique challenge, for which we are truly grateful to generosity of many lenders “- says the curator Francesco Caglioti – The exhibitions named after him so far have mostly been made by exhibiting copies or limiting the choice of originals to a few pieces. Donatello, perhaps the most audacious sculptor of all time, is an artist with a very strong monumental vocation, even when he works in small formats. Finding in the rooms of Palazzo Strozzi and the Bargello numerous works that are still in the large spaces of churches and squares, or that were originally there, invites the curators and the public to experience exciting to ideally relocate these masterpieces in their ancient contexts, imagining the shocking effects that Donatello was able to activate in his contemporaries “. “The Bargello National Museum has always housed the most important nucleus of Donatello’s works in the world and the setting up of the Donatello Hall, built between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, impressed a new museographic face on the ancient Palazzo del Podestà. The exhibition Donatello, the Renaissance, extraordinary for the number of works exhibited in the two venues and the breadth of unpublished comparisons offered to the public – says Paola D’Agostino, director of the Bargello Museums – will exemplify how Donatello was the leading artist of the Renaissance. unique event, made possible thanks to the solid collaboration with Arturo Galansino and his staff, the incomparable curatorship of Francesco Caglioti and the dense network of relationships with the most important museums in the world that have granted exceptional loans “. “After bringing great contemporary art to Florence, with the exhibition ‘Donatello, the Renaissance’, Palazzo Strozzi rejoins ancient art with an epochal project that aims to celebrate an artist who has marked the history of art – says Arturo Galansino, general director of the Palazzo Strozzi Foundation – Together with Paola D’Agostino and Francesco Caglioti we worked to create what might have seemed an ‘impossible exhibition’: the most complete and exhaustive review on Donatello ever made, a unique and ambitious undertaking, born thanks to the collaboration of the most prestigious Italian cultural institutions and the most important museums around the world “.