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Italian sculptor Donatello received his first training in a goldsmith’s workshop in Florence, from where he accompanied the famous architect Brunelleschi to Rome. “Reliquary Bust of Saint Rossore,” Donatello, circa 1386–1466. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
NEW YORK—Donatello’s bronze “Reliquary Bust of Saint Rossore” (circa 1425) gives metal the appearance of soft, wavy hair, a wrinkled brow, and stubble of facial hair that grows into a mustache and beard.
Keith Christiansen, chairman of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Department of European paintings, in an audio guide, says that the reliquary bust is one of those images that attempts to speak to us across the ages. It thus sets the basis of the Met’s current exhibition, The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini.
A detailed brocade collar and draping cloth covers the man’s shoulders, partially revealing armor. The cloth made of metal even gently twists, showing both sides of an embroidered trim.
The artist is said to have called out to one of his statues, ‘Speak! Speak! I command you to speak!’
Christiansen tells an anecdote of Donatello’s wanting his figures to look so lifelike that they could almost speak to him. The artist is said to have called out to one of his statues, “Speak! Speak! I command you to speak!”
By giving a saint, martyred more than 1,000 years earlier, the essence of a contemporary person, Donatello set the groundwork for portraits as we today know them.
Beyond the Physical
The 160 portraits, in paintings, drawings, sculptures, and medals showcase masterpieces of the most well-known artists of the Italian Renaissance. The exhibit reminds us how art uniquely documents a society’s history and values. For example, after assassins had violently murdered Giuliano de’ Medici in the Duomo in Florence, portraits followed, commemorating Giuliano’s death.
The exhibit starts in Florence, covers the Medici family and courts in Italy and ends in Venice. The portraits provide a detailed record of a society’s identity, based upon its self-images. The motivation behind today’s portraits still connects to what were radical developments of the Italian Renaissance.
During the Renaissance, artists crossed a barrier. They defied the common literary notions that sculptors and painters could only produce outer physical likenesses, never reaching the inner life of the subjects.
“I would like to see portraits tend toward the truthful, in the physical, psychological, and spiritual senses,” said Daniel Maidman, a portrait painter, who lives in Brooklyn.
Next … Characterized Male Figures and Idealized Female Figures
