Donatello

Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi, better known simply as Donatello, was a Renaissance sculptor from Florence. He lived from around 1386 until 13 December 1466. By studying ancient classical sculpture, he created his own Early Renaissance style. He worked in several cities beyond Florence—including Rome, Padua, and Siena—taking on commissions and teaching others, which helped spread his techniques across Italy. The Medici family commissioned much of his work, including his most famous piece, *David*, which was the first freestanding nude male statue made since ancient times.

Donatello worked with a wide range of materials: stone, bronze, wood, clay, stucco, and wax, and he also used glass in creative ways. He typically had around four assistants. While his best-known works are mostly full-round statues, he also developed a very shallow type of bas-relief for smaller pieces. Much of his output consisted of architectural reliefs for pulpits, altars, and tombs, as well as Madonna and Child figures meant for homes.

His style went through broad, overlapping phases. Early on, he moved away from the International Gothic style he had learned from Lorenzo Ghiberti, instead making classically inspired works that emphasized expressiveness and monumentality. Later, he focused on smaller pieces full of energy and charm. Some of his later works became stark, even brutal. The bronze *David* stands out for its sensuous eroticism, a quality rarely seen in his other pieces.

**Working and personal life**

Accounts describe Donatello as friendly and well-liked, but not very good at the business side of his career. Like Michelangelo after him, he often took on more commissions than he could finish. Many works were completed late, handed off to other sculptors, or never made at all. Also like Michelangelo, he enjoyed steady support from the Medici family.

He carved stone and modeled clay or wax for bronzes quickly and confidently. Art historians can usually tell his hand from others’, even within the same piece. Renaissance sculptors nearly always used assistants, but Donatello seems to have kept a relatively small number of experienced helpers—unlike Ghiberti’s large workshop. Some of these assistants later became important masters themselves. The technical quality of his work varies, especially in bronze, where casting faults sometimes appear. Even the bronze *David* has a hole under its chin and a patch on its thigh.

Donatello certainly made drawings, probably especially for reliefs. For stained glass designs and perhaps other works, drawings were his only contribution. Vasari claimed to own several of his drawings, praising them highly: “I have both nude and draped figures, various animals which astound anyone who sees them, and other beautiful things…” But very few surviving drawings are now accepted as likely by his own hand. Those that are—such as three in French government collections—are strong, lively figure sketches.

A story told by both Vasari and the earlier writer Pomponio Gaurico says Donatello kept a bucket of money hanging from a cord in his workshop, so anyone in need could take from it. A tax return from 1427, near the peak of his career, shows his income was much lower than Ghiberti’s that same year. He seems to have died in modest circumstances, though this may not have bothered him. Vasari wrote that “he was very happy in his old age.”

**Early life**

Donatello was born in Florence, probably in 1386. He himself stated in his 1427 tax declaration that he was 41 years old in July of that year. His father, Niccolò di Betto Bardi, was a wool-stretcher and a member of the Florentine wool workers’ guild, which likely provided a good income. Donatello’s actual surname was Bardi, but any relation to the famous Bardi banking family seems distant. The banker Bardis were still wealthy and powerful, despite the failure of their bank after Edward III of England defaulted in 1345. After Contessina de’ Bardi married Cosimo de’ Medici around 1415, any connection Donatello had might have been useful. His father also had a link to the powerful Buonaccorso Pitti, whose diary records a 1380 fight in Pisa where Niccolò gave Pitti’s opponent a fatal blow. Vasari’s claim that Donatello was raised and educated in the prominent Martelli household is probably baseless, likely included for literary or political reasons. The Martellis were later keen patrons of Donatello, and they also commissioned work from Vasari himself.

**Early career**

Donatello’s first appearance in documentary records is not promising. In January 1401, at about age 15, he was accused in Pistoia—25 miles from Florence and then under its control—of hitting a German with a stick and drawing blood. He was probably there with his father, who had an official job in Pistoia at the time, while Buonaccorso Pitti served as the city’s captain, or governor. While in Pistoia, Donatello seems to have befriended and perhaps worked with Filippo Brunelleschi, who was about ten years older. Brunelleschi, though not yet a master goldsmith, was working on silver figures for an altar in Pistoia Cathedral. What experience Donatello had to assist him, if that was his role, is unclear. Both Donatello and Brunelleschi returned to Florence in early 1401, in time for Brunelleschi to take part in the famous competition for the Baptistery doors.