Original subtitles

Good afternoon.

In the fourth lecture, we looked at the early work of Donatello,

from St. George for the niche on Orsanmichele to his famous Bronze David.

I say his early work, but when he modeled and cast the undated David,

he may have already been around 50 years old.

The style of those works, however, does present a strong contrast

to the sculptures that he made in Padua, where he moved in 1443, remaining for a decade.

In 1443, Donatello moved from Florence to Padua on the mainland, close to Venice, as you know,

and in fact in Venetian territory at the time that he moved there.

Padua was not as congenial a city for Donatello as Florence was.

He really didn't enjoy living there, and he may not have intended to stay long when he went initially.

It was probably a major commission that drew him there, that coaxed him away from Florence.

And that commission was to design and model and oversee the casting of an extraordinary bronze equestrian statue

of a military figure known as Gatta Malata.

G-A-T-T-A-M-E-L-A-T-A.

It is interesting to note that it was therefore in the decade between two works that we've seen,

the two simulated equestrian monuments painted in fresco by Uccello and Castagno that we saw in the last lecture,

that Donatello created the first great bronze equestrian statue of the Renaissance.

You are looking at it now on its great pedestal beside the Church of San Antonio in Padua.

It was completed only in 1450, so it was seven years from the time that he arrived in Padua

until the final mounting of this on its pedestal, the unveiling of this statue.

The subject, the military man here, Gatta Malata, is a nickname, obviously.

We deal with a lot of nicknamed nicknames of artists.

Now we have one for a sitter.

Gatta Malata can be translated as honeyed cat,

and it may have evoked his character, a slyly syrupy, overly suave character of this military man,

a condottiere, as the two figures in the frescoes in Florence were,

a condottiere named, properly named Erasmo da Narni.

He died in 1443, and of course it was right at his death

that they determined that they would honor him with a statue.

He was in the service of the Venetian Republic, which included Padua.

And interestingly enough, he wasn't the most successful of military leaders,

yet he has survived in memory far longer than many others

because of the great monument dedicated to him that was made by Donatello.

Donatello, this statue is an aesthetic triumph in its embodiment of absolute power and confidence.

It is an awesome and a noble statue.

It is also a technical triumph in the successful bronze casting of such a large, complex model.

Donatello must have had two dozen assistants in his studio.

There is no other way that such a large work all by itself could have been accomplished

without many people working on the project of turning the model into bronze.

Do not mistake this for his tomb, for Gautamalata's tomb.

He's buried inside the basilica, which you see behind him.

But it is a cenotaph.

A cenotaph may look like a tomb, but it is essentially a cenotaph is an empty tomb, if you will.

Somebody who's buried somewhere else, and it's a monument.

It's not a statue too precisely.

It suggests that there might be a tomb here, but in fact, there is not.

And this square that it is in, the very large square by the church, is one of the most important public squares in Padua

because of the importance of the church.

I'll say more about that in a while.

Let me show you his head.

You'll never see it like this in person unless you evade the police and climb up and stare him in the face some night.

You'll never see him this closely.

But what an extraordinary head this is.

It has the ring of truth.

It seems to us to be done from the life, to be a true portrait.

And yet, no earlier life portrait of Gautamalata is known.

When he died, he was an old man.

He was 70 or over, and he'd suffered a series of strokes.

So, it doesn't seem likely that a death mask would have been of any help in assisting Donatello in creating this portrait.

Let me show you the profile.

You can see, by the way, damage in the bronze and the various kinds of restorations that have had to take place.

This is outdoors, and when you put something outdoors for 400 years, it's going to suffer.

But most of the suffering of these monuments took place in the years since the Second World War.

The industrialization of Venice and the area around Venice on the mainland at Maestre,

where, of course, acid rain and all of the other things have caused immense damage to monuments of this sort.

Some monuments have been moved.

This one still stands in his original location.

So, as you look at the profile of this head, I think we have to assume that it's not a true portrait.

Not at all.

That instead, Donatello has given us an idealized head, and as a source for it, has been Roman sculpture of antiquity.

So, inspired by the portrait style of Roman antiquity, he has created a properly noble and convincing head,

a very specific-looking head, for Ngata Malata.

I'm always loathe to leave him because it's a detail that you don't often, won't ever see yourself.

Binoculars help, but otherwise you won't see it this closely.

Let me go back to the whole monument again.

And remark that this is the first surviving, life-size bronze equestrian statue since antiquity.

That is an extraordinary achievement.

And Donatello probably had in mind some ancient prototypes.

He may have intended a reference and a comparison to the famous Marcus Aurelius,

the Roman equestrian statue in Rome on the Capitoline Hill, which, by the way, was at that time thought to represent Constantine the Great,

not Marcus Aurelius, so that it had religious connotations as well.

He may also, Donatello may also have been inspired by those famous Hellenistic bronze horses on the facade of San Marco in Venice.

We'll see those in a later lecture, but those are basically the examples that he had when he faced such an extraordinary commission.

Behind the statue, as I've twice pointed out, you have a glimpse of the enormous basilica of San Antonio,

often just called the Santo, which is one of the most venerated pilgrimage shrines in Italy.

While Donatello was just beginning work on the Gatamalata in 1444,

he was commissioned to create a bronze crucifix for the old main altar of the Santo.

I'll show you the crucifix and remark for a moment that the Santo today is as much of a shrine as it was in the Renaissance.

It is one of a very few places where pilgrims are in constant attendance.

It has a feeling, therefore, very different from most Italian churches in the 21st century,

which are often devoid of people during much of the day and much of the week.

This church, this sanctuary, is constantly flooded with pilgrims.

The crucifix is a very extraordinary piece.

It's very handsome, very moving,

at the same time somewhat conservative,

following some older models of the type of the crucifix.

The church, almost by its nature, tends to be conservative

in the style of art which is commissioned, was commissioned at that time for it.

But this piece is remarkably powerful, and it's in bronze,

and it has tremendous carrying power.

The crucifix that the body of Christ is on is very high, is very tall.

You'll see it in a moment on a different altar than it was originally planned for,

but it always was elevated considerably above the altar.

It was always a focal point, as you see it here.

I would point out the fluttering drapery of the loincloth here,

which gives a sense of motion, gives a sense of wind passing,

a kind of suggestion of Calvary when you see this statue in the church.

The success of it was very great, immediately,

and it may have resulted in the very large commission that followed it from the church

for an ensemble of sculptures for a new high altar.

And to that new high altar, the crucifix was then also moved.

Here is a view of the high altar.

Today, it is very difficult to approach the high altar

because of the popularity of the sanctuary.

One can arrange to sort of slip behind it a few people at a time

with a guide from the cathedral,

and therefore from the basilica.

It is not a cathedral.

And therefore, see the bronze reliefs and statues,

but only from the other side,

those that are mounted on the other side

and the statues seen from behind.

Rarely do you get an opportunity to see the front of this

except at a considerable distance in the nave.

But in this picture, you can get an idea of the way that it looks today.

Let me tell you what is on it.

I'll save you with the counting.

It consists, this new high altar of 1453, when he completed it,

consists of seven freestanding sculptures,

plus the crucifix, which had already been done

and was then moved there,

and 22 relief sculptures of various sizes,

most of them small, but some of them of good size.

The altar was also greatly enlarged

and augmented in the 16th and 17th centuries,

and the modern reconstitution of Donatello's altar is conjectural.

Many people feel it is not correctly shown as it is today.

You might notice that the statues of the saints are scattered about on top of it.

In a sense, they are a sacred conversation of the kind we've seen in painting,

the Sacra Conversazione, but now in three dimensions, interrelating.

But whether they interrelated in the way that we see them

in Donatello's original composition, we don't know.

His work on the altar is characterized by a new emotional intensity

that would profoundly influence the sculpture and painting of northern Italy

for another generation.

Let me move up to the central group just below the crucifix.

That is the Virgin and Child enthroned with St. Francis on the left

and St. Anthony of Padua on the right.

St. Anthony of Padua is the titular saint of the Santo.

He is a Franciscan, as is St. Francis, of course,

and the two Franciscans flank this Madonna.

It is placed right at the foot of that crucifix in the center of the altar.

The Madonna is at once hieratic in the Byzantine mode

and intensely human in the Renaissance manner.

The hieratic quality is clear enough.

She is regal, with a crown, and she is absolutely symmetrical.

The Christ child is presented to us.

And remember, by the way, that this is the altar

on which the ritual of the mass reenacts his sacrifice.

But the humanity of the figure is also apparent

in the remarkable way in which the Madonna's robes part,

in an oval shape, if one can see close in to the figure of the Christ child,

being held by the Madonna who leans slightly forward as though rising,

and the robes part in this oval shape that frames the child,

and it is almost like a reenactment of his birth,

a quite remarkable effect.

St. Francis and St. Anthony are the flanking saints,

as I have remarked already.

The reliefs on this large altarpiece,

I want to concentrate on two of the four large bronze reliefs

which depict miracles of St. Anthony of Padua.

These reliefs were greatly praised from the very beginning,

and in fact, Donatello knew that they were works of difficulty and importance.

He charged twice as much for them as he did for the figures of the saints,

and more, in fact, than for the figure of the Madonna and child.

And to construct these reliefs was,

to model them before they were cast was extraordinarily difficult.

In these reliefs, he used the Renaissance innovation

of linear perspective

to dramatize the narrative scenes in unprecedented fashion.

As I say, they are four scenes, four miracles,

of St. Anthony of Padua.

And two of the reliefs, in particular,

the miracle of the believing donkey

and the miracle of the irascible sun,

are extraordinary demonstrations

of the expressive power of perspective construction.

Here is the first of those two,

the miracle of the believing donkey,

1446, 1450, are the dates that he was working on this relief.

The story, St. Anthony's story, St. Anthony of Padua's stories,

tend all to be very simple and gentle stories.

He's a very gentle saint,

and all of the histories that are told of him tend to be quite direct,

and this one is among them.

They're unusual, the miracles.

They're interesting legends indeed.

A visitor from the provinces to the city of Rimini,

not far from Padua,

refused to believe in the host.

That is, that the body of Christ actually resided in the Eucharistic wafer of the Mass.

And this gentleman, this provincial gentleman,

refused to believe in that unless he said,

my donkey kneels and worships it.

And of course, the donkey very obligingly did just that.

He knelt in front of the...

Oh, and you see it right in the center.

He knelt in front of the altar.

Here is the donkey.

There is the altar behind.

And here is St. Anthony of Padua leaning over,

offering the host or presenting the host did to him.

Well, this is simple, direct, and irrefutable.

It is a miracle which makes its point immediately.

However, Donatello has much more to do here.

Donatello has three arches that he set up.

Not just arches, but arcaded barrel vaults here that he has designed.

And in this, while the center is fairly simple

and concentrates on the miracle itself,

the other two areas are filled to overflowing with people

who are in the church and who are moving forward,

those who are aware of this, to see this remarkable miracle.

One man here in the center of the right-hand area,

the right-hand barrel vault, kneels immediately in prayer.

I think, by the way, if we go back to the donkey,

that this gentleman behind him, he's not easily seen,

but he has an odd headdress.

I think that's probably the owner of the donkey.

I'm not positive.

There are also these figures who are climbing up

and clinging to the pilasters, the flattened columns here,

right and on the left-hand side as well,

in their eagerness to see this.

They want a better viewpoint,

and they're holding on to the pilasters and to the piers

and trying to get a better viewpoint of this remarkable miracle.

It would not surprise me at all

if Raphael knew this particular relief well

because he does something quite interestingly similar

in one of his great Vatican frescoes in the 16th century.

I'll try to remember this at that time.

There is a sense of agitation, of action,

of emotion running high that characterizes this relief.

And by the way, the architecture is almost certainly

his borrowing of or memory of the Basilica of Maxentius

in the Forum in Rome,

which the only part which stands

shows three barrel vaults of precisely this sort.

The miracle of the irascible sun,

irascible is a word that's used all the time

in the discussion of this,

an angry sun, I think, is as good as any.

The sun kicked his mother in a fit of pique,

and in his sorrow and his remorse over his act,

he cut off the offending foot.

He cut off his own foot in repentance.

And in this scene,

we have St. Anthony restoring the foot.

Donatello places the story outside

in some sort of outdoor arena like a playing field.

It looks like a playing field,

even with elevated areas for the spectators.

A very intriguing setting for this.

The activity takes place in the foreground.

The sun is lying right on the front edge here.

And St. Anthony is reattaching the foot here

in a very early example of this procedure.

You have strong perspective.

I mean, that's clear enough.

You look at the balustrades and the railings and so forth,

right and left,

and you realize you have a strong perspective

leading into the distance.

And there are many, many perspectival directions here.

But not everything,

not everything is consistent within the perspective.

And that has to be intentional,

because Donatello was a master of perspective.

So that when he breaks away from the perspective system

and has perspective that collides with one system

that collides with another,

it's almost as though there were an analogy here

to the severed foot,

to the broken limb here.

In any event,

there is that charged quality

that comes from the extreme perspective.

Agitation, again, as in the last relief,

a lot of agitation.

And I must point out the sky.

We have clouds.

They're gilded here.

There is gilding throughout the relief.

And there's also a sun,

a bright, simple sun with rays coming out on all sides,

very brilliant,

almost like an apparition at that point.

The largest relief on the altar

is not of bronze,

but rather of limestone,

carved entirely by Donatello.

I said he had many assistants,

and their hand has been seen here and there

by those who specialize in looking for those details

in the bronze reliefs.

But here we have something considered to be carved,

pardon me,

entirely by the hand of Donatello.

It is a remarkably powerful image.

It is an entombment.

It's also a lamentation at the same time

because the figures who are not actively engaged

in laying the body of Christ into the tomb,

and here is the angular body of the figure

and the rhythm of the three figures

who support the body laying it into the tomb.

But the other figures have extraordinary emotion,

and most particularly the women,

here and here to the right

and behind her as well.

An agitation expressed in two ways,

an emotion expressed in two ways,

their hair, which flies through sheer emotional power,

and hands thrown in the air, up in the air.

And it has been strongly suggested,

and I think certainly true,

that he had been looking at ancient Roman sarcophagi

in which wild, furious women,

mynods they are called, M-A-E-N-A-D-S,

figure, and there are many such reliefs,

and they are wild figures.

Because what is interesting here

is that one of these women

is not more emotional than the other.

So which one is the Madonna?

I suppose the central one

would have to be considered the Madonna

because of placement.

All of this agitation is then played

against the sarcophagus

with these three very even marble tiles.

It gives a regularity to the bottom part of this.

The Paduan decade that Donatello experienced

before he, in a sense, escaped and got back to Florence

saw a marked increase in the emotional impact of his work.

We've just seen it.

And in addition to his advanced age,

there were many external events

that could have contributed to this expressionistic style.

But it's there,

and it is in contrast to the work

before he went to Padua.

When he returned to Florence in 1453,

he soon made a wooden single figure

of the most intense emotionalism.

It is Mary Magdalene,

made perhaps, even probably,

for the Florentine baptistry

where it long resided.

It is, I think, representative

of this old age style,

if such it may be called,

and I think it may be.

The figure is haggard, emaciated,

seems to be almost dissolving.

The physicality is being eroded, eaten into.

The saint, the Magdalene,

is covered only by her hair.

This is, by the way, wood,

if I didn't say so,

and gilded wood, in part.

The figure is unlike any Mary Magdalene

that you may be familiar with.

Recall, for instance,

the golden-haired Magdalene

at the foot of the cross

in Masaccio's Pisa altarpiece.

That, a young woman,

we don't see her face,

but she is young

and presumably beautiful,

and that is the usual way

of showing the Magdalene,

but not here.

This is a different treatment

of the figure,

and it may be explained

by the collation

of two different figures of Mary,

that is, two different saints.

Mary Magdalene, you recall,

had been a prostitute,

a loose woman,

and she repented,

and she converted,

and she is always shown

in figures of the crucifixion

and so forth

as the most emotional

of the figures around Christ.

It is she who washes his feet

and anoints his body.

One of her symbols

is an ointment jar.

She is associated

in that intensely emotional way

with the figure of Jesus.

There is another saint

who you will find

in the Golden Legend,

and I'll say more

about that Golden Legend later,

a medieval compilation

of stories about saints.

They are legends,

but they were widely read,

and Mary of Egypt,

Saint Mary of Egypt,

is a hermit saint,

and there was,

in the popular mind,

an association,

even a confusion

between the two,

and that may be part of this.

That may partly explain this.

You can understand this woman

who's clad only in her hair

as being a desert figure.

On the other hand,

I wonder if Donatello

wasn't making

a very personal,

imaginative observation,

almost a novelistic projection

about the supposed

later life of the Magdalene,

imagining her

after the crucifixion

and so forth.

That, too,

could resonate

in an interpretation,

as an interpretation

of this figure.

The terrible Florentine flood

of 1966,

which submerged

half the sculpture,

half of this sculpture,

in the oily mud,

which flowed

through the city,

required a complete restoration

of the Magdalene,

removing the later paint

from the wood,

and suddenly,

they discovered

that she had been gilded.

He had painted her body

as though tanned

from the desert sun,

and had gilded her hair.

Sometimes great tragedies

like that flood

lead to remarkable discoveries.

The last work

that I will share with you

is the bronze group

of Judith and Holofernes,

at once enigmatic

and emotionally overpowering,

and one of the most

extraordinary sculptures

invented by Donatello,

indeed one of the most

extraordinary sculptures

of the 15th century.

Judith and Holofernes

was made, cast, in 1456.

For many, many years

in the 20th century,

it stood, and before that,

long before that,

even from the late 16th century,

stood outside Palazzo Vecchio,

outside the town hall.

It was in the loggia

to the right of Palazzo Vecchio,

an open loggia

where much sculpture was shown.

Eventually, it had to be moved in,

restored,

and it is no longer

shown outside,

although a copy is.

The story,

the story which I don't think

we've spoken of yet,

of Judith and Holofernes,

is that Judith,

one of the great

Old Testament heroines,

is shown,

goes to,

pardon me,

this is the last part

of the story,

let me give you

the first part,

she goes to the enemy camp,

and goes to the tent

of the enemy commander,

Holofernes,

and gets him inebriated

under the promise

of further favors,

and when he falls asleep,

she cuts his head off,

puts it in a bag,

and returns to the Hebrew camp,

and of course,

the enemy is completely defeated

when they discover

their decapitated leader.

The sculpture is extraordinary

in that effect,

because what we are seeing

is the moment

of the decapitation,

not just before,

because I should say,

before I forget

that she's already begun.

If you could get up close

and see the neck,

she's been hacking at it.

This is,

it is not easy

to cut off a person's head,

even with a sharp sword,

and for the female,

for the Judith to do this,

clearly is going to take

a few more.

It's gruesome,

and powerful,

but her face

is not looking down

at this,

at Holofernes,

whom she straddles,

and on whose right forearm

she treads

with her left foot.

This is not looking

at the victim.

She's actually,

again,

looking inward

in some way.

There's a deep

psychological penetration

into this figure.

It is intense.

It is just this side

of hysteria.

It is an extraordinary,

extraordinarily modern,

if you will,

delving into psychology.

His body is about

as lifeless as it could be.

It sits on a triangular stand,

and it was a fountain

originally,

and water came

from the corners

of the cushion

on which the body is.

What an amazing feat

of design,

this tall group of figures

on this narrow base,

but perfectly,

perfectly balanced.

We don't know

what the commission

was for.

It was probably

for something in Siena

that didn't pan out,

and eventually

the Medici came

into control of it,

and they had it

in their palace courtyard

for a very long time.

When the Medici

were expelled

from Florence

in 1494,

the sculpture

was placed

by the new government

and by the people

in front of Palazzo Vecchio

as a warning

to tyrants.

Ironic, isn't it?

They've taken it

from the people

they've expelled

and are using it

as a warning

to others.

Donatello

had still later works.

The very last

were done

with considerable

workshop assistance,

but they're very powerful,

weighty,

anxiety-ridden creations.

You don't often

use the word angst

for Italian Renaissance art,

but it works

because it is

rarely encountered

in Italian art,

and angst

is an expression

of Donatello's emotion,

and his art

is all the more memorable

because of it.