In Florence to admire Donatello, “master of masters”

Go to Florence if you want to see one for yourself “Impossible show”. Impossible because they are at stake ancient sculptures (that they weigh, which are fragile, delicate, often immovable). Impossible because we talk about Donatello – in the registry office Donato di Niccolò di Betto, born in Florence in about 1386 and died in 1466, after having marked the Renaissance forever – to which our country has not dedicated a specific exhibition for several decades. Impossible because it brings together – and on two locations: Strozzi Palace And Bargello Museum – a series of names that everyone (even those who are very hungry for art) has heard at least once in their life: Donatello, in fact, and then his contemporaries Brunelleschi (that of the dome of the Duomo of Florence), Masaccio (do not miss, if you are in the city, a visit to the Brancacci Chapel in the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine), and then again Mantegna, Bellini, Raffaello And Michelangelo.

A whole compendium of Tuscan Renaissance art (let’s talk about 130 works among sculptures, paintings, drawings) is now on display in Donatello, the Renaissanceone unrepeatable exhibition, curated with passion and absolute competence by Francesco Cagliotiteacher at the Normale di Pisa, which aims to reconstruct the exceptional path of one of the most important and influential masters of Italian art of all time, in comparison with masterpieces by other artists of the time (until 31 July).

Supreme sculptor of the fifteenth century – considered the «master of masters “ – Donatello started the extraordinary Renaissance season by proposing new ideas and figurative solutions that have forever marked the history of Western art. Visionary in the use of perspective (see this Love Attis who giggles), experimenter in the materials. And especially humanvery human Donatello (but the sweetness of Mad Madonna, that you find at the bottom of this article?).

The exhibition proposes a journey through Donatello’s life and fortune divided into fourteen sections: it starts from the beginning and from the dialogue with Brunelleschiproposing the comparison between the two famous wooden crucifixes from the Basilica of Santa Croce and that of Santa Maria Novella, passing through the places where Donatello worked (Siena, Prato and Padua, Florence) to arrive at a section where he proves his influence verse in subsequent to him, including Raffaello, Michelangelo And Bronzinothus testifying the capital importance of his work for the events of Italian art.

To photograph a Strozzi Palace (which is just a five minute walk from the Santa Maria Novella train station): theAmore-Attis, the “Spirits” of the Pergamum of the Cathedral of Pratoall the Madonnas with the Child.

To be photographed at the Bargello Museum (in via del Proconsolo, a few steps from Palazzo Vecchio): the San Giorgio and the Bronze David by Donatellothe Madonna of the Clouds of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Dudley Madonna of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Madonna of the staircase by Michelangelo (here is another reason why this exhibition is unrepeatable: there are single loans, some of which have never been granted before, from nearly sixty of the most important museums in the world such as the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Musée du Louvre in Paris, the Staatliche Museen in Berlin, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the Galleries of the Uffizi, the Basilica of Sant’Antonio in Padua and the Florentine basilicas of San Lorenzo, Santa Croce and Santa Maria Novella: it seems incredible but it’s all true).

“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 enterprise, born thanks to the collaboration of the most prestigious Italian cultural institutions and the most important museums of all. the world, ”he told us Arturo Galansinogeneral director of the Palazzo Strozzi Foundation and how can you not agree with him?