No visit to Florence would be complete without checking out the current exhibitions at the Palazzo Strozzi. Some of our most satisfying art-moments have been spent in this majestic excellently curated building.

Our recent visit to the Strozzi was no exception: an exhibition dedicated to one through whose creativity renaissance sculpture came of age. by shedding its late gothic formulae and producing some of the first works truly representing the flowering city’s new learning. That person was Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi (1386 –1466), better known as Donatello.

David and his victory over Goliath is the city’s symbol par excellence representing new youthful life with its fight for liberty against the dark forces of brute and antiquated repression. Michelangelo’s statue of the Old Testament hero is, of course, famous throughout the civilised world but its macho muscularity and proud, almost arrogant pose comes after at least three previous sculptural incarnations of the Judaic King. Donatello portrayed David twice. The first time was in marble and was to crown a buttress of Florence cathedral, except that it was considered too far up to see properly. It is this statue which is the first exhibit we come across in the exhibition. The upper half of the sculpture is shown in stiffer, almost gothic form whereas the freer lower half depicting the hero’s drapery and his flexing body breathe the joy of the early renaissance with its rediscovery of the classical world and its dumping of formulaic gothic art.

With the second David cast in bronze Donatello reached remarkable heights of renaissance art. The statue, the very first free-standing nude sculpture since classical times, depicts a graceful youth nonchalantly delighted with his victory over the forces of barbarism represented by the giant Goliath. It forms part of the exhibition in Florence’s old town hall, the Bargello, and one must go there to see it.

The shepherd-turned-warrior’s hat (modelled on ancient Greek pastoral head-wear) could so easily provide a model for a chic summer hat for a lady today (indeed, my mother told me she was so taken by it as a girl that she had a friend make an copy of it for her.  I wonder where it is now. Regrettably I have no photos of my mum wearing it).  

My wife found the second Donatello David statue somewhat effeminate (but then aren’t we all used to seeing the Florentine David par excellence, Michelangelo’s?) There are contemporary allusions to the artist’s propensity for young male models and assistants in his studio but so what? Are we still bogged down by jaded stereotypes of ‘the love that cannot be told?’ The renaissance clearly showed that one’s sexual orientation could be free from gothic aesthetic and moral strictures.

For me the most startling examples of Donatello’s virtuoso technique were in the bas-reliefs he carried out, especially those done for Florence’s cathedral and baptistery doors. I was quite bowled over by the astounding vividness of this panel depicting Herod’s banquet. Wow!!!

Other examples included this joyful panel which the artist discarded from his complete project for the external pulpit of Prato cathedral used to this day to show the public the city’s most precious relic, the Virgin Mary’s girdle.

Donatello’s Madonnas and child are exquisite and it was good to see them placed in the context of his contemporaries’ efforts in this type of religious art.

Donatello travelled to other city-states in fifteenth century Italy to carry out commissions for the rulers there. Pisa and Padua all have works by him.  Another achievement of the artist was the creation of the first free-standing equestrian statue since ancient Roman times, Gattamelata’s monument in Padua:

The exhibition had these two fine equestrian heads from an uncompleted statue on display:

When we were at the Strozzi tourist crowds were luckily not much in evidence. It is good that we are now coming to the tail-end of the most devastating pandemic experienced in our lifetime and it certainly is marvellous to be able to return, even if cautiously, to the social freedoms we could enjoy up to early 2020 but I shall miss those once-empty streets and galleries of Florence!  

The exhibition is on until the end of July. Information on admission times and ticket costs are to be found here: https://www.palazzostrozzi.org/en/archivio/exhibitions/donatello/