BERLIN.- Donatello is regarded as one of the founding fathers of the Italian Renaissance. The Florentine sculptor revolutionised the art of his day, his outstanding talent was recognised by his contemporaries, and renowned patrons vied to acquire his artworks. Now, a one-off collaboration between the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, the Musei del Bargello, Florence, and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, sees the first ever exhibition in Germany focused exclusively on Donatello. Across 90 works, many of them key works from his oeuvre that have never before been shown together, a panorama emerges that sparks the realisation that the story of Donatello is also the story of the Renaissance.

Donatello (ca. 1386–1466) was a versatile and pioneering force who experimented tirelessly with a range of different materials, new techniques, and innovative forms of aesthetic expression. He applied the forms of perspectival representation he had constructed using lines and vanishing points to the relief, and worked not only with marble and bronze, but also with terracotta and stucco. These materials had scarcely been used since antiquity and enjoyed renewed popularity during the Renaissance. A host of masterpieces attest to Donatello’s extraordinary levels of productivity and imagination, and constitute some of the major milestones of Italian Renaissance art.

The Staatliche Museen zu Berlin’s Skulpturensammlung und Museum für Byzantinische Kunst (Sculpture Collection and Museum of Byzantine Art), located in the Bode-Museum, boasts one of the world’s most extensive and diverse collections of works by Donatello, alongside the collections of the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. The collaborative nature of this project enables the show to exhibit some of the sculptor’s major works outside Italy for the very first time. Among these are the marble statue David from the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, which was the young artist’s first masterpiece; the Amor Atys, one of Donatello’s most enigmatic creations; sections of the pulpit for the exterior façade of the Prato Cathedral, for which the artist shepherded his rapturous “little spirits” – referred to in his day as spiritelli – into an exuberant round dance.




One centrepiece of the exhibition is the works that are on loan from the Basilica di Sant’Antonio in Padua. It was there in the 1440s that Donatello created a series of unique bronzes that still embellish the basilica’s main altar to this day. Thanks to the close cooperation between the partner institutions involved, we are able to exhibit these works outside Padua for the first time. It is now possible for people in Berlin to witness Donatello’s innovative methods of representing the human body and constructing perspective, as well as his invention of new visual motifs, thanks to these key works of Renaissance bronze casting.

The expansive space of the Berlin Gemäldegalerie’s Wandelhalle is particularly well suited to showcase Donatello’s works. In addition to objects from Berlin’s Skulpturensammlung, a number of extraordinary works on loan enter into a dialogue with paintings rendered by Donatello’s contemporaries – among them Masaccio, Fra Filippo Lippi and Andrea Mantegna – as well as sculptures, drawings and casts from the holdings of the Antikensammlung (Collection of Classical Antiquities), the Kupferstichkabinett (Museum of Prints and Drawings), and the Gipsformerei (Replica Workshop). This constellation of works allows visitors to perceive the ways in which Donatello and the most prominent artists of his time inspired one another. Visitors will be given the opportunity to experience Donatello’s exceptional capacity for inventiveness, as well as the range and scope of the Berlin collections. Coinciding with this exhibition, the Donatello Room of the Bode-Museum will be displaying a series of recently restored works from the master’s sculpture collection.

The exhibition is the result and culmination of a 10-year research and restoration project conducted by the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. It was curated by Neville Rowley, curator of early Italian art at the Gemäldegalerie and the Skulpturensammlung, in collaboration with Francesco Caglioti (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa), Laura Cavazzini and Aldo Galli (both from the Università degli Studi di Trento).

The exhibition is sponsored by Hauptstadtkulturfonds and the Kaiser Friedrich Museumsverein. Media partners are ARTE, Der Tagesspiegel, Exberliner, Klassik Radio, Monopol, tipBerlin, and Weltkunst.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue, published by E.A. Seemann Verlag, Leipzig: 280 pages, 230 reproductions, ISBN (German edition): 978-3-86502-482-4, ISBN (English edition): 978-3-86502-484-8. Proice: 39 € (retail), 35 €(museum bookshop).