The birth of Renaissance sculpture
I managed to get into the Donatello Exhibition at the V&A (Donatello: Sculpting the Renaissance).
This has some marvellous works by Donatello, in marble and bronze – who recreated the skills of the ancient Romans, (and was the first to do it in Renaissance times) - in free standing life size statues in bronze, in portrait busts, in very low (Stiacciato) relief sculpture, implicitly re-writing the rules of sculpture almost entirely from those of the medieval sculptors who proceeded him, and re-inventing the high skills of the classicists before him.
But, be warned, only a third, or less, of the exhibits here can be firmly attributed to Donatello himself. Many are ‘unknown’ (but contemporary), some are school-of, some are useful and illustrative predecessors, some are by known collaborators, some are ‘believed’ to have been influenced by Donatello, some are clearly (much) later copies, some are casts.
None, it must be stressed are bad, some indeed are compellingly good (particularly by those he collaborated with or very clearly influenced and may have taught).
He created a particular style of Madonna with Child which very clearly became the go-to image for contemporary – and later - sculptors and painters , and this is well illustrated here.
This absolutely is not just Donatello. But go, anyway, unless you have no time for the Renaissance, and what it did for us.