1.1 - Artworks of sculpture Flashcards
- Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455)*
- Young sculptor who won the competition sponsored by Florentine humanist Leonardi Bruni in 1401 to determine who would make the doors of Florence Cathedral´s octagonal baptistery. His reaction typifies the heightened sense of self-worth that Renaissance artists felt about their artistic abilities and accomplishments.
The doors were well received. As soon as they were completed, he was commissioned to make a second set for the east side of the baptistery (completed in 1452). Impressed by their beauty, Michelangelo called them the ´gates of paradise´. They face the cathedral facade, occupying the most prominent position of the baptistery.
The panels are fewer in number and larger in size, scenes are set in simple square formats, this time the whole square is gilded rather than just the raised areas. Each panel includes several scenes. The first scene, the creation, portrays 5 scenes from Genesis. At the top God creates heaven and earth. At the bottom left, Adam is created from the earth. The central scene depicts Eve being created from Adam´s ribs. To the left and behind, Adam and Eve are tempted by Satan in the guise of a serpent. To the right, Adam and Eve are expelled from the garden of Eden. This is simultaneous presentation of events that took place sequentially, a technique called continuous narration.*
- Donatello (1386-1466)*
- Depicted a subject popular in the Early Renaissance, the shepherd boy David who slew the giant Goliath with a stone from his slingshot (1425-30). The stone is still in David´s sling, although Goliath´s head lies beneath Davids foot. By depicting David both before and after the conflict, Donatello provides a condensed version of the story.
With the fast large-scale nude created since Roman antiquity, Donatello portrays David as an adolescent male wearing only a hat and boots. According to the Bible, David casts only his armor as too cumbersome for battle. To depict David in the nude is to lik him to heroic nudes of antiquity. In addition David adopts the antique contrapposto posture, in which the weight of the body rests on one leg, elevating the hip and the opposite shoulder, putting the spine into an S-curve.*
Between 1453 and 1455 Donatello carved and painted a wooden figure of Mary Magdalene, over 6 feet high. After a sermon by Pope Gregory the Great in 594, in which he made a suggestive comparison to Mary Magdalene´s sinfulness, she came to be identified as a prostitute. she remained among the followers of Jesus, is said to have annointed him with oil after his crucifixion, to have attended his burial and discovered his resurrection. Donatello depicts her after years of living in the desert, rejecting the life of the body in anticipatiion of the immortal life of the soul after a spiritual resurrection. His figure is intentionally unnerving, even repulsive. Its the striking absence of beauty that makes her both powerful and memorable.
