Donatello: apotheosis in Florence
Donatello - Madonna Pazzi - 1420-1425
From 19 March until 31 July 2022, the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and the Musei del Bargello in Florence are dedicating a historical exhibition to Donatello, the most important sculptor of the Italian Quattrocento.
Image: Donatello, "Madonna col Bambino" (Madonna Pazzi), ca. 1420-1425, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Sculpture Collection and Museum of Byzantine Art. Photo Antje Voigt
Donatello does not allow himself to be confined to a formula of a few words, for his incomparable creative energy bursts into the figurative and moral problems of his time, creating a whole new mode and a new world of visions. In the figurative arts, he is the first man and the most audacious of that enormously complex and extremely rich event which, in irreplaceable terms, we call the Renaissance.Giorgio Castelfranco, "Donatello", 1963
The Musei del Bargello, which owns arguably the finest collection of Donatello's works in the world, including his two sculptures of the David (in marble and bronze), and the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi have joined forces to organise an exhibition that "sets out to reconstruct the outstanding career of one of the most important and influential masters of Italian art of any age, juxtaposing his work with masterpieces by other Italian Renaissance masters such as Brunelleschi, Masaccio, Andrea Mantegna, Giovanni Bellini, Raphael and Michelangelo," according to the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi.
"This is the largest exhibition ever dedicated to the 'master of masters'," explained Arturo Galansino, general director of the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, indicating that the exhibition includes loans from 50 museums around the world, both from Donatello and other artists who were contemporaries of the Florentine sculptor, such as Masaccio and Mantegna.
In addition to the two Italian institutions, the Skulpturensammlung und Museum für Byzantinische Kunst of the State Museums of Berlin and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London have collaborated in the organisation of the exhibition, and will host the exhibition in autumn 2022 and spring 2023, respectively.

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