Donatello Worl [Hardcover]

Early Italian Renaissance sculptors such as Donatello, Ghiberti, Brunelleschi and Verrocchio broke away from late Gothic traditions and embarked on a humanistic exploration of emotions. That awakening is ably traced in this beautifully illustrated survey spanning the period from 1400-1490. The focus is on Florentine sculptor Donatello (1386-1466), whose early works, like the marble David and a wooden crucifix, take into account the viewer's perspective and create their own space. It is Donatello's later statues of figures wracked by powerful emotions-- the glowering, half-crazed Jeremiah or the woodcut Mary Magdalene--that, Poeschke emphasizes, give the lie to any vision of the Renaissance as a seamless monument to classical beauty. A helpful introductory essay, extensive notes and biographical profiles of 30 sculptors accompany the 388 plates, 63 of which are in color.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This excellent new survey of quattrocento Italian sculpture, the first of a projected set of two, is the best in English since John Pope-Hennessy's Italian Renaissance Sculpture appeared in 1958. Poeschke's very readable history of this most crucial of centuries precedes an extensive section of plates, many in color, illustrating the reliefs and statues of 30 artists. Brief biographies, analyses of the pictured artworks, and a lengthy bibliography complete the book, making it an exceptionally well-documented appraisal of an era and a medium. While Poeschke's approach does give a great deal of weight to Donatello's influence, he does not neglect the many other geniuses of the age, including Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Michellozzo, and Verrocchio. The wholeness of his analysis and the impressive photography support his claim that the seeds of the artistic Renaissance lie not in painting or architecture but in the early carvings of these 15th-century Florentine masters. A superb acquisition for all libraries.
- Douglas F. Smith, Oakland P.L., Cal.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The Italian Renaissance is known to have been a golden age for the arts. This volume, which spans the years 1400-1490, examines early Italian Renaissance sculpture. While the author's central focus is on the work of Donatello, the author also illustrates the beginnings of Renaissance sculpture in Florence, its further development in Tuscany and the rest of Italy, the new artistic goals, and the relationships between patron and artist, convention and artistic freedom. Other sculptors included in the book are Ghiberti, Jacopo della Quercia, Nanni de Banco, Luca della Robbia, Francesco Laurana and Verrocchio.