Sculpture

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Italy

Not surprisingly, classical tendencies are found in the Gothic in Italy, where artists were acquainted with ancient Roman works, such as sarcophagi. Nicola Pisano, for example, created a marble pulpit—with a strong classical flavor in its architectural elements and sculptured panels—for the baptistery of Pisa Cathedral in the mid-13th century.

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Italian Renaissance Sculpture

At the beginning of the 15th century in Italy, both scholars and artists evinced strong interest in the ancient past; this period marks the Renaissance—the rebirth of classical culture (Renaissance Art and Architecture).

Lorenzo Ghiberti cast two sets of bronze doors for the Florence Baptistery; both demonstrate his knowledge of ancient sculpture. The second set, known as the Gates of Paradise (1425-1452), shows, in addition, his mastery of the laws of scientific perspective, which had been discovered only recently. The demand was also for large-scale, freestanding statues, and Ghiberti, Nanni di Banco, and Donatello created monumental figures of saints, which were placed in the wall niches of Or San Michele—the oratory of the guilds—in Florence.

Donatello was the greatest sculptor of the early Renaissance; his works demonstrate that he was not only a master stonecutter, but also possessed a profound understanding of human psychology. For example, although St. George (1415?-1416, made for Or San Michele, now in the Bargello, Florence) is represented sheathed in armor, his sensitive face shows he is not invulnerable. Most astonishing is Donatello’s innovative Mary Magdalen (1454-1455, Florence Baptistery), a carved wood statue, polychromed and gilded. Customarily portrayed as a beautiful young woman with lovely long hair, this Magdalen is—in Donatello’s startling and revolutionary work—a semitoothless, emaciated old woman with tangled hair almost to her feet.

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Outside Florence, the most noteworthy sculptor of the early Renaissance was Jacopo della Quercia of Siena. His handling of the nude in marble relief panels—Creation of Adam, Temptation, and Expulsion from Eden (1425-1438)—for the main portal of San Petronio in Bologna shows an awareness of ancient art. Adam has an idealized, muscular body, like the Greek statues of gods and athletes; Eve’s body and pose are based on the type known as the Venus pudica, or modest Venus.

The towering genius in sculpture, not only during the 16th century in Italy but perhaps of all time, is Michelangelo. His mastery manifested itself early, for he was only in his 20s when he carved the Pietà (1497-1500, Saint Peter's Basilica, Rome) and the heroic David, the first monumental sculptures of the High Renaissance. For the tomb of Pope Julius II, a project never completed, Michelangelo created the majestic Moses (1515?, San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome) and other highly expressive individual figures. During the 1520s the style of his sculpture changed, as illustrated by the Medici Tombs (1519-1534) in the New Sacristy of San Lorenzo in Florence. Whereas Michelangelo’s earlier nude sculpture displays harmonious proportions, the reclining allegorical figures on the tombs, representing the four times of day, show bodily distortions and complexities of pose indicating his departure from High Renaissance ideals. His later works, such as the Pietà (1554?-1564?, Castello Sforzesco, Milan), are also anticlassical. Thus, Michelangelo’s later sculpture and the works of other 16th- century artists show that new modes were evolving.

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Mannerist Sculpture

Supplanting the Renaissance style was Mannerism, which made a virtue of complexity, distortion, and artifice.

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Italy

Italian Mannerist sculptors include Benvenuto Cellini, Francesco Primaticcio, and Giambologna. Cellini is widely known for an elegant gold and enamel saltcellar (1540-1543, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), displaying graceful nude figures with elongated proportions, made for King Francis I of France. Also working for the French court, among a group of artists known as the Fontainebleau school, was Primaticcio, whose elaborate stucco sculptures (1540s?) decorate major rooms in the Palace of Fontainebleau. Giambologna, who came originally from France, was the major sculptor working in Florence in the late 16th century. Among his works is a larger-than-life-size marble group, interesting from all sides, Rape of the Sabine Woman (1583, Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence). Consisting of three figures in twisting poses, spiraling upward, it demonstrates the Mannerist ideal of complexity of form.

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France

In northern Europe, the finest sculptors working in France during the 16th century were influenced by the Mannerism of the Fontainebleau school. Jean Goujon did some tomb sculpture, but best known are his reliefs depicting gracefully draped water nymphs for the Fountain of the Innocent (1548-1549, Louvre). Germain Pilon also executed tomb sculpture; most impressive for its realism and technical skill is his tomb figure of Valentine Balbiani (1581?, Louvre), in which a delicately carved marble relief portrays her decaying corpse.

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