Word: donatellos
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Theodore Roethke: "Many poets are sometimes childish; Roethke, uniquely, is sometimes babyish, though he is a powerful Donatello baby who has love affairs, and whose marsh-like Unconscious is continually celebrating its marriage with the whole wet dark underside of things...
There are some famous names, such as Donatello and Van Eyck; but most of the artists are anonymous, known only by such evocative titles as the "Master of the Frankfurt Garden of Paradise" or the "Master of the Hours of Rohan." The masters reported their share of cruelties and martyrdoms: but to a much larger extent, the exhibition reflects the courtly dolce vita of an age that, out of fear of the future, idealized the past and hid the present behind a facade of elegance. The Dutch historian Johan Huizinga summed up the period best when he said, "It bore...
...Donatello, the greatest sculptor of the century, introduced the statuette with his small putti in the Baptistery of Siena. From then on, the great studios turned out an army of naked gods, young shepherds, heroes on horseback, satyrs and saints. Many were received with such affection that they acquired a gleaming patina from the caresses of their owners. They were used as decorations for furniture, as inkwells, even as perfume burners to rid the air of the stench of sewage. But mostly they were loved as works of art in themselves...
Hypnotic God. One of Donatello's greatest successors was Antonio del Pollajuolo, whom Lorenzo de Medici called "the principal master" of Florence. His writhing Hercules and Antaeus, the only surviving statuette, positively known to be his, almost cries out in agony. Wild Man on Horseback, by Bertoldo di Giovanni, a pupil of Donatello, rides with savage majesty upon a steed of extraordinary elegance. Though less renowned, Alessandro Vittoria left in his 19½-in.-high Neptune a figure of hypnotic power. There is no doubt that this small god could quell a storm with his anger...
From the days of the Medici, Florence has been a city of treasures that every eye could see. In one direction was a chapel by Michelangelo, in another a dome by Brunelleschi; here was a bronze door by Ghiberti, there a statue by Donatello. But these were only a part of Florence's great legacy...