This view of a revival of the arts was accepted and propagated by the famous sixteenth-century art historian Giorgio Vasari. As far as sculpture is concerned, it is not wholly accurate, since classical influences were present in the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, we can begin our brief survey of Renaissance sculpture with the artists who come first in Vasari's account, Nicola Pisano (active 1258-78) and his son Giovanni Pisano (c.1250-1314/19). Nicola probably came from southern Italy, but his most important work was done in Tuscany, where he worked as both sculptor and architect. His work shows the results of careful study of ancient monuments, including a Roman sarcophagus in Pisa, which contained reliefs telling the story of Phaedra and Hippolytus. In his reliefs for the pulpit in the Baptistery of Pisa, there is a Madonna based on the figure of Phaedra, a Samson derived from Hippolytus, and numerous other adaptations of themes from the same source. He is also famous for his reliefs on the pulpit in the cathedral of Siena.

While Nicola combined Gothic and classical elements, his son Giovanni represents part of a reaction against classical tendencies, a reaction that can be observed also in literature and that was contemporaneous with the predominance of the International Gothic style in painting. Nevertheless, Giovanni is equally a forerunner of the Renaissance. Although his themes and feeling were largely medieval, he made a great advance in fidelity to nature. It has been said that his true successor was Giotto, the painter, rather than any of the sculptors who worked under him. In another respect also, Giovanni heralds something new; he seems to be the earliest artist to fight for release from the classification of artisan by his insistence on the value of his own individual personality. Though the records of his life are scanty, they show him in conflict with other artists, employers, and even the law. The inscriptions he left on his work, especially the pulpit in the cathedral of Pisa, show an extraordinary sense of his own worth. Though it was not uncommon for artists to leave self-praising inscriptions on their works, Giovanni went far beyond the others in exalting his own talents. Andrea Pisano (c.1290 1348-49) unrelated to Giovanni and Nicola is best known for his work in Florence, which includes the bronze reliefs on the South Doors of the Baptistery. On these doors, in the years 1330-36, he executed twenty-eight panels with scenes from the life of John the Baptist. They are outstanding for clarity and simplicity of design; the number of figures is kept small, and their relationships are clearly and forcefully indicated.

Lorenzo Ghiberti (1381?-1455) is an example of the individuality and self-consciousness that characterize the Renaissance. He wrote the earliest known autobiography of an artist, in which his pride and self-confidence find vivid expression. The same traits may account for the two self-portraits, which he placed on the East Doors of the Baptistery in Florence. This practice of representing one's self among the figures in a painting or a work of sculpture became quite common among Renaissance artists; it was a sort of signature and an expression of the artist's own conception of his importance.

Ghiberti worked on the two Baptistery doors, with interruptions, during virtually his whole productive life. The North Doors

Many of Ghiberti's assistants on the doors became outstanding artists in their own right, and the most outstanding of these was Donatello (c.1386-1466). He was probably the greatest sculptor of the Italian Renaissance, with the single exception of Michelangelo, and had an influence far beyond his own field of sculpture. Though he was affected by the revival of antiquity and the study of ancient works, he was an original, in some ways a revolutionary, artist. His work is marked by realism and by an emphasis on the psychological and emotional state of his figures. His psychological range was enormous, as was his versatility; he was equally skilled in bronze, in wood, and in stone, and in both freestanding statues and in reliefs. Three examples from his work will illustrate something of his genius. His bronze relief Feast of Herod for the baptismal font in the cathedral of Siena, was done during the 1420s. It shows three scenes from the story of the beheading of John the Baptist, in three rooms arranged one behind the other. Notable are the use of the principles of linear perspective and, above all, the expression of strong feeling on the part of the foreground figures who see the head of John presented on a platter to Herod. Donatello's bronze David is another witness to his originality. It is the first freestanding nude statue of the Renaissance, and its thoughtful and meditative David, standing over the body of the slain Goliath, is a new conception of a familiar subject. It is also an expression of an ideal of human physical beauty.

In 1443 Donatello went to Padua, where he spent ten years. The works he created there gave him the tremendous impact on North Italian art, which has already been mentioned. One of these was his equestrian statue of the condottiere Erasmo da Narni, known as Gattamelata ("Honeyed Cat"). It is one of the greatest of equestrian statues, rendered with dignity, assurance, and calm strength. In some of his other works done at the same period and in other late works, he expresses an intensity of religious emotion, and a self-revelation hardly to be found in any other artist and in no artist before his time.

Luca della Robbia (1400-82), though he did important work in marble and bronze, is best known for his development of the technique of sculpture in colored terra cotta. In this medium he did work of unparalleled simplicity and loveliness; the only other workers in this kind of terra-cotta sculpture were members of his family, who continued the tradition for a time, but who never rose to Luca's level. They had no successors, and the technique died out. The true successor of Donatello was the Florentine Andrea del Verrocchio (1435-88). He worked in a variety of media and forms as Donatello had done. His Colleoni monument is one of the two most famous equestrian statues of the Renaissance (the other being the Gattamelata). Colleoni was also a condottiere and appears as a formidable and arrogant figure. The statue is less classical than Donatello's and has a greater sense of movement. The sculpture discussed in this chapter has been predominantly Florentine, because of the overwhelming importance of Florence in this branch of Renaissance art. There was much work going on elsewhere in Italy, some of it important, but reasons of space have compelled limitations in our discussion. The greatest of all Renaissance sculptors was Michelangelo, who, as stated earlier, will be dealt with at the end of the chapter.

By Lynn H. Nelson at the University of Kansas
Information provided by: http://www.ukans.edu