DONATELLO
(b. ca. 1386, Firenze, d. 1466, Firenze)

St John the Baptist

1438
Polychrome wood, height 141 cm
Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice

Where Donatello excelled was in his rendering of drama and pathos, nearly always in a Christian context. The gaunt, painted wood statues of St John the Baptist (1438; Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice) and St Mary Magdalene (c. 1457; Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Florence), as well as his bronze St John for Siena Cathedral, border on the horrific and are deliberately shocking to a casual observer. The choice of wood may reflect a wish to relate these figures to the Gothic tradition of wood-carving in Germany and the alpine regions, where it was always used expressively. The intense empathy that Donatello manifested with his chosen subjects, whether carved in wood or marble or cast in bronze, is deeply moving and is still much appreciated.

The very humanity of such works retains its appeal across six centuries. But even if Donatello's expressiveness is all his own, to some extent he was drawing on an earlier Tuscan Gothic tradition of fiercely dramatic narrative founded by Giovanni Pisano, who, where necessary, as in the Massacre of the Innocents (1301; Sant'Andrea, Pistoia), did not flinch from inflicting the full horror of the event on the spectator.