Donatello, Prophet Habbakah (Lo Zuccone - Melon Head), 1423-35
Image Courtesy Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore / Antonio Quattrone
The Museum of Biblical Art will close their magnificent exhibition of 15th century Florentine master sculptors this Sunday, June 14th. Composed of 23 works and a model of the famous dome of the Cathedral in Florence, this extraordinary opportunity captures the flowering of the Italian Early Renaissance as it embraced the humanistic expressions of Greco-Roman art.. (For those who read Ross King's wonderful book Brunelleschi's Dome, this exhibition is especially welcome.)
Detail from Donatello, Sacrifice of Isaac, c. 1421
Image Courtesy Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore / Antonio Quattrone
MoBIA explains: "This tightly focused exhibition features works all created as components of larger programs for the exterior and interior of the Cathedral from around 1400 until 1450. They include statues and reliefs by Nanni di Banco and Donatello from the lateral entry known as the 'Porta della Mandorla'; two larger-than-life seated evangelist figures made to flank the church’s main western portal, again by Nanni and Donatello; two of Donatello’s life-size figures of Old Testament personages from the Bell Tower; and three of the hexagonal reliefs carved by Luca della Robbia to complete a fourteenth-century series of scenes of Florentine life, also from the Bell Tower. In addition, the exhibition includes the two bronze heads with which Donatello adorned his 'cantoria', or singing gallery, inside the Cathedral in 1439. Also on view will be two Brunelleschi wood models of the dome—one relating to the overall structure and the other to the titanic lantern—and three early fifteenth-century stone reliefs derived from scenes on Ghiberti’s first bronze doors for the Baptistery facing the Cathedral.
Donatello, St. John the Evangelist, c. 1408-11
Image Courtesy Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore / Antonio Quattrone
"The significance of the exhibition derives in part from its single-site specificity. Sculpture in the Age of Donatello brings together objects made for the same location by artists who knew each other personally, offering a moving, close-up look at the project which more than any other shaped the early Florentine Renaissance: the completion of 'Il Duomo'."
Nanni di Banco, St. Luke, c. 1408
Image Courtesy Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore / Antonio Quattrone
The installation of the works is outstanding. And a film leads you through the Duomo in a manner that is breathtaking.
You will not want to miss this extraordinary collection of truly beautiful works of art.
(MoBIA is not far from the Museum of Art and Design, at Columbus Circle. At MAD you will find Pathmakers, on women designers, which is excellent! Pathmakers closes on September 30th.)
Enjoy!
Beth New York
aka Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, Ph.D.
Director
New York Arts Exchange
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