Donatello, Jacopo della Quercia, and Ghiberti in Comparison
from Part III - Sculptural Norms, Made and Unmade
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 February 2020
In the early Quattrocento, few in Italy were more engaged than Tuscan sculptors with changing paradigms of representation. In the century’s first decades, before emerging standards were codified by treatises and by increasingly unified practice, these sculptors developed and explored innovations such as perspectival constructions, the illusionistic integration of figure and space, and engagement with the beholder. Attuned to this context of rapidly changing artistic practices, this essay addresses how Donatello, Jacopo della Quercia, and Lorenzo Ghiberti composed human forms in narratives contained in implied or represented space and questions how these sculptors approached the construction of spatial settings in ways that affected their subjects and related to their viewers. A primary issue is how Donatello employed spatial representation as a narrative tool, as well as a compositional one. How, for instance, did he capitalize on space and perspective’s narrative potential such that they are often inseparable from the story? In contrast, Jacopo’s examples suggest that, for him, spatial representation was at odds with figure and narrative, a tension that the artist resolved by favoring the body. Between these poles, Ghiberti navigated a changing course where spatial representation alternated from backdrop to narrative device.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.