Donatello: Sculpting the Renaissance review – An essential exhibition

The V&A’s landmark show about the Renaissance sculptor reveals a complex and interesting character

Donatello, Pazzi Madonna, marble, courtesy of Skulpturensammlung und Museum für Byzantinische Kunst der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin (Antje Voigt, Berlin)

There’s a case to be made for Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi – that’s Donatello to you – as the most important sculptor of all time. The 15th century Florentine goldsmith turned bronze caster and marble hewer threw aside the stiff, ritualised art of the Middle Ages and created a new sculpture based on ancient Greek and Roman models, which transcended anything produced by the classical world. This new art was more dynamic, expressive and human than anything that had been seen before. Michelangelo, who was in many ways Donatello’s successor, made everything bigger, but essentially dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s of what Donatello had already done.

If that feels a shade grudging towards Michelangelo, it is essentially the rationale of this eagerly awaited exhibition, which is – unbelievably – the first full-scale Donatello show ever held in the country, and is already being hailed as a once-in-a-lifetime experience.   

Actually, it isn’t so surprising we’ve never had a Donatello exhibition when you reflect that most of his key works were cemented into Italian churches and palaces 600 years ago, and don’t move anywhere. This is the third of three related exhibitions, following shows at Florence’s Bargello Museum (the place to see Renaissance sculpture) and Berlin’s Staatliche Museum. The fear was that the London incarnation wouldn’t match the heft of the exhibits in the other two.