2002 Theses Doctoral

Donatello’s Legacy and the Training of Michelangelo. Sculptural Practice in Quattrocento Florence

Catterson, Lynn

In general, Renaissance sculpture has not been explored as comprehensively as the painting and architecture of the period. Research into many aspects of the practical world of the painter—the number and organization of giornate in a fifteenth century fresco, the commonplace outsourcing of gilding and frame production—has led to a better understanding of the actual circumstances of artistic training and practice as well the networks in which the artists were involved. The same level of inquiry has not been undertaken with respect to sculpture, so much so, to name one example, Verrocchio continues to be regarded as a multimedia artist, despite the fact there is no evidence that he maintained a workshop facility which could have possibly produced painting in tandem with marble, porphyry and bronze. Just as striking perhaps, is the example of Michelangelo, who, by his own words, has committed to history the notion that he simply produced a near perfect object out of a marble scrap at first try.
To a large and ambitious extent, John Pope-Hennessy’s Italian Renaissance Sculpture undertook an in depth approach to the material and it remains the standard reference, but one which is mainly concerned with biography and object. With the exception of the few thematic introductory essays, the overall structure of the book is that of mini-monographs strung together chronologically. The result, however, of this kind of compartmentalization is a lack of synthesis with respect to the situation of the actual workshop as it functioned on a day-to-day and generation-to-generation basis. In turn, it is the reason why areas of complex transition, such as that found in the late production and workshop of Donatello or Leonardo’s first encounters with sculpture in Verrocchio’s workshop, continue to stymie scholars.
The traditional approach to the study of Renaissance sculpture has also privileged the finer works, to the neglect of ephemera, such as wax votive portraits, and the minor arts, such as church bells, and the utilitarian, such as canon balls, all of which to some extent were vital for workshop economic sustainability. Once these practical necessities of everyday workshop operation are identified and acknowledged, then there are alternative explanations for phenomena typically the aegis of broader interpretations. For example, taking into account profit margin might suggest another motivation besides emulation for the many Renaissance sculptures all’antica.
This study, which owes a tremendous debt to Pope-Hennessy, pushes beyond the monograph approach recasting the sculptors and their sculpture within the parameters of their workshops and outside, across the broad geographic and generational networks in which they operated. In doing so, meaningful connections between otherwise incidental aspects of their working lives can be established, and in many cases they supply the often missing component in the ever growing area of patronage studies.