Lorenzo de' Medici, the Magnificent (vol. 1 of 2)Reumont, Alfred von
History
Lorenzo de' Medici, the Magnificent (vol. 1 of 2)
Reumont, Alfred von
Medici, Lorenzo de', 1449-1492
It is comprehensible that the noticeable revolution in architecture
should likewise affect the sister arts. Here, however, we encounter in
the first rank two artistic characters essentially differing from one
another. With Lorenzo Ghiberti the influence of the school of Giotto
is very perceptible, and in the reliefs, his master-pieces, he allows
the picturesque principle to predominate to a certain extent, and with
a careful calculation of the effect, which to some degree surpasses
the ability or courage of the painter so active in his youth. The
attitudes and drapery, however, of Ghiberti’s figures are in harmony
with the spirit of antiquity which had inspired Nicolò Pisano more
than a century and a half earlier. The full outbreak of realism in
conception and form is displayed in the somewhat younger Donatello,
who, unpoetical and less imaginative than Ghiberti, depends for
models rather upon real, if even less beautiful, nature, than upon
works of antiquity, of which, indeed, Rome afforded him but scanty
and doubtful specimens. Both were goldsmiths, whose art had at that
time reached a high degree of perfection, and was distinguished by the
production of great works. It was the profession which Brunellesco had
originally followed, and for centuries remained connected with that
of the sculptor. In 1408 Ghiberti, then only twenty-two, received the
commission for his first bronze door of the Baptistery, the completion
of which required more than twenty years. In 1414 he executed the
statue of St. John, and six years later that of St. Matthew, for two
niches on the exterior of the ground-floor of Or San Michele, the
sculptural adornment of which, at the cost of the guilds, had been
determined upon in 1406. In 1424 the execution of the second door of
the Baptistery was entrusted to him, which was finished twenty-eight
years after, three years before his death. One work of less importance
remains from the year 1428—the bronze chest executed for the brothers
Cosimo and Lorenzo de’ Medici for the reception of the relics belonging
to the Camaldulensian convent of the Angeli.[37] In 1411 Donatello
began the statue of St. Mark, which he produced, together with that of
St. Peter, for Or San Michele; about 1420 he began the monument for
Pope John XXIII.; and in 1427 he was commissioned by the Medici to
execute the monument of Cardinal Rinaldo Brancacci for Naples. His most
excellent work in respect to lightness and grace, and which is without
a touch of the heaviness so often characteristic of him, is the statue
of St. George for Or San Michele. The date of the production of this
work can as little be determined as that of the excellent figures of
the Prophets which adorn the niches on the belfry of Sta. Maria del
Fiore.
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