He spent time in other cities, where he worked on commissions and taught others; his periods in Rome, Padua, and Siena introduced to other parts of Italy the techniques he had developed in the course of a long and productive career.

[10] A tax return from 1427, near the peak of his career, shows a much lower income than Ghiberti's for the same year,[11] and he seems to have died in modest circumstances, although this may not have been of concern to him;[12] "he was very happy in his old age" according to Vasari.

[18] Donatello's first appearance in any documentary records is unpromising; in January 1401, at the age of about 15, he was accused in Pistoia, 25 miles from Florence and then controlled by it, of hitting a German with a stick, drawing blood.

[b] Giovanni d'Ambrogio, whose work, according to Kreytenberg, "provided a decisive impetus for the emergence of Renaissance sculpture", has been described by Manfred Wundram as the "true mentor of Donatello".

They were placed very high, and so were seen from a distance, at a sharp angle, factors which needed allowing for in the compositions, and made "fine detail virtually useless for visual effect";[37] Since 2015 the museum's new displays show this and other statues for the cathedral at the intended original heights.

[40] The visibility of statues high on the cathedral buildings was to remain a concern for the rest of the century; Michelangelo's David was intended for such a place, but proved too heavy to raise and support.

Donatello, with Brunelleschi, proposed a large but lightweight solution, and made a prophet Joshua with a brick core, then a modelled layer of clay or terracotta, all painted white.

[41] Another large-scale sculptural project in the city was the completion of the statues for the niches around the outside of the rectangular Orsanmichele, a building owned by the guilds of Florence, which was in the process of turning itself from a grain market to a church on the ground floor, still with offices above.

[45] Because of a staircase on the other side of the wall, the niche is shallower than the others, but Donatello turns this to his advantage, pushing the figure forward into space, and with the "anxious look" on the face suggesting alertness or prontezza, "the quality above all others singled out for praise in the successive Renaissance eulogies of the work".

Holes and the shape of a hand suggest that the figure was originally fitted with a wreath or helmet on his head, and carried a sword or lance; the client would have been able to supply these pieces in bronze.

[49] In 1418 the Signoria commissioned a large and imposing figure of Florence's heraldic lion, the Marzocco for the entrance to a new apartment at Santa Maria Novella built for a rare visit by the pope; in the event he did not finish it in time.

This contrasted with the developing technique of other sculptors who included very high and low relief in the same composition, with Ghiberti's "Gates of Paradise" doors (1424-1451) for the Florence Baptistery a leading example.

The figures project slightly forward, but "by skilful overlaps are brought back into a tightly-stretched unified skin-plane which is scarcely broken in surface relief to suggest a deep, though not limitless, space".

Ghiberti had been involved from 1417 for a project for the font at the Siena Baptistery; it seems to have been his idea to have six bronze, rather than marble, reliefs, and these were allocated to him, Jacopo della Quercia, and a local father and son team.

It does not represent a full one-point perspective scheme, as there are two vanishing points, perhaps intended to create subliminal impressions of tension and disharmony in the viewer, reflecting the grisly subject.

The tomb, elegantly integrating a variety of elements into a narrow vertical space, in a classicizing style, made a great impact and "became the model for the Quattrocento wall-tomb whenever an elaborate or particular impressive expression was wanted" with variations found well into the next century.

[67] The breakup of the partnership with Michelozzo seems to have been partly precipitated by Donatello's delays in doing his part in the commission for an exterior pulpit for Prato Cathedral; highlights in the year at Prato, close to and controlled by Florence, were when the city's famous relic, the Girdle of Thomas (Sacra Cintola), thought to be the belt the Virgin Mary dropped to Thomas the Apostle as she rose in the air during her Assumption, was displayed to the population from a high pulpit.

The commission began in 1428, but Donatello did not begin work on his allotted areas for years, despite relentless chasing by the Prato authorities, and finally Cosimo de' Medici.

[78] They develop the style of the Prato pulpit reliefs,[79] the figures "primarily symbols of Dionysiac abandon, and the childish character of their bodies is forgotten in our sense of their liberated animal life.

If in a photograph we cover their heads our first glance reveals a Bacchic sarcophagus more intricate and vigorous than anything in antique art; and only on looking more carefully are we aware of their fat tummies and chubby legs".

[80] Six spiritelli in animated conversation crowd at the top of the large classical frame of his Cavalcanti Annunciation in Santa Croce, Florence, made for a brother in law of the Medici, c.

"[90] The figure shows "a real boy whose chest was narrower and flank less rounded than the Greek ideal", and the "waist is the centre of plastic interest, from which radiate all the other planes of the body", which became the norm in Renaissance nude sculpture.

[93] The main evidence comes from anecdotes in the Detti piacevoli, a large collection of celebrity gossip probably compiled around 1480 (but not published until 1548), perhaps by the humanist and poet Angelo Poliziano (1454–1494), a Medici insider as tutor to Lorenzo's children.

[95] He was said to hire especially beautiful boys, and "stained" them (probably meaning make-up) so that no one else would find them pleasing; when one assistant left after a quarrel, they made up by "laughing" at each other, a slang term for sex.

The redating of the Saint John had knock-on consequences for a far more celebrated wooden figure, the Penitent Magdalene long in the Florence Baptistery (now Museo dell'Opera del Duomo), where the carving style is comparable.

[103][104][105][106] The Sagrestia Vecchia, as it is now called,[107] of San Lorenzo, Florence was Donatello's last major project before his years in Padua, and forms the only large space almost wholly decorated by him.

The various parts combine experimentation in some places and conservatism in others, and the whole has failed to achieve the iconic status of the rather similar Pazzi Chapel of a few years later, which perhaps learnt the lessons of the sacristy; Luca della Robbia was the sculptor there.

In the pendentives are four scenes from the life of John the Baptist, and at the top of the purely decorative arches in pietra serena are ones of the Four Evangelists, sitting at large desks on which their attributes perch.

Firstly there were bronze doors for the cathedral, of which only a possible trial cast of one panel survives (in the Victoria and Albert Museum); the Sienese may have been unable to fund what would have been a very expensive project.

[140] But, with the help of assistants, he embarked on a major project in these years, reliefs that now form two pulpits for San Lorenzo, Florence, the burial place of the Medicis, though it is possible that this was not the function originally intended.