Pietro Donato

In 1415, he was elected archbishop of Crete with a dispensation from Pope John XXIII on account of his age.

After the death of Cardinal Francesco Zabarella at the council in late September 1417, he composed, along with Barzizza and Pier Paolo Vergerio, a eulogy.

[5] In 1423, Pope Martin V appointed him co-president of the Council of Pavia alongside Jacques de Camplo, Leonardo di Stagio Dati and the abbot of Rosazzo [it].

[1] Donato and Archbishop Giovanni Berardi were appointed co-presidents of the Council of Basel by Pope Eugene IV.

Donato was instrumental in obtaining a papal brief in December 1439 confirming the University of Padua to be the equal of Paris, Bologna, Oxford and Salamanca.

First, there is an illuminated Latin Gospel book, now manuscript 180 in the Pierpont Morgan Library, that was created for Donato in Padua.

[10] The manuscript of the Notitia which Donato had copied was one he had found in Speyer, the Codex Spirensis earlier that year attending the council at Basel; its discovery influenced the Roma instaurata of Flavius Blondus.

[11] The work of Frontinus on the aqueducts of Rome and Vitruvius's De architectura were preserved in very poor manuscripts until Giovanni Giocondo edited them in the 1430s, for presentation to Donato.

With the aid of a scribe and a draughtsman, Ciriaco created a portfolio of sketches of several ancient Greek ruins, most notably the Parthenon, for Donato.

[15] It has been suggested that Donato, among other Paduan humanists, like Ciriaco, Francesco Barbaro, Jacopo Zeno, Palla Strozzi, and Leon Battista Alberti, may have influenced the classicism of the work of Donatello—especially his equestrian monument to Gattamelata—during his Paduan years (1444–53), when he had a studio near the Santo.