Sculpture, Donatello, and the Goldsmith’s Art in Fifteenth-Century Florence

In fifteenth-century Florence, many artists, whatever their eventual specialty, trained in goldsmiths’ shops. Throughout Europe, moreover, the goldsmith’s art, which was practiced publicly, engendered widespread awareness of processes such as casting and plating metal. Among Florentine sculptors, goldsmithing nurtured an experimental approach, an attention to surface, and the adoption of novel media deriving from work with precious metals. After 1400, regulations circumscribing the art were reinterpreted and applied to large-scale sculptures made of copper alloys. In Donatello’s works, expansive creativity collided with strict regulation, revealing the complexities associated with the re-emergence of bronze and brass sculpture in quattrocento Florence.