Sculpting the Renaissance: Donatello at the V&A

In 2023 London's Victoria and Albert Museum mounted 'Donatello: Sculpting the Renaissance', a once-in-a-lifetime gathering devoted to the Florentine master who, in the 15th century, transformed what sculpture could do.

Donatello gave stone and bronze new life and emotion — from his sensuous bronze 'David', the first free-standing nude since antiquity, to figures charged with startling psychological depth.

Bringing together rare loans from across Italy and beyond, the show revealed the towering, sometimes overlooked figure whose innovations made the Renaissance possible.

Image: “Donatello, David, bronze, 1435-40, Florence, Bargello, detail” — MenkinAlRire, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.