donatello gattamelata

Donatello's "Gattamelata" and Its Humanist AudienceAuthor(s): Mary Bergstein and DonatelloSource: Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 55, No. 3 (Autumn, 2002), pp. 833-868Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Renaissance Society of AmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1261558 .

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Donatello's Gattamelata and its I-IumanistAudience*

by MARY BERGSTEIN

Twosmallnudehorsemen locatedin thearmorialdecoration ofDonatello'sGattamelatayieldnew insights about the use of Greek sources in Renaissance art. Here it is speculated that Donatello was informed by a drawing or carvedgemstoneprovided by Ciriaco dAncona that represented riders in the Panathenaicfrieze on the Parthenon. Donatello may have included thefigures as a learned reference to delight a circle of intellectuals in Padua, including Ciriaco and Francesco Barbaro, who wrote dedicatory texisfor the monument. It is subsequently arguedthat Leon BattistaAlberti's treatise De equo animante (ca. 1444-47) and Donatellos Gattamelata appear to have been mutually influential

talian Renaissance sculpture frequently demonstrates the re-discovery of classical antiquity.' In the Renaissance the influence of Greek art was al-

most always filtered through Roman copies. But there may have been instances when Renaissance sculptors consciously encountered the art of

2 classical Greece and recognized it as an aesthetic form suigeneris. This essay addresses the impact of Greek, Roman, and humanist sources - visual and literary - upon Donatello's equestrian statue of Gattamelata and its audi- ences at Padua. 3 (Fig. 1)

The imposing bronze equestrian statue of the Paduan condottiere Er- asmo da Narni (ca. 1370-1443), the "Gattamelata" (speckled cat) who led Venetian forces to victory in the Milanese wars, stands on a high pedestal before the Basilica of Sant'Antonio. The first visual touchstone is a small relief passage of two nude horsemen located on the back of Gattamelata's saddle. (Figs. 2, 3) Insights about the use of Greek sources in fifteenth-century art may emerge from consideration of these figures in the context of

*Parts of this essay were given as a lecture entitled "Donatello at the Parthenon" at the 2000 meeting of the RSA. I am grateful to many friends: James Beck, Gina Borromeo, Ste- fano Casu', Gino Corti, Alexander Gourlay, Margaret Lewis, and Louise Rice. John Monfasani, Michael C.j. Putnam, Nelia Saxby, and David Warner helped with translations. Two anonymous readers for RQ and particularly editor Paul F. Grendler provided valuable suggestions. Above all I thank Father Edward W Bodnar for his patient reading of a draft and valuable responses to my many questions. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce copyrighted material. Copyright holders should inform the author of any over- sight if proper acknowledgment has not been stated.

'Agosti, Farinella, and Settis, 1061-67. 2Beschi, 1983 and 1986. 3Donatello's statue, made from 1447 to 1453, towers before the southwest corner of the

church on a tall substructure, which serves as a pedestal as well as cenotaph; Janson, 151-53.

Renaissance Quarterly 55 (2002): 833-868 [ 833 1



834 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY

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Civilization

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FIGURE 1. Donatello. Gattamelata, 1447-53, Padua. Alinari



DONATELLO'S GATTAMELATA 835

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4K.., N M.. -M ..........

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FIGURE 2. Donatello. Gattamelata, 1447-53, Padua: detail of saddle. Rome, Gabinetto Fotografico Nazionale.

Florentine and Paduan studio practices, as well as habits of collecting and

display. During the years 1444-53 Donatello's studio near the Santo at Padua

may well have been open to humanists such as Pietro Donato (Bishop of

Padua 1428-47), Francesco Barbaro (1390-1454), Jacopo Zeno (ca. 1418-8 1), Palla Strozzi (ca. 1373-1462), Leon Battista Alberti (I 404-72), and Ciriaco d'Ancona (ca. 1390-1452). Given this constellation of

characters, it is possible that informal meetings pertinent to the classical

elements in Donatello's Paduan work took place there. Ciriaco is a key figure in this cohort, unique in his first-hand knowledge of Greek sites, admirer of

Donatello, and author of an epitaph for the monument to Gattamelata, which was composed in tandem with an epitaph by Francesco Barbaro. 4

Ciriaco had been to Padua in 1443, but the epitaph and his sonnet, "Nivea

Paros," most probably date from some time between January and July 1449, when he was in the north of Italy before his departure from Genoa in

September 1449 to points unknown.

A subsequent part of this essay suggests that Alberti's treatise De equo animante (On The Living Horse) of ca. 1444-47 seems to be materialized in

the overall composition of Donatello's bronze equestrian group, and that it

'For a summary of Ciriaco's life in the context of Venetian antiquarianism, Brown, 81-91.




'161

FIGURE 3. Donatello. Gattamelata, 1447-53, Padua: detail of saddle. Rome, Gabinetto Fotografico Nazionale.

is likely that Alberti and Donatello's ideal horses were mutually influential. Again, the contention that Alberti was inspired by drawings or models in Donatello's studio is part of the larger argument that Donatello was in close contact with humanists in Padua as he had been in Florence - humanists who admired his projects and collections and shared their literary culture with him.

DONATELLO AT THE PARTHENON

The two small horsemen on Gattamelata's saddle recall the nude riders from the interior west and north friezes of the Parthenon. (Fig. 4) Donatello's figures, modeled quite freely, and framed by delicate acanthus scrolls, are mounted on rearing horses; their nudity is set off by short capes billowing behind them, and one rider carries a flame. In ironic contradistinction to the restrained Gattamelata ensemble of which they are a tiny part, these figures ride without armor, saddle, stirrups, or reins.' An unmistakable parity of scale between horse and rider echoes that of the human and animal figures in the Panathenaic cavalcade. 6And although the materials, size, and scope of

'Gosebruch, 14-15. 'Such nude equestrian figures reappear, transformed into a much more tormented, even

mannerist forms, in Donatello's "Lamentation of Christ," in the San Lorenzo pulpits: see Lavin; Herzner.




.............. .

FIGURE 4. Phidias and workshop, fragment of interior frieze of Parthenon, ca. 442

BC, London, British Museum. M. Hirmer, Munich.

Donatello's figures are different from those of Phidias, the quotation resonates.

In a normal viewing situation, Donatello's nude riders are not at all vis-

ible from the ground - even with the aid of binoculars. The fact that such

elegant figures would be produced and then effectively hidden is perplexing to the modern viewer, especially in view of the fact that the installation of

the Gattamelata was so carefully planned! Indeed, they seem to belong more to the world of private notation than to that of the public sculpture in

which they are physically embedded. It remains, therefore, not only to iden-

tify the locus classicus for the riders, but also to discern the artist's

iconographic intention, and to imagine the spectatorship - if any - for

which they were created.

Let us look at the iconographic aspect first. The statue's obvious com-

parison with the Marcus Aurelius in Rome and the bronze horses on the

facade of San Marco at Venice (which were believed to be by Phidias), estab- lish a theme of victory all'antica in terms of recognized classical precedents! The hero's gesture of imperial adventus and elaborate fictive armor confirm

the general idea that the Gattamelata represents a kind of equestrian apothe-

'For the design and situation of the equestrian ensemble see Caglioti, 1:88, 100, 141. 'Some time after November 1441 Ciriaco wrote the "Itinerarium" to Pope Eugenius IV,

attributing the four horses to Phidias: Perry, 33; Scalamonti, 10.




osis, a victory in both the military and spiritual senses, facing as it did the "Paradiso," or cemetery, of the Santo.'

Compared to Erasmo da Narni's utilitarian armor, which is said to be a suit of armor conserved in the Arsenal of Venice (Fig. 5), Donatello's all'antica Renaissance fantasy is hyper-populated with angels, erotes, and genii of every category and stylistic type. (Fig. 6) Four anguished pre-adolescent putti in high relief - ascendant, yet apparently bound at the ankles lounge as atlanti around the saddle. In much lower relief, festive and musical putti represent engraved and embossed elements of the fictive armor. Cats' heads emblazon the pommel of the front scroll of the saddle and lionesses spring from parade helmets on the marble relief slabs on both sides of the base. These young lionesses refer not only to the soldier's totemic nickname, which was derived from that of his mother, Melania Gattelli, but also pun on the name of Gattamelata's widow, Giacoma da Leonessa, who apparently had the monument erected by decree of the Venetian senate." The Medusa head on the breastplate of Gattamelata's lorica is derived from examples commonly found on Roman military statues, though no ancient rendition is quite so large, vivid, or focussed as that of Donatello. " Here, Medusa's psy- chological presence echoes that of the general himself, who possesses a gaze of Julius Caesar-like intensity. In the fifteenth century, the Paduan humanist-physician Michele Savonarola (ca. 1384-1468) described the figure as "Seated just like a triumphant Caesar, and with scarcely less magnificence.""

Gattamelata's funeral took place at Padua the day after his death in 1443, at which Lauro Querini praised his character and military achieve- ments Chomo Pius, vir humanus, modestus, prudens"). Twelve days later the Bergamasque humanist Giovanni Pontano delivered an oration at Padua

9Jen6 Unyi, in an unpublished lecture of 1939 given at the Warburg Institute, was the first to analyze Gattamelata's armorial ensemble in terms of apotheosis, as the figure faces the "paradiso" of the Santo. Art-historical arguments have appeared in the literature as to whether the iconography was Christian or Platonic; but this seems clearly to be a work in which Christian and pagan ideas of victory are sean-dessly reconciled. In terms of urban situation, Gattamelata is also special protector of church and state in Padua, which was then a Venetian city; Kauffmann, 134.

"A forthcoming study by Stefano Casu" will analyze the nature of the commission itself in terms of its humanist sources.

II Stemmer, passim. ""Nec silentio pretereundus est strenuus in armis vir ille et illustrissimi dominii veneti

felicis exercitus olim gloriosus imperator, Gattamelata, qui in bello etiam, nostro in tempore tanturn florvit, ut etiam victor fortunatus evaserit. Et enim eneus configuratus est super eneum equum sua cum magnitudine decorum apud angulum templi Antonii nostri acciden- talem: veluti Cesar triumphans non parva cum magnificentia sedet. Ossa cuius eodem in templo magno eum ornata sepulta sunt." As quoted in Sorzano, 1957-58, 32-33.




.... . .... ..

PI i! 1 i Philippines:

.......... .. .. ......

FIGURE 5. Gattamelata's armor as exhibited in Venice, Arsenal. Lithograph by Cleman and Belli, Rome as reproduced in Eroli, 1876.

in the presence of Venetian officials emphasizing that the death of the general was a great loss for the Venetian republic.'3 An inscription by Porcelio

Pandoni (ca. 1405-85) - "The order of the senators and my own pure faith

13 Sorzano 1957, 112-14.




4

Billy

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FIGURE 6. Donatello. Gattamelata, 1447-53, Padua: detail of armor. Alinari Art Resource, NY

rewarded me with worthy gifts and an equestrian statue" - was eventually used for Erasmo da Narni's actual marble tomb of 1456-58 by Gregorio d'Allegretto, inside the basilica.14

""Dux bello insignis dux et victricibus armis, Inclitus atque animis Gatamelata fui; Narnia me genuit media de gente meoque, Impffo venetum sceptra superba tuli; Munere me digno et statua decoravit equestri, Ordo senatorum nostraque pura fides." Eroli, 182.




Donatello's equestrian monument, which was finished long before the actual tomb, bears his own signature (OPUS DONATELLI. FLO.), and had two important memorial inscriptions associated with its creation and dedication. These two inscriptions are germane to the argument presented here. Memorial epitaphs honoring Gattamelata, and associated with Dona- tello's statue, were composed by Ciriaco d'Ancona and Francesco Barbaro. Barbaro, the leading Venetian humanist of the fifteenth century, who had long respected the intelligence and valor of Gattamelata, was a Venetian sen- ator in the later 1440s, and became Procuratore of San Marco in 1452. It is therefore assumed that he was connected with the Venetian proclamation of 1447 that the statue be erected with funds provided by Gattamelata's son Gianantonio, his widow Giacoma di Antonio Beccarini da Leonessa, and a nephew, Gentile Beccarini da Leonessa, who was also his successor as Com- mander in the Venetian army.' 5

There were two complementary dedications, then, Ciriaco's emphasizing the Venetian decree of 1447 to have the statue made, and Barbaro's stressing that funds were provided by Gianantonio and Gentile da Leonessa (both of whom were Gattamelata's prot6g6s and high-ranking soldiers in the Venetian army). These texts are assumed to have been invented for inscription on the two long sides of the pedestal of Donatello's monument. But they were never inscribed there, and whether they were meant to be physically incorporated into the monument or rather to float free as literary obbligati is not altogether clear. Francesco Barbaro, who studied Greek as well as Latin, had been to Florence in 1415, and was a friend of Niccolo", Niccoli (ca. 1364-1437) and Leonardo Bruni 0 370-1444). A quintessential civic humanist in his words and actions, Barbaro was to Venice as Bruni was to Florence. 16 Francesco Barbaro was educated at the gymnasium of Gas- parino Barzizza at Padua, had taken up Greek studies in Venice (where there was no university) studying with Guarino Guarini, who moved from Flo- rence to Venice in 1414 and stayed for five years." Barbaro was an enthusiastic Platonist (probably dating back to his studies with Barzizza) and wrote to George of Trebizand that if the constitution of Venice was based on Plato's Laws it was because, "our ancestors not without cause turned to Plato and other wise men to understand and learn how to acquire and retain civic liberty, and to increase and amplify public majesty."" In-

1 5Mennitti Ippolito; for Francesco Barbaro see King, 323-25. 16 Wilson, 24-25; Brown, 104, 148.

"Wilson, 1 14.

"Translation by King, 44-45, from Francesco Barbaro, Diatribapraeliminaris in duas partes divisa ad Francisci Barbari et aliorum ad ipsam epistolae ab anno Christi 1425 ad annum




deed, as early as 1436 Barbaro showed the public majesty of Venice (San Marco and its treasury) to his friend Ciriaco d'Ancona, who in 1441 pro- nounced the four bronze horses of San Marco as the work of Phidias." it is pertinent that over a decade later Barbaro and Ciriaco would compose verses in honor of another bronze horse, the Gattamelata, which incorporated little reliefs of Athenian riders. In his epitaph for Gattamelata, Barbaro used phrases from the Roman eulogy to Q. Fabio Massimo, which had also served as a model for the Florentine eulogy of 1393 in honor of the condottiere John Hawkwood.2' His text follows.

Here is Gattamelata of Narni, a nobleman illustrious no less for the vigorous way he waged his campaigns than for his success in them, the most cautious leader of his age and the most experienced in matters of war. He crushed the Abruzzesi at Reggio Emilia and avenged the Church with just arms. He also restrained the Perugian enemy exulting fiercely in its victories. Having been received among the patricians in the most difficult time of the Republic, as the unconquered commander of the Venetian army he accepted Verona. After it was lost through deception, he recovered it through trust, counsel, and arms; and he restored the Venetian Republic to its pristine dignity. He died in enormous glory. The public grieving is proof of this. His funeral was celebrated with every honor and with the tears of the soldiers no less than with well de- served praise. Gentile da Leonessa, who learned the art of every kind of warfare under him as his teacher and commander, and Gianantonio, his son, piously took care to have this equestrian statue made for him .21

Ciriaco's text, which follows below, belongs to the same orbit of Donatello's equestrian monument:

&-I.53, ed. A.M. Quirini, 2 vols. (Brescia: J.M. Rizzardi, 1743), 2:290: "Non sine causa ma-

jores nostri a Platone aut a sapientissimis viris aequandae et retinendae communis libertatis et

augen dae ac amplificandae publicae majestatis rationern habuisse et didicisse videantur."

'9Brown, 84; Perry, 33; Scalamonti, 10.

2OEroli, 221. 21 "Hic est Gathamelata Narnius, rebus non minus fortiter quarn prospere gestis in mil-

itari gloria eques illustris, dux aetatis suae cautissimus, reique bellicae peritissiumus, Brutos

compressit in Flamineam; ecclesiam justis ultus est armis; et Perusium hostern vitoriis feroc- iter exultantem, coercuit. Difficillimo reipublicae tempore inter patritios adscitus, Veneti exercitus imperator invictus, accepit Veronam; dolis ammissam, fide, consilio, et armis re-

cepit; inclinatamque rem Venetam, restituit in pristinam dignitatem. Mortuus est ingenti Gloria. Testis publica moestitia. Fuit funus omni honore, non minus militurn lacrymis quarn meritis laudibus celebratum. Ei statuarn hanc equestrem Gentilis Leonessa, sub eo magistro et Imperatore omnis belli arte edoctus, et Johannes Antonius filius pie faciundam curaverunt." With the rubric "Epitaphium clar. Viri Francisci Barbari in laudem Gathamela- tae, imperatoris gentis Venetorum," on f 160v of MS 57 (membr., s. Xv, miscel.) of the Biblioteca Civica Guarneriana, San Daniele del Friuli.




Stefano Gattamelata of Narni supreme commander of the Venetian army, join- ing in a military alliance with the Church in Reggio Emilia, routed the Abruzzesi; in an unexpected victory put to flight the Perugians and the remain- ing forces of the enemy; in the Ligurian War he blocked Niccolb Piccinino, chasing him across the Adige; and having transported an enormous fleet over the steep slopes of Mount Penede to Lake Garda, he avenged the defection of Verona and having liberated Bergamo and Brescia from the siege, he secured the Venetian Republic, shattered and wavering as it was from a multitude of de- feats. To this man, as a monument of faith and virtue, the Venetian Senate decreed that this equestrian statue be made, in the year of the incarnation of

22 the divine Christ 1447.

What these epitaphs and other evidence show about the iconography of the Gattamelata is that Donatello's two little Athenian horsemen participate in a commemorative program of heroic apotheosis; their association with the Panathenaic procession at the Parthenon, which was then thought to be related to Periclean military victory, was ideally suited to themes of triumph

21 and commemoration that pervade the whole monument. In Trecento and Quattrocento Italy, Phidias, Polykleitos, and Praxiteles

were recognized, by way of sources like Pliny the Elder, as legendary-historical sculptors of the highest rank. Writers from Petrarch (1304-74), to

Filippo Villani (1345-1407), to Leon Battista Alberti had read about fifth- century Greek art, including Phidias' sculptures at the Parthenon. Due to this literary tradition, statuary imported from the Greek archipelago was almost automatically revered for its possible connection with these artists. Nor is it a coincidence that Leonardo Bruni, who studied Greek under Manuel Chrysoloras (d. 1415) from 1397 to 1400 together with Niccolb Niccoli and Palla Strozzi, and later corresponded with Ciriaco d'Ancona, styled Florence as a second Athens in his Laudatio Florentinae Urbis of 1404, which was it-

""Stephanus Catamelata [sic] Narnius, Veneti exercitus imperator maximus, in Flaminia eclesiae [sic] socia arma iungens Brutios fudit; Perusinos reliquasque hostium copias inopinata victoria profligavit; bello Ligurico N(icolaum) Picininum., hostern prospero, pre- liorum eventu ferocem, trans Athesim persequendo coercuit; traductaque in Benacum per abruptos Penede montis colles ingenti classe, vindicate Verone defections, Bergomo, Brixia obsidione liberates, Venetium rempublicam multiplici clade concussam atque labantem sta- bilivit. Huic Senatus in monumenturn fidei et virtutis statuarn hanc equestrem faciundarn decrevit. Anno divi Christi humanitatis [humanatatis cod.] MCCCCYLVII." Treviso, Bib- lioteca Capitolare, 2 A/ 1, gi 1-138, cc. 194, r-v. (Erasmo da Narni's baptismal name was Stefano.)

21 Schneider suggested that Gattamelata's armor was composed according to a complex platonic theme. See also Leach, 85-89. For Ciriaco's belief that the Panathenaic procession was in honor of a military victory, see Bodnar 1970, 1 00, and above.




self based upon the second-century AD Panathenaicus of Aelius Aristedes, a history and exaltation of ancient (classical) Athens.'

But Florentine links with the physical vestiges of antiquity at Athens were not merely literary, theoretical, or hyperbolic. Members of the Floren- tine Acciaiuoli family were the Lords of Athens from 1388 to 1456, residing in a palace built into the Propylean gates of the Acropolis.` And the priest Cristoforo Buondelmonti (ca. 1375-after 1430), an Acciaiuoli kinsman, traveled to Greece in 1415 and 1418, writing of his geographical and antiquarian discoveries's Buondelmonti's chronicles, which existed in many redactions, circulated among humanists in Florence, and were copied exten- sively by Ciriaco d'Ancona."

Donatello had been involved with humanists in their study of ancient art from the beginning of the fifteenth century. Poggio Bracciolini (1380- 1459) (who incidentally married Buondelmonti's daughter Vaggia in 1436) was typical in his mania for Greek sculpture, that is, for any ancient sculpture brought to Italy from the Greek archipelago. Heads and statues imported from Greece took pride of place in his gardens; and he wanted to install such objects in a Ciceronian-style library at his villa "La Valdarnina" near Terranuova." It is well known that Poggio's taste in ancient sculpture was vetted by his friend Donatello. In a letter of 1430 Poggio boasted that Donatello had praised some of his ancient statuary in Rome: "Donatellus vidit, et surnme laudavit." (Donatello saw it and praised it most highly.)'9

Sculpture imported from Greece was much desired by collectors like Poggio, Pope Eugenius IV (ca. 1383-1447), and Cosimo de' Medici (1389- 1464) for its provenance. 3' But raecitas as a visual rather than simply 9 historical quality must still have been a relatively unformed concept. 3 ' For example, when Poggio sent the friar Francesco da Pistoia to buy sculpture on the island of Chios, he warned him to beware of certain graeculi, who for purely commercial motives ascribed second-rate statues to Phidias and Prax-

24 Krautheimer, 279; Bruni, xxi-xxv; Publius Aelius Aristedes composed the Panath- enaica in the second century AD, possibly under the reign of Hadrian.

25 Beschi, 1986, 3:325. 26 Beschi, 1983, 256; Brown 77-81. 27 Mitchell, 1962, 283-99. 2'De Benedictis, 20-26.

29Bracciolini, 1964, III: Epistolae, Epistola XII, Liber IV, 322-24. 30 Pernis, 16-20.

3'Beschi 1983, 256; Weiss, 132.




iteles." The antiquities from Poggio's collection, which included a marble head of "Minerva" crowned with laurel, and a faun (described as "Bacchus cum duobus corniculus") among dozens of other ob' n no longer be traced, and take form, like so many other early collections, only in the schol- arly imagination." Maria Grazia Pernis, for instance, has proposed that the head of Mary in Donatello's Cavalcanti Annunciation at Santa Croce was based on a Praxitelean Aphrodite imported to Italy from Greece by Poggio Bracciolini - a head which she suggests must have looked like the example

34 of the "Bartlett Aphrodite" in the Museum of Fine Arts at Boston. Luigi Beschi has coined the useful term "archeologia collezionistica" for this ave- nue of largely speculative stud Y.

3' The circuit of collecting in Donatello's time was such that men like Poggio Bracciolini, Cosimo de' Medici, and Pope Eugenius IV frequently acquired antiquities from the humanist-merchant Andreolo Giustiniani, a member of the governing Genoese group in Chios, who was himself continually re-supplied with stock by Ciriaco d'An-

31 cona as he traveled throughout the Greek islands and mainland. It may well have been Ciriaco d'Ancona, the merchant-antiquarian

from Ancona, Donatello's contemporary and friend, who provided him both directly and indirectly with information of the most tactile and docu- mentary nature about Greek art. A tireless traveler, diplomat, and humanist, Ciriaco fittingly chose Mercury as his patron deity. His role as the "father of modern archaeology" went hand-in-hand with his activities as explorer, diplomat, and purveyor of Mediterranean material culture, trading in Greek wine, Persian and Turkestan carpets, Chinese vases, ancient Greek gems and sculpture, fragments of Roman porphyry, and slaves from Eastern Europe and the Greek Levan t. 31 Ciriaco d'Ancona compiled a great series of commentaria: texts, descriptions, epigraphs, and drawings from his Mediter-

31 ranean explorations, including those to Chios and the Greek islands. These volumes of notes are believed to have perished in the sixteenth century, leaving only a tantalizing fragment conserved in the Biblioteca Arnbrosiana in Milan. 31 judging from a well-known, rather stilted, silver-

12 Bracciolini, 3, Epistola XII, IV, 322. 33 Ibid. 322-24: "Caput Minerva scribit esse cum laurea corona, Bacci vero cum duobus

corniculis." 34 Pernis, 16-20. 35 Beschi, 1983 and 1986.

3'Landolfi, 444. 37 Colin, 52-64, 109, 184-86.

3'Bodnar, 1960, 3. 39 Ibid. 22-35; Milan, Ambrosiana, Ms. Trotti, 373.




point and ink view of the west facade of the Parthenon (Berlin) (Fig-7), which was derived from an on-site sketch in Ciriaco's commentaries, from some drawings from the commentaries re-interpreted by Giuliano da San-

gallo (Vatican), and from the fact that several illustrative folios seem to be missing from Scalamonti's fifteenth-century Life ofCiriaco at Treviso, we can intuit that considerable figurative as well as philological material has been lost. 40

Ciriaco d'Ancona was in Florence in 1433, when he visited several prominent Florentine humanists including Palla Strozzi and Leonardo Bruni. He toured the library of Niccol6 Niccoli, where antique objects such as cameos, coins, and bronze statues were intermingled for display in his library of ancient texts; and Carlo Marsuppini (1390-1453) escorted him

through Cosimo de' Medici's collection of ancient sculpture (here the Med- )

41 -century ici sculpture garden comes to mind . Ciriaco's fifteenth biographer, Francesco Scalamonti, related that on the same occasion, "He also saw in the houses of Donatello and Ghiberti many statues, both antique pieces and their own modern works in bronze and marble." This episode demonstrates not only Ciriaco's interest in ancient art and the production of contemporary all'antica sculpture, but also the prestige of Ghiberti's and Donatello's workshops as salient attractions in the Florentine itinerary (on par, at least in Scalamonti's text, with the Roman arena at Fiesole and the liv-

ing lions in Piazza della Signoria). It also indicates that their studios ("houses") served as repositories of sculptors' collections as well as works in progress. 43

How are we to conceive of Donatello's "collezionistica" (approach to

collecting) in concrete terms? One way of imagining the material environment of his Florentine studio is to consider the ambivalent nature of two bronze "prophet-heads" that protrude from the lower central panels of Donatello's Cantoria made for Santa Maria del Fiore. The pair of heads are of uncertain provenance, having languished in the Bargello as antiquities until they were matched with payment documents for Donatello's Cantoria in the twentieth century. In his monograph on Donatello, H.W Janson proposed that one of the heads was ancient and the other a bronze counterpart

4OThe pertinent manuscripts are as follows: Berlin, Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, Codex Hamilton, 254, fols. 81v-90r; Vatican Codex, Barberinus Latinus 4424, fols. 28r-29v; Tre- viso, Biblioteca Capitolare, Codex I, 138 fols. 108v-98r. See Beschi, 1998, 83-103; Di Benedetto, 89-99.

41 Scalarnonti, para. no. 102, pp. 69-70, 132. 42 Ibid., para. no. 103, pp. 70, 132: "Et apud Donatellum Nenciumque, statuarios no-

biles, pleraque vetusta novaque ab [eis] edita ex aere marmoreve simulachra." 43 Ibid., para. nos. 10 1 -04; see Chiarlo, 1984, 271-97.




FIGURE 7. Parthenon, west front and parts of the frieze, from the Collectanea of Pietro Donato. Berlin, Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, Codex Hamilton, 254, fol. 85r. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin - Preussischer Kulturbesitz.




(neither a cast nor an exact copy) made by Donatello, who installed them together as a pair of prophets in the Christian context of the music gallery. 44

Janson's scenario is interesting: if it is correct, then the pre-1930s pho- tographs of these objects as they were installed in the Bargello, where they look like portrait busts in their own right, might give an idea of how similar objects were arranged, juxtaposed, and apprehended in the workshops of Donatello and Ghiberti around 1433 (Fig. 8).

Having visited Chios and the Greek islands for the first time in 1425, Ciriaco traveled incessantly in Greece from 1443 to 1447, visiting ruins, and acquiring fragments of sculpture, as well as codices, gems, and coins. In 1436 he described the Parthenon as a wonderful temple of Pallas Athena, the work of Phidias. He said it was decorated everywhere with beautiful statues - on both facades, inside on the topmost band of the walls (the Panathenaic procession), and outside on the architraves, all marvelous works of sculpture. 4' After his 1444 visit to Athens Ciriaco elaborated in a letter to Andreolo Giustiniani that he had been able to recognize the Parthenon and the iconography of its sculpture:

from the testimony of Aristotle's words to King Alexander as well as from our own Roman Pliny and from many other good ancient writers, [it] is a won- drous work of Phidias .... This excellent and marvelous temple survives to this day. . . . Above the columns are epistyles nine and a half feet long and four feet high, on which you see superbly carved sculptures of the Thessalian battle of the Centaurs and Lapiths, while on the frieze placed high on the inner walls about two cubits from the top, that great artist Phidias has magnificently represented the victories of Athens in the time of Pericles, each frieze being about the height of a ten-year-old boy. Finally, on each of the fronts, you look up at colossal images of men and horses, entirely filling the two pediments, which fittingly ornament that vast temple. Of this magnificent work I have taken care to include a drawing, as best I could, in the journals of my present travels though Greece.`

44 Janson, 124. 45 Bodnar, 1970, 96-105, 188-99, esp. 100. 46 Trans. by Mitchell, 1974, 114-16, from a letter to Andreolo Giustiniani transcribed

by Bodnar from Targioni-Tozzetti 1773, 5:66-69, 408-61, the source of which is Codex

Magliabecchiano Palatino, Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale. For a transcription see Bodnar 1960, 52-53: "Phidiae mirificum opus extitisse, Aristoteles ad Alexandrurn Regem, Pliniusque noster, et alii plerique nobiles testantur Auctores - Extat vero nostram ad them eximium illud et mirabile Templum 0 Columnae desuper Epistilia longitudine p. VIIII cum dimidio, altitudine vero IIII. in cuis Thessalica Centaurorum et Laphitarum pugnae mirifice

consculptae videntur, et in summis parieturn listis duorum fere cubitum a Cacumine discretas, Athenarum Periclis tempore victories Artifex ille peregregie fabrefecerat, pene decennis Pueri staturae. In frontibus vero tota re velaminis dernersione [sic] magnis




XN i::.;.: Jurisdiction Christie

l BankAmerica

... . .......

. .. ...... ... .. . ....... .....

..........

. .........

i: Victim:

...............

-u-

...... .....

FIGURE 8. Nineteenth-century photograph of a bronze head from Donatello's Cantoria as installed in the Bargello. Anonymous photographer, nineteenth century.

colosseisve simulachris Hominum et Equorum tam ingentis Delubri ornamental atque decora alta videntur. Cuiusce magnificentissimi Operis figuram hisce nostris et hac tem-

pestate per Greciam commentaries, quod licuit reponendam curavimus."




Around the same time as the letter to Andreolo, Ciriaco d'Ancona composed "Nivea Paros" (1445), a sonnet in praise of Parian marble, based upon Cristoforo Buondelmonti's elegiac descriptions of the marbles of Paros.47 The earliest known redaction of this poem, which survives in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence, ends with a dedication to Crusino Som- maripa, Lord of Andros, Paros, and Antiparas. 4' A somewhat later version of "Nivea Paros" appears, significantly on the page preceding Ciriaco's epitaph to Gattamelata, in the Biblioteca Capitolare at Treviso in a miscellany of

49 Ciriaco's writings which span his career from 1435 to 1449. In this redac tion, which is dated to 1449 in this essay, Ciriaco compares sculptors of his own day - namely Lorenzo Ghiberti, Donatello, and Niccol6 Baroncelli with the ancient Greeks: Phidlas, Praxiteles and Lysippos.50

Nivea Paros di marmor candente Cycladurn decus aequoris Aegei Honor de artisti de heroi et de dei Sicch6 di te si fa splendente Ornasti Apollo in Delpho et l'oriente Per Cyrrho et per Alcide Indi et Sabei Minerva Athene et Jove i campi alphei Alexandro austro et Caesar l'occidente

Di Phydia et Polycleto el gran valore Mostro" qual fusti de Natura pari Da te Lysippo e gli altri hebbe splendors Hor per Nencio et Donato a nostri mari Nicolb Baroncielli en tuo decore Fa Leonel col patre al mondo clari

Ornasti il quinto gia papa Martino Sculpto in milan per man di Iacobino.

Snowy white Paros of gleaming marble Glory of the Cyclades in the Aegean Sea, Honored by the artists, the heroes, and the gods alike, that in you they were made resplendent.

47 Targioni Tozzetti, 5:424-25, cites Buondelmonti, whose Trattando dellYsola di Paros

spoke of "Paros altissima valde," and "marmor candissimum."

4'Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale (BNF), Manoscritto Palatino Targioni 49

(gi 5 3), c. mod. 16r (former 68 0. 49Treviso, Biblioteca Capitolare di Treviso, 1-138, cc. 193v-94r; fols. 108v-98r contain a

miscellany of Ciriaco's writings from 1435-49; Scalamonti, 3. "This passage was pointed out by Chiarlo, 1984, 279.




You rendered Apollo beautiful in Delphi, You ornamented the east with figures of Cyrus and Hercules made by Indians and the peoples of Sheba, Minerva in Athens and Jupiter in the Alphean fields, Alexander in the east and Caesar in the west.

The great prowess of Phidias and Polykleitos showed that through you sculpture could equal Nature; It was from you that Lysippos and the others achieved renown.

Now through Nencio and Donatello on our shores, And the elegance that Niccolo' Baroncelli bestowed through you makes Leonello d'Este and his father famous, You also rendered beautiful the late Pope Martin V Carved in Milan by the hand of jacopino. 5 1

Several important art-historical connections occur in this sonnet, which was probably composed between January and July 1449 in Padua at the same time as his epitaph for Gattamelata. It is obviously most intriguing that Cir- iaco cites Donatello as one of the heirs of Phidias, Polykleitos, and Lysippos apropos the pair of nude "Panathenaic" riders under discussion above. Ciri- aco clearly had equestrian sculpture on his mind in 1449, as he also refers to the ultimate predecessor for Donatello's Gattamelata at Padua, namely the bronze equestrian monument at Ferrara by Niccol6 Baroncelli (d. 1453) that Leonello d'Este (1407-50) erected in honor of his father, Marchese Nic- co16 III (d. 144 1). With regard to the date of this poem, Ciriaco is certain to have seen the Este horse in progress when he visited Leonello at the court of Ferrara on 8 July 1449, which might possibly then serve as a terminus post quem for "Nivea Paros" and the Gattamelata epitaph, which are generally dated to some time between January and July 1449. Regarding Ciriaco's classicizing poetic license it is also worth noting that in this ode to Parian marble, he does not seem to mind that Donatello, Ghiberti, and Niccolo' worked in bronze. The poem's final reference, to jacopino da Tradate's hyper-gothic statue of the enthroned Pope Martin V (1421) in the Cathedral of Milan, was most likely added by Felice Feliciano (1433-80), the scribe of this manuscript (fols. 108v-98r), who produced it for the distinguished painter and humanist Samuele da Tradate, jacopino's son. 12 Intellectual cir-

"My translation. "Minerva in Athens" and "Jupiter in the Alphean fields" refer to the Parthenon in Athens and the Temple of Zeus at Olympia respectively.

52 Chiarlo, 1984, 282-83; Quaquarelli, 333-35. Although the praise for jacobino's Martin V was probably added by Feliciano, it is important to remember that as a connoisseur of art Ciriaco was not immune to gothic styles; he admired the paintings of Rogier van der Weyden and Pisanello as well as the sculpture of the Acropolis; see Agosti, Farinella, and Settis, 1069-70; Ciriaco visited the Cathedral of Milan in 1442 (October-November) and 1443 (January).




cles spawned friendships with long trajectories, and the Milanese-born Samuele was a Gonzaga courtier in Mantua'together with Mantegna: the two artists accompanied Giovanni Marcanova (ca. 1418-67) and Felice Fe- liciano on the famous antiquarian outing around the lake of Garda in September 1464. Samuele, who according to Felice organized the outing, was crowned with myrtle, periwinkle, and ivy, and merrily played the zither in the skiff 51

The Ferrarese equestrian ensemble, by Florentine sculptors Niccol6 Baroncelli (the horse) and Antonio di Cristoforo di Firenze (the rider) stood on a marble base in the form of a triumphal arch, the so-called Arco del Cav- allo, designed by Leon Battista Alberti, who had also judged the competition of bozzetti (models) in 1443 for the equestrian group, arriving at the So- lomonic decision to split the commission between horse and rider. 54

Following closely upon these events, Alberti composed a treatise (dated by experts ca. 1444-47, written in north Italy or Rome) dedicated to Leonello d'Este, entitled De equo animante. 5 5The monument to Niccol6 III (d. 1441) was commissioned in 1443, under way in 1449 when Ciriaco d'Ancona visited the court of Ferrara on 8 July 1449, erected in 1451 (a year

56 after Leonello's death), and destroyed in 1796. Had the equestrian statue of Nicco16 d'Este escaped the Napoleonic invasions, it, rather than the larger Gattamelata, which was finished two years later, would have stood today as the first surviving bronze equestrian statue since antiquity. It had claim to an important ancient prototype, namely the monument to Trajan Caesar on the triumphal arch at Ancona, which was a touchstone for all of Ciriaco's subsequent antiquarian researches. 57 In any case, the two north Italian equestrian monuments, one at Ferrara and the other at Padua, commissioned in 1443 and 1444 respectively, must have been made in a typically Florentine spirit of competition, especially because Nicco16 Baroncelli (ca. 1395-1453) and Antonio di Cristoforo had been pupils of Donatello's arch- competitor and longtime associate, Filippo Brunelleschi, and because Bar- oncelli was a Florentine sculptor with extensive Paduan connections. 51 It is

53 Scalarnonti, 3-5; Feliciano, 180. 54 Morolli, 66 n. 70; Rosenberg, 57-61. 55 Pope-Hennessy, 199-202; Alberti, 199 1.

5'For a full discussion of the monument to Nicco16 III d'Este, see Rosenberg, 50-82; Al- berti, 1991, 55-69.

51 Scalamonti, para. 54, P. 117. 5'Baroncelli died in 1453, either just before or just after the installation of the Gattame-

lata in Padua. In 1450 Donatello had been asked by the Consiglio del Comune of Modena to make a life-size bronze statue of Borso d'Este, Lord of Ferrara, Modena, and Reggio, Borso

having succeeded Leonello d'Este (d. 1450). On 14 March 1451 Donatello accepted the as-

signment for 300 gold florins, but the work was never made; Sorzano, 1957-58, 49.




also significant that Francesco Barbaro, who apparently launched and sup- ported the Gattamelata project, was the Venetian ambassador to Ferrara from 1444 to 1447, and therefore aware of the planning and progress of the Este equestrian monument.59

Donatello actually cast the Gattamelata ensemble in the years from 1447, when it was ordered by the Venetian Senate, to 1453. Ciriaco, who

had since been to Athens at least twice, probably visited the Gattamelata in

progress around the same time he visited Ferrara. Therefore it is likely that

Ciriaco composed both "Nivea Paros" and the epitaph to Erasmo da Narni

in spring or summer 1449 at Padua. He could have supplied drawings or

three-dimensional models any time from January to July 1449, and would

conversely have had access to all the wax models and cast bronze elements

that Donatello had created by that time.

Here, at the risk of some repetition, it may be useful to recapitulate Cir-

iaco's geographical itinerary during these years. Having been to Padua in

1443, Ciriaco left for the Levant in January 1444 and did not arrive back in

Italy until late December 1448 at the earliest. He spent the winter of 1447- 48 in Mistra. On 18 October 1448 he was still in northwestern Greece. In

three letters written on 30 December 1448, Filelfo speaks of him as either in

Venice or about to arrive there from the Levant, bringing with him antiquities and inscriptions from Greece and Asia. In late June he was in Rimini

and Ravenna respectively; on 8 July he was at the court of Ferrara. On 31

August 1449 he applied to authorities in Genoa for permission to travel "to

the west and south." Then we lose track of him permanently. If he visited

Padua it would have been either from Venice in January to June 1449, be-

fore going south to Rimini, or in July 1449, when he seems to have been

making his way north again." Since Ciriaco's inscription for the Gattame-

lata emphasized the Venetian decree of 1447, it was probably written in

northern Italy, presumably Padua or Venice, under the advice of Francesco

Barbaro, some time between January and July 1449. And again, the fact that

the inscription is copied by Felice Feliciano in the Treviso manuscript on the

page facing the "Nivea Paros" sonnet, which was presumably written after

having seen the Este horse in July 1449, indicates that Ciriaco composed the

two texts around the same time. 61

59 See King, 323-25. "I am indebted to Father Edward W Bodnar for this synopsis of Ciriaco's itinerary in a

written communication of 4 July 2000. 6 1Janson, 153, through a different argument, dated Ciriaco's epitaph to "winter of

1448-1449."




Since Ciriaco had visited Donatello's studio in Florence in 1433, and

compared Donatello with Phidias around the same time he composed the dedication for the Gattamelata monument in Padua, we may speculate that some kind of exchange took place there between the two men - a conversation about ancient and contemporary sculpture that may well have

accompanied the Athenian reflexes in Donatello's Paduan work. just as Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) would later produce numerous

drawings and models in his own attempts to create an ideal monumental horse in Milan, we may assume that Donatello, who was trained as a gold- smith in the early fifteenth-century manner of Lorenzo Ghiberti, made

drawings and models in wax or clay in the course of designing and produc- ing the sculptural ensemble. 62

Coming in from the outside as an explorer-archaeologist, Ciriaco d'An- cona had accumulated an enormous collection of drawings, gems, coins,

63 statues, and codices that can no longer be traced. We know, for instance, that in 1432-33 Arnbrogio Traversari was in Venice when Ciriaco arrived there with a collection of artifacts including ancient gemstones and gold and silver coins, one with a head of Alexander. 6' Near the end of 1448, Filelfo

speaks of him arriving in Venice with an array of antiquities from the Le- vant. By 1449 he owned various small objects such as a head of Medusa, a cameo depicting the mermaid-monster Scylla, and a deeply carved gem of convex crystal with the head of Athena in a Corinthian helmet signed by "Eustacheo son of Dioscorides" (Berlin) that Ciriaco believed to represent

65 Alexander the Great. (Fig. 9) In addition to using these artifacts as cur

rency in trading or archaeological data, he sometimes had replicate casts made of significant cameos or engraved gems to give as gifts to friends such as Theodore Gaza (I 400-75), King Alfonso I of Aragon O 395-1458), Ja- copo Zeno (ca. 1418-8 1), and Angelo Grassi, Bishop of Ariano.

The humanist scholar Jacopo Zeno was Bishop of Feltre and Belluno from 1447 to 1460 and became Bishop of Padua in 1460. Zeno wrote a laudatio to Ciriaco d'Ancona thanking him for replicas and antiques and commending him for having presented an insect enclosed in a piece of amber to Alfonso of Aragon, with the Plinian allusion to the "spread wings of the fly enclosed in the rosy golden light of amber. "66 Ciriaco gave a replica of a sardonyx cameo of the nude Scylla to Theodore Gaza, who was in Ferrara

61 Pope-Hennessy, 202-04; Krautheimer and Krautheimer, 7.

63 Bodnar, 1960, 22. 64 Brown, 83. 61 Colin, 556-59. 66

Pliny, XXXVII, 5 1, vol. 10:202-03.




... ....... . ..... ..... .... ..... .................. . ...... . ..... .... . . ....... ....... .... . ...... .......... .. .... . .. . . . . ....... .. . ......... . . . ....... .. .. ........ ...

.......... ... .................

..........-. ................ ..... ........

........... .. .. .... ..

.. ..... . .. .. .-

... .. .. ....

............

T:

FIGURE 9. Pallas Athena, late first century B.C. Rock crystal intaglio. Berlin, Staatliche Museen Zu Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Antikensammlung.

at the behest of Leonello d'Este to teach Greek with Guarino Guarini.6' On 4 November 1443 Gaza thanked Ciriaco with a Greek epigram. The image was apparently cast in lead and probably painted to imitate the deep red

background and white figure of the sardonyx cameo, like the one Ciriaco

presented to Angelo Grassi. Grassi thanked him in a letter dated I I Decem- 67 Wilson, 45.




ber 1443 for a cast lead simulacrum of the monster Scylla made from Ciriaco's own famous sardonyx agate cameo. 6' The Scylla cameo and casts no longer exist, but Grassi described the original cameo in Ciriaco's collection in verse as a celebrated object, radiant, with the figure of Scylla white as snow rising from a dark background. He -described the figure as a reclining nude maiden, as beautiful as Venus, who wore a skirt of wolf-fishes and whose lower legs spiraled into a dolphin-like tail.

This account corresponds to the Scylla of Virgil's Aeneid, a young virgin with beautiful torso and breasts - a seductive mermaid, with wolves' heads around her loins and the curving tail of a dolphin. 6' Although a Sicilian silver tetrarchum of ca. 415 BC features a rather awkwardly compressed image of the nude Scylla surmounted by a crab, the type is not known in any cameo or lead-cast from antiquity or the Renaissance." Most perplexing, however, is the problem that it is difficult to imagine a lead copy even remotely capturing the translucent beauty of the white and red chalcedony of a sardonyx cameo, which Grassi called "radiant." All of this vanished material culture of "archeologia collezionistica" constitutes an important part of the visual landscape for Donatello and his audience. For this reason it is pertinent to the "period eye" through which monumental sculpture was apprehended.

Returning to the Gattamelata, no single unambiguous intermediary source of transmission for the small nude "Panathenaic" riders has been located among extant relief fragments, coins, or gems. Nor is such a "key" object mentioned in contemporary documents. It is significant, however, that the selection of autograph inscriptions and copied drawings of the Par- thenon in the manuscript now conserved in Berlin has a Paduan provenance, having been compiled by Ciriaco as a gift given to his long-time

71 friend, Pietro Donato in 1437. In the lower margin of the Berlin Par

""Scyllei monstri plumbeurn simulacrurn ex sardonica achateave gemma ilia tua nobil- issima fusili arte figuraturn describentes." Bartalot and Campana, 373; the letter to Ciriaco takes the form of a panegyric following his mention of Ciriaco's introduction of the elephant and giraffe: "Quis uero ante te iocandissimum illud chryselectrum quod aurei coloris et mat- utini gratissimurn aspectu culice intercluso scribit Plinius, quis Meduseam caput [h]ydris furisque agitaturn et obuolutum, quis Scyllam uirginea facie et pistris forms in posterioribus in hominum cognitionern intelligentiamque deduxerat," Staatsbibliothek Berlin codex lat. 557, cc. 48v-54r. For the Scylla copies given to Theodore Gaza and Angelo Grassi, see Oliv- ieri, 37, 54. These sources are indicated in Chiarlo, 1996.

69 Virgil, III: 426-28, p. 70. The ancient figure of a reclining Venus-like nude may also

be important for the history of Venetian Renaissance painting (Giorgione, Titian), where the reclining female nude became a major subject.

7OLorber, 24-25. 71 Mommsen; Ashmole; Mitchell, 1974; Bodnar, 1998, 57.




thenon drawing is a light sketch, in a hand considerably more fluid than the rest of the page, of a sort of composite contraction of the processional friezes, moving from right to left, with a horseman resembling those from the interior friezes, at the extreme right." Most scholars believe, even though the text of this manuscript is in Ciriaco's own hand, that the drawings were rendered by a more "professional" north Italian artist, possibly Pisanello, Stefano da Verona, or one of their pupils, with the Panathenaic passage added by yet another hand, presumably an elegant synthesis of some rougher sketches. 73

Did the Berlin drawing that Ciriaco gave to Pietro Donato in 1437 serve as a model in anteprima for Donatello's Panathenaic riders? Could the added frieze passage have been drawn by Donatello himself based on Ciria- can material?

It does not exceed the boundaries of historical interpretation to suggest a likely (but impossible to prove) scenario as follows. Simply stated, when Ciriaco arrived in Padua in 1449, he may have presented Donatello with a coin, gemstone, lead cast, or drawing of the Panathenaic horsemen, and stated, "This is the work of Phidias at the Parthenon." At which point Do- natello would have worked up the theme in wax, fleshed it out to the humanist's approval, and incorporated it into the Gattamelata monument, unseen by others - until the invention of the telephoto lens. But, again, the question of audience is particularly important here.

THE WORKSHOP AND THE ACADEMY

Because of its venerable university and its proximity to Venice (which con- quered it in 1405) the city of Padua had long been a center of humanist and antiquarian culture. Following early Greek and Roman antiquarian interests in Venice and the Veneto, the Paduan physician Giovanni Dondi dall'Orologio (d. 1384), for example, went to Rome as early as 1375 to study and record ancient artifacts and art.7' The famous boarding school for humanist studies run by Gasparino Barzizza had a distinguished classical library and tutored the following men among other pupils: Pietro Donato, Francesco Barbaro, Filelfo, and the young Leon Battista Alberti. Alberti studied there from around 1415 to 1418 (at least ten years before he re-en- tered the Florence from which his family had been banished) overlapping Barbaro who received a doctorate in civil law at the university of Padua in

72 Beschi, 1998, 86. 71 Ibid., 85-86. 74 For early Venetian and Paduan collection of classical antiquities see Brown, passim;

Bazin, 43.




1416, having first studied under Barzizza. 75 Barbaro and Filelfo eventually became distinguished as scholars of Greek, which they studied in the second decade of the fifteenth century. Another wave of serious interest in Greek studies began in Padua with the arrival of the Florentine exile Palla Strozzi in

76 1434, who was to live there until his death in 1462. Until 1444 the Greek scholar John Argyropoulos was at the University of Padua. During the 1440s Pietro Donato, Francesco Contarini, and Giovanni Marcanova maintained

77 collections of classical inscriptions and artifacts. Leading protagonists of classical literature and epigraphy in Padua included Pietro Donato and Palla Strozzi, both of whom had direct connections with Ciriaco d'Ancona. Re- corded payments for the Gattamelata were made through a Paduan bank upon the instruction of Palla Strozzi's son, Onofrio, who acted as Dona- tello's representative to Erasmo da Narni's heirs. 71 Palla Strozzi, a Florentine who was an exact contemporary of Donatello, lived out his exile in Padua

79 reading Greek texts including works by Plato and Aristotle. To explain the possible involvement of transplanted Florentines such as

Palla Strozzi, Bonnie Bennett and David Wilkins have proposed that the Gattamelata project had a Florentine connection leading all the way to Co- simo de' Medici, who owed a debt of gratitude to Erasmo da Narni for having indirectly caused the downfall of the Albizzi regime in Florence in fa- vor of the Medici when he defeated the Milanese on behalf of the Venetians

8' Althou h Cosimo had indeed considered Gattamelata an ally, it is unlikely that he was an economic patron of the monument in Padua. Nev- ertheless in the greater scheme of things, because of his longstanding admiration for both Gattamelata and Donatello, he was probably interested in the work, and can be considered a member of a larger humanist audience

81 for the statue, if not a member of Donatello's Paduan inner circle. In their discussions of art and Paduan humanism, scholars have made

much of the so-called gimnasiarcapadovano of the painter and impresario 82

s -school is thought Francesco Squarcione (ca. 1397-1468). Squarcione' art 75

Grayson, 1998a, 420. 76 Wilson, 114. 77

Pope-Hennessy, 194-95. 71 Ibid., 200. 79 Vespasiano da Bisticci, 235-45.

'OBennett and Wilkins work this out in a lengthy argument, 90-94. " Caglioti makes no reference to the possibility of the Gattamelata as a Medici commis-

sion. Nor does Kent, who however points to their good relations, and mentions that Lorenzo de' Medici kept a portrait of Gattamelata by an unknown Venetian artist in his bedchamber at Palazzo Medici; 245, 271.

12 Muraro, 387-97; more recently Brown, 133.




to have been furnished with plaster casts of antiques, fragments of ancient sculpture, coins, gems, medals, and drawings after antiquities from Greece and Rome. 83 His studio itself has been considered a kind of "museum," and renderings of such treasures were probably also circulated in his workshop's pattern-books, an established tradition of North Italian art, familiar from examples such as the taccuino (book of drawings) of Giovannino de'Grassi at the Biblioteca Civica Angelo Mai in Bergamo.8' Some recent scholars have rightly suggested that the three-dimensional "casts" may have simply been plaster mannekins of arms, legs, and torsos made from life rather than from Greco-Roman statuary.85 Nevertheless, Squarcione's studio - a kind of workshop as exhibition-space where objects and ideas could be visited - made Padua a point of reference for artists, and has even been likened to the

86 most elite Florentine and Paduan cultural institutions. Mantegna was among the many pupils trained by Squarcione from his

collections of ancient sculpture.8' His Paduan forma mentis, which emphasized the value of Greco-Roman antiquities, evolved further in his mature years, when he explored the southern shores of Lake Garda with Felice Feli- ciano and Giovanni Marcanova, and when he formed an archaeological cc " in his house at Mantua, which merited a visit from Lorenzo de'

88 Medici in 1483. Giorgio Vasari stated, a century after the fact, that Squar cione, who was "not the world's greatest painter," had trained Mantegna by having him draw from plaster casts, some of which were formed from an-

89 Squarcione's success cient Greek and Roman statues. es and failures as a painter, what precisely the exempla in his shop consisted of, and whether or not Squarcione himself was able to translate these models into inspired drawings, are not central issues here - only that he is said to have maintained a kind of "proto-Academy" at Padua from the 1420s through the 1450s.

Donatello probably maintained a similar kind of studio in Padua, perhaps in a more elegant manner, during the decade 1443-53, as he worked on the components of the High Altar of Sant'Antonio and Gattamelata

83 According to Bernardino Scardeone, who knew Squarcione's lost autobiography, Squarcione traveled to Greece and returned with sculpture and drawings that would facilitate the education of his pupils: Scardeone, Historiae de urbispatavinae antiquitate et claris civibus patavinis (Padua, 1560), 370-71, cited by Tolley, 437.

8'Lipton, 208. 85 Agosti, Farinella, and Settis, 1074.

86 Muraro, 392. 87 Brown, 133. 88 Bazin, 43. 89 Vasari, 3:384.




simultaneously, creating an enormous Paduan enterprise in figurative art. Large-scale Renaissance bronze sculpture was extremely labor intensive, and Donatello's system of bronze casting in Padua, with Andrea del Caldiere as technical master of the foundry, consisted of working up detailed models in stucco or wax, and after the piece was cast, of working back into the bronze by chasing, carving, incising, and polishing, almost as if it were an object roughed out in marble.90 His studio must have resembled a kind of informal museum, with various components of the Gattamelata and the Altare del Santo on continuous display, together with ancient objects, casts, and drawings.9' Donatello's Paduan workshop employed numerous (as many as twenty) assistants, including the sculptor Bartolommeo Bellano (ca. 1434- 97) and Donatello's most gifted Paduan assistant Niccolo' Pizzolo (1421- 53), who would eventually collaborate with Mantegna.

92 Whether or not Mantegna himself ever actually participated in the studio, it is widely acknowledged that the work Donatello made there was of paramount importance for the development of Mantegna )s career as a painter. Donatello, rather than Squarcione, may have provided the germ of a model for the eventual archaeological museum that Mantegna kept in his house at Mantua. 93

Donatello's shop may have served as a forum for the demonstration of new ideas worked up in modeled, sometimes ephemeral, form. Workshop ephemera coexisted with antiquarian fragments, and in such an environment, Donatello's "Miracle of the Penitent Son" relief, for example, whether in a paper, wax, or bronze state, with its bizarre, stadium-like perspectival network, may have leaned next to the head of Gattamelata, which stood at eye level like an ancient bust of Julius Caesar. These objects intermingled with Ciriacan artifacts, Donatellian drawings and models, and ancient objects.94 Such a scene would not only parallel the Paduan example of Squarcione (however paltry or grandiose that collection actually was), but

9OBearzi, 99-100; Pope-Hennessy, 210.

9'Several parts of the horse were cast by 1447; Pope-Hennessy, 21 0. 92 Martineau, ed., 94 and passim; The sixteenth-century sculptor Baccio Bandinelli told

Grand Duke Cosimo I that Donatello had employed eighteen or twenty assistants in his Paduan shop; Pope-Hennessy, 210.

9'Ibid-

9'Pizzo has recently published a hollow plaster version of the head of Gattamelata at the

University of Padua (Museo di Scienze Archeologiche e dArte) as having been either a pre- liminary study for the Gattamelata from Donatello's studio (which he says is not likely since models for bronze sculpture were usually made from stucco or wax) or, more probably, a copy of Gattamelata's head made during 1447-53 to commemorate Donatello's work. The head may have an ultimate provenance in Squarcione's studio.




it would follow the Florentine tradition established by Lorenzo Ghiberti's workshop in the first years of the Quattrocento, which Donatello himself had frequented as a young artist. Ghiberti's foundry in Borgo Allegri had quickly become a training ground for the most ambitious young sculptors and painters. And Ghiberti's collection of ancient and medieval objects, the utilitarian purpose of which (like pattern-books) was to stimulate figurative representation, became a symbol of intellectual prestige, like a private library, launching the sculptor into the role of antiquarian connoisseur - a role that Donatello seems to have accepted readily." Indeed, we recall that when Ciriaco d'Ancona visited the Florentine workshops of Ghiberti and Donatello in 1433 he viewed their antiques side by side with works in progress.

The various components that made up the High Altar and the Gattame- lata, then, probably had their first and most critical reception as individual objects in Donatello's studio. These works in progress (drawings, models, and cast bronze elements) would have been interspersed with gems, small bronze statues, marble reliefs, medals, and other exempla from antiquity. Donatello, as a mature, accomplished artist, would have thus initiated a kind of museum ante litteram, not so much to possess objects for their material value, but to incorporate them into the collective humanistic visual and ekphrastic vocabulary.

It is here that a group of spectators for the two nude horsemen (which were ironically rendered invisible once the statue was installed in public) be- gins to emerge. A special audience of cosmopolitan eruditi, possibly including Pietro Donato, Palla Strozzi, Francesco Barbaro, Ciriaco d'An- cona, Leon Battista Alberti, and their counterparts and friends, would have enjoyed the allusion to the work of Phidias in fifth-century Athens as it was demonstrated in drawings, wax models, and cast-bronze elements in Do- natello's shop. Regarding Palla Strozzi's intellectual interests in exile, it may not be a mere coincidence that Edgar Wind (in a conversation with Jenb La'- nyi prior to 1939) commented that the two nude riders under consideration here reminded him of the evening horse-races described by Plato in the Re- public, in which participants passed torches to one another in relay. 96

Indeed, some of Plato's works, including a Latin translation of the Republic, were in Barzizza's library, and would therefore have been known to Pietro

95 De Benedictis, 9-29. 9'The reference to Plato's dialogue (Republic, Book 1) was suggested to Jenij LAnyi by

Edgar Wind and mentioned in an unpublished lecture by LAnyi, cited by Janson, 15 9; Plato, 576-77. These races were performed in Athens in honor of the goddess Artemis-Bendis.




Donato and Francesco Barbaro. 97 Nor is it incidental that the Pietro Donato, Bishop of Padua, owned Ciriaco's drawing of the Parthenon, or that Barbaro and Ciriaco were the authors of inscriptions for the Gattarnelata monument.

It can be proposed that Leon Battista Alberti, who also knew Donatello, Francesco Barbaro, and Ciriaco d'Ancona, and was in northern Italy in the 1440s, was also a protagonist in the configuration of intellectuals surround- ing Donatello at the time of his Paduan production. Donatello's work seems to have inspired Alberti (who we recall was also deeply involved in the creation of the equestrian monument in Ferrara) in his composition of the treatise on the living horse, De equo animante. The Gattamelata statue and De equo animante appear to have been mutually influential.

THE LIVING HORSE

A decade after Alberti recognized Donatello as "our great friend Donato the sculptor" in his treatise on painting, the two men seem to have collaborated on ideas of equestrian physiognomy, proportion, and decorum that are manifest in the equestrian Gattamelata and the De equo animante.9' Moving from the microcosm of the nude riders that decorate the saddle to the Gat- tamelata as a whole, the ensemble is a massive, compact group, especially compared (as it inevitably has been) to Verrocchio's later equestrian statue of the Bergamasque general Bartolommeo Colleoni W. 1476) in Venice. Art theorists from Filarete (fifteenth century) to Leopoldo Cicognara (eighteenth century) to John Shearman (twentieth century) have written about the historical dissonance in the ancient-modern mix of the Paduan general's portrait, armor, and stance, about the static quality of the equestrian group, and the unduly small scale of Gattamelata in proportion to his horse.99 Iron- ically, the great eighteenth-century historian of sculpture Leopoldo Cicognara even lamented the fact, in his critique of the Gattamelata, that Donatello had not been aware of horsemen such as those on the interior frieze of the Parthenon."'

For many all'antica features in early Renaissance art, there seem to have been counterbalancing impulses of empirical naturalism and local function and meaning-"' Donatello's Gattamelata and Alberti's De equo animante are

"See Mercer,114,115, 123 and Passim for the influence of Barzizza on Paduan and Ve- netian humanism.

"Alberti, 1972, 32-33.

"Filarete, 659; Cicognara, 3:176; Shearman, 28.

"'Cicognara, 3:176. "'This'is particularly the case with Donatello's works, as pointed out by Bennett and

Wilkins, 168-90.




not exceptions to this rule. Fifteenth-century humanists and sculptors knew from Pliny the Elder that the idea of the equestrian memorial statue was Greek in its ultimate origins; likewise Alberti's De equo animante was based on Greek literary sources insofar as his descriptions of the volatility, emo- tions, and psychology of a horse deliberately followed Xenophon, the Greek historian, soldier, and philosopher."' We have seen that classical learning including an understanding of ancient Athens was by no means lacking in Florentine-Paduan intellectual circles, and yet Donatello and Alberti's horses speak as insistently of fifteenth-century ideals and North Italian and Tuscan traditions as those of classical antiquity.'03

Although Alberti's De equo animante was ostensibly composed as a vet- erinary text, about the "natural inclinations of horses" as well as their formal beauty, it was in several ways a parallel text to Donatello's Gattamelata." The essay, and its insistence on "naturalism" together with its integrated ref- erences to classical literary models, may have nourished Donatello in his presumed competition with the simultaneous composition of the equestrian monument in Ferrara. The reciprocal cause and effect of Alberti's ideas upon Niccolo" Baroncelli's horse, which no longer exists, cannot be gauged. But Donatello's statue conforms to Alberti's text in several of its features, and since Alberti's art theory typically followed existing practice, we may speculate that drawings or models from Donatello's studio facilitated Alberti's treatise as well.

In De equo animante Alberti advocated a kind of equine "civic humanism," stating that a horse on the battlefield should always show "the excellence of glory and the decorum of liberty" in his bearing.'O' Such a horse had to be trained to tolerate great physical efforts in order to save his fellow citizens and defeat his enemies, for the dignity and glory of the patria.'06 He had to be ferocious and disciplined in battle, and happy and festive in triumphal parades.'O' Alberti explained that even a horse that is used for warfare should be raised to be peaceful, like a human citizen, who maintains his good manners, sense of duty, and civic dignity. Like a civilized man, the horse's violent instincts ought to be controlled for the common good.'O'

102 Salamone, 242, 248. 103

Grayson, 1998b, 412-13. 104 Alberti, 1991, 86-87.

'O'Ibid., 86-87. 106 Ibid., 120-21, 132-33. 107 Ibid., 132-33. 108 Ibid., 120-2 1.




It is enough to recall the criticisms of Filarete, Cicognara, and Shearman to identify a strong plastic expression of these qualities in Donatello's Paduan equestrian monument. The horse and rider form a closed composition, with the rider relatively small compared to his horse, especially as opposed to ancient prototypes such as the equestrian statue of Marcus Aure- lius in Rome. Gattamelata's masterful control of his horse, and the synchronic unity of horse and rider, communicates a clearly legible sense of decorum. `9

Gattamelata's horse is specifically visualized in Alberti's triumphal parade mode, rather than in a state of battlefield fury. The proportions of Donatello's horse, so much broader and heavier than classical precedents, correspond with Alberti's prescription in De equo animante. Alberti ern ha- sized that a perfect (fifteenth-century) stallion must have a large body, with solid and robust limbs, legs broadly distant one from the other, a large back- bone that does not protrude nor is concave, and a great wide chest, "pectore superbo," that can easily support a rider in full armor."' To be most beautiful, the horse should also have a curly tail (fluid and wavy, but at the same time solid and nervous), small flexible ears, flared nostrils, and a short abun- dant (almost curly, "subcrispa") mane that falls to the right of the horse's neck."' Alberti's discourse on the proper use of reigns and spurs also finds a detailed parallel in Gattamelata's regalia."' Alberti's perfect horse has a Tus- can literary precedent in the anonymous Sonetto del Cavallo Perfetto, of the late Trecento, which itself has been identified as a textual prelude to Paolo Uccello's Hawkwood Monument of 1436. 113

Historians of the material world of Renaissance Europe have shown that fifteenth-century people perceived actual living horses and equestrian monuments with extraordinary interchangeability. A sort of "flicker effect" blended the apprehension of real horses with their highly naturalistic sculp- tured surrogates."' Alberti's treatise on the living horse and contemporary plastic representations of equestrian groups such as the Gattamelata ought to be understood in light of this observation. Although De equo animante is considered an essay about living horses, with no reference to artistic representation - hence its "naturalism" - Alberti did insert one sculptural analogy, when he stated that a horse must be well blanketed and groomed, because even statues made of ivory or bronze would rot under accumulated grime. 1 1 5

"'Pope-Hennessy, 204.

"OAlberti, 1991, 98-101. "'Ibid., 98-101. 112 Ibid., 134-35. 113 Martelli, 57-77. 114 Jardine and Brotton, 139. "'Alberti, 1991, 164-65.




The impact of Leon Battista Alberti as classicist, artist, and naturalist, whether it be in his writings or his lively presence, could have been instru- mental in the ambience of Donatello's Paduan studio. ̀6 The hypothesis that Alberti's assistant in Rimini, Matteo de'Pasti (ca. 1420-68) ended up with a cache of Ciriacan material suggests that Alberti, too, had access to Athenian

drawings and descriptions like the folios dedicated to Pietro Donato, and that fresh from the Ferrarese competition, he too might have been a member of the audience for the exquisite Phidian riders on Gattamelata's saddle.117

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, we may envision Donatello's Paduan studio as a "museum" of sorts, not in the architectural sense, but as a viewing space for a variety of images and objects, antique and contemporary reliefs, gems, cast replicas, and drawings. This Paduan viewing space, whether taken literally or figura- tively in historical retrospect, was frequented not only by painters, sculptors, and apprentices, but also by humanist intellectuals. Following Ciriaco d'An- cona's death (1452) and the Ottoman occupation of Athens (1456), the presence of Greek art in Italy was diminished and almost disappeared for about two centuries."' But it may not be straining the limits of interpretation to speculate that it was actually here in Donatello's Paduan workshop in the later 1440s that the textual antiquarian tradition of Phidias and Classical Greek sculpture first coalesced on an intellectual level with the primary ref- erent visual material in the minds of Italian artists and humanists.

Donatello may well have been homesick. But despite his assertion at the

age of sixty-eight that he longed to return to Tuscany, cc so as not to die

among the Paduan frogs,"' " we may assume that Donatello's ten-year resi-

dence in Padua was enriched with a humanist audience of the most

sophisticated order.

RHODE ISLAND SCHOOL OF DESIGN

116 Grayson, 1998b, 416; 1998a, 425-26.

117 Bodnar, 1998, 59. 118 Beschi, 1998, 83.

"9Milanesi, 2:299-300, no. 210, Rome 14 April 1458. Letter from Leonardo Benvogli- enti to cav. Cristofano Felici Operaio del Duomo di Siena (Archivio dell'Opera del Duomo di Siena, Libro di Documenti Artistici, no. 78): "Et salutate el maestro delle porti, maestro Donatello, da mia parte. P- veramente bene atto a farvi grande honore: et cosl m'avesse creduto misser Mariano, che gih 4 anni ve lo menavo da Padova; avendo esso grande affec- tione d'essere a Siena, per non morire fra quelle ranochie di Padova; che poco ne manch6."




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