Clarisse Grosseto
Fondazione Grosseto Cultura
List

#383 • Saint John

Author

Donatello – workshop of

Date

Late 15th century

Technique

Painted wooden sculpture

Size

Height 115 cm

Description:

This polychrome wooden work was part of a larger sculptural group representing a probable Lamentation of Christ: this iconography was widespread in 15th-century northern Italy, particularly in the Lombard-Venetian and Emilian areas.
 
Donatello was active in Padua in the mid-15th century where he renewed his language, which became sculptural in a Renaissance sense.
 
Of the sculpture in the Luzzetti collection a workshop attribution has been proposed, close to Donatello's work, but without identifying a precise artistic personality.
 
The fine carving, expressive charge and remarkable polychromy make it a remarkable work and enclose it within the circle of Florentine sculptors active in parallel with the Renaissance master.