Donatello, Saint Mark

We're standing on the second floor of Orsanmichele in the heart of Florence. Orsanmichele is the site of a true renaissance of sculpture. Orsanmichele is the first place where we see sculpture start to be the main event instead of subservient to a larger cathedral program. Previously in Gothic buildings, we see sculptures that are part of a larger whole, sculptures that are over a doorframe, attached to a wall. At Orsanmichele, the sculptures begin to come to life. They were commissioned for this building, for Orsanmichele, by different guilds. There are 14 niches, all independently furnished with a sculpture by a different guild. Guilds were professional organizations for people who all had the same job. At Orsanmichele, we find a lot of guilds related to the cloth trade. Wool merchants, linen drapers, the silk guild, because those were the guilds that made the most money in Florence, and they wanted to look better than the other guys. And if we look specifically at the magnificent sculpture by Donatello of Saint Mark, you can see that he's standing on a pillow, the signifier for the linen guild. The linen guild was the guild that commissioned Saint Mark from Donatello for their niche. And this was a powerful way for the guilds to assert, almost like an advertisement, their presence in the city, their pride in the city. And also their good taste, because hiring the best artist with the best, most expensive sculpture was a way to declare that you were better than everybody else. The guilds were competing against each other, the artists were competing against each other, and Florence was competing against other city-states in the area. Competition is a theme that we see again and again in Renaissance Florence, from the baptistry door competition between Brunelleschi and Ghiberti. Brunelleschi famously loses that competition and seemingly gives up sculpture, but we actually know that he didn't. He joined into a formal partnership with Donatello, and they were jointly commissioned to make the Saint Mark for the linen guild. It seems very likely that this sculpture was meant to best Ghiberti, and prove to the entire city of Florence that he, Brunelleschi, should have won the baptistry door competition. But it's Donatello that historically gets the credit. And that's because he actually did the carving. But it seems, thanks to new research, that they both were involved in the conceptual planning of this extremely modern, innovative sculpture. And this is a hallmark of the We see a turn from tradition, from repetition, from stable imagery, in favor of innovation, something that sparks debate and comparison. This is an increasingly mercantile culture, with families competing against each other in the marketplace. And so why wouldn't artists also compete against each other? The sculpture is about seven feet tall. There is an incredible sense of presence. It commands the space immediately surrounding it. Even the replica stands out on the exterior of Orsanmichele. When you walk by this building, you notice Saint Mark. What I find so striking is that the niche that he's located in is so gothic. And yet the figure that it frames, Saint Mark, is a figure that is drawing its inspiration directly from the classical world, long before the gothic. That's another way in which the Saint Mark stands out against its fussy, pointy, gothic niche. All of that framing sets him off even more. He stands on the ground. He has a real weight, a gravity to him, and we get that sense not only from the firm planting of his feet on the pillow that yields to his weight. He stands in what's called contrapposto, a classical pose that involves putting your weight on one leg and resting the other. Saint Mark's right leg is completely hidden by the heavy drapery that he wears, whereas his left knee pushes forward. We can see the peaks of drapery that result from that. His right hip juts up, his left hip is falling down, and even his upper body begins to respond to that shift. So when Donatello references the classical tradition of contrapposto that we see in by Polykleitos, among others, he's saying he's educated. He's saying he's part of the long tradition of sculptors who have been praised and lauded in Europe for their prowess in crafting figures that seem as if they could be alive, because that's what the new goal is. Create a figure that looks as if it were real. When you stand on the street and you see him standing above you, it's as if you know him. It's as if you could talk to him. Your body turns as he turns towards you. It's completely different than the sculptures that Ghiberti made for Orsanmichele that are elegant. They look like they're superhuman divine figures with drapery that responds to no earthly wind. The S-curve of Ghiberti's Saint John the Baptist does not come from a human spine, but rather from an ideal. Saint Mark's body is that of a human. He's available to us on the streets of Florence. He is a part of the civic conversation. And we have to remember that Orsanmichele is very much in the heart of the city. It was originally an open market where people did their shopping. It was a granary that held the city's very important stores of grain to feed the population. So very much part of the hustle and the bustle of the city. But in 1292, an image that the granary had of the Madonna started performing miracles. So Orsanmichele then becomes an important religious building, a shrine that attracts pilgrims. It's a little bit inaccurate to look at Saint Mark as we do when we look at the original now on the second floor of Orsanmichele because he stands in front of us, not above us. So we notice some of the slight distortions that the sculptor intentionally included. Famously, the early art historian Giorgio Vasari noted that his hand and his head are just a little too large and were seen as ungainly. Donatello did this because he knew that the sculpture would be viewed from below, but when he presented the they wanted to reject it because of these distortions. Then Donatello, being diplomatic, simply took their criticism, hid the sculpture under a cloth, perhaps pretended to do a bit of work on it, and then unveiled it in place so that they could see it from the proper angle, and it was accepted. Now, we don't know if this story is true. Vasari loved a story of artists being smarter than their patrons. The left hand is large, but it's beautifully rendered as it holds what we presume to be the gospel of Saint Mark. The sculpture bears traces of gilding and of some pigment that probably was applied to make the sculpture look more like bronze. This can be really surprising for us in the 21st century because we associate marble with luxury, but marble was actually a cheap material for sculpture, or at least the cheaper material for sculpture. Bronze was much more expensive and much more prestigious, and that value system was inherited from the classical world. The face has an extraordinary presence. The nose is damaged. The eyes have a riveting quality, and you can see that Donatello has etched around those pupils to emphasize their presence. And we have to remember that the light would change on the exterior of the building over the course of the day. So, as you walk through the city, as you go about your daily life, Mark is responding to the same changing light conditions that you are. And importantly, this sculpture is not attached to the building. It stands freely within this niche. The artist bothered to carve the sculpture in the round, even though originally we couldn't actually see the back of the sculpture. And so Donatello was, in a sense, completing this conceit that this figure could emerge from his niche and walk into the city itself. Donatello's Saint Mark is a monolith, meaning it was carved from a single block of stone, which was a classical mark of prestige in a sculpture. A sculptor was considered highly skilled if he could complete a sculpture out of a single block of stone. And Florentines, always up on their art theory, would have noticed and would have known. And this sculpture has made a significant impression, not only on Florentines in the 15th century, but into the 18th, 19th, and into the 20th centuries, where art historians often cite this sculpture as one of the first truly modern works of art. It's truly a game-changer.