Title: The Springtime of the Renaissance: Sculpture and the Arts in Florence 1400-60
Abstract: The Springtime of the Renaissance: Sculpture and the Arts in Florence 1400-60Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, 23 March-18 August 2013; Musee du Louvre, Paris, 26 September 2013-6 January 2014Marc Bormand and Beatrice Paolozzi Strozzi (eds), The Springtime of the Renaissance: Sculpture and the Arts in Florence 1400-60 (exh. cat.) Florence, Mandragora, 2013, 560 pp., c. 350 illustrations, mainly colour, £40. ISBN 978-88-7461-186-7For enthusiasts of the Renaissance and sculpture, the must-see exhibition of 2012-13 was unquestionably The Springtime of the Renaissance: Sculpture and the Arts in Florence 1400-60, which this reviewer saw at the Louvre in Paris, the second and final venue after the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence. As the title suggests, the exhibition was premised on the idea that to observe the first shoots of Renaissance art, we should direct our gaze not towards painting, which has always garnered the spotlight, but towards sculpture, which has been comparatively neglected. Without the great sculptors of the early Renaissance, such as Lorenzo Ghiberti and Donatello - so the argument goes - there would be no Masaccio, Filippo Lippi or Paolo Uccello - to say nothing of later masters, such as Sandro Botticelli and Leonardo da Vinci. In a display of good sense, the organizers did not hold too tightly to this thesis, which would have been a challenge to prove in exhibition format. Although paintings were included in the exhibition, their purpose was mainly to suggest that painters and sculptors were in dialogue, not that sculptors were always out in front of painters. How the exhibition dealt with the theme of sculpture's primacy was to let the assembled sculptures - more than 100 - speak for themselves. They told of an extraordinary moment in history when men blessed with phenomenal powers of imagination and technical skill let loose a revolution in three-dimensional art as significant as any the art world has experienced.The organizers assembled nearly an embarrassment of riches in loans. No sentient viewer could escape the material's spell, especially when standing beneath such ravishing works as Donatello's large and gleaming Saint Louis of Toulouse. Many of the sculptures, including the Saint Louis, benefited from lighting conditions superior to those in their home institutions. Also aiding inspection was the disciplined approach to vitrines and the ability to circulate behind many of the sculptures.The first room of the exhibition established a useful benchmark for the stylistic progress to come. It presented a group of works by the leading sculptors active in Tuscany during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, including Nicola and Giovanni Pisano, Arnolfo di Cambio and Tino di Camaino. The most impressive object in the room, however, may have been an antiquity, the Talento Crater, an important inspiration to many of the featured artists, although that message was not entirely clear from the assembled works, which seemed to owe a larger debt to French Gothic art, represented in the exhibition with two Madonnas, a small ivory and a large wooden statue. The visitor needed to step into the next room and approach two of the greatest treasures in the exhibition, the competition panels for the north doors of the Florentine Baptistery, to see classical sculpture wielding its influence. On the panel by Ghiberti, the boy fated to be sacrificed is unabashedly classical in origin, a point the exhibition underscored with the nearby placement of an ancient torso. The boy is related to the antique in another way. Ghiberti conceived the figure as an independent small bronze - the earliest known since antiquity. …
Publication Year: 2014
Publication Date: 2014-09-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 14
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