I wrote an article for The Brooklyn Rail September 2015 issue about my enduring love for Donatello. Here’s a teaser… I’ll include a link to the full text when it’s published in September!
St. John the Evangelist, Donatello, hand detail. (Click to enlarge.)
PUPILS BUT NO IRIS (possible title?)
Donatello’s extraordinary St. John the Evangelist, the center point of MOBiA’s Sculpture in the Age of Donatello this last spring, is a Trojan Horse. He works his way deeper into thought for days, he troubles. Along with twenty-two other irreplaceably precious works of Renaissance sculpture, the nearly seven-foot marble work was in New York because the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Florence decided it best to tuck him into an airplane and fly him to the New World so he could experience international travel while they remodeled their galleries.
St. John was installed within sight of Donatello’s blood-chilling Prophet Habbakuk, and a foot away from Nanni de Banco’s St. Luke, a hunk of marble-man, sitting proud, confident, and stiff. St. Luke looks less like a saint than an arrogant man-in-his-prime, confident in his ascent and domination over the restless and ruminating elder next to him. …
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