Donatello - Celebrating the importance of the Renaissance master in the first major exhibition in nearly 40 years
17.00 (GMT), 9 March 2022 | Online
This historic exhibition, with exhibits from the world's leading museums and collections, sets out to reconstruct the astonishing career of one of the most important and influential masters of Italian art of any age, juxtaposing his work with masterpieces by other Italian Renaissance masters such as Masaccio, Andrea Mantegna, Giovanni Bellini, Raphael and Michelangelo.
Devised as a single exhibition across two venues, the Museo Nazionale del Bargello and Palazzo Strozzi, it is promoted and organized in conjunction with the Skulpturensammlung Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London; each of which will hold subsequent variant exhibitions on Donatello, later in 2022 in Berlin and at the start of 2023 in London.
Donatello, The Renaissance, will be the first major exhibition on the art of Donatello in 40 years. Hosting over 130 works, this exhibition is set to be one of the most important cultural events in Italy in 2022.
Katherine completed her MA degree in Renaissance Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. For the past 20 years, Katherine has specialised in the Renaissance to Baroque, working first as a researcher for the Daniel Katz Gallery. Her exposure, predominately to European sculpture during those years at the gallery, inspired a personal concentration in this area. And in 2004, Katherine began work as a private advisor to collectors and institutions, where her specialist responsibilities encompass various areas beyond that of sourcing works of art; including all aspects of educating and collection management. Katherine is the dedicated Vice President and Director of The Friends of the Bargello, a non for profit foreign support group committed to raising the profile and encouraging support for the Museo del Bargello in Florence; the world's most important collection of Italian Sculpture.
Dr Francesco Caglioti is Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Art History in Pisa, Scuola Normale Superiore and a world authority on the Quattrocento and Donatello. In the last 35 years, he has published extensively on Italian art from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century, in particular on Renaissance sculpture. He rediscovered masterworks by artists such as Donatello, Desiderio da Settignano, Verrocchio, Leonardo and Michelangelo, as well as four large bronze angels from the tomb of King Henry VIII of England (formerly of Cardinal Wolsey), entered in 2014 in the collection of the V&A Museum in London. He has curated Donatello, The Renaissance, the first retrospective in nearly 40 years dedicated to the pioneering florentine sculptor of the Quattrocento. The groundbreaking exhibition will take place from 19 March in two nearby major cultural institutions in Florence, the Museo Nazionale del Bargello and the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi.
Paola D'Agostino was appointed Director of the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in 2015. This recently created museums' consortium, now called Musei del Bargello, comprises five major institutions in Florence: The Museo Nazionale del Bargello, the group's headquarter, the Medici Chapels, the Church and Museum of Orsanmichele, Palazzo Davanzati and Casa Martelli. An expert on Renaissance and Baroque sculpture, Dr D'Agostino was the Nina and Lee Griggs Assistant Curator in European Art at the Yale University Art Gallery from 2013 to 2015, where she co-curated the exhibition The Critique of Reason: Romantic Art 1760-1860. Previously, she worked as Senior Research Associate in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. During her tenure at the Metropolitan, she contributed to the forthcoming catalogue of Italian bronze sculpture and co-organized the exhibitions Bernini: Sculpting in Clay (2012-2013), and Antonio Canova: The Seven Last Works (2013).
Dr Arturo Galansino is Director General of the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi in Florence since 2015. Art historian, curator and academic scholar, he studied in Turin, Milan and Paris, obtaining his PhD in Art History and Criticism in 2007 and worked in international museums such as the Musée du Louvre in Paris, the National Gallery and the Royal Academy of Arts in London. He curated and co-curated many exhibitions spanning from Old Masters to Contemporary art including Giovan Battista Moroni (2014), Rubens and his Legacy (2015) and In the age of Giorgione (2016) at the Royal Academy in London; Giovanni Battista Moroni. The Riches of the Renaissance (2019) at the Frick Collection in New York; Ai Weiwei. Libero (2016), Bill Viola. Electronic Renaissance (2017), Carsten Höller. The Florence Experiment (2018), Marina Abramović. The Cleaner (2018); Tomás Saraceno. Aria (2020) at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence.
