The Springtime of the Renaissance:
Sculpture and the Arts in Florence, 1400-1460
The Louvre Museum
Through Jan. 6
Say "Italian Renaissance" and we think about works whose idealized naturalism attests to a new fascination with the particulars of the real world and its inhabitants, and, at the same time, to a new appreciation of the art of antiquity. We think about the way forms are modeled with increasing conviction, beginning with Giotto in the 1300s, and about how space is rendered more and more believably, after the invention of mathematical linear perspective in the early 1400s. Together, these associations can suggest a conception of art as a two-dimensional phenomenon that aspired to evoke the appearance of the world we inhabit by fictive means—in other words, "Italian Renaissance" can seem synonymous with painting.
Blame Leonardo da Vinci for this. Though he made sculpture occasionally, the legendary polymath was convinced of the superiority of painting. "Painting requires more thought and skill and it is a more marvelous art than sculpture," he wrote in his notebooks in the late 1400s. Why? Painting can depict the ephemeral and the transparent, where sculpture cannot. Sculptural form is physically articulated and depends upon the way light falls upon those articulations, while painting can present the effect of sculptural form, illuminated in any way the painter wishes, on a flat surface. Sculpture is literal; painting is an illusion.
Leonardo's convictions are challenged by the provocative, informative exhibition "The Springtime of the Renaissance: Sculpture and the Arts in Florence 1400-1460," seen first in Florence and now at the Louvre. The show concentrates on sculpture, which the curators describe as "the art that flowered first and more than any other" during the extraordinary period of exploration, invention, discovery and creativity that Giorgio Vasari baptized the "rebirth" of culture in Florence. The exhibition's thesis is that sculpture led the way, in the first half of the quattrocento, providing a means both for assimilating the influence of classical antiquity—which was known chiefly through sculpture—and for translating that influence into a new language.
The exhibition's sculptures and reliefs, executed in materials ranging from terra cotta to marble and bronze, and intended for everything from private devotions to public display, were selected, we learn, because they were "destined to have a crucial impact on the development of the other figurative arts." The proof? The show's selection of what the curators term "sculptured paintings": powerfully illusionistic works by artists such as Masaccio, Paolo Uccello, Andrea del Castagno and Filippo Lippi, made in response to the fresh ideas proposed by their sculptor colleagues.
Whether or not the show convinces us of the accuracy of these assertions, it offers some extraordinary, often stellar works by such masters of the early 1400s as Donatello, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Nanni di Banco, Desiderio da Settignano, Filippo Brunelleschi, Mino da Fiesole, Michelozzo, the della Robbia brothers, and more. An introductory section presents a sampling of their trecento precursors, while occasional antique pieces throughout the exhibition remind us of what quattrocento Florentines regarded as a standard of excellence. Sculpture dominates, as promised, but with regular interruptions by groups of paintings. The entire selection is remarkable and, while we may quibble at the organization of the installation at the Louvre, it's impossible not to rejoice at the works on view.
The sculptures, for example, include the two celebrated relief panels of the "Sacrifice of Isaac" submitted by Ghiberti and Brunelleschi for the 1401 competition for the bronze doors of the Florence Baptistry. (Ghiberti's more dynamic, more dramatic conception won, with its heroic, classicizing Isaac.) The "sculptured paintings" are equally impressive, with such treasures as Masaccio's magisterial "Saint Paul" (1426), a sturdy, impressively bearded fellow who pulls himself out of his medieval gold background into assertive three-dimensional splendor, and Castagno's robustly modeled, life-size frescos of "Famous Men and Women" (1448-49), seemingly about to step from their niches.
We may compare Ghiberti's elegant bronze "Saint Matthew" (1419-22), with his uncanny inlaid eyes and emphatic drapery, with Donatello's gilded bronze "St. Louis of Toulouse (1422-25), all agitated folds and introspective solemnity. Both were public showpieces, intended for Orsanmichele, the sculpture-studded church designed to demonstrate the wealth of Florence's powerful guilds. Ghiberti's saint is suave and authoritative, but Donatello's was clearly problematic. Being able to see the piece from the back allows us to follow his struggles with casting, his mistakes and repairs.
There are similarly illuminating groupings throughout. Witness the pairing of Donatello's expressive bronze head of a bearded man with an antique bronze portrait head of Seneca, economical proof of what the Florentine master learned and rejected from the classical past. A series of tender devotional Madonnas in relief, some polychromed, plus a few related paintings, allow us to understand both the dominance of particular, popular types and the subtle variations that artists wrought on such "best sellers," in various mediums.
The section on Renaissance interpretations of antique equestrian monuments is, of necessity, schematic, since Donatallo's superb mounted figure of the mercenary soldier known as Gattamelata, completed in 1453, obviously could not travel from Padua. In compensation, the show unfolds around a sublime bronze head of a horse from a mid-fourth-century Greek equestrian statue, formerly in the Medici collection, grouped with Donatallo's much larger, fiercer, more naturalistic version (c. 1455). Together they announce and summarize just about everything we need to know about quattrocento Florentine artists' relationship to the antique past and their vibrant present. Everything else is a wonderful bonus.
Ms. Wilkin is a critic and independent curator.