Book contents
- The Art of Sculpture in Fifteenth-Century Italy
- The Art of Sculpture in Fifteenth-Century Italy
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- Introduction Making and Unmaking Sculpture in Fifteenth-Century Italy
- Part I Surface Effects: Color, Luster, and Animation
- Part II Sculptural Bodies: Created, Destroyed, and Re-Enchanted
- Part III Sculptural Norms, Made and Unmade
- Part IV Sculpture as Performance
- Chapter 10 Sculpture and Sacrifice
- Chapter 11 Illuminated Sculpture and Visionary Experience at the Cardinal of Portugal Chapel in Florence
- Chapter 12 Tullio Lombardo, Antonio Rizzo, and Sculptural Audacity in Renaissance Venice
- Part V Sculpture in the Expanded Field
- Part VI Sculpture and History
- Index
- References
Chapter 10 - Sculpture and Sacrifice
Abraham and Isaac by Donatello and Nanni di Bartolo*
from Part IV - Sculpture as Performance
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 February 2020
- The Art of Sculpture in Fifteenth-Century Italy
- The Art of Sculpture in Fifteenth-Century Italy
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- Introduction Making and Unmaking Sculpture in Fifteenth-Century Italy
- Part I Surface Effects: Color, Luster, and Animation
- Part II Sculptural Bodies: Created, Destroyed, and Re-Enchanted
- Part III Sculptural Norms, Made and Unmade
- Part IV Sculpture as Performance
- Chapter 10 Sculpture and Sacrifice
- Chapter 11 Illuminated Sculpture and Visionary Experience at the Cardinal of Portugal Chapel in Florence
- Chapter 12 Tullio Lombardo, Antonio Rizzo, and Sculptural Audacity in Renaissance Venice
- Part V Sculpture in the Expanded Field
- Part VI Sculpture and History
- Index
- References
Summary
The Aretine art historian and fabulist Giorgio Vasari tells a story in his “Life of Donatello” of a Genovese merchant who, with Cosimo de’ Medici as intermediary, commissioned from the sculptor a bronze bust. The transaction did not run smoothly. When the work was completed, the patron thought the asking price too high. “So the deal was referred to Cosimo, who had the bust carried to a courtyard above his palace and had it placed between the battlements overlooking the street so that it could be better seen.” Up in this arena of heightened visibility, the artist and patron both proved intransigent. Cosimo told the merchant that the price stated by Donatello was actually too low; the purchaser, however, calculated that the price meant the artist was earning more than half a florin a day, and that this was too steep a price. Such accounting did not go down well with the artist
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- The Art of Sculpture in Fifteenth-Century Italy , pp. 221 - 238Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020