Proper Context

“The sixteenth-century artist and art historian Giorgio Vasari tells us about Donatello’s Saint Mark. Supposedly, when the patrons first saw the statue standing on the ground they were displeased with it, but Donatello convinced them to let him install it in its niche, where he would finish working on it. The patrons agreed, the statue was installed, and Donatello covered it up for fourteen days—pretending to work on it but in reality not touching it. When it was finally uncovered, everyone viewed the statue with wonder. The only difference was the installation of the work in its proper context. The artist had included distortions to account for the sculpture being seen from below (in its original location its base would be just above the height of an average person). Some of these distortions include a torso and neck that are slightly longer than expected, which would be visually corrected when viewed from below (and the neck is hidden by a flowing beard).

Although Vasari’s story is apocryphal, the visual evidence does suggest that Donatello—in this work and others—was keenly interested in viewer perception. This sensitivity to audience and the ability to manipulate his viewers through his works in stone and bronze are part of what makes him such a distinctive figure—and part of why his Saint Mark still has the ability to astound us with its power and expressiveness.

This over-life-size marble, carved from a single, shallow block of stone, portrays the evangelist Saint Mark standing on a pillow, holding a book in his left hand, staring intently into the distance… Apart from this gaze, his face is defined by a long, intricately carved beard whose wavy curves reach down to the base of his neck. The rich folds of the toga he wears convey the expressiveness of fabric—bunching up at his waist, for instance, and falling dramatically around his legs—while also responding to and suggesting the body underneath. Note, for example, how his left knee—slightly forward—pulls at the garment, and how even when the fabric is piled up, as it is on his hip, it manages to convey the body’s physicality. Consider the extraordinary skill in turning hard stone into something that looks like soft, malleable fabric…

Donatello’s commission for Saint Mark was part of a broader campaign to adorn the exterior of Orsanmichele in Florence, Italy. Orsanmichele is and was a building with both civic and religious importance for Florentine citizens. Though constructed in part as a grain warehouse and used as such for decades, Orsanmichele was also a significant site of pilgrimage and religious devotion, due to the presence of a miracle-working image of the Virgin and Child…

Unfortunately, all of the original statues on Orsanmichele - fourteen works—have been placed in either the building’s museum or the Bargello museum. The sculptures in the niches are copies. The result is that we can now view Donatello’s Saint Mark at ground level—exactly as he did not intend it to be viewed!...

By the time of the Saint Mark commission, Donatello had already completed or was at work on several other notable public sculptures, including his marble David (1408-9), Saint John the Baptist (1408-15), and Saint George (c. 1410-15, also for Orsanmichele). These early works—especially Saint John—already exhibit some of the hallmarks of Donatello’s style, including a realism informed by Classical (ancient Greek and Roman) art and a certain psychological intensity… These works had an impact not only on his peers but on later sculptors, as well—including on Michelangelo, who can be considered the High Renaissance artistic heir to Donatello. Thanks to a career that spanned over 60 years of activity (Donatello lived until 1466) and that resulted in radical works for major cultural and artistic centers—including Florence, Siena, Padua, and Rome—Donatello became an artist whose fame and impact equaled if not surpassed that of his teachers.”

~ smart history dot org