Greeks and Romans. Ancient texts about art became a
source of inspiration and a touchstone against which to
measure artistic achievements. Verisimilitude, the imita-
tion of nature, gained signal importance in the artists’ vo-
cabulary. Contemporaneously, the lay spirituality of the
Franciscan movement gave force to the renewed interest
in nature and man.
Monumental stone sculpture had been revived as a
component of architectural decoration in the Romanesque
period. Figural sculpture was reintroduced into the artis-
tic vocabulary of Europe in the Gothic period principally
through the evolution of portal jamb colonnettes into
jamb figures. This process adumbrated the revival of the
ancient Vitruvian association between the human form
and the column. In Italy, ingrained classical traditions en-
sured that figures and reliefs on pulpits, tombs, and
church facades had a greater independence from their ar-
chitectural setting than did those on northern Gothic
structures.
Classicism and Gothic naturalism combined in the art
of Niccolò PISANO, a sculptor from Apulia, working in Tus-
cany. His son, Giovanni PISANO, a contemporary of Giotto,
enlarged the expressive capabilities of figures. Quotations
from classical sculpture continued to appear side by side
with stylistic elements imported from the Gothic north
throughout the Trecento. By the end of the century, the
Italian and northern traditions merged momentarily, pro-
ducing the phenomenon of the International Gothic style,
whose chief exponent in the north was Claus SLUTER.
A series of commissions for public sculpture in Flo-
rence in the first decades of the Quattrocento was the cat-
alyst for the emergence of new directions in sculpture.
The protagonists were a group of young craftsmen, mostly
trained as workers of precious metal or stone in the Inter-
national Gothic style. Challenged to give tangible form to
a new ideal of the individual—of man’s special place in the
world order—they carved and cast a race of heroes, saints,
and gods and won acclaim for their own genius. This con-
cept of virtu, represented by the image as well as the
maker, became a leitmotif of Renaissance sculpture.
Within this context, two strains in sculpture emerged,
a refined, elegant mode and a vigorous, classical one,
sparked respectively by the different temperaments of the
two leading artists, Lorenzo GHIBERTI and DONATELLO.
Throughout the century materials, motifs, and formats
were reintroduced under the guidance of ancient art. Fig-
ures in classical CONTRAPPOSTOstance, clothed or nude,
life-size and over life-size, sometimes free-standing, reap-
peared. Artists in the service of the cult of the individual
created portrait busts, equestrian statues, and a special
brand of funerary monument for a clientele who wished to
perpetuate their memory or to commemorate their
achievements. Donatello, a leader in these developments
and undisputed creative genius of his generation, also
evolved a new method of low-relief carving (SCHIAC-
CIATO). He took advantage of that method to offer
provocative interpretations of traditional subjects, height-
ening psychic energy and incorporating the newly devel-
oped Brunelleschian one-point perspective into complex
vistas. In addition to marble and bronze, terracotta was re-
vived as a primary sculptural material; among the most
important workshops, that of the DELLA ROBBIAfamily pro-
duced glazed, polychromed reliefs and statues, meant
principally to decorate the coolly rational pietra serena
and plaster spaces of the new architectural style. The third
quarter of the century witnessed the emergence of a group
of virtuoso marble carvers (DESIDERIO DA SETTIGNANO, An-
tonio ROSSELLINO, BENEDETTO DA MAIANO) working in the
so-called “sweet style.” Perhaps best known for their re-
liefs of the smiling Virgin and Child, they focused their
production on church furnishings, including pulpits and
tabernacles. By the last quarter of the Quattrocento, tech-
nical mastery of materials and an emerging scientific
knowlede of anatomy combined in a new ability on the
part of sculptors to display the body in motion. A primary
vehicle for the exploration of the figure in action (and in
the round) was the bronze statuette, though experiments
of this kind found their way into sculpture on a large scale
as well. Leading the field were VERROCCHIOand Antonio
del POLLAIUOLO, masters who were distinguished by the
fact that they were also painters. Greater facility gained
through the combined use of drawings and models further
enhanced the potential for experimentation.
The Tuscan style was disseminated to other cultural
centers; Donatello spent about a decade in Padua, while
artists of lesser rank sought work in the courts of north-
ern and southern Italy or in Rome. In most cases Quattro-
cento sculpture outside Tuscany was characterized by a
more sharply exaggerated local classicism, meant to sug-
gest ties to Roman and early Christian traditions specific
to that area.
In general, 15th-century sculptors outside Italy con-
tinued working in a late Gothic idiom which featured fig-
ures of either tall, slender proportions or Sluteresque
robustness swathed in drapery. The figures, for the most
part, appear embedded in fantastic and elaborate Gothic
settings as part of architectural schemes or church fur-
nishings. Sculptors worked primarily in wood and stone;
polychromy was a significant feature. Among the greatest
northern sculptors are counted Hans Multscher (c. 1400–
67), Nicolaus GERHAERT VON LEYDEN, Tilmann RIEMEN-
SCHNEIDER, Veit STOSS, and Adam KRAFT. Of the sculpture
that was independent of an architectural framework, vo-
tive figures, such as PIETÀgroups and Madonnas, were es-
pecially popular. In France the popularity of groups of
near lifesize figures in stone (representing, most typically,
Entombments, as at Auch and Bourges) may have inspired
a similar phenomenon in Italy, although in terracotta. Nic-
colò dell’ ARCAexploited the latter medium, producing
highly active figures charged with great expression. The44334 4 ssccuullppttuurree