Donatello, Equestrian Monument of Gattamelata (Erasmo da Narni), 1445-53, bronze, 12 feet, 2 inches high, Piazza del Santo, Padua Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
That nickname, honeyed cat, comes from the fact that he was such a cunning sweet talker. Apparently on top of being a cunning warrior, he was able to impress the pope with his smooth diction (although they had a falling through when the pope failed to pay him).
Donatello the ninja turtle used “Dona-tell me who you are again dude, cause I don’t gattamelata clue what you do. ” in a rap battle against Donatello. It was almost as dope as the beautiful intricacies of this magnificent horse statue.
The church has an amazing structure. Gattamelata is my new pet name - I'm surprised the number of levels it works on, lol. I appreciate this throwback to the previous playlist. I was mostly expecting paintings of a certain style here.
Marcus Aurelius looks like he’s riding a on a pony. Gattamelata’s large and muscular war horse (no doubt a breed meant to carry a knight in heavy armor) is more realistically proportioned to his rider’s body than Marcus’ is. Marcus Aurelius is depicted as a symbol, while Gattamelata is a gloriously noble individual on his equally noble steed.
This statue is quite disapointing. Not even near the lightfull apperance of Marc Aurel. The rider sits symetrically and stiff on the horse, so that there is no good viewing side. The horse itself is smooth and not very detailed, no real renaissance horse. Donatello has done his work as an artisan, but not as an artist. To recognize this, just compare it with the statue of Colleoni in venice, where you will see everything, this statue lacks: Impressive vividness of the massive horse; strong personal expression of the rider, beeing an amusant mixture between fat, old, keen, reckless, very experienced in life; the uper body turned in another direction than the head, so that there are two good viewing sides, apart from the dynamic that is given by that. Sorry, Signore Donatello, on this one you where just practicing.
Casting bronze is not hard, after all, if they did it 1,000 years ago with primitive everything, it's no big deal to figure it out again and do it. Of course we don't know how many failed casts were made before this one was a success, or how much repairing had to be done to it to fix defects. The biggest challenge is getting enough heat and having a large enough cruiciable to melt this much bronze in without modern gas fired furnaces and cruiciables. 500 years ago they had to melt all that metal probably burning coal or wood, which, even with a modern gas furnace can take hours to fully heat and melt a large quantity of metal.
I would not dismiss the difficulty of large scale bronze casting of intricate design during the Renaissance, by the ancient Greeks, or today for that matter.
@@Milubee I'm talking about NO gas furnace and temperature controls, asbestos suits and safety equipment- primitive meaning coal, coke, charcoal or wood fire melting the metal @ 2,000 degrees. They cast iron in the 1800s using sand molds and wood fired furnaces
