From the Hand of Donatello to a Physician

The V&A launches its Medieval & Renaissance galleries with some spectacular art works by the likes of Donatello. The most fantastic piece to make it into the gallery includes a "tondo the size of a plate" that was a gift for the doctor Giovanni Chellini da San Miniato who writes about it in the Ricordanze, his economic diary. Back in the Renaissance, well-to-do men would keep small journals about their finances (e.g. debits and credits, dowries, etc). Occasionally, the author would add a small commentary or two.

Chellini did the same on the 27th of August 1456, when to his surprise, the physician treated a celebrity. The celebrity in question was none other than Donatello, one of the most iconic visual artists of the Quattrocento (what the Italians called the 1400's or the Renaissance). As payment for the doctor's treatment of an unspecified illness, Donatello gave a tondo of the Virgin Mary, who is forced to bend her neck to avoid being out of the boundary of the sculpture. On either side, two angels stop her from going to the left or right.

The fact that the good doctor accepted a work of art as a form of payment comes to show that visual artists were held in greater esteem than in our modern times. In addition, Donatello created art that replaced beauty with emotional honesty, making him the first expressionist visual artist before even Van Gogh equated emotion with art.


Sources:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/nov/21/donatello-vanda-medieval-renaissance-galleries

http://www.answers.com/topic/tondo-art-1

http://www.lib-art.com/imgpaintingthumb/3/3/t9233-chellini-madonna-verso-donatello.jpg