Michelle de Vandahlcourte's video: Donatello s Mary Magdalene Michelle s art vlog part 19

Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi (c. 1386 – 13 December 1466), better known as Donatello, was an Italian Renaissance sculptor from Florence. He studied classical sculpture and used this to develop a complete Renaissance style in sculpture, whose periods in Rome, Padua and Siena introduced to other parts of Italy a long and productive career. He worked with stone, bronze, wood, clay, stucco and wax, and had several assistants, with four perhaps being a typical number. Though his best-known works were mostly statues in the round, he developed a new, very shallow, type of bas-relief for small works, and a good deal of his output was larger architectural reliefs. The Penitent Magdalene is a wooden sculpture of Mary Magdalene by the Italian Renaissance sculptor Donatello, created around 1453-1455. The sculpture was probably commissioned for the Baptistery of Florence. The piece was received with astonishment for its unprecedented realism. It is currently housed in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo in Florence. The wood used by Donatello is that of White poplar. Documentation about the work is scarce. The earliest mentioning of the Penitent Magdalene dates from 1500 and mentions that the statue is being placed back in the Baptistery in Florence against the southwest wall. Since then, the statue has been moved a few times: in 1688 it was replace by the baptismal font and put in storage, in 1735 it was moved back to the Baptistery and this time the work was placed against the southeast wall, in 1912 it was put back against the southwest wall and today, being moved after restoration, it can be seen in the Sala della Maddalena in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo in Florence. The Renaissance art historian Giorgio Vasari mentions the work in his Vite: "In the same baptistery, opposite this tomb, a statue from Donatello's own hand can be seen, a wooden Saint Mary Magdalene in Penitence which is very beautiful and well executed, for she has wasted away by fasting and abstinence to such an extent that every part of her body reflects a perfect and complete understanding of human anatomy." Donatello executed the work when he was more than sixty years old, after he had spent a decade in Padua. The dating has been established indirectly, based on a 1455 copy from Neri di Bicci's workshop now in the Museum of the Collegiate of Empoli. In 1500 the work was in the city's baptistery. According to an Italian historian, it was seen by Charles VIII of France in the 1480s, when he was camped with his army near Florence. The work was damaged by the 1966 flood of the Arno River, and the restoration process revealed some of the statue's original polychrome and gilding.