Alpha Book

" Slightly younger than Ghiberti was
Donatello (1383-1466), who, among other triumphs, fashioned the
realistic statue of St. Mark in Venice. Luca della Robbia (1400-1482),
with a classic purity of style and simplicity of expression, founded a
whole dynasty of sculptors in glazed terra-cotta. Elaborate tomb-
monuments, the construction of which started in the fifteenth century,
reached their highest magnificence in the gorgeous sixteenth-century
tomb of Giovanni Galeazzo Visconti, the founder of the princely family
of Visconti in Milan. Michelangelo himself was as famous for his
sculpture as for his painting or his architecture; the heroic head of
his David at Florence is a work of unrivaled dignity. As the style of
classic sculpture became very popular in the sixteenth century, the
subjects were increasingly borrowed from pagan literature. Monuments
were erected to illustrious men of ancient Rome, and Greek mythology
was once more carved in stone.
The extension of the new sculpture beyond Italy was even more rapid
than the spread of the new architecture.


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