After Donatello (circa 1386-1466), Italian, Padua or Florence, circa 1450-60

This fine and moving composition is known as the Madonna di via Pietrapiana, named after the street in which the terracotta version, now in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence, was formerly housed, 38 Via Pietrapiana in Florence. The attribution of the prime example, in the Bargello, was the subject of debate when it was previously described as a cast by Pope-Hennessy¹ and because of the existence of various replicas. Leading scholars questioned whether that terracotta was a prototype or cast. However, examination in 1985 during restoration of the relief revealed that it was modelled on a wooden board by the artist² and it is, according to Galli,³ the sculpture from which all replicas derive. The attribution for the Bargello relief was upheld during the recent Donatello exhibition in Florence in 2022.⁴

The tender relationship between mother and child is witnessed in this composition, with the seated Virgin holding her son firmly in her hands as he presses his tightly swaddled body against hers while her face approaches his. The mantle of the Virgin is held together on her breast by a fibula with a seraph, as is the case with Donatello’s Virgin of the High Altar of the church of Sant’Antonio, Padua. In fact, the design relates closely to several of Donatello’s works produced during his time in Padua (1443-53): the Verona Madonna, the small roundel of the Miracle of the Newborn Child in the Basilica of St. Anthony and the Chellini Madonna.⁵

Scholars have variously proposed that Donatello either modelled the prototype shortly after his return to Florence from Padua, or perhaps had the piece sent to Florence from the Veneto.⁶

Copies exist in both clay and stucco; another polychromed terracotta version of the composition is in the Bode-Museum, Berlin (inv. no. SKS 2431) catalogued as "After Donatello" and a stucco example is in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (inv. no. 7412-1860) catalogued by Motture as “circa 1450-60 after Donatello”.

¹J. Pope-Hennessy, Catalogue of Italian Sculpture in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1964, vol. 1, pp. 95-6.

² C. Avery, op.cit., 2001.

³ F. Caglioti (ed.), op.cit, cat. no. 13.5.

⁴ Ibid.

⁵ P. Motture, op.cit., cat. no. 6.5.

⁶ Ibid., p. 236.

RELATED LITERATURE 

C. Avery, “Donatello’s Madonnas Reconsidered”, Apollo, CXXIV, n°295 (new series), September 1986, pp. 181-182: the version in the via Pietrapiana is by Donatello, ca. 1455-1460;

C. Avery, ‘Donatello’s Madonnas Revisited’, in C. Avery, Studies in Italian Sculpture, London, 2001, pp. 23-60;

F. Caglioti (ed.), Donatello: The Renaissance, exhibition catalogue, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence, 2022, pp. 388-389, cat. no. 13.5;

P. Motture (ed.), Donatello. Sculpting the Renaissance, The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2023, 6.5, pp. 236 and 237