OPERE ARTISTICHE
Madonna col Bambino, bottega di Donatello
Madonna and Child, from the workshop of Donatello
This relief (93 x 64 x 19 cm) depicts the Madonna in half length with the Child and is after a terracotta, the "Kress Madonna" (around 1405), conserved in the National Gallery of Washington (Kress Collection) and discussed by Ghiberti and the young Donatello who was still working in his master's workshop: this relationship is important as it is one of the most significant examples of the return to painted terracotta that involved artists of the calibre of Ghiberti and Donatello. This work in Bagno, that has been carefully modelled from a single piece of terracotta that is hollow in the base and behind and is covered in traces of gilding, would have been produced in Donatello's workshop in around 1410. From the sixteenth century it was set on the Porta di Romagna, and was placed on the outside wall of the Basilica in 1890 and then moved into the inside after its restoration in 1992.
It is placed in the Basilica di S. Maria Assunta, in Piazza Ricasoli.