BERLIN—Two Davids greet visitors at the entrance to the exhibition “Donatello: The Inventor of the Renaissance” in Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie, and they couldn’t be more different. Having left Florence, Italy, for the first time, Donatello’s triumphant marble sculpture “David” dons classical drapery and a crown of wine grapes normally seen on Bacchus, the Roman god of…

Italian sculptor Donatello worked at the dawn of the Renaissance. His works epitomize the beauty and ingenuity of the era and set the standard for sculpture from then on. Donatello sculpted figures full of life. He did so by looking at the classical sculptures of ancient Rome, and by faithfully copying life itself. His sculptures…

Craftsmen should trace the greatness of art to one man, according to 16th-century art historian Giorgio Vasari in his book “The Lives of the Most Celebrated Painters, Sculptors, and Architects.” That man is the Italian sculptor and architect Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi, whom we know as Donatello. Donatello, along with his friends and…

Donato, who was called Donatello by his relatives and wrote his name thus on some of his works, was born in Florence in the year 1403. Devoting himself to the arts of design, he was not only a very rare sculptor and a marvellous statuary, but also a practised worker in stucco, an able master…

Their artworks are icons of Italy and their names are among the most well-known in the art world: Donatello, Brunelleschi, Botticelli, Michelangelo. Eager viewers stop and snap photos of the instantly-recognizable paintings, sculptures, and buildings. Displayed in museums around the world, the immortal paintings invite a popular following. What remains obscured in the history books,…