For the first time in almost 40 years – and for the first time ever in Germany – a major special exhibition will be held on the extraordinary Renaissance artist, Donatello. The exhibition at the Gemäldegalerie will focus not only on the complexity of his oeuvre, but also on his influence on the development of Renaissance art as a whole, especially when it comes to painting.

The Florentine sculptor Donatello (ca. 1386–1466) is one of the great pioneers of the Italian Renaissance. Even his contemporaries recognised his outstanding importance, and clients from all over Italy – including Prato, Siena, Padua, Rome and Naples – sought his works.

Donatello was a versatile innovator who was always open to technical and artistic developments and experimented tirelessly with materials and forms of aesthetic expression. This included his consistent application of linear perspective, his rediscovery of terracotta, his pioneering use of bas-relief – as in his famous Equestrian Statue of Gattamelata – or the rendering of the most diverse human emotions.

The exhibition is sponsored by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds.

A special exhibition by the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, in collaboration with the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and the Musei del Bargello, Florence, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London