DONATELLO

DONATELLO (1383-1460), a great Italian sculptor, born at Florence, where he was apprenticed to a goldsmith; tried his hand at carving in leisure hours; went to Rome and studied the monuments of ancient art; returned to Florence and executed an "Annunciation," still preserved in a chapel in Santa Croce, which was followed by marble statues of St. Peter, St. Mark, and St. George, before one of which, that of St. Mark, Michael Angelo exclaimed, "Why do you not speak to me?"; he executed tombs and figures, or groups in bronze as well as marble; his schoolmasters were the sculptors of Greece, and the real was his ultimate model.