When did the Renaissance begin in Florence? The question is problematic, but it is believed that that great flowering of new artistic styles, inspired by humanistic principles and the rediscovery of nature, started with the 1401 competition for the northern bronze door of the Baptistery of Florence. The competitors had to present a gilded bronze relief depicting the Sacrifice of Isaac: those of the two finalists are preserved in the Bargello National Museum. Lorenzo Ghiberti, the winner, then realized not one but two large bronze doors for the Baptistery, while Filippo Brunelleschi did not win but shortly thereafter will start the grandest and most emblematic work of the Florentine Renaissance, the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore, the city cathedral.

In those early years of the 1400s, another great artist took his first steps in Florence. A close friend of Brunelleschi, he would be the guide – for the whole first half of the century – of the most innovative artists in and outside the city: in one word, Donatello. The Bargello National Museum houses the largest number of works by Donatello in the world, all displayed in the so-called “Donatello Hall”: here, the sculptor’s works are flanked by many other sculptures from the time, thus creating a stunningly rich gallery of statues and reliefs of the early Florentine Renaissance.

In the center of the room stands the famous bronze David, made for the Medici family, the first nude, sculpted in the round, after the end of classicism. Around it, we find the youthful marble David, the stone Marzocco, emblem of the city of Florence, and the bronze Cupid-Attis, one of the first large sculptures to depict a pagan and mythological character, here captured in a natural, lively, liberating laugh. The Saint John the Baptist in the guise of a hermit was finished by Donatello’s best pupil, Desiderio da Settignano, of whom other works are displayed in the same gallery, along with some other of other great Florentine sculptors of the time, among which Luca della Robbia, inventor of the glazed terracotta technique, Agostino di Duccio and Vecchietta must be mentioned.

Finally, on the back wall of the Donatello Hall, St. George stands out within a reconstructed niche: below him, the relief depicting St. George killing the dragon is its original predella, and one of the first artworks ever to feature perspective space. The sculpture comes from Orsanmichele, a building where artistic commissions were in full swing at the beginning of the Renaissance.

The exterior of the church of Orsanmichele is adorned with marble niches, dedicated to the patron saints of the Florentine “Arts” (the arts and crafts guilds): for these niches, the guilds commissioned a statue of their patron saint, almost all of them at the same time, in the beginning of the 1400s. They chose the best sculptors then available, who thus realized a great gallery of monumental statues of the early Renaissance. Set aside the Bargello Saint George by Donatello, the other twelve original sculptures are today on show in the Orsanmichele Museum on the first floor of the same building: three large bronzes were made by Lorenzo Ghiberti, while Donatello and Nanni di Banco sculpted three marbles each. Donatello had also created a gilded bronze Saint Louis of Toulouse (now in the Santa Croce museum) which was replaced, around 1470, by one of the greatest bronze masterpieces of the Renaissance, the Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Andrea del Verrocchio (which invites you to return to the Bargello National Museum to admire his other masterpieces, such as the bronze David and the delicate Lady with a bouquet).