Description
The Equestrian Monument to Gattamelata is Donatello's bronze statue that dominates Piazza del Santo in Padua, in front of the Basilica of Saint Anthony. Cast between 1446 and 1453, it is the first large bronze equestrian statue since antiquity: the starting point for every equestrian monument in the modern West.
The rider is Erasmo da Narni, known as Gattamelata, a condottiero in the service of Venice. The bronze group is about 3.4 metres tall and rests on a high trachyte pedestal shaped like a sarcophagus, with two carved doors on the sides, one closed and one ajar.
The horse is a sturdy warhorse, slightly larger in proportion than its rider, advancing slowly with its muzzle lowered, like the horses of St Mark's in Venice. One raised hoof rests on a sphere, perhaps a cannonball, which keeps the statue balanced.
Gattamelata rides bareheaded, with a modern saddle and stirrups, and holds his baton of command at a slant. The face is that of an ageing man, stern and focused. The armour, invented by Donatello in the antique style, bears a Medusa head on the chest and putti around the belt.
The nickname is a small mystery. One biographer explained it by his gentle manners combined with great cunning, handy for ambushing enemies; more simply, it may have come from his mother's surname, Melania Gattelli.
Despite the doors on the pedestal, the monument is not a tomb: the condottiero is buried inside the basilica, in the chapel his widow had built. The statue was created purely as a public tribute, a kind of cenotaph, in what was then a burial ground.
When Donatello finished the work and left Padua, in 1453, a committee of five experts valued it at 1,650 ducats. Most of it was paid by the widow, perhaps with some help from the Venetian Senate. Verrocchio later looked to it for his monument to Bartolomeo Colleoni, and Giambologna for his of Cosimo I.
The rider is Erasmo da Narni, known as Gattamelata, a condottiero in the service of Venice. The bronze group is about 3.4 metres tall and rests on a high trachyte pedestal shaped like a sarcophagus, with two carved doors on the sides, one closed and one ajar.
The horse is a sturdy warhorse, slightly larger in proportion than its rider, advancing slowly with its muzzle lowered, like the horses of St Mark's in Venice. One raised hoof rests on a sphere, perhaps a cannonball, which keeps the statue balanced.
Gattamelata rides bareheaded, with a modern saddle and stirrups, and holds his baton of command at a slant. The face is that of an ageing man, stern and focused. The armour, invented by Donatello in the antique style, bears a Medusa head on the chest and putti around the belt.
The nickname is a small mystery. One biographer explained it by his gentle manners combined with great cunning, handy for ambushing enemies; more simply, it may have come from his mother's surname, Melania Gattelli.
Despite the doors on the pedestal, the monument is not a tomb: the condottiero is buried inside the basilica, in the chapel his widow had built. The statue was created purely as a public tribute, a kind of cenotaph, in what was then a burial ground.
When Donatello finished the work and left Padua, in 1453, a committee of five experts valued it at 1,650 ducats. Most of it was paid by the widow, perhaps with some help from the Venetian Senate. Verrocchio later looked to it for his monument to Bartolomeo Colleoni, and Giambologna for his of Cosimo I.